Title: Damaged
Author: Yoko_cw Date
Written: 8/29/09
Characters: Hiei and Kurama
Series: Yu Yu Hakusho
Note: All Standard Disclaimers Apply.
Length: 509 Words
POV: Hiei
Summary: Hiei Observes An Ailment Known As Depression.
Damaged; a word so easily understood, although the meaning is very rarely conveyed so deeply. To many, it's used only in terms of property; cars, homes, windows broken by the mistake of giving children bats and baseballs. Very rarely is the term used to describe a person, their pain, their lives. Why, I'm uncertain; is it so rare? Do so few people look at their lovers as I do, see masks and so obviously false smiles? How, I wonder, can humans be so naieve?
Nights are never easy for us, for him. The sunlight's absense, or perhaps the moon's presense, does something. It changes the way he expresses emotion. It makes his eyes darker, his teeth dig into his bottom lip until it's swollen. I don't ignore it, but, as an unspoken rule between us, I never mention it. I don't touch or speak until he puts the masks back on. Until he puts the bottle of whatever he had been drinking back into the pantry, or until he'd come out of the bedroom red-eyed, but otherwise completely normal. Until we were ready to lie to ourselves again.
He's been avoiding his mother, I noted as I listened to her voice on the machine. Letting him know that she would appreciate him coming to dinner on sunday for a stirfry. To say hello to me. To, somehow, ask if he was still alive. I looked up at the calender to note that it was November; he hadn't left the house in almost a month.
With my breath captive in my chest, I stared at the solid oak door, the handle that wasn't locked but somehow forbidden to me. I knew he was lying in the bed, sanguine hair spread upon the pillow, body morbidly limp. One would have to moniter breathing to know he was alive. I pinched the bridge of my nose to quell the headache. I didn't so much hate him for it, but resentment was there; I didn't understand. Why was he so fixated on a past that couldn't be changed? I wondered why he thought of those he'd murdered as a demon. Why did he miss Kuronue after all these years, why dwell in the time where he essentially killed Shiori's child to survive? ...Why look at himself as the demon he used to be?
I poured tea, trying to be soothed by the fresh scent, the oak incense that filled the den. I looked at the blackened television, wishing all of life's problems could be solved within thirty minutes. Why are humans so complicated?
One door opens, another shuts. A moment of quiet, toilet draining, sink running. Another door.
Silence.
I sip tea, look out the window and, albeit with regret, wonder what my life could be like if I hadn't stayed in human world with him.
The routine of the damaged.