The Sun Also Rises

-x-

Jade.

Silvery metal.

A thin chain.

Delicate tools.

All inside a secret pocket for a secret wish.

-x-

"Hiei? I didn't think you were going to drop by tonight. What prompted this?" Kurama looked up from his pruning.

"Come, fox." He beckoned out the window, his silhouette cast sharply on the wall by the stark moonlight.

An eyebrow raised, the redhead stood up and followed the hiyoukai out the window. "Where are we going? Is there a mission?"

"Out. No."

The taller demon sighed, pushing off the sill to follow his friend in silence.

It took only ten minutes to arrive at the forest a few kilometers away, though he was at a loss as to why the diminutive youkai had chosen it. It had originally been a beautiful sea of trees, but after a wildfire a few years ago Kurama had devoted his free time to regrowing it. One or two plant deaths was nothing, really – it only hurt him in that it was a loss of beauty – but that many at once had had him laid out for days, his mother worried over the freak sickness that plagued her usually healthy son. Either way, Hiei had never been there except to find him for missions once or twice, so he had no idea why the short demon was headed to such a place.

Dropping down from the treetops into a clearing halfway up the mountain, Hiei paused and turned to Kurama, tilting his head in a way that the fox had never seen him do. "Hiei…? Why are we here?"

The imiko gave an odd little half smile and walked over to the silk-clad redhead. "Fox, I just want you to know…I've always loved you."

Kurama's eyes widened and he took a breath, only to have it expelled brutally as his friend sunk a firey fist into his stomach. Sinking to the ground, he coughed once, twice, before blood came up and he was wrapped in darkness.

-x-

Coming to, the fox kept his eyes closed and his laboured breathing even. Why would Hiei have done that? He'd never given any hint of…well, actually, he probably was a little insane. But who wasn't, in the Makai? Kurama never thought he'd do something like this, though. Was he planning to sell him? Kill him? Use him? Youko were, admittedly, rather rare, and his tail and hide would fetch a large fortune on the right side of the market. But the Hiei he knew had never been motivated by money…

Then again, the Hiei he knew wouldn't have betrayed his best friend, either.

Taking a slow breath, he attempted to get his bearings and discreetly shift to a more comfortable position, only to realize that his arms and legs were trapped by some type of cool metal that made his wrists and ankles ache severely. He clearly was bound or warded in some way and was not going to get out soon. Throwing caution to the winds, he opened his eyes and groaned at the sudden assault of orange light. What was Hiei using fire for?

Turning his head, he blinked to clear his vision and realized that the hiyoukai was crouched over with his back to Kurama, concentrating on enveloping something in his hand with flame. "Don't try pretending you're asleep, fox; I'm almost done here and I'll need you in a minute."

The redhead's lip curled in a distinctly vulpine way, showing his canines. "Bullshit! You know that I can't move and I know you obviously don't want me to. What have you done?"

Silence reigned over the crackle of flames for a minute before the black-haired figure put them out, confident that whatever he was doing was complete. "You'll see." Turning around so that the bound demon could see him fully, he held up an intricate piece of jewelry and grinned at Kurama's vicious snarl.

"Don't you dare!"

Shaking his head, the fire demon gave a coarse laugh. "Sorry, fox, but I've wanted to do this for years – ever since I found out that jade was deadly to you youko. Yusuke always wondered, you know, why you never used those charms they kept getting you for good luck. 'Matched your eyes', they said. Ha! What would they say now, seeing you cower before it – brought down low by a simple piece of stone? The silver helps too, I'm told – apparently it can hurt any type of spirit, even a spirit fox like yourself."

The fox's form only tensed more, muscles straining at the thin silver chains wrapped around his limbs that matched the filigree on the piece Hiei was holding. "Goddammit, Hiei, just tell me what you want!"

The hiyoukai's lips curled to show a glinting fang as he stepped up to the fox, holding the white jade dragon above the prone form. "I want…this." He dropped it and stepped back, relishing the sight of the beautiful stone falling through the air and Kurama's green eyes tracking the piece in fear and anger, only to roll back into his head as the jewelry made contact.

"Made it myself, too – and I'll have you know that it's damn hard to shape melting jade with fire. I hope you enjoy it to its capacity…" Eyes flickering with hidden flame, he watched ravenously as the fox's mouth opened in a soundless scream and his back arched up in pain and an attempt to dislodge the ornament. The shorter demon watched happily as the attempts failed – he'd warded the stone to attach itself to the first thing it made contact with. He'd also made a contingency plan or two in case the initial one failed – but maybe he should fire them up anyway?

Anything to cause the bastard fox more pain.

The fire demon grinned maliciously and snapped his fingers, bringing forth a spark. Kurama's eyes widened and he gasped with realization, wrists struggling weakly against the silvery cuffs. "No…please, Hiei! Please…" The raven only shook his head and blew the bit of black fire onto the closest tree – the first tree the fox had planted during the rebirth of his forest. It took only a second to go up in hungry flames that jumped from leaf to leaf and then to the next tree, consuming the entire stand in a less than a minute. Pupils contracting from the harsh shock of so much plant life massacred by the greedy fire, Kurama screamed in agony as the double shock set in and the preset jade wards surrounding him flared to life in equal amounts of pain and white-hot fire.

One last bit of energy was devoted to calling out weakly, but Hiei had already vanished, intent on leaving him to his fate. "Hiei…"

From a tree a mile off, the hiyoukai narrowed his eyes at the flames and the figure he could only just see. The fire wouldn't go near the fox, but the plant deaths and the jade would do the job well enough, especially in such amounts. Smirking, he vanished, knowing that his friend would soon be dead.

And by the time dawn emerged from the inky blackness, a splayed form breathed its last, screamed its last, and lived its last…and then the sun had risen on the dead.

-x-
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Would it surprise you to know that Kurama is my favorite character and that I absolutely hate reading sad character death fics?

Oooh.

Well, either way, welcome to my oneshot series for Yu Yu Hakusho! (Most will probably involve Kurama and they won't have anything to do with each other.)

This should be similar to my Moments series (oneshots about Itachi from Naruto – lots and lots of oneshots) and hopefully I'll get new inspiration occasionally for both of them. For now the summary will be a summary of this first ficlet but as I add to the series I'll make it a generic version.

Happy reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. If I did, I would sell my wife to her rabid fans and rake in the cash. (Naoko Takeuchi – the creator of Sailor Moon – is Yoshihiro Togashi's wife, for those who were unaware.)

And I am quite aware that The Sun Also Rises is an Ernest Hemingway title. It crossed my mind as a cool name for this and then I realized what it was. Sorry, but I'm keeping it. It's supposed to refer to 'the sun also rises on death' (because a lot of people like saying that it rises on new life). I've never read the actual book.