Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Unbalanced Pendulum ❯ ...to Discover it was all a Dream ( Chapter 11 )

Thanks to my wonderful, as always, reviewers!! (Don't feel unloved if you reviewed and are not included below; I just don't have room to reply to everyone.)

 

Anishu - Thanks for the lengthy review and I'm overjoyed that you love this fic so much.

Yes I do value honest reviews so anything you can find to criticize, please do. :)

 

Kuranga108 - Kurama's invoking of The First was a desperate last minute resort to save

Hiei's (and his) life.

 

Bluespark - lol, no offense taken. In a sense, The First is a senile old man - a very

twisted, greedy, bitter, evil, rotten, senile old man. ;)

 

Ko-krama - it's great to know that I'm really getting an emotional response from readers.

 

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Unbalanced Pendulum

Chapter 11: …to discover it was all a dream

 

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Hiei's POV

 

The First's ghostly half recoiled as if struck by a strong wind. Then he thrust forward and screamed with a voice now of boiling, spitting, and popping tar that made me feel as if I were boiling alive from the inside out.

 

“You are not in Hell! This is my world! I am no Devil! I am God! You cannot defy! Give them to me!”

 

I will never… The words never became more than thoughts. Shock held my body still as new ice. What the Hell had just happened? Before me was no longer The First's decaying body but rather an unnatural, fiery-orange desert stretching in all directions, devoid of all life except myself and the gnats swarming ten yards to my left. Burnt orange sand and the sky only shades lighter. The transition was so sudden that I could never have beheld it, faster than the illumination of a room through electric light. And it was sharp and crisp like one's reaction to touching an object of overwhelming heat.

 

Automatically I reached up to uncover my third eye only to find it unbound and non-existent. The absence of my eye unnerved me terribly. Was there any reality to this world before me? Lost, without my third eye I could not know.

 

I stooped down on one knee and ran my fingers through the orange sand like a Zen rake. It was fine, clean, almost weightless yet heavier and more substantial than ash, and it did nothing to impede my hand's circular progress. If this were truly made of crushed rock then its age was immeasurable. Here but minutes, my throat was already running dry. My breathing was normal, my mouth was moist, but my throat was parched. Cracks were forming along my inner skin and out of them flowed my voice and my sound. I felt it begin to drip away. I was coughing. Each time the cracks widened. Blood was rising, it pooled on my tongue and I swallowed.

 

One leg lifted one foot free of the Hellishly tinted sand and took a step, step after pointless step towards a barely distinguishable horizon millennia away. My only certainty was that it was futile to remain where I was. For what purpose would I be remaining, or from what purpose was I hiding? At every step I would sink a little lower below the sand. It would collapse about me like some horrible, intelligent beast that aimed to eat me alive. Surface tension would save me…if I had possession of my speed, but I was so tired…without reason. I was waist deep in the startling orange sand, soul deep in the dizzying orange sky hazy above my head. If there was a sun, I could not see it. I was face down in the sand, incredibly cool against my skin, soothing.

 

No trees.

Nothing alive.

Just sand.

Just me.

 

Hiei…

 

I didn't respond. Soft, windblown, insubstantial - I believed it to be a fancy of my affected mind. The sand in my face was beginning to suffocate me. I had to turn my face to the side for air; then I saw him. I mouthed his name for my voice was no longer mine. Where am I? I asked him silently.

 

Hiei…

 

He called again with such gentle concern. His white hand reached out and brushed my cheek. I felt I was being caressed by the fog of frozen lands. Comforting, his alien touch, like being wrapped in thin silk, while resting my forehead against a cold pane of glass. I strained to turn into his retreating hand, wanting more of the comfort it could offer. He was as insubstantial as his voice. I could nearly see through his skin to the bone, through the bone to the sand. But he was here nonetheless. Kurama…

 

I didn't take the moment to ponder why I was so relieved.

 

His fingers trailed upwards to where my memory had begun to falter. And I screamed because of it. He was massaging the skin under which my jagan should lay and it felt so wrong. Dead skin and dead power were coming alive. The touch was coming from far away and penetrating something of me that was far from my current body. I shouldn't have been able to feel those fingers - his hand and my fading sight. These things had been killed in this world. I was screaming, shredding what was left of my throat for a brief, piercing moment of sound before silence again became my partner in pain. Blood was flying from my mouth and my entire body had gone rigid at the contact. It hurt equal to that of the eye's implantation. Sand flew into my mouth with every inhale, choking me and stinging my insides. It coated my throat and plastered over the cracks in burning fragments.

 

Hiei, open your eyes!

 

What would it matter? My eyes were open and all I could see was bright, electric light. All I saw was my pain. I was pleading with him to stop every way I was able without being able to move, speak, or see. But he would not stop. With his free hand he lifted me out of the sand and spread me across his lap. I vaguely recognized his efforts to ease the pain with his chill. One of his hands was over my forehead, one was supporting behind my neck. Again his cried,

 

Hiei, please open your eyes!

 

It was then that I noticed his agony, and mine began to wane. His flesh was trembling with exhaustion against me and, though I could not feel them, I could see beads of sweat coalescing on his skin. I opened my eyes.

 

-

 

“Brat!” The First was shrieking at the caged orb, ignoring me. Kurama's body lay limp, desecrated, and lifeless as before. But his spirit trapped within the orb was very much alive - he was fighting back. The black web was fraying and dark threads were snapping free of the net. Yet I could tell that Kurama was tiring. The golden energy was crackling in less and less grandiose displays of defiance and had been since I'd woken. The ferocity of his struggle had solely been to reach me and now he was spent (a conclusion that I had difficulty accepting). Then, slowly, I began to understand. He was relying on me. He knew that between the two of us only I could get us out of this territory and so he was willing to exhaust and possibly even kill himself to help me.

 

The black web was reforming - strengthening - and the gold was sputtering, soon to die. Ghouls were beginning to gather, called by The First to contain the fox. My moment was slipping. Then all of these things - everything - suddenly made sense. I realized how simple the situation truly was. And although I didn't understand why this would work, I knew that I only had to destroy The First's body.

 

I rose to my feet with none of the dramatics as befits a hero, drew my sword, summoned my mortal flame, and charged the rotten corpse that was the true manifestation of The First - utterly pitiful but deserving of no one's pity. I ignored the ghouls who tore at my clothes and hair, following orders and their own eerie curiosity and playfulness rather than responding because of any fealties. I pierced the mass of liquefying flesh, setting it immediately afire, and watched as the body boiled and rose in putrid steam, or turned to charred ash and was taken by the sudden wind.

 

There was no sound as The First died, no howl of pain, anger, or misery. There was only the spitting of the fire and the soft huffing of moving ghouls similar to velvety silk batting against itself in a steady wind. The First was finally able to be rid of his flesh and die appropriately. He ignored me as he rose from the earth. There would always be things he would want to do, destroy, and possess. But I recognized that these desires only manifested because he was cursed with the time to accomplish them. Now that he was truly dying, he was sad that he hadn't been able to see all he wanted come to pass and he looked upon death ruefully as one always does when they realize it never arrives at an appropriate time.

 

The First watched as all those that had come to him slowly dispersed now that his avarice was no longer holding them to him. They glided about the worlds and some eventually released themselves to death, while others chose to cling to what little earthly pleasures they could grasp. And while he was rising from his abominated flesh and seeing all of this, The First remembered his real name. It was a name he had not heard for thousands of years, Tiras. He was now again Tiras, his father and mother's child. And with his recovered name he passed, completely, into the world of the dead.

 

The unnatural darkness of the forest lifted and moonlight actually penetrated the dense canopy in thin silver beams. Not all of the life here was dead and dying. The colors green and blue and the sounds of breath were beginning to return.

 

Kurama and I were left alone. With the death of The First, the ghouls had lost their interest in containing us. They had gone and the orb had vanished, relocating Kurama's spirit back within his body. I knelt at his side. He was battered and unconscious, deep within a healing sleep. Close inspection made it obvious that most of his injuries had occurred from the inside out. The skin at the edges of the patterned cuts and wounds were reaching up and out. Why had he done so much for me? Was it merely because he needed me to survive this territory? I was beginning to doubt my hatred - no, my apathy. It had ceased to be hatred long ago.

 

Moving on without him able to travel was counter-productive. We needed food and water both to drink and to cleanse out wounds.

 

It seemed I had no choice but to care for him.