Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Fluff Forevermore ❯ The Story Everyone Wants to Hear ( Chapter 7 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything except the plot and Kou, and I am getting tired of saying so.

“Yusuke, what dud you mean this morning when you said that your job is painful sometimes?” Harry asked, running a rag over his broomstick in the empty dormitory that evening. He had just spent an hour patiently explaining to Hiei why anyone would want to play a game where you flew at extreme heights and threw a ball back and forth to each other. He didn't understand why anyone would want to do this on the ground, much less while trying to keep your balance while at least fifty feet above the ground. After Harry explained this well enough for Hiei to be reasonably satisfied, he had to clarify the reason they used brooms.

“If Kurama's mother were here, she would say that brooms are used for cleaning, not for flying,” the hiyoukai maintained stubbornly.

Now, though, he and Harry had agreed to disagree, freeing Harry up to open the conversation to this new subject. He studied Yusuke intently and waited for his answer.

Yusuke looked slightly lost as he looked from Kuwabara to Kurama to Hiei, as if trying to decide from their faces how much to tell. Then he shrugged and said, “It was just hard to kill, is all.”

“But weren't the ones you killed the enemy?” Ron questioned, confused.

Yusuke looked down at his hands. “Oh, no,” he said softly. “There were many people we didn't like, but the enemies were few.”

“Then why did you kill them?” Hermione asked. She had joined them in the deserted dorm, even though girls weren't allowed.

“We had no choice,” Kuwabara answered.

“What?” Harry asked incredulously. “You were taking lives! How could you not have a choice?” He glared around at all of them.

Yusuke slammed his fist into the table. “Don't treat us like the bad guys! They were threatening my girlfriend's life, damit! And Kurama's mom, and Kuwabara' sister, and Hiei's—” Yusuke made an odd choking sound and looked quickly to Hiei, who had gone rather rigid. “Well, they threatened our friends,” he finished somewhat lamely.

“Who?” Ron asked, as Hermione gave Hiei an odd look. “Who threatened you?”

“Our archenemies,” Yusuke replied quietly. “The Toguro brothers.”

“And what did they make you do?” Ron asked, evidently unable to resist pressing them for details.

And that was how Yusuke ended up telling Harry, Ron, and Hermione about the Dark Tournament. But to explain it properly, he had to go all the way back to the beginning, to that moment when he was fourteen—the moment that changed his life forever…by ending it.

If the three were surprised that Yusuke had died once, they were shocked to hear that Kurama had actually joined forces with Hiei in a quest for world domination. They listened in wide-eyed silence as Yusuke recounted most of his life from the moment the car had hit him that fateful day, to the moment he and Kuwabara had officially gotten Hiei and Kurama on their side in Maze Castle, straight through the Dark Tournament. How he managed to tell all of that clearly and smoothly without revealing about Hiei and Kurama's pasts was a mystery to them all.

Apparently, though, his attempt to keep the light focused on himself instead of the two youkai was a bit more obvious than he'd hoped. He had just finished telling how he'd finally beaten Toguro when Hermione asked mildly, “So why are you trying to make us forget that Hiei and Kurama were there as well?”

Yusuke froze like a deer caught in headlights. “Well…er…um…I…”

“He doesn't want you all to badger us about ourselves,” Kurama said. “He doesn't want us to have to recount our own lives if we do not want to.”

“Why don't you want to? What'd the big secret?” Harry asked. “Because whatever it is, you can trust us.”

“I have nothing to hide from you,” Kurama said slowly. “Just things I do not think you would find very interesting.”

“I'm interested!” Hermione said at once. Ron rolled his eyes, but Hermione ignored him and kept her eyes on Kurama, who smiled at her eagerness.

“I was a demon once,” he began. “A kitsune—a spirit fox. My given name was Yoko, my family name Kurama. I was also a thief—a very skilled thief. I spent my days as a bandit, pillaging many fortresses and strongholds. My dream was to become the greatest demon in all of Makai…and I worked my way up toward that goal quickly. Many feared and revered me. Unfortunately, this caused me to become cocky, thinking that no one would ever be able to stop me. But one night, I was caught during a robbery. I was fleeing the fortress when I was shot, and fatally wounded.

“Something you must understand is that I was selfish then. When I felt my life energy weakening so quickly, the only thing I could think about was saving myself, at any cost. So, I went to the human world. There, I found a woman who was with child. Thoughtlessly, I joined souls with the unborn boy, with the idea that I could return to Makai once my powers were developed.

“My plan should have gone off without a hitch. The human, Shiori, raised me as Shuuichi Minamono, without any idea of what I truly am, and for over a decade, I lived in her home and planned my escape, all the while treating her as an inferior person.

“But then something I never could have foreseen happened. It would later prove to be both a blessing and a curse—my strongest asset and my possible downfall.” Kurama smiled and fingered the chain he always wore around his neck, along with his Hiroseki. “I grew to love two people. One I realized at a younger age, but the other I would not realize or confess until the age of sixteen.”

Next to him, Hiei smiled.

“Now, this newfound love for my mother was a new feeling to me, and one I was rather afraid of. That fear caused me to proceed with my plans as if nothing could stop me. And then, when I was fourteen, my mother fell ill. It was deadly, and the doctors held little to no hope for her survival.

“I have never been one to take things lying down, and when I found out that she was dying, I took matters into my own hands, vowing to save her.

“I will not go into detail, but I found a way to save her, at the cost of my own life. It was a sacrifice I was willing to pay, but it was not one Yusuke planned to allow me to pay. Instead, he offered up his own life, and because of his willing sacrifice, we were both spared. And since that time…I have been on his side,” Kurama finished. He sat back and waited for someone to say something.

Hermione was the first to speak. “That is an amazing story. Does your mom know now?”

Kurama nodded. “I told her a few months ago. And…she accepted it.” He sounded bewildered over the fact even now.

“How did you and Hiei meet?” Harry asked.

A smile broke across Kurama's face.

“If the next words out of your mouth are…” Hiei muttered.

“Hiei tried to kill me,” Kurama cut him off.

“OH, BY INARI-SAMA!” Hiei swore. “I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE YOU, DAMIT!”

Chuckles resounded around the room. “Is your mom nice, Kurama?” Harry asked, stowing his broomstick under his bed.

Kurama's smile grew soft. “Yes, she is. She's…very nice,” was all he said, for lack of words that could possibly describe his mother.

“Are your parents nice, too?” Ron asked Yusuke and Kuwabara.

Kuwabara didn't reply. He never talked about his parents, to anyone. Yusuke, though, said, “My dad skipped out when I was born, so I never met him. My mom might be pretty cool if she stayed sober long enough to think straight for a few minutes.” His voice wasn't angry or sad, just resigned. He had moved past those problems long ago…or at least he liked to think so. Most other people thought so, too. The only ones who were close enough to him to know the truth were Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei and Keiko. Of those four, one pretended not to care, one was too respectful to press Yusuke, and the other two had simply been asked by Yusuke not to say anything about it. So, the subject was respectfully avoided.

Ron started to say something to Yusuke, but Kuwabara shook his head, ever so slightly, and Ron turned to Hiei instead.

Kurama, guessing where the topic of conversation would head next, made a violent motion to silence the redhead, but too late.

“What about your parents, Hiei?”

Silence fell over the room. Yusuke and Kuwabara were almost cringing, visibly, and Kurama gave Ron a very un-Shuuichi-like-but-very-Yoko-like glare.

Hiei, noticing this, said, “Stop acting like I'm going to break.”

“We know you won't, but he might,” Yusuke muttered.

Ron looked uneasy. “What'd I say?”

Hiei shook his head. “Nothing. You said nothing wrong. In answer to your question…I don't know. I never met either of them.”

“They're dead?” Hermione asked quietly.

Hiei shook his head. “It's more…complicated than that.”

“Do you want to tell us?” Harry asked.

Hiei paused, trying to decide whether or not to tell the story that he had only ever willingly told three people.

“I was born in the Ice World,” he began. “It's an…island…about a mile in the air over Makai. The people of that world—the Koorime—are all women. They consider men a sort of taboo. Koorime reproduce asexually, which is how they keep their race free of males. It is Koorime law that men are to be avoided at all costs.

“However, one woman broke that law. She ventured off the island, and she met a male demon. Months later, she birthed…twins. A girl, named Yukina, and…a boy.”

“You,” Hermione said.

Hiei nodded. “When it became known that my mother had lain with a man, there was an uproar. By the time I was a week old, my name had changed from Hiei to the Forbidden Child. They all said it was bad luck to have a boy on the island, even an infant boy, and that in order to keep their race safe, they had to…get rid at me.

“My mother begged them. She offered to take Yukina and I and leave the Ice World. But the Koorime would not listen. They bundled me up in specially warded cloths, along with the sacred gem given to every Koorime child at birth by their mothers, and then they…they threw me off the island. Literally.”

Hermione gasped aloud. Hiei ignored her, and continued. His voice, which had been halting and shaky at first, grew stronger as he relived those horrible days.

“I didn't die, as I should have. I don't know how I survived. I just forced myself to keep on existing. I was still lying where I had landed when I was found by a band of thieves. They saw the stone my mother had given to me clenched in my fist, and they tried to take it. I bit one of them, and when they finally figured out that they weren't going to get it, they simply took the whole package.

“The details of my life would not interest you, but to make several different stories very short, as I grew, I became obsessed with finding my mother and the land I would have called home. I vowed to find her, sacrificing whatever was required to do so.

“And there were sacrifices. I gave up the bandits I had come to call family, I sacrificed peace, and I very nearly sacrificed my sanity. All for nothing.

“After long years of searching, I finally succeeded. As soon as I found out the location of my home, I traveled there, as fast as possible.

“But the people of that world wanted nothing to do with me. As soon as they saw a man in their midst, they scattered. I had gone there intent on killing the ones responsible for my hellish life, but upon seeing them, my anger and thirst for revenge, long held close to my heart, my only reason for leaving, was replaced by something entirely new—pity. Pity for the very people I had wanted to torture and kill for so long. Because I knew that they had been almost as unhappy as I had been since infancy, and they had felt it for far longer. They were a cold, fearful people, shutting out happiness and security for fear.

“However, there was one part of my mission that I could not allow my pity to cloud. I had to find my mother, the only one who had ever been on my side. And I completed that part of my excursion.” Hiei's voice held a sorrow and a bitterness that made all the others in the room want to retch.

“In my search for answers, I found Hana.” (AN: I don't remember her actual name.) “She was my mother's best friend and the only woman in the village who hadn't run from me. In answer to my inquiries, she led me to a grave marker, and then she told me that the woman had killed her self a few years after…after her son was exiled from her world, not knowing that I was that very son.

“My world grew cold and dark in that one moment. Right then, I banished all emotion. I allowed myself to feel no anger, sorrow, pity, or anything else. As I turned away without a word, I remember that she said, `You're him, aren't you?' When I simply kept walking, I heard her fall to her knees and whisper, `I'm so sorry…' and then her words were wracked with sobs.

“I left that world without looking back, and I never even thought about finding my father again.”

Hiei looked down at his lap and realized, much to his own surprise, that his hands were shaking. He stared at them, unwilling to look up and see everyone's faces.

There was silence in the room, broken after a minute or so by a small sniff. Hiei, looking up, saw that Hermione was crying. “Don't,” he said quietly. “Don't cry. I do not want anyone feeling sorry for me. Pity only makes it all harder to deal with.”

Hermione hiccupped and wiped her eyes. “I understand, but…”

“I know.” Hiei's voice was softer than it had ever been unless he was talking to Kurama, Yukina, or Shiori. “But it won't help me, and it will only make you feel worse. I think that what we all need right now is sleep, not pity. The other dimwitted ningen will be up from that `common room' thing soon, and you are not supposed to be here,” he added to Hermione.

“No one will be back up for a couple of hours, but you're right, I'm tired,” Ron said. “G'night, everyone.” He stumbled to his own bed, followed by everyone but Hiei and Kurama, since it was their bed everyone had been sitting in, and Harry.

“My parents are dead, too, you know,” he said quietly.

Hiei's eyes snapped to him.

“Voldemort murdered them…on the same night he tried to kill me, and couldn't. No one except Dumbledore and I know why he couldn't kill me, a one-year-old boy, when he'd killed so many powerful wizards. It was because my parents sacrificed themselves…for me. It caused Voldemort's curse to hit him instead of me, but it broke his power instead of killing him. That's why he's after me, now that he's back to full strength.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Hiei asked, a bit sharply.

Harry took no offense at his tone. He said simply, “I always wished I could tell someone who really understood.”

Kurama was woken later by the sound of quiet gasps and hiccups. Confused, he rolled over, and his eyes widened.

Hiei was lying on the corner of the bed, knees pulled up to his chest. His back was to Kurama, and his shoulders were shaking.

Kurama reached out and touched him gently. He started and turned to face the fox, and Kurama gasped softly when he saw Kurama's face streaked with tears. Without a word, he pulled the Jaganshi into his arms. Hiei struggled, and for a moment they were back to before Hiei had confessed his love. But when Kurama didn't let go, Hiei buried his face in his chest and cried.

“Oh, koi, it's all right,” Kurama whispered. He had a pretty good idea of what had caused Hiei to break like this. “Shh, shh.” He held his koi tightly, lips pressed against his hair.

Hiei cried into his chest for a long time, until he had cried himself out. Then he simply lay in Kurama's arms, silent except for an occasional hiccup.

“I miss her, fox,” Hiei rasped, his voice hoarse from crying.

“I know, Hiei. I know it's hard. And I wish there was something I could do, but…”

“You're helping right now,” Hiei whispered, meeting his eyes. “I'm sorry I woke you.”

“Why are you always apologizing to me when there's no need?” Kurama asked quietly. “You know that I'll always be here for you, no matter what time it is.”

“Thank you, fox. Just…talking about it to them…”

“I know.”

“I haven't cried over her for so long…”

“Not since you told me your story, I believe,” Kurama agreed. “Did it help?”

“Yes,” Hiei said honestly. “But what would really make me feel better would be to go back home to Tokyo…and to see Yukina again.”

Kurama kissed his forehead. “I love hearing you call Tokyo `home',” he said as he began hiding Hiei's tears in his pillowcase.

Hiei gave a hoarse chuckle. “Sentimental kitsune.”

“Pyromaniac hiyoukai.”

“Shut up.”

“Aishiteru.”

“Back at you.”

I FINALLY managed to update! I am so sorry it took so long, but things have been really hectic around here. I had a bunch of big papers due at school, along with all my other homework, plus another fic to work on, and it's just been hard to find the time to update. I got within one page of doing it last night, but then I was dragged away—literally—by a couple of my friends. But enough with the apologies…I updated, so could you guys please, please, PLEASE review!

Reviewers' comments:

Pyro: N0! YOU MOST CERTAINLY CANNOT EAT ME! Because then I can't finish my beloved fanfics! And that just can't be allowed. So go and ask Kei to find you someone to eat! Or Sho…Sho's good too…and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? gets weird look Didn't think so…anyway, thanks for reviewing!

Amine: I know. School does tend to ruin things, ne? Kind of an annoying habit...but now it's spring break! YIPPEE! And I can update more now! YAYS! Of course, the question is: WILL I ACTUALLY UPDATE! Hope so…anyway, thanks for the review, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well!

YokoYoukai: Okay, I will try to have Hiei and Snape keep fighting. TRY being the keyword, since I just realized that fights could be REALLY hard to put in, especially considering that I already have up to chapter ten written and ready to go. (Though, again, the real question is whether or not I will be too lazy to actually update.) But I promise to try to find a way that works with what I already have written!

StormAZ: Thanks for the advice. It really was helpful. But I repeat the things I said to YokoYoukai: I can only try. And Snape, like all the other teachers, already knows about the Reikai Tentei, by the way. But I just wanted him to be a meanie so that Hiei could finally threaten a teacher at Hogwarts. And since Snape's naturally mean, I picked him! Though Trelawney might have been fun, too…

“The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.” -John Barth