A/N: While helping my older brother go through his old box of keep-sakes, I came across a book filled with his collection of Yu Yu Hakusho cards. So, of course, that meant I had to re-watch the entire series and re-read all of the manga. And, as always, I was unhappy with the explanations, or lack there of, in it about the Kuwabara family. And Kuwabara in general, really. Doesn't fit with my head-canon, understand?
Watching that series also meant that I had to try writing for it. So, like I start out with every series, we get a short foray into the fandom!
There was only one thing that Kuwabara envied about his team-mates. It wasn't the fact that they had such a long life-span. It wasn't their stamina or their strength. It wasn't even the fact that, no matter how much of a beating they took, they always had that extra help when it came to healing from injuries.
No, Kuwabara envied them because of their families. He envied them because of their mothers - from the drunken Atsuko all the way down to the woman that gave birth to Hiei. Because they had a mother that cared for them, loved them, watched out for them, always tried to do the best for them.
Even though Atsuko was just a child when she gave birth to Yusuke, she did her best to raise him. She taught him not to give up. She taught him how to take care of himself and survive when no one thought he could. And always, always, she loved him.
Hiei's mother was so distraught after she lost her child that she took her own life. That was true love. That was a real mother - real to the point of being surreal and unbelievable, but still real. She loved him more than her own life and wanted to be with him more than anything else in the world.
And everyone could see how much Shiori loved Kurama. Enough that, when he finally told her, she didn't care her son was a demon. Didn't care that she had been used for years before Kurama grew to love her. Shiori didn't care about any of that because Kurama was still her son.
Mothers were meant to love their sons. They were meant to always do the best for their sons; because if a mother didn't, then there was no one around that would.
So Kuwabara watched his team-mates and listened to their stories, to their pasts, and he couldn't help but envy them. Maybe even hate them a little, just because they didn't know what they had. And as he watched and listened to them, he thought and remembered about his own mother.
Her name was Ayami.
She had firebrand hair that cascaded down her back in ringlets and the bluest eyes. A thin, pale face but large, dark lips. Long black eyelashes and dimples when she smiled. Ayami was tall and thin, yes, but she carried herself in a way that showed she knew how to protect herself.
All of that Kuwabara has gathered from pictures.
Ayami, Kuwabara also knows, did not love him for him. She did not take care of for him or raise him so that he could live a good, care-free life. She didn't even try - and a part of Kuwabara wanted to hate her for that, while the other part wanted to love her all the more because she wasn't like everyone else's mother.
Yusuke he grew up with. Kurama was always willing to tell a story of his human-mother. Hiei spoke grudgingly but still with love.
Kuwabara kept to himself. Ignored their questions when finally, finally, Kurama looked at him and asked; "Where is your mother at, Kuwabara?"
The words echoed in his ears and he couldn't form the words to answer. So he got up and he left. The memories had been wakened though and it would be weeks before Kuwabara was able to sleep without having the fuzzy forms of his childhood get trapped behind his closed lids.
Mostly, Kuwabara pictures his mother as a combination of Shizuru and Shiori. He knows this isn't true. He does it anyway.
Ayami was the daughter of a priest. The granddaughter of a priestess. The great-granddaughter of a Shrine Maiden. Her spiritual awareness was greater than of her parents - and this was passed on to both of her children, though her son bore the brunt of it.
Shizuru would be a good psychic one day. Kuwabara scared her.
His powers were so great at such a very young age. But he couldn't control them. The baby boy couldn't stop the spirit-aided fits that racked his body, couldn't stop from seeing the ghosts that live everywhere, couldn't fight off the devils that crept into his bedroom at night and clawed at his skin, trying to get in and get at the power that lived inside of him.
Ayami was afraid, of her own son, and so she took action. Action that aided her and no one else. Ayami Kuwabara sealed her son's powers away, so deep inside of him that they would most likely never be fully awakened. With his powers, Kuwabara lost many of the memories of his childhood.
He also lost his mother.
Sometimes, he likes to think that Shizuru is his mother. That Ayami never existed and he never lost anything.
He couldn't find the words to say this to his team. So he walked away instead, listening all the while to their tales of love and granduer, he felt the quite envy start to consume him once more.