Fully Exposed
By: Kowareta
This is a Mukuro-centric drabble based on that scene where she strips off her clothes in front of a mostly unconscious Hiei. Gosh wow, Kowareta, that sounds dirty—oh, wait, this is genfic isn't it?
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.
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Someday, even the stars will die and the world will become a tomb of ice. It would be an ice so cold that nothing could survive, not even the warmth of hope.
But these days are not yet those days.
The fabric slid down her skin, collapsing gently. Cold air, full of space and nothingness reached its way around her, drawing itself closer. It says: Pull the fabric back, drag it back in place, and do not expose your flesh. To reveal your flesh is to show your weakness. It opens your heart to pain. The fabric is your armor.
The darkness is equally pressing. It snakes down her body trying to contain the woman in its shadowy world. It tries to keep her from clawing out of its grip and into the new world full of color.
The darkness is convincing and says: It protects the weakness, keeps it from becoming known. If the secret—the weakness, the shame—sheds the dark world, there will be nothing left to lie safely in.
The fabric falls to the floor. The woman steps forth and the darkness pulls back. The flesh is fully exposed: gray, ugly, and marred. The raggedy orange hair colors the world and the blue eyes peer through everything.
The darkness shudders; a naked, ugly truth before it. The cold air urges: Do not recede the shadows; do not bare the flesh. The fabric, your armor, still lies behind you. Do not show the weakness.
The woman doesn't listen.
"As I promised," she tells the dark one before her, the one whose soul she held as he lay dying. "Here I stand, with nothing hidden."
The darkness reels and the cold air shivers, both madly pleading with the woman to take up the fabric.
But Mukuro did not.
There was never a weakness and there was no shame in baring her soul.
One day the stars would die and the world would become a crypt of ice. One day the ice would freeze even the warmth of hope. One day even these days could become those days.
But not today. The world grows only as cold as its people, and the stars as dark as their souls. Perhaps the ice will entomb the world and the warmth of hope, but it will only be as thick as shame.
Skin—gray, ugly, marred—and nothing more. There is no secret. Being a woman—hair that colors the world and eyes that peer through everything—is not a weakness.
Shame doesn't come with the baring of the soul, nor does it come from the events of the past. It comes from denying who you are.
Mukuro looked up at Hiei, fully exposed.
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