Elflord: Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah, I know it, I don't own YYH. Must you remind me time and time again that I do not own Hiei or Kurama, the two hottest bishies of the show? MUST YOU???? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy??? *sob and crying* Wahhhh!

A/N: In this fic, as in all my fics, I do not take plot as orthodox. I leave the parts of the plot that I believe support the fic, but I am not afraid to rewrite parts of the plot for my own purposes. Please don't flame for plot reasons.

Watching . . .

Remember me? I really doubt it, y'know. Circumstances what they are, you might wanna forget me altogether. Or should I say, forget us . . .

But that's another story, I suppose.

That's what life really is, isn't it? There is no "true" reality. Life is our illusion. We write the story the way we wish it could be, and then find that our manuscript was rejected. Find that the book is full of everything we feared and more . . . our own reflection.

And here's the scary part . . . in that book, we find our old passages. They're exactly how you wrote it. But we weren't careful enough.

We make our home our gallows . . .

But I am being impudent and improper. I shall introduce myself.

I am the obscurity in the shadow of the beast. I am the parrot which cannot speak. I am the lesser yin, immersed, and yin none the less. I am the dark mirror. I am the reflection of you; the side you that is your worst nightmare.

I am the one you wouldn't speak of.

But mute words cannot kill the passions of my soul. For long, my words have remained intact within me, apart of the reality, my own personal novella of the outbreaks of life. And in a sense, they are thus still.

Doguro . . . that name of my generations. My brother . . . he has claimed it, made it our own, the two of us to share, for, in a sense, we are truly one. Doguro . . . It is my phantom for all time, and yet, my fortress. Like a coat of rain and false courages, it wraps around my soul, entrapping and enshrining at the same purpose. The blood of my forefathers flow in these veins, and at the same time, it is young blood. Young blood with young fortunes.

For a new time is coming, my friend. True, long ago, the Doguro era died. Long has it been that our names are forgotten. But perhaps that time is dying now.

For there is not time for but the heirs of greatness . . .

Shame to see what that passes for, when I look in the mirror each day.

Admittedly, I am not of those medieval painted Doguros; those Lords and Ladies of days of old that ruled the spirits with iron fists, the only humans feared by men and demon alike. My brother . . . he surely fits the bill. His stature and cut of character alone make him of their aristocracy. But me, I am the shadow of the Doguros; the face staring back from stilled waters in the smallest hours of the night, a grim reminder of what greeds and hungers sacrifice. Tough and leaden-face, wiry and wolfish, wild eyes without voice, great mangles of hair . . . An unclean thing, a scrounge or a pet, as you like it. In the parody of some alien monkey, he carries me around on his immense shoulders like a show, a curiosity that followed him home one day.

Degradation. It taints my heart and yet I've learned to thrive it. Better to be a pet than a rouge.

He chose to write his philosophies in stone. I wrote mine on the dark.

No one shall ever forget him. I am just a wilting illusion.

He is the definitive Duguro. I am the shadow.

He is the inferno causing chaos on the earth. I am the silence that follows.

And in the end, one is not without the other. Together, the two of us make the ultimate Doguro. Yin and Yang, two make one, fighting allies in this tangled, crazy chaos of the universe . . .

How do I know all this? Brothers tend to be pretty close.

Sometimes I wonder if my words are better left muted.

Some eyes are better left just watching.

THE END