Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Balance ❯ Into the Abyss ( Chapter 14 )

Disclaimer: woe is I.

Balance

Chapter Fourteen: Into the Abyss

He cried softly.

He cried to the abyss, into the blank white black nothingness that had become the world surrounding him.

He cried to the shadows and the darkness and the light hovering over him and to the mystic winds that swirled about him under the phoenix's wing.

He cried to the man in the mirror who had stolen his last shreds of sanity and wholeness.

The man in the mirror stood over him and watched silently.

Words spiraled around him.

Ink black letters, words of glaring crimson, sharp lines of sword blades and frightening drips of blood shone out of the bleak background.

PITY

"I pity the man you have come to be."

WANT

"You receive it and you no longer want it!"

HATE

"It is you who hates me."

CRY

"You have no right or reason to cry."

SELFISH

"Selfish bastard!"

No!

'Yes!'

He cried into his hands and the man in the mirror scorned him.

'Foolish bastard. You know nothing of anything, do you?'

I know enough! he screamed, raising his head. Red eyes met red eyes but only one pair was dry. Only one pair was rightfully red.

'Dry your eyes, idiot.'

I am- he tried to choke out, but his voice was caught halfway and only the beginning of the denial was let out and sounded like an admission.

'You are!' shouted the man. 'You are and you admit it? Cowardly bastard!'

I did not admit to any such thing! he wailed in response. I did not mean it and you know it! You know everything about me!

'Lies!'

They are not!

A sharp noise resounded throughout the endless eternity of space.

The man in the mirror withdrew his hand from the bitter slap and glared.

'I know nothing about you,' the man hissed. His voice was venomously bitter and fiercely dark. 'You think I would dare to delve into the endless spiral you call a mind? You think I would have the strength to wash through the endless ages of misery and torment you call a life? You think I read your mind? You are a fool!'

I am no such thing! he screamed. I am no fool! You are the one who is being ignorant if you think I am!

Tears leaked from his eyes as he yelled out to the infinity of space and time.

The man in the mirror knocked him down.

'These words…' the man growled, waving to the inky and blood-colored letters, 'these words you have created, these words you call yourself… I have no part in this and I want no part of you.'

He did not move from his place on the groundless ground, but did not cease his tears, and they were lost into the abyss.

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"Oi, domo," Kuwabara muttered quietly.

Yuusuke looked up half heartedly and nodded.

"Wait a minute," he suddenly interrupted himself, "why?"

Kuwabara laughed. It figured, he thought, that Yuusuke would accept thanks before even knowing what they were for.

Yuusuke, in turn, frowned out of frustration. He batted Kuwabara on the back of the head and innocently whistled as Kuwabara turned to glare at him, his head turned to the side.

"Anyway," Kuwabara said, his voice and poise dignified as though he were raising himself above the "petty" denial Yuusuke was trying to make, "arigatou."

"Aa," Yuusuke prompted, "for…"

"Stopping, you moron," Kuwabara replied easily.

Yuusuke dropped his head to his hands and huffed a loud sigh. "Why I put up with him, I have no idea…"

Kuwabara easily returned Yuusuke's slap with a friendly one of his own, earning him a sharp glare, which, in turn, prompted a harder punch, which warranted a response, which blew out of proportion into a full-scale free-for-all.

Somewhere in the midst of the punching and kicking and a little sparkle of reiki here or there, Kuwabara thought with a smile.

'Yeah…just like old times…'

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Kurama smiled down at his little friend as he slept. Hiei's face was so misleadingly angelic when his guard was down, it was almost childish. His eyes were the key…his glaring red eyes…

His shining red eyes bore the signs of age, of bitter torment and a horrid past. His eyes revealed age and wisdom beyond his years, the color of blood and the shine of dark temptations. They showed lovely promises and equally strong ones of unspeakable betrayal if you dared to get too close…

They showed beauty…

They showed hope…

They showed death…

They showed…exhaustion.

Hiei was tired.

Kurama understood exhaustion and tiredness… He was, after all, over one thousand years old. He was getting tired and his body felt heavier than it once had. Destruction no longer held quite the same thrill it used to and thievery was not so easy.

And his past, ridden with murder and betrayal as it was, was nowhere near as full of the black depths Hiei's was…

Kurama could only imagine.

Behind closed eyelids, Hiei blinked.

"Awake, my friend?" Kurama asked softly. Hiei quivered a bit in his lap and shifted his position.

"Mm…K'rama…just…" He yawned cutely. "Just…tell me…"

The redhead smiled kindly and gave Hiei a little half hug. In the position he was in, he could do nothing more, but he had to be content with that for now.

"I guess you are awake, ne?"

"Urusei…"

Kurama laughed quietly.

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"As great as it is to…" Yuusuke began, faltering in the midst of his speech.

"Revert to old ways?" Kuwabara supplied. Yuusuke answered with a stunned look.

"How'd you know a big word like 'revert'?" he asked incredulously. Kuwabara glared poisonously.

"I'm not stupid…"

The Tantei waved him off with a laugh, nodding in deaf agreement. "Sou, sou. As great as it is to…revert to old ways, we really gotta find Kurama and Hiei."

Nodding his assent, the carrot top stood and offered Yuusuke a hand which was gratefully accepted. The friends nodded to each other in an almost brotherly way, smiles hidden underneath their blank stares, and started off together, sensing for the absent ki signals.

"Found a lock…" Kuwabara muttered, trance-like, as he walked off in a seemingly random direction. Yuusuke nodded approvingly.

"Guess your training with the two of them paid off quickly," he noted, meaning Kurama and Hiei. Kuwabara, still dazed and unfocused, ignored him and continued on.

Yuusuke stumbled over his own feet a bit and ran after his friend.

Kuwabara picked up speed with each step, and soon he had broken into a full scale run, fast enough to be fleeing authority. Yuusuke tailed him easily enough, but had no idea where they were going. Neither kept track of their surroundings and once they went around in a small circle, but all was irrelevant.

Exactly eight minutes later, they had stumbled upon Hiei and Kurama.

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"I'm sorry…" whispered the kitsune, smoothing down his friend's hair. "Did I say something wrong?"

The little youkai shook his head, but then resettled, nestled into Kurama's lap.

"Iie…"

Kurama felt his heart ripping again and he turned away in an effort to stop the pain in his chest. Hiei squirmed around and ended by resting his arms around Kurama's waist in a little hug.

Tears brimmed in Kurama's eyes. Hiei was so small, so broken…so fragile beyond his wicked exterior…

This was the precious child who had never been given the chance to grow up. This was the beautiful youkai who hid himself behind evil and venomous lies. This was the good hearted man no one was ever allowed to see.

"Gomen nasai gozaimashita, Hiei…"

The little youkai nuzzled his face into Kurama's lap. Kurama blinked. 'So innocent…'

"It's not your fault…"

"But, in its way, it is…"

Hiei shook his head. "Mm-mm…iie…"

Kurama smiled and offered a shallow laugh, throaty and short. "Aa…tomodachi…"

"Aa…"

The tranquil mood slowly lulled Kurama, pulling him down, down, down… He slept quietly and the picture of serenity graced the two friends.

Long minutes passed in silence.

A rustling broke the peace.

Kurama looked up with a start as the other two members of their team tripped into the clearing, laughing at some unknown joke.

"No shit," Yuusuke was saying. Kuwabara's cheeky grin was firmly in place and the pair of them seemed to be having the time of their lives.

Upset at the stolen calm but visibly unruffled, Kurama nudged Hiei awake and let him stand before Yuusuke and Kuwabara noticed what could have been called their compromising position.

'Just…tell me…'

"Before I forget," he said, preening his hair subtly, "there is something I wish to tell you three."

"Mm?" Kuwabara looked over, and Yuusuke nodded gravely for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of. Something about the entire mood rang of seriousness somehow.

Vaguely.

"You wondered why I was so angered at Attou, were you not?" he asked as if it were mindless chatter about the weather, or some equally trivial thing. The others nodded, Hiei less so.

"Well, you all know I was a bit of a player as Youko, don't you?" he asked. Hiei nodded, Kuwabara tilted his head in confusion, and Yuusuke shook his head 'no.' Kurama laughed slightly, though there was nothing humorous to laugh about.

"Well," he said in a cool ripple, "I suppose I must have forgotten to mention it. I was adept at…how would you say it, playing the field?"

"Dame…" Yuusuke prompted.

"As you may expect with such a careless life, I made a few enemies. A few enemies with a few powerful friends. One was Attou's mother."

"Wait," Kuwabara interjected abruptly, "wait. You aren't going to tell us Attou is your kid, are you?"

The very thought appeared to sicken him greatly, and Kurama shook his head with a slightly concealed smile. "Iie, iie, nothing like that," he assured them.

Hiei sat beside Kurama, half concealed to their friends, and laid a hand on his back comfortingly. He knew how easy it was for the kitsune to change his skin and, sensing the underlying torment of the story, offered what meager comfort he could. Kurama shot him a second-long, barely perceptible thankful look. Hiei nodded equally quickly.

Neither action went unnoticed by the Makai natives.

"Attou heard of me from his mother," Kurama continued, "and how I abandoned her, as she put it. She claimed I left her with child, which was, of course, a filthy lie. Her sort is of a rare class which can only reproduce with members of its own species, and I am certainly not one of them."

Yuusuke nodded blindly, no longer really listening to the trivial padding details. Kuwabara raised a skeptical eyebrow at Kurama's elitism, but made no move to correct him.

"In any case, Attou was raised with a great hatred of me and, when he grew into his meager power, paid one of his more powerful and admittedly more attractive friends to-eh…attempt to seduce me, to put it lightly."

Hiei rubbed a slow circle around his friend's back. "He raped you, didn't he?" he asked quietly.

Kurama nodded. "He did. It was most vulgar…"

"But why do you-Youko Kurama…" Hiei intoned hesitantly, wary of moving on to new territory, "why do you have such a…vendetta against someone who used sex as a tool? Didn't you do the same? Youko Kurama is anything but hypocritical."

Kurama smiled forlornly, looking off into the mist. His hair seemed to shimmer with a vague silver color and his eyes shone a sad emerald. "Why, indeed…

"He all but disappeared after he attacked me. I spent much of my life trying to find him again but to no avail… He stole something precious of mine and I never had the chance to make him take his atonement for it."

Kuwabara looked away, a faint blush tickling his cheeks, and Yuusuke stared off into the distance in his own sort of rapt attention. Hiei sat stock-still as he waited for Kurama to continue, careful not to pressure him in any way. The redhead leaned into his hand slightly without giving him any other acknowledgment.

"Not your…eh…virginity?" Kuwabara asked delicately. Kurama outright laughed at that.

"Oh, dear, Kuwabara, he didn't do that. My virginity had been lost long before I met this creature. No, he stole something much more abundant, but much more precious."

Yuusuke looked over questioningly, but didn't speak. Hiei continued sitting silently, offering his own brand of comfort. Kuwabara tried valiantly to fight back his blush.

"Oh, yes," Kurama said suddenly, as though he had just remembered that they were all there. "He stole something very precious to me: he stole my dignity. Youko Kurama does not take lightly those who steal his dignity…but the man disappeared.

"He left me in a cave on the most northern side of Makai and knocked me out. How he did it, I don't quite know, but I would only assume he was a very strong youkai. S-class, at least. In any event, he left me there, looted a cave he had found of mine-luckily it was a relatively small one, with few very precious items-and I never heard from him again.

"But the tale was quickly spread all around Makai. Youko Kurama, the great thief, the great lover, the great whatever you want, had been raped and looted. It was blown all out of proportion and things were made up that had never happened, and it took a great many years to regain all that I had lost. I did it, of course… Youko Kurama does not lose his dignity. But it took more effort than I might have liked and more than a few youkai had to die before the whole mess tapered off."

"And the wire whip?" Yuusuke asked, randomly digressing back to the beginning of the conversation in that Urameshi Yuusuke way he was so good at.

"His…tool," Kurama bit out, his voice full of vile loathing. "His name, as you may have guessed by now, was Kurokyoui. Or that was what he called himself-sort of."

"I understand…" Kuwabara said slowly. "He made you yell out 'Kurokyoui' while he was…you know…eeto…you…know…"

Kurama decided to save his friend and nodded. "Yes, Kuwabara, he did. I suspect, from the stories we've heard so far, that it is the same man, though why he captured Attou along with the others is beyond me."

"That's easy," Hiei muttered hatefully. "He's a sadistic, totally insane old bastard."

Kurama smiled sadly. "Maybe…"

Yuusuke clapped Kurama on the shoulder and looked at him with a gently pitying expression.

"We'll catch him, Kurama. Don't worry."

Kurama returned the look with a grateful one of his own.

"I don't doubt it, Yuusuke."

Hiei laughed to himself at the falseness of the appreciative thanks.

No one else seemed to notice.

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Oi: hey

Domo: thanks

Arigatou: thank you

Aa: yeah

Reiki: spirit energy

Ne: isn't that right?

Urusei: shut up

Tantei: detective

Sou: right

Ki: energy

Kitsune: fox

Youkai: demon

Iie: no

Gomen nasai gozaimashita: i.e., I'm so very sorry

Tomodachi: my friend

Dame: and

Makai: demon realm

Eeto: errr…

Note: the shounen-ai is more abundant in this chapter than I intended. But remember that anything they do is all very subtle and not evident enough for Yuusuke and Kuwabara to notice. Except for the sleeping thing, but Yuusuke and Kuwabara weren't there, so I figure I'm covered.