Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Before there were Band-aides ❯ Dreams and Crab Apple Dreams ( Chapter 7 )

Renard: Ya, time for another update. I finally caught up with myself on ff.net so everything's good and grand.

Yusuke: *claps* good for you

Renard: O come on! *grabs his arm and chains him to a pole* HA! TRY WALKING AWAY NOW!

Yusuke: *slides other side of handcuff off the top of the pole and walks away*

Renard: Damn, I should have known that a four foot pole wouldn't hold him…ugh onward read.

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Two hours later I was still sleeping and for some unexplainable reason Kurama was still there. Who knows that the kid thinks but anyway. The door bell rang, and then again. Kurama looked up, and noticed that there was now furious knocking.

"Open the bloody door!" A girl yelled as Kurama made his way towards the door in question. He opened it, and did indeed find a girl standing there. She was medium height, with strawberry blond hair pulled into a ponytail. She looked up and instantly sucked air.

"Hello."

"Oh my god! You…you have RED HAIR!" Tara said excitedly, pointing to Kurama's head with a gloved hand and exposed fingers.

"Yes." He answered in a slightly confused tone.

"And you're a guy. You must be him!" She squealed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and basically hung from him saying "I love you" repeatedly. He stiffened, waiting for her to let go and knowing Tara he was going to have to wait a very long time. Luckily I woke up when a garbage truck drove by the open door and rattled painfully loud.

"Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooww, too early!" I grumbled before I noticed Tara still clinging to Kurama who was looking at me rather desperately. "Hey hey hey, get off him! You don't want to kill him there now do ya?" I said pulling Tara off Kurama, causing him to sigh almost unnoticeably in relief. Tara let out an ear piercing screech and wrapped me into a crushing hug.

"Ok, Tara, your killing me. I love you too, but I would like to keep my rib cage IN TACT!" She pulled herself away from me and I could have sworn for just a moment I saw a tear in her eye. Tara, with tears in her eyes? Now there's something NO ONE could ever have counted on, in all of eternity. Just when I thought life was going to be all happy sappy and movie like, Tara reached up and slapped me.

"And now I feel complete." She said bouncing on the balls of her feet. I rubbed my face and glared at her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, leading Tara into the kitchen.

"Gee, I wonder. I'm your friend, and you're here, why wouldn't I be here ya twit." I shook my head knowing that Tara was, always has been, and always will be the hopelessly special child that we see here today. I looked behind me suddenly, realizing that he was still here.

"Hey, you're still here." I said, pointing at him. Kurama blinked at me almost blankly, and I shrugged.

"So, you and Tara have met."

"No not really. I just hugged the crap out of him."

"Well that counts."

"So…ya gonna tell me anything or am I gonna have to read his mind?" I almost started laughing, some how I wouldn't ever be able to hear that line again without thinking of Hiei and his "abilities".

"hey whats so funny!" Tara said, flicking me.

"Hey hey hey Hobo hands, keep off the merchandise!" I said, moving away from her gloved hand. She pulled back and hugged her hand protectively inspecting the tips of her fingers.

"I do not look like a hobo in these." I rolled my eyes.

"Kurama what do you think? Doesn't she look like a hobo?" Kurama had enough time to open his mouth.

"Ok, Kurama, cool name. Ya…so…gonna tell me anything else? Like…what the hell happened?" Kurama and I both looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"What are you talking about?" I asked out of pure confusion.

"Well like the whole thing." She said, pointing to my wrists. I clenched my fists and rolled my eyes.

"Why the hell is everyone so obsessed with that?! It's not a big deal ok! He came through my window, saved my life, told me a bunch of stuff and poof." Kurama gave me a rather odd expression when I finished speaking and was breathing hard because I had practically held my breath as I threw out that little speech.

"Oooooooooooooooo, so why?" She asked rather cluelessly, pulling her gloves tighter over her hand.

"I dunno, guess he wanted to." I said, turning to Kurama who just glanced back at me. SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEENCE!

"Well this is going somewhere in a hurry." Tara and I declared in unison. That in turn caused us to turn to each other, get bright expressions on our faces, point at each other, and then giggle. I'm sure this scared Kurama thoroughly, but as I've stated, I don't care, and Tara cared even less because she is Tara.

"I should probably go home. I told my mother I would only be gone an hour." Kurama said standing. Yep, we scared him. Tara stood and grabbed his arm.

"Hey wait." She wrapped him in a gentle hug and kissed him on the cheek. Kurama looked almost shocked, but then I explained to him that Tara always does that so he needn't feel special. He walked out the door with a final nod to me. The door shut and the house shook with laughter. Tara lifted her hand for a high five and I obeyed, laughing harder at the soft patting noise of the white fuzzy gloves.

"Wow…he was so afraid!" Tara squealed, collapsing on my table top with laughter. Her entire back was shaking up and down violently, and I couldn't hear any noise coming from her any longer.

"Tara?" She didn't stop. I started shaking her. "TARA BREATH IT WASN'T THAT EXCITING! CHILL PILL KIDDO, CHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILL PIIIIIIIIIIIILL!" She lifted her head to take a sharp breath and continued laughing in the same fashion. This held up for nearly twenty minutes. Twenty long minutes of Tara laughing herself to death and me sitting there trying to fight back my own laughter cause once you start laughing, she can't stop. Not that she can stop anyway but that's not important.

She finally stopped laughing and clutched her stomach in the aftershock giggles that were still flying over her head and hurting her already sore diaphragm. I had boiled tea water, and was now spinning my tea mug from hand to hand watching her struggle to regain regular breathing. She seemed to have gotten back into a regular pattern of breathing, and was sitting there still bouncing with a half suppressed giggle every now and again. I shook my head and pulled her tea mug away from her.

"Ok, no more sugar or caffeine for you ok." I said, swerving the mug around my own. She watched me spin the two mugs in circles, muttering small inaudible things in an adorable voice that was causing me to erupt into giggles of my own. My diaphragm hurt now, I couldn't imagine how Tara must have felt.

((Two Weeks Later))

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((Two Weeks Later))

I was spinning in a circle.

"Circle? Whycome circles?" I said to myself as I stopped, suddenly very woozie. I held my head and swayed, waiting for things to stop spinning. They didn't. Everything moved quickly around me, like bad special effects in a retarded movie. I made a few groaning noises, and slid my feet around to try to keep up with my heavily swaying body. I could hear my name being screamed, one voice in fear, one voice in anger, and one voice in sobs. I clamped my hand over my ears. The space around me spun faster, and my name was yelled louder and louder until I couldn't take it anymore and I released my own scream melding the fear, anger and sadness into one ear splitting cry.

Suddenly, my throat burned and the cry felt real. I could feel myself being shaken and felt my limp body sinking into something warm. My eyes suddenly opened as the scream became silent, and I found my self in Yusuke's apartment…in Kurama's arms. I was breathing so heavily that it felt like I had eaten a cotton ball, and I was light headed.

"Calm down." He was saying, I was shaking my head, struggling to figuratively grab something that wasn't there.

"K-Kurama?" I there my arms around him and broke into quiet sobs.

"Maybe she's PMSing." I heard some one whisper behind me. Kurama, how had secured me in an effort to calm me, now pulled me tighter into him to keep me from killing the comment maker. It was Kuwabara…he wouldn't be missed.

"What happened?" Yusuked asked as I finally regained some compsure.

"I had a weird dream. I don't know why I screamed, it wasn't scary." Silence. "Was I loud?"

"Ya the neighbors complained." Kuwabara stated dimly.

"I wasn't screaming hat long."

"Just ignore him." Ysuke said, plying with his hair. I shook my head.

"Well that was weird. Hey, wait a sec, why the hell am I here?" I had a flashback to the past two weeks. I had speant almost all of my time with the guys, sleeping at Yusuke's apparment. I teneded to just tag along while they struggled with this case. So much for "no brains mission" like Yusuke had suggested it would be. So far all that happened was Yusuke had slit his palm on a box cutter, Hiei ripped his cloak on a metal pole, and I almost ended up with whiplash and a cuncosion. Thaks to Kurama I only got a slightly stiff neck the next morning. I promiced the guys that when we find this dude, I was going to kill him slowly as payment for being annoying and making life more unpleaseant then it already was.

"Are you alright?" Kurama asked as I held my head in my hands. I nodded meakly.

"No, I'm fine. I Just had a retarded dream and it got to me for some reason." There was a knock at the door and Tara stepped in. I was still leaning on Kurama which caused a large grin to spread on Tara's face.

"Shut up Tara."

"Didn't say anything."

"But you wree thinking it."

"What are ya, Hiei?" By now she knew everything. I'm not exactly known for having a small mouth.

"Hn." Hiei answered, shifting against the wall. I, of course, was still clinging hopelessly to Kurama, twirling a red strand of hair around my finger. Everyone thought we were together, our circle knew it was because I was clingy and liked to give hugs. Hiei didn't like being hugged…I found that out the hard way.

Hugging related activities aside, we had fallen silent yet again, and I had given up on cuddling with Kurama and was now leaning on the wall. I could still hear those haunting screams, and for a moment I thought the room was spinning. Shit, what is my problem? It was just a dream, a stupid plotless dream. Take a chill pill and stop thinking in full perfect paragraphs. I told myself in my head. I often had outbursts in which I would complete whole speeches made up on the spot in my head. I just liked the feeling of words leaping around in my mind I guess.

"Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooo" Tara said, hoping ot get some converstations going.

"Tara, I forgot you where here." I said, still rubbing my pounding forehead.

"Thanks a lot." She remarked sarcastically, pulling her infamous gloves tighter over her hands.

"Hey, you brought Ariah." I said, pointing to the bow on her back.

"Ya, and I even have my new leg quiver~!" She said excitedly, pointing to her thigh. I clapped quietly for her, and removed an arrow.

"Hey, cool…" Yusuke didn't have enough time to finish his sentence because he was faced by a sharp arrow, knocked and shaking with pressure. Tara slowly lowered her weapon, and released the arrow every slowly so it wouldn't lodge itself into anything.

"Don't ever scare me when Ariah is on my back." She warned, placing her bow on her back again and the arrow in her quiver. Before Yusuke could speak I jumped in.

"Ya, nearly kill him and don't say sorry." I said, watching Yusuke walk away.

"O ya! Sorry!" She yelled back at him with her hands cupped around her mouth. He was muttering which I took as a bad sign. Instead of falling silent, Tara started rambling to Hiei, poking him every now and then trying very hard to get him to speak to her about things besides whatever Hiei talks about when you get him into conversation. Tara even went so far as to take out her bow and threatened him with shooting at him from close range. Being the fool that he was, he just "hn-ed" and walked away. Tara, being the stubborn fool that she was, followed.

I was finally relaxing from my bizarre dream, and was on the verge of falling asleep again when suddenly I heard a deep thunder like voice. I couldn't make out the words, but the soothing rumbles of the baritone speaker caused me to open my eyes and scan the room.

"You will not find me anywhere. Just listen to what I am about to say and remember that you are the target." This scared me enough, and I stood, taking a fighting stance. I wondered why I had to be left alone in this room because right now things were getting pretty weird.

"What the hell is going on?" I murmured quietly enough so the others wouldn't hear me.

"I have a goal which has been overlooked since your arrival. Though I would like you to know that Kurama smashing through your window was no accident. I needed them to have a weakness that wouldn't be as simple as that foolish girl of Yusuke's or as powerful as any of the detectives themselves." I gulped.

"Go on." I whispered.

"My goal is quite simple. By taking you, the detectives will have no choice but to find you."

"Heh, that's funny. It sounds like your thinking you can use me as bait."

"Aren't we smart." The voice responded sarcastically.

"They wouldn't come after me. I've only known them for two weeks and besides, I'm utterly useless. They'd be glad to get me off their hands."

"Are you as blind as all other humans? Have you not seen the way Kurama looks at you, his hesitance then eagerness to touch you?" My face scrunched up in disbelief. The stupid voice was playing mind games with me and I knew it.

"Soooo what do you want me to do anyway?"

"I want you to tell them that you are a burden that they can not carry, and then go to your back yard and wait under the crab apple tree."

"Oh please, that is the corniest line I've ever heard."

"You will say it."

"And if I don't?"

"I kill the others slower and more painfully than intended."

"Oh, ok that works." The voice didn't answer, and with the shake of my head I walked out to where the guys were.

"Uh ya, I have something to tell you." I cleared my throat, and in a very fake and toneless voice I rambled, "I'm a burden that you can't carry so I'm leaving now bye." And turned to walk off.

"Whoa whoa whoa, wait a sec and get your ass back here!" Tara commanded. I turned. "What the fuck was that about?" I shrugged.

"I dunno but I have to go now so I'll see you all later bye." Before another word could be said I slammed the door and ran like mad away from his apartment. With any luck Kurama wouldn't follow. Just incase, I didn't take the normal way. Instead I went through a few ally ways, having to beat up a bunch of perverts along the way.

I finally arrived home and went out to the crab apple tree. It was small and old, but it's branches were still strong so I climbed into it and sat in the elbow of a sun drenched branch. My heart beat furiously. This could very well be the end…for real.

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Renard: Wow…this turned out really really long! Sorry about that, and sorry for the oocness that ran wild in this chapter. Hopefully this'll give me a start for later chapters so ya. I'll shut up now and demand that you review! SO REVIEW! AHHHHHHHH!