InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Chapter Sixteen ( Chapter 17 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 03.14.2009 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 443 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 03.14.2009 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 443 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.THE HEART WITHINSummary: She has carried vengeance in her shadowed heart for 500 years, sacrificing her self for that dream. Now, Sango just might get her chance… (IY/YYH crossover) A/N: This is a really short chapter, more of a scene, actually, than a true chapter. I originally wrote it as the end of Chapter Fifteen, but then cut it at the last minute. I wrote out the next three chapters and realized that I did need this scene, as it explained certain things about our little red-eyed menace to society that I could not leave out. I am editing the next chapter now, and it should be up in a day or two. (Fate)
Sidenote: Guyute24 has completed her fic, “Closer to You,” a Hiei x Sango x Jin lovely that brought tears to my eyes and a tightness to my chest. Beautiful, beautiful work. I recommend the reading, and you can find it under my favorites on ff(dot)net under YFate.
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
WORDS
koorime - ice maiden
hiruseki - a valuable stone created by the tears a koorime sheds at her child’s birth
Amiko - Forbidden Child
Chapter Sixteen
Jumping to the highest perch he could find still able to bear his weight, Hiei leaned back against the tree’s trunk and watched the restless storm play out across the purple skies. The jagged lightning that split spidery tendrils through the low clouds did not frighten him, nor did the icy touch of the rain-ridden wind bother him. The tree creaked, its branches tossing as the gusts came and went at odd intervals, but Hiei only shifted his weight to follow the swaying agitation. His wet cloak felt heavy around him, but the wool actually kept him warm, though his own body temperature saw to that as well.
There was something about a storm, especially one like this, with lots of rain and thunder and light, that soothed the restlessness within him. The Dragon, for once, was quiet, its faint growls seemingly growing sleepy as if it, too, was calmed by the sight. For a time, Hiei just sat there, taking in the savage beauty of nature that raged across the heavens. He smiled slightly when lightning struck but a nearby tree in a shower of sparks and ozone. The resulting fire was quickly doused by the icy sheets of rain that accompanied it, but he could feel the earth shudder below from the powerful strike.
Closing his eyes, he sunk into the Jagan, which gleamed in the shadowy darkness. Summoning his energy, he focused his thoughts like an arrow of seeking, following the thread of awareness he had tied to it as it sped outside the demon realm and into the human world. The image was at first blurry and indistinct, but the kakai barrier had never been built to repel thought, and so it let him pass.
Her face slowly formed, at first a silvery-white blob of spilled paint with odd specks of red that soon resolved itself into Yukina’s soft smile and warm scarlet gaze, her pale, silvery-blue hair caught up in her distinctive red hair-clasps. He watched her for a minute, trying to detect if anything troubled her serene features, but she seemed content, and even happy, for her smile widened, and she spoke words he could not understand to someone he could not see.
He expanded his vision to include her surroundings, and caught the wrinkled face of the old priestess, Genkai, who was cleaning up the remains of their dinner and bringing the dishes over for Yukina to wash. It was an achingly homey scene that made his fingers unconsciously curl into a fist even as he was reassured that all was well with the twin he had vowed never to know more than in this fleeting way.
Satisfied with what he saw, he let the image go, relaxing his hold on the Jagan and lazily letting it bring his awareness back to Makai. The iridescent green glow slowly dissolved from around his third eye as it drooped half-closed and he allowed his thoughts to drift as they would.
Unbidden, a second image slowly formed---of Kurama ducking back inside the cave and pausing momentarily as he caught the taiji-ya’s troubled gaze. Hiei sharpened his focus, and saw as she slowly sat up, still wrapped in the spell-cast cloak that managed to blur itself into an indistinct shape even to his all-seeing Eye.
But Kurama only waved her back, saying something Hiei could not, of course, hear. She nodded, still looking troubled, but sank back to her curled position on the floor, her head pillowed on her bent arm. The other two demons seemingly slept, though Hiei could tell that Yusuke, at least, was faking it. Kurama sat himself down across from the three of them. Putting his back against the wall, the kitsune closed his eyes. Even in the thick shadows of the cave, his long hair was a ruddy flame that danced around him.
But that current image of Anei and Kurama was dissolving into another, and Hiei let it, for it was the memory of the embrace the two had shared this afternoon, deep in the Forest of Fools. Nestled into the crook of a tree much like this one, he had been brought out of a light doze by it, and he ruthlessly examined that vision anew, sorting out the mixed emotions it called up within him and rejecting them out of hand.
The fox often seemed to be incapable of passion, but there was a fire in him that he let few see. Contain it as he might, still it came out when least expected. Wary of the weakness undue emotions could bring, Kurama tried to control them to the point where he was almost paranoid if he felt them. Hiei avoided emotions in much the same way and for much the same purpose. They were very much alike in that respect. Funny, that had never occurred to him before.
Funny how they both seemed to respond to the slayer in much the same way, too. Hiei had not missed Kurama’s irritation or annoyance with Jin. He had felt the same way, though the yappity wind demon who never shut up could get on anyone’s nerves, if they had half a brain. Not that he didn’t respect Jin’s particular sense of honor and fair play, but what he could barely stand in one boy---Yusuke---he could not stand in two. Gah. Even thinking about it was making him scowl.
Being ruthlessly honest with himself, he was attracted to the slayer. Even though she was human, and all but hopeless when it came to her demonic powers and potential. Even though she was, by all his estimations, too emotional and far too complicated a knot to untangle. Even though he should hardly care one way or another. Even though, when he had touched her mind, he had seen the darkness she hid inside herself and knew just how much it was like his own…
The Fates had chosen for him long ago, even before his birth, that his was a road that would always be walked alone. Dual-natured and discarded by his own people for it, he had always been shunned for the icy fire that ever burned in his dark heart, because he was what he was and they feared it---that the opposing natures that ever warred within him would one day unleash themselves upon them.
Hiei smiled. They were right to fear him. He gloried in their fear, knowing that it at least guaranteed their respect. Love---he had never needed that. That was never to be his, born as he was and to who he was---an all-female race of koorime who had rejected men and fled to their icy island in the sky where no man would follow. But his foolish mother had done the unthinkable, and lain with a demon, and a fire elemental, no less. Her misfortune was in giving birth to twins---yin and yang; she as pure as he was impure, her nature sweet and innocent, his dark and angry. The koorime had seen the darkness in his soul and knew the battle in his heart, just because he was what he was, a despised demon child of the opposing elements of fire and ice. They had known then what he was capable of, and feared it. Their hatred of that fear had led to their tossing him over the side of their icy island, leaving his fate to the gods and praying fervently for his death.
Hate was something he could understand and embrace. As opposite to love as fire was to ice, he could understand it and know it and use it. For hatred had helped him, as an abandoned youngling, to fend off the bandits who had found him and raised him. Hatred had brought him to where he was now, though it still wasn’t enough.
A B-class demon. That was what Koenma had classified him. How pathetic. Even after all the fighting in the Dark Tournament, even after unleashing the Dragon of the Darkness Flame---something of which he had never intended to do, but something that he was now glad that he had.
It had been his hatred and anger of Zeru that allowed him to will the Dragon forth. It was his hatred and anger that allowed him to survive the Dragon’s dark hunger and shadow-ridden rage when it had been thrown back at him later, in the fight with Bui. A lesser demon with lesser will than he would have succumbed to the Dragon, his soul delivered to the darkest pits of hell as forfeit for his weakness.
It was strength that had allowed him to succeed in taming the Dragon, where others had ever only failed. It was his strength that had allowed him to keep going, even after the bandits had eventually turned their backs on him, betraying and forsaking him just as the koorime had. Strength had kept him going even after he lost his mother’s hiruseki stone in a stupid fight with a worthless ogre. And strength had kept him resolute when he had gone to the surgeon Shigure to have the Jagan Eye implanted inside his body.
Anger and hatred and the desire to exact revenge on his mother’s people had seen him through the horrific operation. He had never felt such terrible pain and unending agony as when that bell-wearing, freaky sadist had first touched the scalpel to his forehead and dug into his flesh. Even he, vowed as he had to keep silent, could not contain the involuntary screams that had been ripped from his throat as the surgeon transplanted the Eye into his brow, rooting it right into his very brain.
What was the Dragon’s pain to that? Not that taking the Dragon inside himself hadn’t cost him, and with more than just mere agony. The Dragon was rage and hate and the hunger and passion of pure, raw emotion in its darkest form. Only he, Hiei the Amiko, Forbidden Child of the Glacial Village, with the icy fire in his heart and the darkness in his hungering soul, could have understood what powered the tortured Dragon in its constant, seething ambivalence. Only he could have embraced the Dragon’s nature and welcomed it as lost kin to his own. And only he, with his strength and fierce resolve---and the rage and hate that fed that strength and resolve---could the restless Dark Dragon have recognized as its own and allow him to finally contain it.
Lonely he might be in his shadows, but they were his, and he understood them. Kurama, now---Kurama deserved more than just the prison of withdrawal he set for himself. Old and jaded as he was, burdened with Youko’s knowledge, the kitsune didn’t take part in life, just existed on its edges, watching others from afar---though he gave the appearance of more. But Hiei knew better.
Perhaps this half-demon youkai-assassin could give Kurama more. For that alone, Hiei was willing to suffer her presence.
*Hn. I lie, even to myself.* The sneer of disdain for that fact twisted his mouth in self-recrimination. Tilting his head back against the sturdy tree behind him, he opened his eyes and glared at the angry heavens above. What did any of this really matter? It changed nothing, it helped nothing, it did nothing. Reality was what it was. Defining it had never been something he cared enough to do. He did what he did at the time that he did it and that was ever good enough of a reason for him.
He had accused the fox of thinking too much, and here he was following in the kitsune’s footsteps. How disgustingly pointless. He did not need to justify anything to himself or to anyone else. If he was attracted to the slayer against all reason, than so be it. He could accept that and ignore it because he didn’t have any place or willingness for that kind of foolish, insipid distraction in his life. He had room for only one thing---and that was power.
Not the power he had once craved---power over others. He had been a foolishly brutish demon then, needing to prove to himself and everyone else that he was a force to be reckoned with, one to be feared and respected. It was thanks to his friendship---yes, he could admit that now, though the idea still gave him chills of disgust---with Yusuke, and the others, that had made him see that that kind of power was not what he wanted. No, he wanted that power over self that meant that he had gone beyond even his own limits and reached past his own potential to realize that ultimate strength that resided within him. That was true power.
And if accompanying the detective on his search for this so-called father of his meant accompanying the slayer as well in retrieving her brother and defeating this arrogant demon, well, that was only a path to achieving his own goal. For the strange feelings he had regarding Yukina and this girl-hanyou’s similar circumstances was an area of weakness for him that maybe he could root out by doing whatever it was he would eventually do regarding either of them. Besides, by his own code of scant honor, he could not do less, and that was not an area he would ever question. He knew it was right that he do so, thus it was enough.
And he’d had enough right now of questioning himself. Let Kurama do that if he wanted to. Hiei was not one to care.
Jumping from his high perch, Hiei let the buoyant branch launch him across the troubled skies to the next. Using only his quick reflexes and light step to leap from treetop to treetop, he zig-zagged his way through the fitful lightning, delighting in the energetic game to avoid being struck and battling with the elements as the wind shrieked past him and the rain slathered him in icy blasts. He was back at their hillside cave all too soon, and eased himself inside the dry darkness with nary a whisper of sound to betray him.
Sitting back against the wall a few feet down from the sleeping kitsune, Hiei drew his knees up so he could rest his forearms on them and stare broodingly at the girl who lay across from him. Curled into her thick cloak, only the top of her tangled head and a bit of white skin was visible above the shapeless blanket. Like a child, she snored softly and slept deeply, an indication of her innocent---and foolish---trust in her surroundings.
Watching her like this, so soft and vulnerable, it was hard to reconcile the dark eddies that he had briefly touched within her mind. Ignore and deny them as she might, still they were there, deep black pools of an ancient bitterness and seething hatred that he recognized all too well, for they growled across the back of his own thoughts in the voice of the Dark Dragon who had come to symbolize them.
She, though, ignored those feelings and denied their existence until they boiled up over her thin control to loose themselves on those around her, as had happened just two days ago. That was rather pointless, for hate and rage could be used for one’s own advantage, as he well knew. But she seemed somewhat afraid of those dark shadows that dwelt within her deepest thoughts, and determined to either quell or escape them.
That useless, inner battle she waged between those very real feelings and her baffling need to deny them should have disgusted him outright. But somehow, instead, it actually intrigued him, for it was as if she were made up of two completely different natures, each dueling within her for supremacy.
And perhaps that was why he found her so compelling, for if anyone knew that personal turmoil, it was he. And perhaps the fact that she did try to suppress her hatred and rage so thoroughly intrigued him, too, for it was so novel an idea, and he wondered what, in the end, would win. And maybe there was something there that could save her from eventually being consumed and devoured by that bitter rage and seething hatred, and maybe by helping her, he could learn it for himself.
If, that is, he actually wanted to be saved. Truthfully, he didn’t know, and might not know until the moment when he did. And that he would leave for another time.
Closing his eyes, Hiei eventually slept as the storm continued to rage outside against the cold and lonely night.
Sidenote: Guyute24 has completed her fic, “Closer to You,” a Hiei x Sango x Jin lovely that brought tears to my eyes and a tightness to my chest. Beautiful, beautiful work. I recommend the reading, and you can find it under my favorites on ff(dot)net under YFate.
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
WORDS
koorime - ice maiden
hiruseki - a valuable stone created by the tears a koorime sheds at her child’s birth
Amiko - Forbidden Child
Chapter Sixteen
Jumping to the highest perch he could find still able to bear his weight, Hiei leaned back against the tree’s trunk and watched the restless storm play out across the purple skies. The jagged lightning that split spidery tendrils through the low clouds did not frighten him, nor did the icy touch of the rain-ridden wind bother him. The tree creaked, its branches tossing as the gusts came and went at odd intervals, but Hiei only shifted his weight to follow the swaying agitation. His wet cloak felt heavy around him, but the wool actually kept him warm, though his own body temperature saw to that as well.
There was something about a storm, especially one like this, with lots of rain and thunder and light, that soothed the restlessness within him. The Dragon, for once, was quiet, its faint growls seemingly growing sleepy as if it, too, was calmed by the sight. For a time, Hiei just sat there, taking in the savage beauty of nature that raged across the heavens. He smiled slightly when lightning struck but a nearby tree in a shower of sparks and ozone. The resulting fire was quickly doused by the icy sheets of rain that accompanied it, but he could feel the earth shudder below from the powerful strike.
Closing his eyes, he sunk into the Jagan, which gleamed in the shadowy darkness. Summoning his energy, he focused his thoughts like an arrow of seeking, following the thread of awareness he had tied to it as it sped outside the demon realm and into the human world. The image was at first blurry and indistinct, but the kakai barrier had never been built to repel thought, and so it let him pass.
Her face slowly formed, at first a silvery-white blob of spilled paint with odd specks of red that soon resolved itself into Yukina’s soft smile and warm scarlet gaze, her pale, silvery-blue hair caught up in her distinctive red hair-clasps. He watched her for a minute, trying to detect if anything troubled her serene features, but she seemed content, and even happy, for her smile widened, and she spoke words he could not understand to someone he could not see.
He expanded his vision to include her surroundings, and caught the wrinkled face of the old priestess, Genkai, who was cleaning up the remains of their dinner and bringing the dishes over for Yukina to wash. It was an achingly homey scene that made his fingers unconsciously curl into a fist even as he was reassured that all was well with the twin he had vowed never to know more than in this fleeting way.
Satisfied with what he saw, he let the image go, relaxing his hold on the Jagan and lazily letting it bring his awareness back to Makai. The iridescent green glow slowly dissolved from around his third eye as it drooped half-closed and he allowed his thoughts to drift as they would.
Unbidden, a second image slowly formed---of Kurama ducking back inside the cave and pausing momentarily as he caught the taiji-ya’s troubled gaze. Hiei sharpened his focus, and saw as she slowly sat up, still wrapped in the spell-cast cloak that managed to blur itself into an indistinct shape even to his all-seeing Eye.
But Kurama only waved her back, saying something Hiei could not, of course, hear. She nodded, still looking troubled, but sank back to her curled position on the floor, her head pillowed on her bent arm. The other two demons seemingly slept, though Hiei could tell that Yusuke, at least, was faking it. Kurama sat himself down across from the three of them. Putting his back against the wall, the kitsune closed his eyes. Even in the thick shadows of the cave, his long hair was a ruddy flame that danced around him.
But that current image of Anei and Kurama was dissolving into another, and Hiei let it, for it was the memory of the embrace the two had shared this afternoon, deep in the Forest of Fools. Nestled into the crook of a tree much like this one, he had been brought out of a light doze by it, and he ruthlessly examined that vision anew, sorting out the mixed emotions it called up within him and rejecting them out of hand.
The fox often seemed to be incapable of passion, but there was a fire in him that he let few see. Contain it as he might, still it came out when least expected. Wary of the weakness undue emotions could bring, Kurama tried to control them to the point where he was almost paranoid if he felt them. Hiei avoided emotions in much the same way and for much the same purpose. They were very much alike in that respect. Funny, that had never occurred to him before.
Funny how they both seemed to respond to the slayer in much the same way, too. Hiei had not missed Kurama’s irritation or annoyance with Jin. He had felt the same way, though the yappity wind demon who never shut up could get on anyone’s nerves, if they had half a brain. Not that he didn’t respect Jin’s particular sense of honor and fair play, but what he could barely stand in one boy---Yusuke---he could not stand in two. Gah. Even thinking about it was making him scowl.
Being ruthlessly honest with himself, he was attracted to the slayer. Even though she was human, and all but hopeless when it came to her demonic powers and potential. Even though she was, by all his estimations, too emotional and far too complicated a knot to untangle. Even though he should hardly care one way or another. Even though, when he had touched her mind, he had seen the darkness she hid inside herself and knew just how much it was like his own…
The Fates had chosen for him long ago, even before his birth, that his was a road that would always be walked alone. Dual-natured and discarded by his own people for it, he had always been shunned for the icy fire that ever burned in his dark heart, because he was what he was and they feared it---that the opposing natures that ever warred within him would one day unleash themselves upon them.
Hiei smiled. They were right to fear him. He gloried in their fear, knowing that it at least guaranteed their respect. Love---he had never needed that. That was never to be his, born as he was and to who he was---an all-female race of koorime who had rejected men and fled to their icy island in the sky where no man would follow. But his foolish mother had done the unthinkable, and lain with a demon, and a fire elemental, no less. Her misfortune was in giving birth to twins---yin and yang; she as pure as he was impure, her nature sweet and innocent, his dark and angry. The koorime had seen the darkness in his soul and knew the battle in his heart, just because he was what he was, a despised demon child of the opposing elements of fire and ice. They had known then what he was capable of, and feared it. Their hatred of that fear had led to their tossing him over the side of their icy island, leaving his fate to the gods and praying fervently for his death.
Hate was something he could understand and embrace. As opposite to love as fire was to ice, he could understand it and know it and use it. For hatred had helped him, as an abandoned youngling, to fend off the bandits who had found him and raised him. Hatred had brought him to where he was now, though it still wasn’t enough.
A B-class demon. That was what Koenma had classified him. How pathetic. Even after all the fighting in the Dark Tournament, even after unleashing the Dragon of the Darkness Flame---something of which he had never intended to do, but something that he was now glad that he had.
It had been his hatred and anger of Zeru that allowed him to will the Dragon forth. It was his hatred and anger that allowed him to survive the Dragon’s dark hunger and shadow-ridden rage when it had been thrown back at him later, in the fight with Bui. A lesser demon with lesser will than he would have succumbed to the Dragon, his soul delivered to the darkest pits of hell as forfeit for his weakness.
It was strength that had allowed him to succeed in taming the Dragon, where others had ever only failed. It was his strength that had allowed him to keep going, even after the bandits had eventually turned their backs on him, betraying and forsaking him just as the koorime had. Strength had kept him going even after he lost his mother’s hiruseki stone in a stupid fight with a worthless ogre. And strength had kept him resolute when he had gone to the surgeon Shigure to have the Jagan Eye implanted inside his body.
Anger and hatred and the desire to exact revenge on his mother’s people had seen him through the horrific operation. He had never felt such terrible pain and unending agony as when that bell-wearing, freaky sadist had first touched the scalpel to his forehead and dug into his flesh. Even he, vowed as he had to keep silent, could not contain the involuntary screams that had been ripped from his throat as the surgeon transplanted the Eye into his brow, rooting it right into his very brain.
What was the Dragon’s pain to that? Not that taking the Dragon inside himself hadn’t cost him, and with more than just mere agony. The Dragon was rage and hate and the hunger and passion of pure, raw emotion in its darkest form. Only he, Hiei the Amiko, Forbidden Child of the Glacial Village, with the icy fire in his heart and the darkness in his hungering soul, could have understood what powered the tortured Dragon in its constant, seething ambivalence. Only he could have embraced the Dragon’s nature and welcomed it as lost kin to his own. And only he, with his strength and fierce resolve---and the rage and hate that fed that strength and resolve---could the restless Dark Dragon have recognized as its own and allow him to finally contain it.
Lonely he might be in his shadows, but they were his, and he understood them. Kurama, now---Kurama deserved more than just the prison of withdrawal he set for himself. Old and jaded as he was, burdened with Youko’s knowledge, the kitsune didn’t take part in life, just existed on its edges, watching others from afar---though he gave the appearance of more. But Hiei knew better.
Perhaps this half-demon youkai-assassin could give Kurama more. For that alone, Hiei was willing to suffer her presence.
*Hn. I lie, even to myself.* The sneer of disdain for that fact twisted his mouth in self-recrimination. Tilting his head back against the sturdy tree behind him, he opened his eyes and glared at the angry heavens above. What did any of this really matter? It changed nothing, it helped nothing, it did nothing. Reality was what it was. Defining it had never been something he cared enough to do. He did what he did at the time that he did it and that was ever good enough of a reason for him.
He had accused the fox of thinking too much, and here he was following in the kitsune’s footsteps. How disgustingly pointless. He did not need to justify anything to himself or to anyone else. If he was attracted to the slayer against all reason, than so be it. He could accept that and ignore it because he didn’t have any place or willingness for that kind of foolish, insipid distraction in his life. He had room for only one thing---and that was power.
Not the power he had once craved---power over others. He had been a foolishly brutish demon then, needing to prove to himself and everyone else that he was a force to be reckoned with, one to be feared and respected. It was thanks to his friendship---yes, he could admit that now, though the idea still gave him chills of disgust---with Yusuke, and the others, that had made him see that that kind of power was not what he wanted. No, he wanted that power over self that meant that he had gone beyond even his own limits and reached past his own potential to realize that ultimate strength that resided within him. That was true power.
And if accompanying the detective on his search for this so-called father of his meant accompanying the slayer as well in retrieving her brother and defeating this arrogant demon, well, that was only a path to achieving his own goal. For the strange feelings he had regarding Yukina and this girl-hanyou’s similar circumstances was an area of weakness for him that maybe he could root out by doing whatever it was he would eventually do regarding either of them. Besides, by his own code of scant honor, he could not do less, and that was not an area he would ever question. He knew it was right that he do so, thus it was enough.
And he’d had enough right now of questioning himself. Let Kurama do that if he wanted to. Hiei was not one to care.
Jumping from his high perch, Hiei let the buoyant branch launch him across the troubled skies to the next. Using only his quick reflexes and light step to leap from treetop to treetop, he zig-zagged his way through the fitful lightning, delighting in the energetic game to avoid being struck and battling with the elements as the wind shrieked past him and the rain slathered him in icy blasts. He was back at their hillside cave all too soon, and eased himself inside the dry darkness with nary a whisper of sound to betray him.
Sitting back against the wall a few feet down from the sleeping kitsune, Hiei drew his knees up so he could rest his forearms on them and stare broodingly at the girl who lay across from him. Curled into her thick cloak, only the top of her tangled head and a bit of white skin was visible above the shapeless blanket. Like a child, she snored softly and slept deeply, an indication of her innocent---and foolish---trust in her surroundings.
Watching her like this, so soft and vulnerable, it was hard to reconcile the dark eddies that he had briefly touched within her mind. Ignore and deny them as she might, still they were there, deep black pools of an ancient bitterness and seething hatred that he recognized all too well, for they growled across the back of his own thoughts in the voice of the Dark Dragon who had come to symbolize them.
She, though, ignored those feelings and denied their existence until they boiled up over her thin control to loose themselves on those around her, as had happened just two days ago. That was rather pointless, for hate and rage could be used for one’s own advantage, as he well knew. But she seemed somewhat afraid of those dark shadows that dwelt within her deepest thoughts, and determined to either quell or escape them.
That useless, inner battle she waged between those very real feelings and her baffling need to deny them should have disgusted him outright. But somehow, instead, it actually intrigued him, for it was as if she were made up of two completely different natures, each dueling within her for supremacy.
And perhaps that was why he found her so compelling, for if anyone knew that personal turmoil, it was he. And perhaps the fact that she did try to suppress her hatred and rage so thoroughly intrigued him, too, for it was so novel an idea, and he wondered what, in the end, would win. And maybe there was something there that could save her from eventually being consumed and devoured by that bitter rage and seething hatred, and maybe by helping her, he could learn it for himself.
If, that is, he actually wanted to be saved. Truthfully, he didn’t know, and might not know until the moment when he did. And that he would leave for another time.
Closing his eyes, Hiei eventually slept as the storm continued to rage outside against the cold and lonely night.