Dreams were one thing. It was possible to wake from a dream, after all. But, what could be done when dreams invaded reality? When all around was a confusion of sensations, impressions, things that just shouldn't be there? That was really the question, wasn't it?
Since that day, the day they'd met again, purely by chance, nothing had been as it should. Neither was supposed to be alive anymore. Both were dead, or so the other thought. That they knew themselves to be alive was unquestioned. The other was dead. No way he could have survived.
Or so they both told themselves. It was a comfort to believe your enemy dead, after all. More of a comfort to believe an old lover dead when you've moved on. Especially after trying, for years upon decades, to find them.
Why now? Why, when everything was going so well for both of them, did they have to run across each other? It's not like they had to be at the shrine on the same day. Hell, only one was bound to even show up at that shrine. Why did the other? What strange pull, what bizarre nostalgia, drew him?
Kurama was ready to believe that Inari had a grudge against him when he caught sight of the too familiar form. He had been dead, that damn flying rat. Dead, he knew that. He'd dealt with the guilt, laid it to rest finally, only to have it rear its ugly head once more. There was no way in all the hells he knew and those he could only imagine, that Kuronue was here again. Maybe Inari was angry with him for working for Koenma and Enma. Not that he had given himself much of a choice in the matter.
It'd taken Kuronue longer to recognize Kurama. The tall, silver fox demon now confined to a human body. What really drew his attention was the way the redheaded human boy stared at him. To most humans, all but those with particularly strong spiritual gifts, his wings, his ears, those marks that would identify him as 'not human,' were invisible. It wasn't much of a trick. Humans wouldn't see what they didn't want to see, after all. Just simply amplifying that natural tendency was something even the weakest youkai could do. He strode over to the redhead, his eyes narrowing as he recognized the youki contained within the body. "Kisama," he hissed. "What are you doing here, you bastard?"
'Such a greeting for a long lost lover,' Kurama thought, bridling. "Paying my respects," he answered, keeping his voice calm. "I am Inari's, after all. What are you doing here?" he asked, slightly more polite than Kuronue's demand, but not by much.
"Paying respects for a fallen comrade," Kuronue mocked and then smeared the last word as if it were something foul he didn't want to touch.
Inwardly, Kurama winced. Some part of him had held out hope, the belief that there was something in his life that was as it had seemed. He bowed his head slightly. "I am sorry to disappoint you," he said evenly. "I am not fallen, only displaced."
"Wearing a human shell," Kuronue shot back.
"And, what of you?" Kurama demanded hotly, done playing the penitent one. Yakumo's demon had seen that he dealt with that particular grief and guilt. "You told me to go on; you were caught, dying, for that damn pendant!" As he said the word, his eyes sought the gem had once hung from Kuronue's neck. "You never came back, Kuronue!"
Kuronue's hand came up and Kurama almost wanted for it to fly at him, to give him an excuse, to give him pain, something. Instead, it went down slowly, curled into a fist tightly at Kuronue's side, matching the other. "When I could, I tried to find you, only to find that you'd been killed," the word again was foul, "by a bounty hunter." His fists came up to waist height as he loomed over Kurama. "I created a fucking memorial for you!"
"And if you'd returned to the den, you would have seen yours," Kurama hissed, trying to keep his voice down. They were attracting attention.
Kuronue laughed, an unpleasant sound, as full of hate and anger as it once had been of joy and mischief. "I know how you played Yomi, and still I believed that, with me, it would be different. What an idiot you proved me to be."
"Kuronue," Kurama growled. He took a step back. "We'll talk about this in a more private location," he said flatly, turning his back to his former friend and walking into the forest that surrounded the shrine. He could feel the eyes on him; both Kuronue's and of the people close enough to catch part of their conversation. He wasn't sure if he was pissed or relieved when Kuronue didn't follow him. He felt the demon, his former partner, leave in the opposite direction. Wasn't twice in one lifetime enough to live through the death of his partner? 'Inari, but I don't need a third time,' he thought, sagging against a tree.
The days that followed were filled with ghosts, memories, blue eyes, black hair and wings, voices from the past. Sleep brought no relief, the visions, the sounds stronger than in the day. Daylight's only gift was the general babble of noise and distraction. In quiet moments, Kurama's mind would return to the shrine, to the past. Desire to return to the shrine, to see if Kuronue had returned, warred with the desire to return to the Makai, to see if his den was still there, to see if the memorial he'd constructed still stood. Neither was practical, though. Neither presented a solution to the complications that twisted his life on itself after a chance encounter of less than five minutes.
A week of sleepless night and anxious days had the redhead calling on reserves he didn't know existed to keep himself going, to keep the face he'd developed for himself in this world in place. He kept expecting to see Kuronue's figure just around the corner, just out of reach, out of sight, if only he could move a little faster, see a little farther. He was for the first time grateful for the reprieve from the tantei. He had kept in touch with his friends, even Hiei, but that contact was loose at best. He would not have wanted to explain. This ghost should have been laid to rest after the Meikai incident.
Two weeks and even casual acquaintances, for he had none closer at present, noticed his distraction. He laughed off their concern, saying it was nothing, just the season getting to him.
All lies. The guilt he'd thought he'd put down rose from the graveyard in his mind, dragging with it every memory, every repressed emotion, every vestige of guilt over Kuronue, every wrung out 'what if' he'd ever thought, stretching back even to Yomi and the wild antics of his youth.
Kurama took a day off from work and returned to the shrine. After paying his respects, he moved deeper into the forest, away from the press of people; away from the noise. There, he cleared a small space so that he could touch the ground under the fall of leaves and decomposing plant life. He didn't expect it to work, but he sent a call for Kuronue into the earth, willing him to come, to talk. He tempered it to a request, a plea for the other's presence, rather than the demand he wanted to make it. He then settled in to wait. Whether Kuronue would even be aware of the request or not, he wasn't sure. It was what amounted to a desperate measure. He needed to talk to the flying demon again.
In a fit of pique, the skies, which had been threatening for some time, loosed their accumulated store of water on the mountain. Kurama moved a few of the branches and grew a couple of smaller plants, but he hadn't come prepared to wait in the pouring rain. He was miserable, drenched, cursing his fate, curled in a ball at the foot of a large pine tree when he heard a derisive laugh behind him. He turned, pushing his hair out of his face then letting his fingers slide back for his rose seed at the nape of his neck.
"What are you doing Kurama?" Kuronue's voice floated through the dark, amusement and smugness laced through it.
"Waiting for you," Kurama replied, his hand easing down to his side, seed between his fingers.
Kuronue moved slightly down hill. Kurama could see the umbrella he carried, a modern, human style that would collapse to fit into a bag or very large pocket. "I had business to take care of. There are places that are rather inaccessible."
Kurama raised an eyebrow. "You went?" he asked, his voice laced with the surprise he couldn't suppress.
"I went," Kuronue said, still moving. "A memorial," he said flatly. "One that has been neglected since you came here."
"I was unable to return," Kurama said defensively. "Even when I had the chance to get to the Makai, I didn't have the chance to return, to honor you. I never forgot, Kuronue."
Kuronue looked off to the side, away from Kurama. "You were only caught because you wanted to be," his voice was flat, but the accusation, the anger that burned the air between them didn't need his voice to project it.
Kurama winced at the assault. "It was the most expedient course of action."
"LIAR!" Kuronue shot, his eyes burning as they turned to Kurama. "You liar," he growled. "You wanted either the tantei or the halfling," he spat. "Otherwise, it would not have suited you to be caught." He stalked forward. "I heard of the Ankokubujutsukai, as well, how that demon threatened your 'mother' and you allowed him to beat you." Each noun was a blistering accusation. "You're weak, Kurama. Weak and pathetic." Kuronue laughed bitterly. "You always have been plagued by guilt. Who would have known it would have led you to this pathetic existence?"
Kurama's hand shook with the control it was taking to not shove his energy into the seed, to cause his whip to burst forth and lash out, to stop the painful words. "And you, why didn't you find me again, Kuronue? Why did you let me think you dead?" he demanded, his own anger starting to overcome his guilt.
"You're weak," Kuronue growled. "You have become weak, Kurama." He laughed bitterly. "To think, I once respected you. Once desired you."
Kurama was silent a moment. "I have become weak," he said softly. It was a dangerous, deceptive calm. "To allow you, such as you are, to disturb me thusly." He laughed, shaking his head. "Why have I bothered?" he asked, partially to himself, partially to Kuronue. "Why, Kuronue, did I bother to mourn you? Why did I bother to remember you?" He laughed. "I really have become weak." The whip burst forth from its seed, coiling around his feet. "So foolish," he said, the laughter leaving his voice, replaced with icy danger.
Kuronue didn't flinch. He glared at Kurama. "Very foolish," he bit out. His hand started toward his back.
"Don't," Kurama ordered. "If you continue, I will give myself reason to mourn your loss again," he said coldly.
Kuronue paused. He then laughed, letting his hand relax at his side. "If I'd come here to kill you or be killed by you, that would have been done already."
Another laugh, this one cold. "You couldn't do it."
"Could you?" Kuronue asked. "Could you really kill me?"
There was only a second's pause, but it was telling. Almost as telling as the answer that followed. Very softly, Kurama said, "Yes."
Kuronue's face revealed surprise. "You really do mean that."
"Yes, I do," Kurama replied, still softly.
"This is the end, then?" Kuronue asked.
"Well past, Kuronue. You lived and you did not let me know. You could have found me. You knew where I was. And you didn't." The pain behind the words didn't leak into his voice. The only tell was the slight tremor in his hands, amplified by the whip at his side.
Kuronue put his hand on his hip, the other still holding up the umbrella. The still-falling rain kept the tremor from his notice. "Would you have had a failure back, Kurama? I know what you did to Yomi."
"Yomi openly defied me, Kuronue. You didn't. You saved my life."
"After I endangered it for this," he spat out, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing his pendant. "I still haven't repaired the chain," he said bitterly.
Kurama laughed, short and brittle. "And why not?"
"I thought you dead," Kuronue replied as he shoved the pendant back in his pocket. "Stupid sentimentality."
Kurama merely snorted. 'Stupid sentimentality' had almost killed him. "What do you really want, Kuronue?" he asked.
"To forget, to move on." A bitter laugh filled Kuronue's throat. "I was at the temple to pay my last respects to you so that I could move on, Kurama."
"So sorry to inconvenience you by still being alive," Kurama said bitterly.
"Are you intending to press a claim that means so little to you?" Kuronue demanded.
Kurama drew his energy out of the whip, returning it to a seed. "I never claimed you," he said, his voice bitterly cold. "You were with me by your choice, not by my force."
The pain was obvious in Kuronue's face. "Fine, then. It seems we have wasted our time in meeting like this."
"So it would seem," Kurama agreed coldly, angry at himself for wasting so much energy being concerned, being worried.
A laugh that sounded as if it were trying to mask that pain filled the space between them. "I'll be on my way, then. Farewell, Kurama."
"Good-bye, Kuronue." His voice was even, level, unemotional. He would be proud of himself later. After he constructed another memorial. He wouldn't forget, but he couldn't remember. It was the way he was.
Kuronue left, taking to the sky, leaving the human umbrella to fall to the ground.
Even though he was soaked through to the skin, Kurama picked it up. He walked to just behind the temple, a place sheltered but rarely visited by anyone. Here, he buried the umbrella, scribing over its resting place Kuronue's name in the language of the Makai. He prayed, not in the prescribed manner of worshipers at the front of the temple, but in the older, more naturalistic method of addressing his kami as if Inari were before him.
"I am a thief. I am a liar. I have done many things that fill me with guilt and regret. I do not regret freeing him, only the pain that it caused, that I caused." He let his head hang a moment. "I suppose that you have your reasons, whatever they are."
"So, this is where you were hiding," a surly voice behind him broke the silence.
Kurama turned with a smile. "Yes, this is where I've been hiding." He stood, joining his companion. "Shall we leave?"
"We have a job," he said flatly, walking away from the temple.
"A job? It's been quite a while since we've had a job," Kurama said, his voice still pleasant.
No further answers were forthcoming. Kurama didn't really expect any. He just fell into step. There would be time later.