Ambush
Author's Notes: Written for the LJ Community, 31 Days, for the May 9th theme, "Watch your chance and hit him with a brick." Set vaguely somewhere after the end of the series. Drabble dedicated to Hieiko-san, who requested for it.
There were two guards outside the castle: one, watchful, eyes (all twenty three of them) trained on the possible angles of attack; the other, more careless, head nodding as it drifted in and out of sleep.
A shadow flitted before the two guards, and with a single sword stroke disposed of the former, attacking from its only blind spot: underneath. Blood spattered, remains splayed onto the brown earth; but the other guard still did not move.
Hiei stopped his attack, and he waited, invisible in the shadows. He stared at the other guard, who still had not moved, except for an occasional pricking of its ears.
The guard remained still, and the night remained undisturbed, or so it seemed. As the moonlight shone on, it glinted off a blade that hovered above Hiei's head; but his gaze was riveted on the other guard. With its eyes still closed, the guard's legs moved slightly, and tripped a mechanism under its feet.
The blade descended. It sliced through the air, and through flesh.
"Hn."
The other guard gasped, grasping its own sword, now pierced through its chest. It pulled fiercely at it, but the blade only sliced through its own hands, and soon, the ground on which it stood was bathed in crimson. Hiei stood before it, plunging the sword deeper into the guard, and in his other hand, held the other weapons that the guard had placed in its traps.
"You still have some minutes to live," he said, "So start talking." His Jagan glowed in the moonlight, shining through the white cloth that he used to cover it.
"About…what?" The guard coughed up its own blood as it spoke, which it wiped away with one hand.
"Where is she?" Hiei twisted the sword slightly, making the guard gasp once more.
"Find her for yourself." The other guard smiled. "If you still recognize her remains." He laughed, spitting blood toward his face; those were its last words.
"Hn," was the only thing Hiei said in response, and he jumped to a broken window of the castle without another backward glance.
The hallways were dark; torches lined the walls, but they were unlit, and covered in a thick layer of dust. The whole castle seemed in a massive state of disrepair, as well: several areas of the ceiling had already crumbled, mixing with several shards of broken glass and ceramic on the floor. He treaded on them lightly, jumping from one spot to another, only visible to the guards as a shadow, a mere blur of a deeper darkness.
The whole castle screamed of ruin and despair, just as this kidnapping their owners had done. In his mind he cursed her for allowing herself to be caught by these incompetents, and soon he began to curse his own lapse into carelessness, over the years of near-stability of the three worlds. Peace was merely a distraction, they knew—or they should have.
He should never have allowed this to happen, not to her.
He finally came upon a direct underling of the owners of the castle, who, as Hiei held in his hands the creature's severed arm, threatening to sever the other, told him all he needed to know. Satisfied, he threw the creature out through the window beside him.
He rushed through the hallways, the stairways and the tunnels, slaying everyone that stood in his way, until he came to the chamber where they kept her.
He opened the door, and the unmistakable stench of death stopped him in his tracks. His grip on the door tightened, and with a muttered curse—Mukuro, you fool—he stepped inside.
Inside was a mess of blood and remains, but he did not look at any of them. He stared at the empty chair at the middle of the room, the ropes that had once held fast a captive now hanging limply at the chair's side.
"Certainly took you a long time to get here."
She was standing by the window, her single blue eye fixed on the sky outside, the ravaged part of her face turned away from him. Blood was trickling out of a single gash through her right arm.
He put down his sword, and sat down on the ground.
"Hn," he said, "You could have gotten out of here yourself."
"And go through all the trouble of killing those guards outside?" She turned away from the window, and walked towards him.
"This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been so careless," he said.
"You were the one who was careless, actually," she returned.
"I'm not your bodyguard."
"Then what are you?"
He did not answer.
"These creatures were merely desperate," she said, filling in the silence. She gestured towards the bodies of her captors. "Kidnapping me was a last resort for a final, pathetic plan. Ransom, maybe. I allowed myself to be captured, to be sure that they had no other motive. In any case, they couldn't really have done anything to disturb the peace of the three worlds, because I am not as powerful as I used to be."
"We're wasting time by talking." He stood up, and got his sword from the floor.
"Saving me was not essential, Hiei," Mukuro went on.
"So?" he said.
He stepped out through the door, and said, from the other side of it, "There are still some more guards here. We have to leave, for we have your own wounds to attend to."
"Why, thank you, Hiei," Mukuro smirked, "You certainly sound worried."
"Hn."
She followed him out the door, and they did not speak as they made their way out of the school, easily breaking free of the guards that came to stop them.
It was only when they were out of the castle, and the evening stillness had returned to them, when he finally spoke.
"You're welcome," he said, and he looked away as he said it. She only smiled, and the rest of the evening passed in companionable silence.