Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Issue ❯ The Issue ( One-Shot )

 

The Issue

 

AN: Well, I watched about a gazillion YYH AMVs tonight, so of course this happened. It's annoyingly similar to Goals, but I like it anyway.

 

Disclaimer: Yuu Yuu Hakusho and all characters, names, and related insignia (ooh, technical terminology) copyright Yoshihiro Togashi. And not me.

 

 

I sat in the tree, my legs crossed and my elbows resting on my knees. Technically, I was supposed to be working, but… Mukuro could wait a few hours. The sky was dark and clouded, and as I stared at it I knew that Earth was out there somewhere, whether I could see it or not.

 

Earth… it was a strange place, a strange place I had once tentatively called home. I had stayed for the ice cream. After all, he had given me whatever I wanted—that green kind with the little brown squares that tasted vaguely of toothpaste or the smooth pink kind or even the brown-cream ones with little pieces of candy in them that always had strange names that had to do with roads or the feet of woodland creatures. And I could have as much as I wanted, too. Sometimes I made myself sick eating as much as I could.

 

But it was ice cream and it was cold and sweet and I loved him… it.

 

There was a time, long ago, when I visited for ice cream two or three times a week… but not anymore. I've been busy lately.

 

I miss the ice cream, but I don't miss his company.

 

Of course, there are times when I think back… when I recall the delicious taste of the ice cream, but certainly not the gentle smile that came with it… and I want to go back. I want to go back to Earth, just to taste ice cream again. Sometimes I even half-convince myself to return, but Mukuro puts a stop to that by giving me some tedious assignment that I can't finish until the inclination has passed… I should thank her sometime.

 

He almost always smiled, a soft upturning of his lips and a brightness in his eyes. Sometimes, though—the rare times—his mouth would form a thin white line and his eyes would be narrow and dull. The longer I took to eat my ice cream, the thinner his lips would become, until sometimes I thought there couldn't be any blood left in them. Those times, I thought that maybe he was waiting for me to say something earth-shattering. I never said anything, though; I just finished my ice cream and left through the window, leaving only a sticky brown-covered bowl behind.

 

That was the last time I came back for ice cream, because I knew that he wouldn't tolerate my silence for much longer. It wasn't fair to him to linger when it meant so little to me and so much to me… him, I mean.

 

…Even so and even after so much time and even after so many assignments and missions, somehow I still long to go back. Vaguely, I worry about the people I left behind… but only vaguely.

 

I shouldn't worry. After all, he's strong—he wouldn't really care that I'm gone. Or at least he'd move on with his life. By now, he's probably got a successful job, living like every other human with his beautiful wife and his two kids. She'd have to be beautiful, because otherwise… otherwise…

 

I blew out a shaky breath through my teeth, my hands on top of my knees. If I went back now, there wouldn't even be space for me.

 

And if I was wrong about his wife and his children, if they didn't really exist, then I'd just have to deal with his thin lips and his breaking green eyes and I don't know how long I could handle that.

 

And that's why I won't go back for ice cream.

 

…and sometimes, when the line between consciousness and sleep blurs, I realize that ice cream isn't even what it's really about.