Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction / Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ 'Til The Last Sunset ❯ Chapter 1: Come Day ( Chapter 1 )

Come Day

 

Drof: Well, the only people to guess so far were: Yami-Ko! Yami-Ko guessed whose POV the prologue was from, so she alone shall receive mention! Gerg, would you do the honors?

 

Gerg: Naga! *Translation: Yes!*

 

Drof: Lemme get the translator ready…Kay, now it'll translate what you say!!

 

Gerg: Congratulations, Yami-Ko!

 

Drof: Okay! Now, on with the chappie!

 

Disclaimer: Ford owns nothing but the OCs, and she's currently borrowing Riddick's teacup.

 

Warnings: VERY angsty and lots of psychological crap, suicide and child-abuse mentioned…After all, I'm just such a child-friendly writer, aren't I?

***

Chapter 1: Come Day

 

 

***

Karasu's POV

 

I wondered what had made him cry like that. It was a bit frightening, truth be told. He wasn't the sort to be given to emotional outbursts like that. Obviously, it had been something terrible. It hurt me, seeing him sad like that, in a way few other things had.

I guess you could say that I love him, but `love' doesn't really tell how I feel about him. I do care deeply for him, and I do love him…But in the same way you'd love a close friend. I wasn't infatuated with him, though I have a feeling he thinks that.

He's one of those people you just can't help but love, because he's a good person. Because it's obvious that if he comes to care for someone, he'd do anything for them. And because there are so few people like him in this world. He was the kind of person you wanted to care about you, the kind of person you'd try desperately to make happy.

He was one of those people who, when they're sad, would affect everyone around them, often without meaning to. And he was one of those people who didn't really like using that to his advantage. That's a quality that few people, in today's world, have.

He was beautiful, and not just physically. It was the way he cared about people, his thoughtfulness, and the way he tried not to hurt people. Gods, I'm making it sound like I am infatuated with him. I know I'm not…I don't think I could feel that way towards anyone. Not anymore.

Not after what happened.

Why am I thinking about that? Why do I keep bringing my mind back to that? Why? Why do I keep hurting myself like this, over and over again? Why can't I just let it go?

What's wrong with me?

Ha, what a question. So many answers to it. Most of the time, it seems like everything is wrong with me, and I can't do anything right. And maybe it is, and maybe I can't. It's no use trying to tell myself that that's not true, that I'm just fine how I am, because I know I'm not…I know there's something wrong with me, but I don't know what. And I don't know if I want to know.

All I know is that I keep coming back to what happened, picking at the wound until it's open again, though that's not hard. The memory is fresher than the wounds on my body. Of course, isn't that how it always works with things like this? The psychiatrists and the know-it-alls and the well-meaning fools who think they know what it's like say that it's the hurt that causes the memories, but they're wrong. And of course, none of them know that they're wrong. You can't blame them, they think they're right, but they aren't.

They say you can understand this kind of abuse if you study it, talk about it, read about it, but they're wrong. You can't understand it unless you've experienced it, and even then you can't really understand it. I've been alive for a thousand-three-hundred-odd years, and since I was ten, my father has abused me. And I still don't understand why he does it. I know that he hates me, and that's part of it.

He hates me, but he loves me.

He hurts me, but he helps me, too.

His tortures hurt me, and with every blow, that part of me that lets people inside….it just….dies. And with every blow, I die a little more inside, become colder. I'm alive, but inside I'm dead. I seem cold and unfeeling, because I can't manage to be anything else and stay alive, stay sane. It's gotten to the point where I'm so cold and dead inside, that I want him to hurt me, because at least that's something…

He's always hurt me badly, but this time, he went too far. This time, he didn't just hurt me. This time, his torments went far beyond merely hurting me. He aimed to break me, to crush the last bit of will I had, and it almost worked.

If it had, I'd be dead now. As it was, I almost didn't live, and, truth be told, I'm not so sure I will now. I'm not so sure I want to live. I looked at my wrist, at the thin scar there, barely visible. That scar, a testament to just how badly my father has hurt me. In a way, the abuse has helped me. My natural healing abilities would have been quite strong, if allowed to develop normally. However, thrust into a situation in which I was beaten and tortured to the point of death every day, often more than once each day, those abilities became much stronger.

If they hadn't, I'd be dead now. If they hadn't, those scars wouldn't be on my wrists. The scar I was looking at right now came from a knife, which I'd repeatedly run across my wrist, for hours on end, throughout a period of several hundred years.

People have said I'm crazy. I'm not going to argue. We're all crazy, in a way. My insanity simply manifested itself in the desire to feel something other than that cold emptiness inside of me. And of course, pain was one of the few things I felt regularly, other than that coldness. In a way, I take comfort in the pain. It takes away that coldness, fills up that empty gap inside of me, and makes me feel alive. Even the despair of losing someone you love is preferable to that emptiness. Death would be preferable, but I can't bring myself to that point.

I could say that it's for the people who care about me, for Hotaru, for Ford, for BHS, and for Kiiyra. I could say that, but it wouldn't be true.

In the end, it's pure cowardly selfishness that keeps me from killing myself. I'm afraid to die….No, that's not right. I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to. I want to live.

Few people who know me understand why, and, truth be told, neither do I. I doubt I ever will. I don't like my life, but I don't want to die.

Of course, how can you die if you've never really lived? For all of my life, I've been merely surviving. I have to survive each day. If I make it until sunrise, then I've survived another day, when so many others haven't.

I looked at the boy curled up against me, and was struck by a sudden feeling of déjà vu. And why shouldn't I be? This wasn't so different from times at the Kastle, when father had beaten Hotaru... After these times, she'd usually come to my room, bruised and bleeding and sobbing. And all I could do was hold her, and tell her that I wouldn't let him hurt her again, and of course it was a lie, every time. She knew it too. She knew I'd try, but she also knew that sometime, I'd fail, I wouldn't be there, just like I hadn't been there that time, and every other time. She'd fall asleep curled up in my arms.

She looked so innocent when she was sleeping. She looked like any other normal child, a sweet and naïve little girl, though she was not little and most certainly not naïve. With Haretenki as a father, who could be? I could barely stand to look at her then. It hurt me, the same way watching Kurama cry had hurt me, but much more, because she was hurt like she was because of me, because I hadn't been there. Because for a little while, I'd taken a break from looking out for her.

I had failed in protecting her. I looked at Kurama again, and the similarity between him and Hotaru was painful. They looked nothing alike, save that they both had that sweet, naïve innocence when they were asleep.

“I couldn't protect her,” I whispered, my words carried away by the wind that was becoming gradually warmer as sunrise approached. “I couldn't protect her, but I'll try my hardest to protect you.”

And I would. Right up until the last sunset, I would.

***

Kurama's POV

 

When I woke up, the sun was rising, tinting everything blood red. It was ominous, beautiful and terrible all at once. I heard a low, clear voice singing softly.

“…Sleep, love, lay down and sleep; your soul you need not keep; when the darkness is this deep; sleep, love, forever sleep…”

“Karasu?” I asked groggily, wondering who was singing and where he was. And where I was, for that matter. And perhaps who I was….Oh, I remembered that.

“Hm?” the voice broke off, and it was Karasu's that answered. He was sitting a few feet away from me, cross-legged. I blinked. He looked a lot worse in the light, with his wounds more clearly illuminated.

“Were you just singing?” I asked, hoping the words came out right. I have been known to be a bit of a mush-mouth when I wake up. Thankfully, not nearly as much as BHS, who had trouble speaking any understandable language for at least two hours after she woke up.

“…Yes…” Karasu said, a bit sheepishly.

“What song was that?”

“Something my sister came up with…” Karasu said. “Nothing, really.”

“You sing quite well,” I noted. Karasu blushed, embarrassed. That made me blink again. He was acting distinctly…un-Karasu-ish, as BHS would have put it.

“I'm not that good…” he said. I was beginning to think he had something of an inferiority-complex.

“Hey!” a voice called. I turned around, and saw a young girl, not quite four and a half feet tall, dressed in black pants and what appeared to be a large orange potato-sack with sleeves and a slight V-neck. Said shirt-potato-sack-thing went to her knees. She raised her hand in a wave, the sleeve falling away from her arm to reveal a mildly tight-fitting wrist. Her short hair was disheveled, but that was normal.

“BHS?!” Karasu and I said at the same time, in varying degrees of surprise.

“Yep!” she said, running over to stand beside Karasu. I stifled a laugh, noting that even when he was sitting, he was still taller than her.

“Did I interrupt something?” she asked, looking from me to Karasu.

“BHS!” Karasu cried, blushing again.

“That wasn't funny,” I added.

“I was just asking,” BHS said innocently.

“Sure you were,” Karasu said.

“I thought I heard the heavenly chorusing of angels, but there's no angels up here. Just you two,” the girl said.

“He was singing,” I informed her.

“That explains why it made the heavenly chorusing of angels sound shoddy.”

“Are you mocking me?” Karasu asked, without a trace of seriousness in his voice.

“Why do you have to be so suspicious?” BHS asked, playing along. “It's a beautiful day! We're not dead, the sun is up……and if I hear myself say one more positive thing, I think I'll barf.”

“Wonderful,” I said dryly.

“Don't tease me!” BHS warned, holding out a metal teacup. “Or I'll bring down the wrath of Riddick's teacup on you!”

“I'm so scared,” Karasu said, rolling his eyes. “Now, care to tell me why you came up here?”

“I was bored,” BHS said.

“So you climbed a cliff?” Karasu quirked an eyebrow.

“I wanted to see the sunrise from up here.”

“It's red,” I noted.

“You know what they say!” BHS said.

“A red sunrise means the blood of an irritating and enigmatic twelve-year-old midget will be spilled that day?” Karasu asked.

“No!” BHS said indignantly. “Red sky at night, sailors' delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” she quoted. “Means there's gonna be a storm. Oh, and I found this pretty glowey-thingy, you guys should come check it out!”

“Well, alright,” Karasu said. “I've got nothing better to do.”

“Why not?” I said. “Where is it?”

“Follow me!” BHS said, and promptly ran to the edge of the cliff. As we walked down, I mused over what she could have found.

“It's probably a shiny rock or a piece of metal,” Karasu said.

“Sometimes, I wonder about her sanity,” I said.

“If you don't already know she's insane, I worry about your intelligence,” Karasu responded. I blinked at that. Had he just called me stupid?

“Here it is!” BHS announced when we had reached the bottom of the cliff, and then walked a suitable distance away. She pointed with a flourish to what appeared to be a piece of incredible shiny metal against a wall.

“It's a piece of metal, BHS,” Karasu said.

“Nuh-uh!” BHS argued. “I can stick my hand through it, see?” She demonstrated this, much to my surprise, and Karasu's as well. “I think it's a portal to somewhere,” she said confidentially, her dark brown eyes big and wide behind her too-big glasses.

“We might as well check,” I said.

“I'll go first!” BHS said. And, without another word, she stepped through the metal-thing, and was gone. Karasu and I traded glances, and went after her.

***

Normal POV

 

The three came out in some dark place.

“I can't see!” BHS called.

“That's because there's no light,” Karasu muttered.

“Who's there?” a voice called out. It was male, with a British accent.

“Me!” BHS called.

“Who's `me'?” the British voice asked. Although the gesture wasn't visible, Karasu rolled his eyes.

“Three people who intend you no harm, and would like to get the hell out of here,” he said.

“Well, follow me then,” the British voice said.

“We can't see you,” Kurama pointed out.

“Um, do you see a light?” the British voice asked sheepishly. “Follow it.”

They followed the bobbing light, and after an indeterminate period of time, came out into daylight, which, after spending a good deal of time in pure darkness, was blinding.

“I'm meeeelllttiiinnggg!” BHS said.

“Erm…sorry?” the British voice said, a bit nervously.

“Ignore her,” Karasu said. “She's crazy.”

“I'm not crazy!” BHS protested. “Just insane. There's a difference!”

“Yes, one has more letters,” Kurama said, rolling his eyes. By then, they could see the person who'd led them out here. It turned out that she was an incredibly beautiful woman of about eighteen. She was very short, not even an inch over five feet, with long blue hair that fell in a single braid to below her waist. It was a sort of hard, icy, brittle blue color, like the color of the sky in winter, when the bare tree limbs seem to claw at the sky. Her eyes were teal, with just a bit more blue than teal normally has. She wore grey clothing, which blended well with the grey chunks of rock scattered about.

“Would you happen to be a vampire?” she asked.

“No, I'm a crow demon,” Karasu replied.

“Who are you people?”

“I'm BHS,” BHS said, “ask what it stands for and die. The red-head's Kurama, and he's Karasu.”

“I'm Nikio,” the British person said. *That's pronounced `Nick-yo.*

“Heya, Nikio!” BHS said. “Nice to meetcha! Um, say, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what?”

“Um….are you a guy or a girl?” BHS looked rather sheepish. Karasu brought his fist down on her head and hissed at her not to be rude. To their surprise, Nikio was laughing.

“I'm a man,” he said.

“Thanks,” BHS said gratefully. `He's awfully pretty…' she thought to herself.

“Why is it that it's noon now?” Karasu asked. “The sun had just risen when we went through that portal, and now it's noon!”

“It's been noon, for about twenty minutes,” Nikio said.

“We come from a different reality,” BHS said. “Or at least, a time a few hours earlier. I found a pretty glowing portal-thingy.”

“Did you…” Nikio said doubtfully.

“Actually, she did,” Kurama said. “Odd as it seems.”

“Well, we can't just stand around all day,” Nikio announced. “Follow me.”

***

“Oh it's a small world, after all; it's a small world, after all; it's a small world, after all; it's small, small world!” BHS sang. She took a break from her singing to remark, “I think this is going to be a very long day.”

“It already is,” Karasu muttered, as BHS started up on `It's A Small World, After All' for the umpteenth time.

“We're almost there!” Nikio encouraged.

“You said the same thing thirty minutes and fifty choruses ago!” Kurama said. BHS's singing was grating on his nerves as well. Then again, it was a very annoying song.

“This time, I mean it,” the Brit responded. “The house is right there.” He pointed to a small house, quite ordinary looking. He went up, and knocked on the door.

It was opened by a boy who looked about twenty, with slightly slanted brown eyes, and long white hair. His next statement exhibited obvious sophistication and politeness.

“Who the hell are they?”

“They, Bakura, are three people who apparently went through a portal and ended up here,” Nikio replied. Bakura blinked, and put a hand to Nikio's forehead.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked concerned. “You're hot.”

“So you've told me,” Nikio said, grinning.

“That's not what I meant!” Bakura cried, blushing. Nikio just laughed.

“Can we come in, or are you going to continue blocking the doorway?” Nikio asked.

“I might just stay here!” Bakura said.

“Then I will have to pick you up and carry you into the house,” Nikio informed him. Bakura rolled his eyes, but stepped back so they could come in.

“You're too short to pick me up,” he told Nikio.

“You're right,” Nikio agreed. “I guess I'd have to just push you aside, then.”

“Nice house,” BHS said, plopping down on a nearby couch. “Karasu, don't you wish—duck!”

“Wha—?” Karasu asked. Before he could finish, a rock hit him in the back of the head.

“I said `duck',” BHS told him.

“Shut up,” he said, ducking through the doorway and into the house. He went and sat down next to BHS, being unable to stand up due to the fact that an eight-foot ceiling cannot properly accommodate a ten-foot demon.

“Okay, could you please explain what's going on here?” Nikio asked.

“Erm…Alright,” Karasu said. And he, Kurama, and BHS proceeded to explain what had happened. Since it'd make this even longer to go into details, I, the author, shall simplify it for you. Basically, for no apparent reason, wars and sickness had been breaking out all over, as well as unexplained deaths. People who weren't killed in wars, didn't catch some sort of sickness that killed them within minutes, or just drop dead randomly were all that was left of a now-broken world.

“I have just one question,” BHS said, when they finished explaining.

“And that is?” Karasu asked.

“What is the velocity of Canada?”

“Better question,” Nikio said. “Since when did Canada have a velocity?”

“Forty-two!” BHS replied. *This number has great significance, both to me and the story you're reading.*

“Forty-two?” Karasu asked.

“It's the answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” BHS says. “Except, no one knows the Question. The Earth was a giant super-computer built to discover the question, but it was destroyed five minutes before the Question was found, in order to make way for a hyper-space-bypass. The mice were furious.”

“I bet they were,” Nikio said.

“Did you escape from an asylum?” Bakura asked.

“She's not that insane,” Karasu said.

“Yeah!” BHS said. “Like Kara-chan says, I'm not that insane. I'm really quite harmless.”

“Kara-chan?” Kurama asked, sniggering.

“Shut up…” Karasu muttered.

“So, what're we gonna do today?” BHS asked. “I'm bored, and I can't stalk Karasu.”

“That's a bad thing?” Karasu asked.

“Well, you can't stalk Kurama!” BHS pointed out.

“I am not stalking Kurama!” Karasu yelled. “Or anyone!!”

“Denial,” BHS said, shaking her head. “Poor thing.”

“I am not in denial!”

“Prove it!”

“Prove that I am!”

“They fight like a married couple,” Nikio remarked to Bakura.

“It's rather funny,” Bakura said. Nikio laughed and nodded. He put an arm around Bakura's shoulders, pulled him close, and leaned against him. Bakura shifted slightly.

“Nikio…” he said, glancing toward the others.

“Does it really matter?” the blue-haired boy asked. Bakura smiled, and shook his head.

“No…”

“Good,” Nikio said, laying his head on Bakura's shoulder, absently stroking the other boy's hair.

***

Drof: Heya, peoples!! Guess what's with Bakura and Nikio, and you'll get a special mention next chappie!

 

BHS: Finally, I changed it! Uh, I had Nikio's description wrong…Hehheh…

 

Drof: YOU didn't change it, I did! I'm the one who writes this!! Anyway, that description was an old one….You see, Nikio's description has changed as many times as the pronunciation for his name. And I've gone through 64 different ways of pronouncing `Nikio'. Anyway, what I've written is what he actually looks like.