Opposition: Yang
Characters: Hiei, Yukina
Pairings: None
Continuity: English Anime
Summary: Hiei's thoughts on his sister. "I'm fire. You're ice." [Companion to Opposition: Yin]
Author's note: Short (pentadrabble), but hopefully enjoyable. This was written in response to The Countess of Monte Cristo's request for Hiei's Story…though it turned out to be a little different from my other Stories, so I made it part of a pair.
Set more or less during Hiei's dark time in the Three Kings arc.
I'm fire. You're ice.
We are, and always have been, opposites.
Ice and fire, warm and cold, female and male, gentle and harsh, kind and cruel, good and evil, wanted and rejected, hope and despair…yin and yang.
Is there any way our basic natures aren't in conflict?
Though my power is fire—burning, destructive, furious fire—I didn't get the hot temper to match. No, I got the coldness of spirit that our mother's people showed me.
You, though…your heart is as warm as your ice is cold.
How did that happen? How did you manage to escape the ways of the ice maidens, though you yourself are one? How did you manage to leave? Why? They accepted you. They didn't cast you out the filth that I was.
I'll never ask you, but I always wondered.
Why?
Why did you want to look for me?
I'm the Forbidden Child. I'm the opposite of everything the ice maidens stand for. Why would you reject all of that, choosing a brother you couldn't remember, a brother who was almost certainly dead, over the life you could have had there?
I can't let you do that again. I can't give you back the life you threw away, but you have a new chance here. I never thought I'd say this, even in the privacy of my own mind, but I think life among these humans would be good for you. I think you can be happy here.
That's all I can hope for.
I can't risk that, can't risk letting you know that your only brother is a convicted criminal and a killer.
That's all I am, really. A ruthless killer, whose one source of satisfaction in life is taking those of others.
Why did I have to be like this? Why do I have to be so heartless, so violent and destructive?
I know, of course.
It's for you.
We're opposites. Whatever I got, you got the reverse.
I am heartless, so that you can have a heart. I destroy, in order that you may build up. I hurt, so you can heal.
If I were by nature kind or compassionate, then you would be cruel and pitiless.
And I would rather die than see that.
I might like becoming more like you. Who can tell?
But I cannot risk having you become more like me.
So I can never tell you who I am.
Such opposites should never be brought into contact.
Yin and yang chase each other in eternal circles, but they never truly meet. If they did, they would become nothing more than a muddy grey, dull and lifeless. Only by staying separate, staying distinct, staying opposite, can they stay themselves.
So I will stay away, circling you from afar, and take comfort in the fact that yin and yang each carry a little of the other inside them.
No matter where I go, you'll always be in my heart…and I in yours.
