A/N: Yay! It's the Prologue! This is my first ever non-x-men fic. Yup, no gambit here… I don't know if I should be happy or sad…. Anyway, I just want everyone reading this to know that I'm trying my best on this one. There will (hopefully) be updates. Points and a digital cookie to anyone who can tell me what exactly Hiei's got .

Without further ado…

And Life Goes On: Sleeping

By Ima Super Mute Ant

Hiei was thirsty. Very thirsty. Thirsty and tired and he had to pee. In fact, Hiei had never in his life felt the intense discomfort that he found while slowly dying of dehydration and at the same time feeling like his entire body was about to explode from the amount of liquid within it.

He sat in the middle of Kurama's kitchen, on the floor, at 4:00 in the morning, and chugged the last bottle of milk from the fridge. He threw it across the room and shot out to the tree by Kurama's window to relieve his bladder, barely hearing the clunk of the milk jug hitting the other empty containers that lay scattered about the floor.

Hiei glared at the wall as he tried to clear the fog that distorted his vision. Every now and then he let out a quiet but sincere "fuck!" every few minutes. Hiei had no wish to wake the fox, and had barely enough energy to stand, yet still felt the urgent need to kill something with his bare hands.

At 5:00 Hiei got around to throwing out the milk jugs and juice containers he had taken from Kurama's house and walked out to his tree. However, as he looked up at the towering branches, Hiei realized that a change in sleeping arrangements would be welcome. He settled down at the foot of the tree and welcomed the sleep that engulfed him almost instantly.

He awoke later only to be violently sick in the grass. He blinked at the sun for almost ten minutes before realizing that it was past noon. Kurama's window was closed and the lights in the house were off, meaning the family was away for the rest of the day.

>Hiei easily picked the lock on the back door and slid into the sanctity of the Fox's kitchen. Without opening his eyes anymore that he had to (at all), Hiei jumped up onto the counter and stretched to reach the freezer and his beloved sweet snow.

He settled down with his back to the wall and commenced to eat the chocolate sweet snow with his hands, pausing only to periodically run (stumble slowly) to the woods outside for a pee break. The world contracted into the taste of the ice cream in his mouth and the nausea and fatigue he did his best to ignore.

Hiei found his vision blurring even more halfway through the pint, yet continued to eat. After all, it was probably some Makai flu or virus. It would pass with time, Hiei told himself. In fact he was having a hard time being miserable with his strange illness simply because of how tired he was. The sweet snow didn't sit right, and all Hiei wanted to do was sleep, but he wouldn't be caught dead on Kurama's kitchen floor.

With a great deal of effort Hiei took his pint of sweet snow and stumbled into the trees outside Kurama's house. He found a good place beneath a bush to collapse, and did so, still clutching the melting ice cream to his chest as he fell asleep yet again.

…In his sleep he dreamed. It was not the living dream he had experienced while gorging on ice cream in Kurama's house. There was no gray at the edge of his vision, no persisting thirst that drove him mad.

He felt angry, annoyed, afraid, and a hint of nausea fell into his sleeping mind. He could feel his ki fluttering, and the Jagan rolled back into his head and fell asleep itself. The dragon on his arm slept, in his dream, the Jagan slept, the Makai slept.

In his dream Hiei could see Kurama floating by on a bed of rose petals, and Kuwabara, fast asleep, in a pool of burning ice. Then, all of a sudden, all he saw was color, and all he felt was anger… The water came crashing down on his head and…

Hiei awoke in the pouring rain without the energy to stand. He lay there, under the bush. For quite some time he lay there as his eyes blinked languidly without seeing much at all. The rain poured down, and Hiei felt cold. But most of all he felt thirsty, and hungry, and tired, and pissed off. For the third and final time, Hiei's eyes closed, but this time he was not asleep.

Ps. This has not been beta-read. Sorry for all problems. Please tell me if there's a major one.

-ISMA