MOKUROxHIEI

(I wrote this because I hate Mokuro.)

(Well, OK, I don't HATE HER.)

(Scratch that. I do hate her. She doesn't deserve Hiei.)

Mokuro has changed.

That's what they were saying.

The demons who used to be in her army.

She is weaker, less harsh, slower to anger, and no one knew why.

Except for Satome, her former second-in-command. He had served her for hundreds of years. His loyalty was so great that he hadn't even complained when she replaced him with Hiei as her new right-hand-man three years ago. Now, despite that Mokuro hadn't won the Tournament of Demon World and was just a normal, politically weak demon, she still kept Hiei around

She continued to find uses for him, and he never seemed to not want to do it.

Or at least that is what Mokuro saw. Satome knew differently. Whatever patience, compassion, and honor Hiei felt towards Mokuro's terrible past – terrible like his own – was wearing thin. Satome could see the annoyance in Hiei's dark eyes as Mokuro would speak softly to him, with kindness in her eyes.

Like a puppy in love.

Satome realized what this cost Hiei in his honor and dignity. Ironically, it was that same honor and dignity that made him pay his respects to a woman whose life had been as awful as his own.

But the time Hiei had allotted for mourning Mokuro's pain was almost over.

"Listen to me!" Satome begged with even greater desperation than the last time he'd said those words. "Hiei has no feelings for you other than that of mutual sorrow born out of the similarities of your lives." He breathed deeply and held Mokuro fixed to her spot on the ground so she couldn't run off like she had last time. "Surely you believe me. He will leave you soon."

Mokuro ripped her arm from his grip.

"He loves me. He feels out bond as deeply as I do." She turned her back on her old second-in-command and walked away.

"Hiei will never leave me."

"I'm leaving."

Mokuro's glass slipped from her hand and hit the stone floor of her bedroom.

"Why? Won't you stay…here…with me?"

"No. The time for mourning our pasts is over. I for one have absolutely no intention of allowing my life to slip even farther from me than it is now."

Mokuro gripped the arms of her chair tightly.

"I thought we had an understanding. That we had…something."

Hiei gave her a strange look.

"No."

Mokuro felt the heat rise in her face as her anger boiled inside of her.

"I thought you loved me." She said bitingly. "That you wanted to stay with me. Here. At my side."

Hiei's face darkened.

"I have spent my life searching for the island of ice, my sister, my mother's Teargem, and along with eventually discovering them, my honor evolved. My honor demanded that I pay my respects to the only other person who has lived a life that equals mine in pain. Now that I have, my life is calling me elsewhere." Mokuro shook her head, as though to discount everything he had just said.

"Your life is here. With me."

"No. It isn't."

"Why not? Where else do you have to go? You can't even return to Yukina! She doesn't even know you're her brother! You will never have anyone like me again if you walk away!"

"Who said I wanted anyone like you? The purposes of my life may have been fulfilled, but that does not mean I'll throw away the benefits of those purposes on a woman who not only hid my mother's Teargem from me, but is now demanding that I live the rest of my years with her." Mokuro looked as though she had been slapped. Her level of emotion was too much for someone like her to handle.

"You won't leave me!" Mokuro threw herself at Hiei, kicking and punching. "I won't let you!"

Satome heard the screams long before he could reach their origin. He threw the door to Mokuro's room wide open and gasped at the sight before him.

Hiei's Katana was wedged between Mokuro's flesh and metal parts of her neck. The former Demon World King was gurgling blood and clutching at the fire demon.

Hiei reached to the side of her head where the cords that connected her brain to her machine heart were tucked under a cloth. Then he looked into her dying eyes. She still seemed hopeful.

Hopeful that he would stay.

Hopeful that he would love her.

Hopeful that she had finally found the one who would fix all of the pain from her life.

"Goodbye" he said, and with that he ripped the cords out.

Immediately, her grasp on him slackened as she fell to the ground, dead.

He turned to Satome, who leaned against the door frame in shock.

"Now she has no cause to mourn her future as well as her past." Hiei said as he walked out of the bedroom.

He never returned.

END