Disclaimer: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho (although I will soon own a magnificent complete DVD box set!)
A/N: This has just been floating around in my mind for a while, so I figured I would just write it down. To those who've been reading Revelations, I sorry that I haven't been able to update recently; I've been suffering under a major plot-crisis (and the chapter just doesn't want to write itself, anyway).
Through A Child's Eyes
Only the truly special individuals meet me; and when they do, it's almost always more of the same. Stunned faces, laughing eyes – judgment by toddler is probably the biggest joke of all. They can't take me seriously, and I hate it.
Take Yusuke, for example. His was a prime example of this kind of reaction; he laughed at me then, when I was the being he needed to resurrect him; he laughs at me now, when I'm his boss. If I were to be completely truthful with myself, my Spirit Detectives probably work for me because they're bored and want excitement (Yusuke, Kuwabara), or because I hold something over their heads (Hiei, Kurama). None of them have any real respect for me; if they do it's only that grudging kind that no one gives you when you most desperately need it.
Sometimes, when Botan's feeling particularly reflective, she'll ask me why I still continue to stay in this degrading form, open to such mocking treatment. I can't answer her. There are some things that one should never burden others with, although I suspect that I take on the appearance of a toddler for the same reason she always chooses to remain so obliviously happy. It's odd – one a child in body, the other a child in mind.
But I think we've both discovered that the result of death – the one thing that even the fearless fear, that which can ruin lives and destroy love and happiness far more completely than any other instrument, the final, resounding end – can be blunted. For a moment we can forget that ours is the trade of human lives and souls with hopes and dreams; for a moment we can forget all the pain and suffering we invariably cause the living. For a single moment we can forget it all when we view death through a child's eyes.