Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Unbalanced Pendulum ❯ When the Night is Too Dark for Sleep ( Chapter 9 )

Kodaijin Hiei - I'm not quite sure what you are asking about as for future parts. I will

tell you that I've changed the genre of this fic because I plan on running it right

up to the start of the Yu Yu Hakusho series.

Insaneningen14 - the story is meant to impact. If it's too much for you please

discontinue reading (I'm being serious not offensive). And as for your other questions, please note that I am taking AU liberties with this story - and that the way I write the characters is only my interpretations of them.

NobodyNow - thanks for the recommendations. I'll check them out if I have the time. I

realized that I forgot to recommend any fanfictions to you. If you had the time, it

would be easiest if you just looked at my favorites (especially those on my MM.org account (namely The Collector by SaintMe and the My Kitsune series by NyxJr) ).

MikaSamu Kooriya Yui IneXpressible Buenagirl What2CallMyself

Kuranga108 Yamistar Kikvws SkSuncloud Avari

kurayami-ni-koorime Mz.Bitz Multifaceted Tune

This chapter was beta-read by Kooriya Yui

-------------------------------

Unbalanced Pendulum

Chapter 9: When the Night is Too Dark for Sleep

-------------------------------

Kurama's POV

To have your eyes wrenched from their sockets and be smothered from behind with wide silken ribbons, that's what it felt like. The forest was too thick and no prodding on my part would lessen the pressure. The innate link I shared with my plants was muffled beyond repair, leaving me stranded, cut off from my greatest source of power and my second sight. Utterly disoriented, I could feel the swell of panic rising from my gut and encompassing my whole chest. The fiery hot, itching pain that builds until one is both immobile and unable to be still, as sudden as the darkness after a bolt of lightning.

Where was I to follow him? My head began to ache - my body was unable to follow Hiei as I had promised. He couldn't be far…would he leave me behind in his angry haste? I spun slowly in place, my pupils searching for the scantest trace of light to grab and gather, looking for some sign of Hiei's passing. I could no longer even find my entrance point, though it was seemingly impossible for me to have traveled more than a few paces.

"Hiei!" I called out. Anything that could hunt me in this place would do so whether I drew attention to myself or not. "Hiei!"

Who would've ever thought that I would be dominated by a forest, though it wasn't merely the forest. No one thing dwelled within these trees to cause such perfect impenetration but hundreds of ancient ghouls. Twisted, evil, and deformed fallen spirits crowded and infected these trees. I won't say that they were devoid of all goodness for they have no concept of it and so cannot be without. Their accumulated power was great and I, as far more earthly than they, had no sway in this world. I would be even more susceptible to their gullery because of my potential to become one of them. I wonder if Hiei knew that he had given me no choice but to place all of my trust in his ability to protect me. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not.

I turned full circle and saw haunting, milky white eyes staring straight at me not a meter away, lit by an unknown and rabid light. I jumped back, crouching low to the ground and growled. My ears folded back against my scalp in aggressive fear. For all I could see the eyes hovered with no bodily connection, pupil-less and eerily focused on me. There was no barrier between my soul and their scene. I was utterly exposed and shaking, pride forgotten with the plants' voices. Perversions of thought came to me, thoughts of what I could become, and hideous sights of me dragging the weight of my dead body behind the outline of my spirit, trying to escape the fleshy confines. The wisps of soul breaking loose and leaving me a hardening husk now dependent upon the rotting flesh to sustain my spirits existence.

My eyes were so wide they hurt. I didn't want to become the nightmares I had been terrified with as a kit! I didn't want to rot in my own skin! I would rather die than become a ghoul. I would not be taken alive.

The thoughts kept coming faster, more frantic the longer I stared into the two blank white eyes. I forgot about survival. I forgot the taste of life. And without any weapon, I was prepared to claw through my throat and drown in my own blood. I closed my eyes with deadly conviction, still seeing the eyes through my lids, further proof of their spirituality and lack of existence in the physical reality. And raised my hand, trembling so violently that it was difficult for my nails to grip the clammy skin under which their targets resided.

"Kurama!"

The eyes blinked into the dark and my own opened with a wet gasp. My hand was sticky and wet with what smelled like contaminated blood. I fell to my knees then back on my heels in shock. I brought my other hand to my neck - I could feel viscous droplets of liquid trickling down my shoulder and chest. My neck was spattered with raised, oddly shaped clumps of jelly-filled sacks. Ironically enough, they had protected my neck from being shredded and, more importantly, my jugular from being slashed, while trying to poison my blood. I tore what was left of them off with a desperate urgency. Great gashes were revealed where they had attached themselves and having to scrape them off my skin further mangled my bleeding neck.

The forest was still completely saturated with an oily darkness but minor visibility was now possible, shapes wove in and out of focus until my eyes had finally adjusted. And my headache vanished at the sound of Hiei's voice. The feeling of being smothered without the widespread senses of my plants remained, though the pressure lessened.

Hiei was standing near me, his red eyes glinting almost comfortingly in their familiarity and his third eye blazing blue fire, though the outline of his body was aggressive. I let the flesh about my neck continue to bleed, hoping to bleed out the foreign substances that had been bled in. Hiei walked closer to me, unsure of my condition. He took my chin in his right hand and lifted it to better see the state of my neck, jagan blazing, and angrily gasped at the ugly sight. He let go with a hard jerk and grabbed my blood-encrusted hand, gnashing his teeth in frustrated disgust. I was still too dazed to protect myself from what came next. Hiei pulled my arm to the outside by the wrist within his grasp then suddenly switched directions, painfully wrenching my arm and throwing me to the ground with enough strength to stun me. I lay there unmoving, suddenly confused and afraid, knowing that I could not defend myself against him no matter the situation. Very softly, I whimpered.

"You're worth nothing to me dead," he spat. I cringed but at the last moment I also recognized that his voice's pitch was too high to be cruel. Whatever the motive, he was worried. It might just have been over the possible loss of his bounty but it was better than nothing… Or at least it was all I had to cling to. "Get up!" I complied only as far as my knees. I swiped a hand slowly across the wounds on my neck, stopping the bleeding and scabbing over the worst of the gashes. The insignificant cuts disappeared altogether.

"What the Hell is this place anyway?"

It was my turn to scowl at him in anger. Of course now he wished to know what I did of this godforsaken land. "I thought you didn't care."

I heard him step closer to me. "Tell me." He was threatening me with his proximity. He may not want me to die but the need to understand this foreign and threatening world was overriding any tolerance he might have had. I would be struck again if I pushed him any farther. Resistance would have been stupid and pointless.

"A gathering of the eternally undead whom can never die." I ignored his scoff, feeling the tale condense from fragments of memory I thought I had lost long ago. "The First was created here when he tried to become a god. A dark alchemical ceremony pieced together from crumbling documents ancient even in comparison to all but the oldest of gods. He half succeeded, his spirit beginning to float free from his avatar. But ultimately the magick required more than he could give and he was abandoned by the powers guiding his transition, left in an in-between stage of complete incompletion." With a sense other than sight, I could see wisps rising from the earth and trees and gathering, at a distance, around my legend. They were coming to listen. Impulsively, I grabbed for Hiei, crushing the edge of his cloak within my nervous fingers. Not yet afraid was he. And I needed that confidence through the only vector I could be assured of, the touch of his presence - no matter how cold - in my blind nightmare. "Gradually, others were attracted to his unconscious blankness and a territory began to form."

Rough cloth slipped against my shoulder indicating Hiei's now bent position beside me. He cupped his hand underneath one side of my jaw a bit more firmly than was perhaps called for and angled my head to face him, I think. I could only tell from the proximity and angle of his breath upon my face.

"What can they do to harm us?" His words were deliberate and demanding.

"You? I don't know. Me?" Unwilling and unable to describe in words, I took his hand in my trembling, bloody one and guided it to my eyes, letting his fingers catch on my eyelids and close them. Then back down to my where the recently spilled blood had begun to harden into brown flakes. "Because I have potential to become one," my voice was high, scared, ashamed, and embarrassed. My priorities were beyond confused.

"How do we leave?" His voice was still even.

I didn't answer. The wisps became distinguishable shapes; emanations of the ghouls I knew surrounded me.

---------------------------

Hiei's POV

I could feel his drying blood catch under my fingernails. He was so scared that he glowed and pulsed frigid white. My jagan squirmed against my skin, stimulated by so much fear. Whatever he had seen in the hour since I had left him was driving him mad. I couldn't understand his sudden irrationality. What dreams were leading him to this desperate and pathetic show of weakness? It was repulsing.

I asked again, "How do we leave?"

The Youko was no longer looking at me at all. His eyes were unfocused and glazing over. The annoying trembling had ceased

"Kurama!" It was the second time I'd ever addressed him by his name. I didn't like having to use it. This job was becoming too strange already.

His eyes clouded over entirely, but the barest of gold still shone through the smoke. "Keep walking along the given path," it was a monotone, alien voice that spoke to me from his mouth. "I will be awaiting your arrival, oh master of the jagan eye. I will be waiting for you indeed."

The mist literally lifted from his eyes, rising from the sockets like white smoke. And he was suddenly racked with shallow gasps, the shaking worse than ever. His hands frenziedly grabbed for me. And I stood still disgustedly, taking the brunt of his terror, no knowing what to do but wanting nothing more than to flee from his touch. I wasn't supposed to ever comfort my prey, ever. This was all wrong! If I could just kill him I wouldn't be having this problem, damn it! Fuck that demon Karasu for putting me through this (shit, I already did that, I thought with no little irony).

I just stood there, watching with a little detachment as this infamous legend shuddered at my hem, trying to regain control of his self enough to stand, or even kneel. My instincts were staging an indecisive civil war with each other, leaving me immobile. Three bloody black tears fell down his cheeks, purging his spirit. And he began to calm. His breathing evened but minor tremors still shook his body. It was an impressive demonstration of will power.

I don't know why I did it (though I have the suspicion that Logic had lost a crucial battle). But when he began forcing himself to relinquish his holds on my cloak, causing the tremors to temporarily worsen, I grabbed his hands and held them in place. Then I lowered myself to my knees and firmly embraced him. I think that on some level I understood that he needed this contact. Not necessarily with me, but with anything physical and alive.

"What was that?" I spoke directly into his ear.

"The First," he said breathlessly unable to speak solidly yet.

"Should we go?" I was doing my best to keep my voice from sending him into another fit. It wasn't easy. My patience was dying much faster than his tremors.

He nodded against my shoulder, "We have no choice."

-------------------------------

Please Review

A/N: Hiei can see so well in the dark because he's using his jagan eye.