Moon: Just here for my usual disclaimer. I wrote this while very sleepy; Ryuuie beta'ed for me. This is loosely based on Inception, if you haven't noticed, but it is not a crossover. This prologue is as close to the movie as we'll come on this little adventure. The pairings are Yuusuke/Kurama and maybe Hiei/Kurama. I'm not 100% on the pairings. I have this planned out, but you never know what can happen when and if a story takes a life of its own. I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. Please enjoy and, if you like this (or don't), please leave a review. Thanks.
Kurama's POV
Urameshi Yuusuke and I have had a wonderful life together. We have grown old together. After four years of friendship, we evolved into lovers in a very peculiar way. I remember he came home from the Makai and kissed Keiko on the beach. And, I remember that it was the first time we had all been in the same place at the same time for a long time. Almost two years. Though I suppose that's not entirely true – Hiei wasn't there. But, at the time, that wasn't important. What was important was that Yuusuke was back and we were all together. He and Kieko were making out, finally solving that little love spat that had been going on for what I am sure amounted to years.
The Spirit Detective had been out of a job for three years now, and it had been two years since the Tournament. He had been training with the others for twenty-four entire months, though it seemed like decades. The next one was scheduled for a year and there was a new demon on the scene. Koenma was worried, but the weird thing was, so was Yuusuke. New demons pop up everyday, but they were concerned for the future of the three worlds; they wanted to check out his odd power that manipulated one's sense of time.
I agreed to be the test subject. How could I say no when Yuusuke asked? So they caught him and I let myself get hit by one of the attacks. I remember falling asleep for a moment, and when I woke up I felt no ill effects. Yuusuke was so grateful-he kissed me. And I didn't even think to ask about Keiko or why because I didn't need to. We loved each other and I was blinded to all else.
For some reason, I'm not sure why, the others were listless during this time. I supposed they were angry at me and, I suppose, I understood that. Keiko and Yuusuke were supposed to be together. That was the script, the fairy tale ending, the right thing. Whether they avoided us or we avoided them, I'm unsure. All I know is, soon Yuusuke and I had taken up residence in the Makai. We led a rather reclusive life together and, occasionally, Yuusuke would get antsy. I think that was the only thing we ever fought about, but hey, no relationship is perfect.
We calmed down together, though. I didn't need the chaos that came with thievery or the love that came from family because I had him. Besides, all of our human family and friends were long dead by this point. We had been together for at least a thousand years. I'm not entirely sure on the number – when you're a demon with a life that spans not just centuries, but millennia, you lose track of time. Yuusuke and I aged at about the same rate and for that I was thankful. We grew old together.
Every day was the same routine, but it never grew boring or tiresome. I would rise first, awoken by Yuusuke's snores. I would make breakfast and he would wake to its smell. After eating, we would spar until lunch, when I would hunt small game. After lunch, I would go off to my study and read or research or tend garden until dinner. Yuusuke used this time to travel a bit in the Makai and catch up with friends who lived in a nearby town, but whom I never saw. He would bring dinner home with him and I would eat. An after-dinner romp through the bedsheets followed and then we would fall asleep, entwined in each other's arms until morning. And the pattern repeated.
I had noticed the first signs of aging on him – his hair was turning white. And then I noticed I was getting wrinkles. But I honestly didn't care. Vanity held little satisfaction for me now that I had him. And so we spent our twilight years together, holding and speaking to each other in soft voices. And we were satisfied. Neither of us needed any more. And we both basked in the realness of it all. When you have spent so much time with a person that you can't even count days or years or millennia anymore, you have found eternal bliss. We had found a life that fit us and we were at peace.
And then I woke up.
"Kurama, man," Kuwabara's voice came rasping from the dead. Hadn't he died long ago? "We thought you were a goner. Yukina's healing that nasty wound on your head."
Yukina? I did feel her healing presence just as I saw Kuwabara's orange mop top in my face. But how?
I looked down and noticed long diminished red locks falling over my shoulders. Hadn't my human body died thousands of years ago?
The biggest shock, though, came when he walked in. "Kurama! You've been asleep for, like, eighteen hours. That demon did a job on you! But don't worry, I killed him. Dude . . . why are you looking at me like that?"
I watched as my lover, who had miraculously aged backwards into his teenage human body, looked at me with a disapproving, worried look.
Finally I managed, "Asleep . . .?"
"Yeah," Kuwabara responded. "For eighteen hours. We were worried there for a while. We weren't sure you were going to wake up."
"I've been asleep for eighteen hours . . . and . . . just eighteen hours ago I was fighting . . ." I struggled to remember the demon's name, the new one that Yuusuke and Koenma had been so worried about millennia ago, but I couldn't find the name.
"Chronos. Yeah. You fought Chronos about eighteen hours ago and ever since you took a hit from him, you've been asleep, man."
Yuusuke's words floated over me.
So it was all . . . just a dream?
Yuusuke's POV
I walked into the room after hearing Kuwabara's raspy voice proclaim Kurama awake. I entered the room and watched fox-boy look up at Kuwabara as if he had risen from the dead. "Kurama!" I made myself known. I was happy he was alright. "You've been asleep for, like, eighteen hours. That demon did a job on you! But don't worry, I killed him." I stopped. Kurama was looking at me like I was the only person in the world. The look he gave me was too intimate for a friend to give another friend. "Dude . . . why are you looking at me like that?"
Kurama's eyes widened and he looked a bit hurt, which was weird since, well, fox-boy just doesn't have emotions. I think I once heard Yomi say that Kurama was a master of thinking logically, coldly, and without emotion. I always thought that made him sound like a robot, but this display, while subtle, was a big difference from what I usually saw from him. But then again, I had been gone for two years, training in the Makai. Maybe he had gotten more emotional in the time we had been apart.
Kurama surprised me when he spoke. "Asleep . . .?" He seemed desperate to scream; like a murder victim who wanted to shake a ferry girl and proclaim, "I'm alive! This death is just a lie!" I have never, in all the years I've known Kurama, seen him look so desperate.
"Yeah," Kuwabara responded. "For eighteen hours. We were worried there for a while. We weren't sure you were going to wake up." I nodded along to Kuwabara's words. Chronos's attack had seemingly just put his victims to sleep, but often they didn't wake up. Near the end of his nap, Kurama's heart had slowed and his breathing had gone shallow. We had feared his death until, finally, he had awoken.
"I've been asleep for eighteen hours . . . and . . . just eighteen hours ago I was fighting . . ." Kurama's face pulled into a look of frustration, fear, and concentration.
"Chronos, yeah," I supplied. I wanted the fear to go away. Kurama was beginning to frighten me. "You fought Chronos about eighteen hours ago and ever since you took a hit from him, you've been asleep, man."
Kurama looked at me as if his whole world had just crumbled. He wanted to cry; even Kuwabara noticed. Yukina withdrew a little bit, giving the older demon his space. Whatever Chronos's attack had done, it had shaken Kurama up.
I watched as Kurama tried to regain control of his emotion. "Hiei showed up a couple hours ago when border patrol finished. I think he wanted to see if we had handled the Chronos situation, but I don't think he'd ever admit that. He's at your house now. Do you want to go home, Kurama?"
Kurama's look of pain returned at the word "home." Why was that such a painful concept for him? Slowly I walked over and put an arm on his shoulder. "What's wrong? Kurama, what happened?"
Kurama stiffened the second I touched him, but he made no move to pull away. "Nothing, Yuusuke. I am fine." The lie wasn't very convincing, and we all knew it, but I didn't call him on it and neither did anyone else. "Yes, I do believe I'll go home now, Yuusuke."
And with that, Kurama got up and left.
Hiei's POV
In all the years I've known the fox, he has never displayed emotion. So, imagine my surprise when he entered his room, drenched from the downpour outside and crying. I suppose, to the untrained eye, his tears would have blended in with the rain, but I knew. I had never seen Kurama in pain until this moment.
He ignored me completely, something he never did. The redhead fell into bed, soaking his blankets, and sobbed into his pillow. I frowned. "Shut up, I'm trying to sleep." I would never tell him I was worried or ask what was wrong, and he knew that. This was as close to a reaction as he'd ever get from me.
Kurama froze for a moment, as if noticing I was there for the first time since entering. He shook his head and left the room. He was gone for an hour before he came back. He was freshly showered and dry, dressed in pajama pants just as he was every night. His face was a passive neutral.
"So you've regained control over yourself?"
He didn't answer again, but sat on the drying bed and pushed a bowl of rice over to me. He ate nothing and I made no comment on the matter.
After I finished my rice, he took my bowl to the kitchen and returned. He turned off the light and went to bed, just as he always did. And I watched.
He stayed awake all night. That was unlike him. At first I thought it merely insomnia, or that he was too tired to sleep, as sometimes happens to fighters with too much adrenaline and not enough energy. But as the hours passed, I came to find a different reason in his less-than-passive face. Every time he started to drift off, he would jerk awake with a look of fear or dread on his face. I pretended to be asleep as I watched, but he knew I was faking.
Finally, he spoke his first words of the night to me. "Is this real?"
"Don't be stupid, fox," I snorted out in disgust. "Do you honestly think that, in your dreams, I would be this mean and demanding?"
For some reason, that seemed to soothe him and, just for a few minutes at a time, he allowed himself to drift off into a shallow, dreamless sleep.
Kurama's POV
I suppose it would be a lie to say it just got easier, as if I became numb to the feelings of hopelessness I felt whenever I saw Yuusuke or Keiko together, or to say that every time I saw one of my human friends I was not overwhelmed with the feeling that they should not be alive. Even my mother could not make me forget the dream I had, or cure me of its effects.
Hiei's words that first night had helped, though. With the exception of Yuusuke, nobody I knew had been in my dream. I had avoided seeing them, or just secluded myself. Maybe my subconscious had not been capable of reproducing them, or maybe I had known deep down that it had been a silly dream, but knowing that I could reach out and touch Hiei or tease Kuwabara or compliment Yukina kept me grounded. I knew I was not still asleep. I did not have to deal in the realness of the reality surrounding me. With the presence of others, I felt sure that I had not created another dreamscape.
I did not tell Yuusuke or Koenma or anyone else what had happened. Chronos was dead, so it didn't matter if they knew the truth. I tried my best to go back to the way I had been before. I tried to tell myself that none of it was real, that it had only been eighteen hours and not thousands of years. But I could feel myself slip.
Every time I saw Yuusuke, I felt a pang on unfathomable loneliness and sadness. It was if my very soul was being repeatedly torn from its pathetic shell and was being crushed by a thousand pounds of force created by the very gaze of Yuusuke's chocolate eyes. I would catch myself staring at him. Or Yuusuke would catch me. Or Hiei. Hiei had been following me around since the accident, as if he knew the truth.
He could very well have figured it out. I was loosing my passive, calculating face. I couldn't remove myself emotionally from situations anymore. It was all too overwhelming. Some of my slips were overt – Yuusuke and Kuwabara, dense as they were, would catch them. Most of my slips, though, were subtle. But I knew Hiei always caught them. And in turn, I caught his worried gaze more than once.
It was worst when I saw Keiko. Mostly, I was jealous. My animalistic instinct told me to remove her as a threat and assert my rightful claim over Yuusuke. Less so, though, and probably more powerfully, I was ashamed. I wanted what she had. In my dreams, I had removed her so completely from the picture without question. I felt like I had committed some great injustice against her, and that I should apologize. After all, she had been there first.
But hadn't I been there longer?
No, I hadn't.
The more intense the feelings of loneliness, rejection, and depression became, the more I wished to leave. But what would I say? "Sorry, Yuusuke. I'm in love with you and secretly want Keiko dead?" No. I wouldn't tell anyone what had happened. It was too . . . weak. I mean, I had no previous feelings for Yuusuke. Before my dream, he had only been a friend to me. And now, after nothing had changed, I wanted to throw myself at him. I couldn't just go back to being the friend that I was to the boy.
But everything had changed. And in a way, I felt justified in wanting to leave.
The lies came easily. I mean, think about it. Yuusuke had Keiko. Keiko, Shizuru, and Botan were best friends – almost like sisters. Yuusuke also had Kuwabara, and Kuwabara dated Yukina, who connected Hiei to the whole mess. And Hiei and Yuusuke had become more and more like brothers since the first time they had fought. The entire group was interconnected, except for me. Sure, I could argue that I was Hiei's friend and that brought me in. But I wasn't Hiei's friend, not really. Nor was I Yuusuke's . . . at least not in the way they were to each other. I was the odd man out, or at least that was what I convinced myself. And so, I left. Because, really, I couldn't live knowing that my entire life had been a lie.
