Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Unbalanced Pendulum ❯ Like a Sunrise to the Blind ( Chapter 16 )

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Unbalanced Pendulum

Chapter 16: Like a Sunrise to the Blind

 

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Hiei's POV

 

After the fox left me, I distractedly picked up my clothing and dressed myself. Then I staggered back to the hollow tree, retracing my last night's burning steps. Once there I discovered that I didn't want to be there. I didn't wander far, all but collapsing against a tree at the edge of the clearing. I hugged my knees loosely to my chest and hung my head forward in exhaustion. My right hand slid down to where my sword lay unsheathed (the sheath was still within that tree) and I ran my finger along the blade. The cold steel was comforting in its apathy. A master smith had created it with glorified purposes in mind, but the metal itself was without desire lying on the ground. Held in my hand, the uncaring metal became a weapon with a wicked thirst for blood, but that was nothing more than my projected feelings. It was a good sword to take on its wielder's heart like that. Still it was not a great sword. A great sword would always carry its possessor's heart within the microscopic folds pounded into its being. That was all right with me, though, I would find no comfort in a lustful blade.

 

I stopped stroking the smooth metal to examine my hand. The lines in my skin stood out strikingly since blood had dried in the tiny grooves. One of my claw-like nails had broken at the tip. I wondered what I had snagged that on, or when. I sincerely hoped it wasn't lodged within the fox's flesh, though I couldn't imagine how that could have happened. Guilt more prominently nagged at my heart. I didn't really understand guilt. To me it was more like an annoying pain in my chest than an emotion. Because of this uncertainty, I was more conscious of it than anything else. I fisted my hand against my chest in the irrational hope that pressure would make it go away. I remembered seeing people do that, putting pressure to their chests with anguished expressions upon their faces. A very few of the ice maidens had done that too while plotting my demise.

 

The pressure did help, but as soon as I would relinquish it the pain would return, more constricting than before. I felt it like hot steam in my gut, rising up into my chest, and then demanding that I expel it into the night. However, I physically could not do this. I stopped trying after four heavy exhales. The fox had been forgotten, oddly enough, in lieu of my confusion when I heard light footsteps approaching. He had intentionally allowed me to hear his approach. I knew he would be naked, but modesty was hardly my concern and I looked up with a defiant glare in mind. To my surprise he was clothed in a strangely plant-like robe. It was short, reaching barely past his mid thigh. In one thoughtless moment, I noticed that he had an amazingly contoured pair of legs.

 

He stood still, his gaze lilting over me like a petal that skirts the surface of a pond but never touches down. Cautious but also inquisitive, arms relaxed at his sides, and the lines of his face smooth. He looked incredibly young, like a dream. I could have stared forever. It was as if I had never seen him before.

 

“These garments won't last long,” he said. “I would prefer real fabrics to these anyway.” Did last night even happen? I dazedly nodded once in reply. “Your own clothing is in need of replacement as well.” I again nodded once. He tilted his head, his ears twitching forward. The expression was purely fox and, had I been in better spirits would have looked comically adorable. His eyes softened and seemed to brighten the smallest degree. The fallen leaves, sticks, and stones compressed quietly beneath the thin soles of his slipper-like shoes as he approached and then knelt before me.

 

Birds in the canopy above us took flight in a loud flapping of wings. Hundreds of feathers momentarily broke our beam of sunlight. Shadows passed over us like moving pictures. They were of the first animals to return to this hellified forest. The slightest branches of the trees rustled for a moment then settled. Quiet returned.

 

The fox reached a hand out tentatively towards me. It paused for the briefest of seconds before brushing against my chin. Light enough to catch my attention, I suddenly remembered that, yes, I had cruelly attacked this spirit only half a day ago. For a moment, I felt my body consider shaking. Then he smiled a small smile at me, it was more in his eyes than in his mouth, and he spoke, “I'm not mad Hiei. There is nothing for me to forgive.” I froze. My eyes locked on the still angry bite mark on his neck just now exposed by the shifting of his robe.

 

“Yes there is.” I placed one of my small hands upon the wound faster than he could protest and applied the slightest pressure. Stoic though he was, he could not hide the small surprised wince of pain my touch had caused him.

 

“Hiei! What -”

 

“This morning, you told me not to apologize…and you were right. I will not apologize to you for what I did, nor should I.” I paused for a significant amount of time. Neither of us moved. The fox looked nervous, the slightest widening of his eyes betrayed him. “Do you know the legend of the forbidden child?”

 

“Yes…”

 

“Not all of the rumors are true…I did know my father. And he had loved my mother.” A gentle arm circled behind me and I gratefully leaned into the embrace. From the wound, my hand had slipped down to his chest, clinging without holding on. I felt him shift so that his back was against the tree and I against him, chest to chest. Only his one arm held me to him, giving me a wonderful sense of both containment and freedom. This was the first time I had willingly been close to another with no ulterior motive. The grainy texture of his mysterious clothing against my cheeks, his masculine scent thick, his willowy hand engulfing my shoulder, and his aura surrounding and enveloping me in its earthy nature were all things that I welcomed. I would not apologize to him, but I would give him something in its stead; I told him who I was. In the process I had somehow found myself in his arms, and it wasn't like any moment before. I wasn't ill, or cautious, or simply tolerant. In fact, I wasn't thinking of anything. I was truly feeling calm here, with him. “Kurama….”

 

He was mercifully silent and still, seeming to know. We lay there together.

 

-

 

Kurama's POV

 

Astonishing. I had been wrong about him. I had expected another dramatic switch in the mood of this temperamental demon. Yet his sense of duty had counteracted all of that and proved false many of my assumptions. When I returned to him, I had been prepared to be the submissive again and give way before his stubborn and immature anger. However, he had been the one to bend. I was impressed that he had and was still keeping his head - he was still entirely aware of our relative roles. I had shaken him free with my harsh words this morning. He knew the importance of them and, because I had been the one to remind him, he suspected me of nothing. He was bending, but was it for me or was it for his own self. Either way, would I have to break him to break free? I was losing more conviction with each revelation I was allowed to have about him.

 

Hiei was the forbidden child, the bastard son of the ice princesses. The rumor was that he had been thrown from the floating island hundreds of miles above the rest of Makai. At least my original suppositions were not far from the truth. When I looked at him, I could see the legitimacy of his words in his physical appearance. He was an ice princess in stature. I could feel the lean, almost wiry form beneath the cloak. He had an unbelievable amount of power that defied his small body. I could even feel the effeminate curve of his waist, proportionally slimmer than my own. But his coloring was wrong: the red eyes and black hair. His skin, also, was different. According to legend, the ice princesses were completely isolated by the static snowstorm that hung eternally above the floating island. They never baked under the sun, and Hiei's skin was tinted with the hint of tan from his rough outdoor existence.

 

I was beginning to understand what treasure had fallen into my lap with my capture. He was one of a kind, a sinister and paradoxical half-breed with no manners and a deep-seated mistrust of everything. The muscles and aura that defied logic were likely his birthright. And he had known nothing but the fight - not even caring for the kill - since the day that he had been thrown from the frigid land hovering over us all. Above all odds, he had survived and he still had a heart kept safe his entire life hidden under a well-practiced exterior. I wanted to hold him to me forever like I had wanted to hold my young and precious Kuronue.

 

Eyes half-closed, but not in sleep, Hiei leaned into me. He was nearly lying on his side now. Only his torso had been charmed my way to start, but slowly his knees had returned to their natural bent position and rested upon my thighs. Not once had he looked me in the eye since I first returned from the lake. He had tried to glare at me, forcing all of his angry indifference into his eyes. That at least, I had predicted and countered with a soft willingness to forgive and forget. The directness with which he scolded my passiveness was what I had not been prepared for.

 

We lay there, together, for a long while before he spoke again. I said nothing, only listened. I was afraid that he would stop if he remembered more consciously my presence.

 

“I had come to consciousness a few days before my birth, or something like to it. I remember being pressed tightly all around and then being very cold for the briefest of moments, birth. The face of an old and wrinkled witch was my first sight. She sneered at me with a look of complete loathing. Next, strips of cloth were binding me. I fought furiously at first, kicking and screaming as best as an infant could do, but it was to no avail. I didn't then know why I was losing strength or why all of my internal heat was dissipating. Now I understand that I was being bound in ice wards that negated my power.

 

“I could hear a woman screaming. The old wretch called me `Angra,' but the woman was yelling something different. `Hiei!' She was terrified and angry, but, unbeknownst to me, my sister still had yet to be born and so my mother was unable to come for me. That hated woman took me away, securely wrapped from head to toe in the wards. I was allowed a space to see and breath through. She kept calling me Angra, but even then I knew that would never be my name. I was Hiei, my mother's child.

 

“I was placed on the stone floor of a dark, windowless room. The door closed behind the hag's retreating back. I don't know how long I remained helpless in that despicable place. Vibrations in the floor told me whenever someone would pass by. More than once I heard sobbing and anguished shrieks. One of the lamenting voices I did not recognize. It was this strange woman who retrieved me. Tears were locked within her eyes. Her name sounded like Ri. She also called me Hiei, but only that once before the evil woman appeared behind her and commanded that she work faster. We left that place and I saw my first snowflake. They fell gently within the city. I liked to taste them when they fell within the reach of my tongue, but I was already cold from the wards and did not appreciate the frozen air.

 

“The farther they carried me, the colder and harsher the weather became. Even the wards were soaking through. I was shivering. Then I heard my mother's voice again. We had reached the very edges of the ice world. My mother was reaching out to me, but could not come any closer as two more strange women were restraining her. I remember that everyone appeared washed out and white by the snow except for my mother.” He faltered in his tale.

 

I was afraid to push him into telling me more, but I felt terrible. From the ache in his words, I could tell that he was lost within the vivid memory of the mother he was never able to know. I gently hugged him with my one arm and he sighed.

 

“I remember wanting her, just knowing that she was precious to me without anyone having to tell me so. I couldn't reach her. I couldn't reach her….

 

“Rui walked past her and soon, my mother was blocked from my sight. That was the last time I ever saw her. I had no peripheral vision, bound as I was, and had no idea how close to the edge Rui and I were. She told me to live so that I could return and kill her one day. It turns out that she was a close friend of my mother's. Rui was begging me to survive. Then tucked a perfectly round stone into the wards with me. I gripped the string it was on as tightly as I could. It was the hiruseki stone my mother had shed for me during labor. Rui's grip changed. She was holding me out from herself. The snow fell harshly and the wind was stinging my baby's eyes. Then I slowly slipped from her hands and fell backwards into a nothingness I hadn't even known existed.

 

“It was so fast and yet it lasted so long. I just remember the white of the clouds and the snow turning to rain and the wind whistling in my ears. That was how I first viewed the rest of the Makai, falling towards it. I was so afraid and I have no idea how I survived.”

 

Hiei sounded both small and detached, fading in and out of the present and the past. He was absentmindedly clenching and unclenching his hand around the folds in my robe. This was another pause where I wasn't sure whether he was going to continue or not. He seemed to shake himself free, but his voice held a bitter undertone when he said, “That should suffice in place of an apology. You are not to repeat what you heard. Or do, I don't really care. The information is yours now.”

 

I didn't verify one way or another. He looked up at me with an odd expression on his face then pushed away from me. I wasn't hurt. Likely he wanted to be able to face me. I was right. He scooted to the nearest tree and leaned back against it, folding his arms and looking straight at me. We just looked in silence, examining each other without awkwardness.

 

“Tell me about Kuronue,” he said unexpectedly.

 

“What?” I was honestly stunned.

 

“What about him could make you give up your freedom?”

 

“Oh.” I chuckled a bit, sobering almost immediately. “He was about your age, I believe, young anyway.” Hiei didn't deny it. “He was rash and sometimes overconfident - everyone is guilty of that evil at some point in their lives. Yet he was always faithful and I was mystified by his unerring trust in me. I never had any reasons to doubt his motives or loyalty.” I smiled to myself at the memory. “We had our fun.”

 

“You loved him.” I couldn't decide whether he was bitter or disgusted or something else, vaguely familiar but unrecognizable.

 

I nodded. “Yes, very much so. He was never my equal but the two of us often pretended so. It was only he and I; I had given up on a maintaining a band years ago after…. I betrayed a very close subordinate. Maybe I should call him a friend. He was never one to follow orders and thus was a liability. I abandoned him and eventually found that I could not stand any member of that group's presence, so I stole away from everyone. It was in my consequent wanderings that I met Kuronue. He was a stubborn and proud young thing without any goal in life other than to accumulate wealth through trickery because he could. He was, admittedly, quite talented. That was why I allowed him to join me. Besides, you saw how attractive he was.”

 

It was odd that I could talk so lightly about Kuronue with his murderer. My gaze had drifted during my musings. I looked back towards Hiei to see him studying me with the same expression on his face as before, unaffected. He saw me looking his way and locked eyes with me. I held steady and continued to speak.

 

“It was a given that we would become physical. I just hadn't expected to become so attached. There was no sudden revelation for either of us. For Kuronue, it was slight hero worship and for me it was…I felt the need to care for him in response to his blind allegiance. We were as brothers, truthfully, an innocent love that learned to be passionate.

 

“The word love bothers me, though. The word holds little power or meaning for me in itself. Yes, we loved each other dearly, but it was so much more than that. Love is too general of a word. Broken down, it symbolizes utter devotion. Everything else that stems from it is just extra. Devotion is something that people can understand without abstract terms or ideals and, while there are different facets of devotion, it is all the same in the end. That is why I gave my word when Kuronue's life was threatened. And that was why he sacrificed his life when my freedom was at stake. That was stupid of him, though I wonder….

 

“How much do you understand of spirits?” I addressed him directly.

 

“Whatever is common knowledge. Why?”

 

I shook my head in a combination of amusement and disbelief. “Spirits may have gods that must be attended to, but by nature we are not comfortable being confined in any way. The loss of any ounce of freedom by a spirit, unless freely forsaken, is akin to a slow death. You don't like being in the rain. Now imagine living in a world where rain poured from the sky every moment of every day and night.”

 

It wasn't my intention to pierce him with my staring gaze, but my eyes were unforgiving. I wanted to make sure he understood, nothing more. Not quite a shiver wracked his frame. I accepted that.

 

“Tell me, why are things as they are? Your motives are obviously not personal, so why have you done this to me?” I didn't plead but spoke matter-of-factly. He understood.

 

“I am a bounty hunter. A little over half a year ago, I was hired by a man to deliver you to him unharmed.”

 

“I see…. Thank you for telling me. Is that where we are headed, to meet with this demon?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh.” My shoulders slumped subtly forward. “I will miss you when that day comes.”

 

He snorted, “Hn. No you won't.”

 

I made as if to protest, but stopped short. I was feeling the beginnings of despair. This demon before me was calm, not the bipolar one whom I had been dealing with and manipulating for the past month. My nerve and determination were failing me. I could picture Hiei telling me that it would be all right, that that dooming day would never come. And then he would kiss me gently to reassure me. I would smile. Lately I had been losing myself in imaginings. Depression was quite comfortably nestling down into the creases of my mind. I'm sorry, I thought. It was to both Kuronue and Hiei.

 

-

 

Hiei's POV

 

Defeat was written all over his body. I didn't know what to do, having mixed feelings about Kurama's current state. On one hand he was finally realizing the control I had over his fate. On the other, I didn't want to ever see him look that way. It didn't suit him.

 

This was an odd moment for us both. I felt the weariness permeating from us and it was this exhaustion that had whittled down our walls, leaving us as we were now: open, uncaring, and strangely calm. Pressure had lifted from my chest when I'd told him about my origins. I had then asked about Kuronue simply because I was curious and had felt no inhibitions. I now regretted that decision. Everything he had said accumulated and again there was swirling, burning smoke bottled up inside my chest.

 

We sat in a long silence. Finally I stood and walked towards him, stopping when we were side by side. I gripped his shoulder firmly then wordlessly brushed my fingers against his cheek. He was uncharacteristically slouched and so I did have to stoop a little. Weakly, he nuzzled my hand.

 

“Come, we can afford to sleep away today.” Staying awake would be unproductive anyway. Remaining where we had already found a shelter within the ancient hollow tree was logical. I was also conceding ground to him, allowing him another day of assured distance between himself and Karasu. I'm not entirely sure what spurred me on to say those exact words, but they were a minor comfort to the kitsune, suddenly so young, and I felt better for it.

 

Kurama nodded and rose to follow me into the wooden cavern. He lay down, pressed tightly against the wall, and curled about himself. I reclaimed the sheath that been hastily discarded last night and slipped my katana securely inside then sat with my back against the wall opposite him, leaning the sword against my shoulder. His milky white lids covered the gold of his eyes but he was not asleep. As tired as I knew he must be, his consciousness was fitfully riding the fine line between sleep and waking. I moved to sit beside him, his body between mine and the wall. Then I stroked his hair to sooth him, marveling at its light and very unnatural quality, the smoothest material I had ever touched. When he had fallen asleep, the movement behind his eyelids ceasing and the small gasps caused by an unknown discomfort fading into steady breaths, I unhesitatingly touched his lips with my own in a chaste and soothing kiss.

 

Moving only slightly, I sat near to his head and watched him until I too fell into a light slumber.

 

-

 

End of Chapter 16

 

A/N: Anyone know where I found the name Angra?