Reflection
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Sunlight filtered through the clouds bit by bit, a spider web of filmy midday light that promised to wash the world in vivid color after the long week of grey monotony that seemed to prelude the coming of Spring in the region. And after so much rain, he welcomed the shift from pallid monochrome to subtle vibrancy; lush, rich color. Crispness in the air lingered from a foregone rainfall yet the sun's reappearance beckoned him outside, promising a fresher breath of air, and he could not resist the allure.
Slipping into a light coat, the heaviest that the promise of on-set Spring could coax him into, he made his way outside, gingerly. A deep intake of breath, the air sweet with the scent of damp foliage, assured him the call he had made was the right one. And with that knowledge in mind he began a leisurely stroll, enjoying the freshness of the world around him and savoring the potential this day held.
Minutes fell away and he found himself in a familiar place: the city park. Around him, strangers bustled along, enjoying the freedom the day offered, an escape from the imprisonment the earlier rainy weather had incited. He followed the cobblestones beneath him mindlessly — after fifteen years he had worn a well-trodden path through the area — and relished the liveliness underfoot; pedestrians chatting in his periphery, the birds calling to one another, the whisper of wind through the trees. After a weeklong confinement to the house it was truly a beautiful symphony the world sang, and this, along with the sights and smells, he took in greedily, eager to shed the melancholy that had stolen upon him in the foregone week.
Another several minutes came to pass in which he meandered forevermore along the rain-damp trail, taking in the scenery and trying resolutely to relinquish his hold on the gloom that his subconscious mind seemed to have chained itself to. But for all the beauty of the seemingly re-born day around him, he could not shake the trouble that hovered, like ever the perpetual rain cloud, over his head.
He sighed, shaking his head tiredly from side to side and batted at a loosed tendril of hair when the motion brushed it into his face. "With such a day on the horizon, I picked a wonderful time to brood," he mused to himself, the intended amusement in the words coming out bitterly.
"Look at me, Ma! Look at me!" The sudden volume of the words made his head turn automatically and he followed the sound to a playground a ways off the path he had taken to.
A little girl was swinging from a set of monkey bars, her legs flailing unattended in the air, and even from the distance he could hear her giggling as she insisted, "Look at me, Ma! Watch this!" as she made her way slowly, but delightedly across the bars, without her Mother's help. Of course, at the first plea, the girl's mother had turned to look at her and she clapped enthusiastically for her daughter when the little girl reached the end and stretched desperately for the steps that would let her dismount the bars.
Turning away from the scene, he felt the beginnings of a cynical smile tug at his lips.
"Look at me! Look at me!"
He walked a few steps farther, quietly pondering. When was the last time he had gotten such unabashed attention from his own Mother — or anyone else for that matter? How many years had passed since he had been able to say those very words and not had to doubt that someone would, indeed, look at him; watch him? The answer came to him automatically, of course: it had been years and years since that time in his life.
Acknowledging this with grudging acceptance as a term of his coming of age, he wondered, idly, But if I were to ask, would anyone turn to look at me now?
Unfortunately, to this question, such a cut-and-dried answer was not immediately forthcoming.
Certainly, he assured himself, someone would look. No guarantee stood as to who would look and who would not, of course, but most assuredly someone would look.
He stopped then, in light of the ponderings, and was surprised to find himself standing in the middle of one of the refurbished footbridges that stood to carry wandering folk across the various water features — in this case a nearly-dried creek bed that the earlier rains had restored — that spanned the sprawling park.
Another sigh sprang from his lips as he approached the railing and rested his crossed forearms against the cool, unevenly grainy structure and allowed his eyes to wander along, following the steadily flowing water, with tired reverence.
The water was remarkably clear, no doubt a mark of the fresh rainwater that gave the stream its current livelihood, and with barely a breath of wind its surface was glass-smooth and just as reflective.
Regarding himself in the water beneath him he chuckled at the positively morose look on his face. Once the moment passed and the laugh had coalesced into nothingness, however, his face fell automatically into its previous glum mask.
"Look at me! Look at me!"
The words resonated inside his skull and he found himself voicing the words aloud, "Look at me, look at me," quietly, and watching as after a moment his reflection fell still again.
"Look at me…" the words echoed in his thoughts again and he said aloud, slightly irritated, "I am looking!"
"Talking to yourself, Kurama?"
Startled, and wondering just how far he must have retreated into his own mind so as not to have noticed the arrival of his companion's all-too-familiar youki, he yelped in poorly-disguised surprise, "Hiei?"
"Hn." The typical monosyllabic response positively hummed with concealed mirth.
"What are you doing here, Hiei?" he asked slowly, turning his head to regard the small raven-haired man beside him, and mentally cursing himself for having been caught off guard.
"What are you doing here, Kurama?" he parroted back, ignoring the question as it pertained to him in its entirety.
"I asked you that, Hiei," came the just-as-quick response.
"Hn," accompanied a quick shrug of black-clad shoulders as all the answer he received.
Shaking his head and suppressing the sudden urge to roll his eyes, Kurama turned his head back to gazing at his, and now Hiei's, reflections in the stream below.
After several moments of silence had transpired between them, Hiei finally broke the silence by asking the one question which Kurama was surprised he had not asked to begin with and for which he had no tangible, believable answer.
Startlingly, when the words left his lips, they were tinged with obvious curiosity that bordered on concern. "Why were you talking to yourself, Kurama?"
It was his turn to shrug, a bare half-rise of one shoulder, as he replied with a sideways glance of emerald eyes, "I was talking to my reflection, Hiei, not to myself."
This garnered him a sharp glance from Hiei that, before he could contain it, flashed an array of emotion across his face that included shock, surprise and an inkling of fear, as he snapped, harshly, "You're losing your mind if you're starting to designate your reflection as someone apart from yourself, Kurama."
"Perhaps," Kurama conceded quietly, admitting to the hiyoukai's point. "But to tell you the truth Hiei, I see so little of myself — if I can be sure of any of myself — in the reflection before my own eyes that, honestly, I cannot say it is me."
"I've killed a lot of poets in my life, Kurama."
A half-laughed sigh came from his lips at this and he amended, "Hiei, when was the last time you looked at yourself? I mean really, really looked?" He tilted his head to the side, gesturing to the image painted in the water below them as he added, "For me, it has been too long, and I am afraid to say that I do not recognize myself in the portrait below."
"Maybe if you spent less time preening in front of the mirror like a ningen female you wouldn't be having this crisis of identity, Kurama," Hiei replied bluntly, and a smile ticked at Kurama's lips as he realized that it was on what Hiei probably considered to be reasonable grounds that he had said as much.
However, for the tidbit of amusement it dredged out of him, it warranted no reply as he merely returned to gazing, half-lidded, over the bridge's railing.
To his side he heard an annoyed sound and a muttered string of curse words before a quick breeze ruffled along his jacket and sent his hair fluttering. It prompted another tired laugh out of him as he turned to his once more solitary reflection.
"I cannot even see myself anymore, when I look," he mumbled quietly, regarding his twin below and wondering why he couldn't find himself anywhere in the jaded gaze that stared neutrally back up at him. "And when even I cannot see myself, how can I expect others to look and see?
After a few more minutes and after staring blankly into his reflection unfeelingly, he wondered aloud, "Who am I?"
A sudden, quick chill came over him and sent his hair flying and the overwhelmingly loud sound of something obscenely solid striking water drew his attention towards the shattered picture beneath him where his reflection had vanished, upset by a violent torrent of circular undulations, and melted into a shimmering blob of tans, reds and darker hues.
"Idiot."
He spun from the ruination of his reflection to face the harsh word and met surprisingly soft crimson eyes as he asked, "Hiei?"
"That is who you are, Kurama," snapped the hiyoukai in a tone that suggested anger but belayed a softer, more understanding emotion — one that his eyes mirrored — as he motioned to the pair of imperfect reflections that had started to reemerge as the water began to calm again.
"I am not sure I follow," Kurama admitted quietly, watching as his reflection alongside Hiei's slowly began to reform as the ripples began to even out. "Are you suggesting that I am something ruined? Something imperfect or abstract?"
Hiei shook his head at this and truly marveled at his companion's ignorance. For a moment, before he answered the question, he had to wonder if the ignorance was purposely self-imposed and Kurama was being intentionally dense, or if the Fox truly did not know what he was talking about. The thought of that alarmed him.
"You are all of those things, Kurama. And that you recognize as much means that's not the issue you're having to ask yourself 'Who am I?' and you know it."
"Then what are you saying, Hiei?"
Hiei laughed then, a quick, sharp sound, and turned to look at their reflections, still wavering in the aftermath of his action, still two as of yet imperfect, colorful blobs trying to congeal into a solid from.
He felt Kurama's gaze follow him, confused.
"You will never find yourself looking in a mirror, Kurama."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because a mirror is a shallow thing."
"Are you making a joke about how I feel about my appearance?" Kurama asked, slightly amused.
"No, idiot," Hiei snapped back. "I'm just saying it has no real substance, just like the water below. There's no substance there either, for all it shows of your reflection."
"Are you saying I lack substance, then?"
"No!" Hiei's voice was an angry snarl.
"Then what are you saying, Hiei?" Kurama snapped back ,growing impatient.
"I am saying, Kurama, that a mirror simply cannot show you who you are!"
To the point as ever, Kurama quipped back, simply, "Why?"
"Because to see who you are, it'd take a damn X-ray!"
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General Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho and all things thus-ly related belong to Yoshihiro Togashi, FUNimation, VIZ Media, and all other parties with rights to the title. This does not include me in anyway and I make to money from my writings, so please don't sue.
Author's Ramblings: So, I know this isn't exactly any of the material I have been promising lately, but this just sort of sprung up and slapped me in the face and I couldn't really resist. I'm happy with how this started out, even if the beginning was a bit forced (and I apologize if they sound that way!) and the end was sort of... blah... but I lost the thread of my original ending by the time it came to write it, so I apologize. Although, in my opinion, at least, this is the most light-hearted, humourous (kinda) things I have written in a long while. So, overall, I think I did okay with this, and I do hope I didn't skew my intended message too badly (read on and I'll give you the punchline) or make them too OOC. Please let me know? Flames, ConCrit, Critique. Anything?
Anyway -- this was inspired by the classic (and greatest, IMHO) Disney movie of all time, Mulan. I recently re-watched it and then the montage with the song Reflection (property of its writers and C. Aguilera, BTW) played, and I thought of Kurama. And then I pondered the nature of him and realized that, for all of who he is, a mirror simply could not explain who he is entirely and that it would take something far more substantial. Though, honestly, I think this applies to everyone. A reflection of any sort and most certainly Mirrors, are so delicate, easily marred (as Hiei kindly demonstrated), so who are we to allow something so fragile and shallow (like water -- get it?) tell us who we are? There's so much more to all of us -- so many layers. I hope my point came across before I had to kill the punchline, though.
Let me know what you thought of everything and if this even made sense by please, please leaving your names at the door, reviews and honest opinions intact, yes?
Blackrose