Author's Notes: I am seriously enjoying writing this story, even though it's many times less popular than most of the other fanfics I've put up (and which I really should get around to updating). It gives me the satisfaction of a story well-crafted, and I love playing with the characters and universes from two of my favourite fandoms ever. My planning extends about a chapter ahead of the one I'm currently writing, and later I might come a cropper as a result of not having worked out the whole story, but hopefully inspiration will strike before I run out of steam. I have some vague ideas about characters and situations that will crop up later, so we'll see how those play out.

Thanks to Gakupo Kamui for being my only reviewer so far!

Disclaimer: Peter Pan is the creation of J.M. Barrie and the property of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Yu Yu Hakusho is the creation and the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Some other bodies may own the rights as well, but I'm not sure who they all are. Suffice to say I don't own either of these fandoms, and am borrowing the characters and concepts for entertainment purposes only.


Hiei Jaganshi, Legendary Bandit

Chapter Two: Come Away With Me

"I knew you'd come back," Kurama whispered.

Hiei Jaganshi glared down at him, his arms braced either side of Kurama's head. "Where's my shadow?" he demanded.

"Not so loud; you'll wake my brother," Kurama cautioned, although he knew it was unlikely. "Were you listening to the story?"

"My shadow. Where is it?"

"In the chest of drawers. I'd get it for you, but there's something restricting my movement."

Hiei gave him one last baleful look and sat back so that Kurama could move his legs out from under his slight weight, and swing them over the edge of the bed. Kurama felt Hiei's gaze following him as he padded over to the oak chest of drawers and pulled open the bottom drawer. No sooner had he drawn out the shadow from under the various garments than it was snatched from his hands.

"At least you managed not to damage it further," said Hiei, examining the shadow with a curl of his lip.

"I didn't realise it could tear like that," Kurama said, rather guiltily. "Can you re-attach it?"

"Hn." Hiei laid the shadow flat on the nursery floor. It formed a very clear Hiei-shaped silhouette when flattened out. Kurama watched with interest as Hiei pressed his own feet to the feet of the shadow and then lifted them. The shadow stayed where it was on the ground, unattached to Hiei.

Hiei cursed loudly in a language that wasn't English and Kurama glanced over at Shuichi, who didn't stir. Hiei tried to attach the shadow again, pressing his feet more firmly to it this time, but still with no success.

"Do you need some help with that?" Kurama inquired, unable to help being amused at the situation. Hiei snarled at him.

"I can do it myself."

"It doesn't look like it," Kurama remarked. There was a flash and a shing! of metal, and Kurama found himself with Hiei's sword pointed at his throat. He calmly got to his feet and went to the dressing-table, hunting around for a needle and thread. "You should be careful with that. You could hurt someone."

"Hn. That's the idea," said Hiei derisively, but he sheathed the sword. Kurama caught a glimpse of his own small smile reflected in the mirror. He didn't quite know how he could be so calm or so bold when faced with such a volatile, dangerous figure. Maybe he still didn't believe any of this was real. Or maybe he knew deep down that Hiei wouldn't really harm him.

Kurama located a needle and unwound a length of black thread from a cotton reel. He had no idea whether it was possible to re-attach a shadow by sewing, but it was a more practical solution than Hiei's had been. Kurama was good at sewing; his mother had taught him it at a young age, concerned that she might never have a daughter to pass the skill onto (and believing in any case that the ability to darn a hole or repair a seam should not be limited to women). His father had thought it unbecoming for a boy, but Kurama had never been concerned about appearing too feminine. Gardening, another of his favourite hobbies, was also considered a womanly interest.

Kurama approached Hiei with the needle and thread held aloft. Hiei regarded the foreign objects with suspicion. "Sit on the bed and stretch your legs out in front of you," Kurama instructed. "I'm going to sew your shadow onto your boots."

"Won't that mean it's attached to my boots and not to me?"

"Do you even own any other shoes?"

Hiei fell silent and climbed up onto the bed as Kurama had asked. His boots left a couple of dirty scuff marks on the white sheets which Kurama would have to deal with later.

Kurama lit the candle in the glass holder on the bedside table to help him see what he was doing. He then arranged himself by the bed, kneeling near Hiei's feet with the shadow in one hand. Hiei watched apprehensively as Kurama lined up the shadow's feet with the soles of Hiei's boots. He flinched as Kurama made the first stitch, securing the thread before he began to sew.

"See, it isn't so bad," said Kurama. "Tell me if I prick your foot."

Hiei gritted his teeth and said nothing. Kurama proceeded to sew the shadow onto the sole of his boot with a neat running stitch. He had almost finished one foot when he noticed that Hiei was shaking slightly.

"Is something the matter?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Hn," was Hiei's only reply, but as Kurama pushed the needle back into his boot, he noticed a slight flinch that Hiei was trying to hide.

"Hold on," he said, staring intently at Hiei. "Am I hurting you? How is that possible?"

"It's nothing," Hiei dismissed, too quickly.

"I'm not piercing your skin, am I? How can you be in pain?"

Hiei said nothing, and for a while Kurama thought that he wasn't going to give an answer. Eventually, he replied, "It's the shadow. It means it's working, so finish what you started."

Kurama frowned, but he couldn't very well leave the work half-done. Re-attaching Hiei's shadow was what he'd set out to do, and so he would do it. He did his best to tug the thread through gently, hoping it might cause Hiei less discomfort. Hiei sat rigidly until the sewing was complete, and Kurama tied a knot in the thread before cutting it short with a small pair of scissors.

"Finished," he said. Hiei immediately jumped up, and in the blink of an eye was standing in the middle of the nursery floor. His shadow looked seamlessly joined to his feet, and it followed his movements exactly. Kurama was willing to bet that if he looked back at where the join had been made, the stitches would have somehow melted away.

Hiei drew his sword, and performed an acrobatic series of slashes, watching critically to see that his shadow did the same. He sheathed it again with a satisfied smirk. "Excellent. I knew that sewing would work. I always was resourceful."

Kurama's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, and so this was all your doing?"

Hiei glanced back at him as if he'd forgotten Kurama was still there. "I suppose you contributed… to amending your own error. If it wasn't for you, my shadow would never have been severed to begin with."

"You were the one who sneaked into the nursery in the dead of night and climbed onto my bed!" hissed Kurama angrily. It occurred to him that he still didn't know the reason behind Hiei's first night-time visit, but he was too annoyed now to ask. He'd had enough of this boy and his arrogance and his mood swings. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to bed. Good night." He lay down and pulled the covers over his head.

There was a long pause. Kurama knew that Hiei could easily leave without making a sound, yet somehow he sensed that the demon bandit was still standing in the room. It meant that he couldn't really relax properly or come out from under the covers (that would ruin his dramatic exit of sorts), so instead he lay there, too hot and waiting for something to happen.

Finally, after an age, Hiei broke the silence. "Kurama."

Kurama didn't move, assuming that there was more to come.

"There was another reason I came here… originally."

Kurama abruptly sat up, his red hair in a mess from being under the covers, wisps escaping from his bedtime ponytail. "How is it that you know my name when I never introduced myself?"

"I know one or two things about you."

"Such as?"

"You aren't human."

Kurama was speechless with shock at the blunt way in which Hiei delivered this revelation. It was some minutes before he found his voice. "It… That's not possible."

Hiei directed a piercing glare at him, his expression impatient. "You have incredible speed and a grace that borders on the supernatural."

"I… I'm athletically gifted, that's all."

"You also excel in every academic study and are at least ten times more intelligent than every other human idiot in your class."

"Kaito is as intelligent as I am. He even surpasses me in some areas. Occasionally."

"Not to mention your unusual talent with plant life."

"How can you know all this?" An icy feeling was growing in the pit of Kurama's stomach. The pieces fitted together too well, and his only rebuttal to Hiei's argument was to attack Hiei himself. "Have you been spying on me?"

It was Hiei's turn to fall silent. For once, he actually looked uncomfortable. For his own part, Kurama was outraged.

"You have been spying on me! How long for? Why did I never notice you there? How could you invade my privacy like that?!"

"It wasn't like that!" Hiei snapped back. "I visit the human world on occasion and I noticed you on one of my trips. There isn't another being on this planet with hair of your colour. Including your so-called family."

The ice in Kurama's stomach solidified until it felt as heavy as rock. He rubbed at his chest absently, trying to ease the ache, as he stared at Hiei. "My great-grandmother had hair like mine when she was young. Mother told me."

"Have you ever seen a portrait of her?"

"There aren't any surviving images of her or of my great-grandfather."

"Isn't that convenient."

Kurama's eyes narrowed. "You're implying that Mother lied to me, about who I am and where I came from. She would never do that."

Hiei's silence spoke for itself. Kurama found his hands were shaking. He couldn't take in what Hiei was implying, and so instead he became angry. Furious even. "I want you to leave. Now."

"You know I'm right."

"Get out!" Kurama pointed one trembling hand towards the window. Hiei turned and walked away, but instead of going to the window, he paused at the foot of Shuichi's bed. Kurama surged to his feet, convinced that this was a veiled threat against his brother. "You leave him alone."

Hiei simply looked down at Shuichi, somehow still sound asleep in spite of all the loud and angry words that had been exchanged. "Isn't it curious how you barely resemble the human sleeping in this bed? Or the two at the end of the hallway. Have you never wondered why that is?"

Kurama slowly sat back down on the edge of the bed. He was now trembling from head to foot. Slowly, he put his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

"Mother did tell me once that she and Father had trouble conceiving a child." His voice came out slightly muffled. "She said it was such a miracle when I came into their lives. She never actually said the word 'born'."

He looked up at Hiei in despair. "If I'm not their son… then who am I?"

"You're a demon," Hiei replied. "A powerful one."

Kurama rubbed his hands over his face. "A demon. Until a few nights ago, I didn't even believe there was such a thing."

"Yes, you did."

Kurama sighed. A lot of memories were coming back to him all of a sudden, making a new kind of sense in light of what Hiei had just told him. He believed it was true. Of course he did.

"I always knew there was something unnatural about my hair colour," he admitted, staring into the distance. "In the village where I grew up – before we moved to London – people used to say that I'd been cursed by the devil. Actually, I think that was part of the reason we moved away."

He looked over at Hiei, who was standing with his arms folded, failing to hide how interested he was in Kurama's story.

"But my mother told me I wasn't cursed, but blessed. By angels, she said. With eyes as green as grass and hair the colour of rose petals…"

"Like the rose on your dressing-table," said Hiei, and Kurama jumped slightly, having been immersed in his memory. He glanced over at the rose, sitting bright and innocent in a ray of moonlight. It was the wrong time of year for a rose to bloom. Yesterday, it had been only a stunted clipping from Mother's old rose bush in the garden, which scarcely bore any flowers even at the proper time of year. But Kurama had sensed its potential, had brought it inside to nurture it, focusing all his energy and attention on the little stem. When he concentrated, he could feel a sort of aura around it, around all plants, and if he directed his thoughts in just the right way, he could make them bloom more brightly, overcoming blight and mildew and the ravages of insects. Yesterday was the first time he'd ever brought a flower to bloom from nothing, though.

Hiei walked over and touched the rose petals lightly with a fingertip. "I can sense the traces of your ki on this," he mused.

"My what?"

"Your energy. You used pure energy to make it bloom. It's not something a human can do."

Kurama bit his lip and looked away. "But demons can?"

"Some demons." Hiei gently picked the rose out of its vase of water, holding it carefully to avoid the thorns. "In your hands, this could become anything you wanted. A suffocating thicket of petals. A vine with razor-sharp thorns that can cut through the sturdiest rock. I've seen other animal spirits use weapons such as those."

That sounds horrible, Kurama knew he should say, or, I would never do something like that. But the truth was, the prospect excited him – to know that he had such a potential, even though it was for violence.

Hiei dropped the rose back into the vase and looked directly into Kurama's eyes. "Come with me to Maikai, and I'll show you exactly what your powers can achieve." It was as if he knew Kurama's thoughts.

Maikai. The demon world. It was just what Kurama had always dreamed of – the chance to go on an adventure straight from the bedtime tales he'd been telling Shuichi all these years. He took a breath, and then let it out, looking guiltily over to where his little brother slept. He couldn't just rush off on a whim in the middle of the night with a boy he barely knew. What would that do to his mother? Yes, she'd deceived him, and it hurt, but he couldn't repay that hurt with an even worse heartbreak. He could talk to her about it rationally in the morning, and calmly request the truth and some answers.

…But how many answers would she be able to give him? Did he really think that she would have knowingly taken a demon child into her family? She couldn't have suspected, even in her wildest dreams, that her adopted son might not be human. She wouldn't be able to give him the answers he now sought so desperately. And at the end of it all, he would still be stuck here in this world, knowing he had the potential for something more but never being able to live up to it, for fear of anyone else finding out. He could never truly be himself.

Hiei was offering him the chance to live up to that potential. To cast off this dull, constricting, ordinary world and go on the kind of adventure he'd talked about so often in his stories. Why was he even hesitating?

Because he loved them all, in spite of everything; even his father whom he had never been close to. Because his mother had raised him lovingly for fifteen years and he couldn't just turn his back on that. Because Shuichi needed his older brother, and he had to be here for him, even if it meant being doomed to forever tell stories of a life he could be living.

Hiei saw the conflict play out over Kurama's face and the resignation that descended in his eyes as he looked at the sleeping form of his younger brother. "Forget him, Kurama," he said harshly. "Forget all of them. You don't owe them anything. They lied to you. They already took away years of your life; don't let them take any more."

"Mother loved me and raised me for fifteen years. I can't repay that by leaving her," Kurama responded listlessly.

"She never told you the truth."

"Maybe she wanted to," Kurama countered, his voice shaking slightly. "Maybe she had her reasons. And no, I don't know that-" he forestalled the argument he knew Hiei would make, "but I don't know you either, and I can't throw everything away on a whim. This is my choice."

Hiei looked disgusted with him, and Kurama turned away. "I was wrong about you. You are human, in mind and spirit. You're too weak; you would never survive in Maikai."

"What did you expect, Hiei Jaganshi?" asked Kurama wearily, though looking not at Hiei but at the wall above his bed. "I'm a demon raised by humans, living in a human world. Of course I'm human in my mind. Did you think you could just spirit me away and change all that?"

Silence descended over the pair of them once more. Kurama was on the verge of telling Hiei to go away again, and this time he knew the other demon would obey. But in spite of everything he'd just thought and said, he couldn't bring himself to send away his one chance of freedom. He could argue the logic of it all he liked, but the action was a lot harder to take. I am weak.

Still he knew without looking that Hiei hadn't moved, and maybe this awareness of him was not instinct, but some kind of demon sense, like the way that he could feel the auras of plants. Would he ever get the chance to find out?

When Hiei spoke again, Kurama let out a breath, as if he'd been waiting on tenterhooks for what Hiei said next.

"It doesn't have to be forever. Just come with me for a few days. Time moves differently in Maikai; they won't even know you're gone."

Kurama turned to him, hope dawning on his face, rising to his feet without even realising it. "Is that really true? They won't know?"

"Hn. Do you think I'm making this up? You'll be back before the sun rises."

Kurama broke into a smile for the first time in what felt like an age. "All right then. I'll come with you."


Author's Notes: Whew! There was a loooooot of introspection in this chapter, and I absolutely love writing introspection, so I went to town. I didn't expect to take so long in writing Kurama's decision to go to Neverland Maikai, but we all know how much he analyses everything, so it stands to reason that he wouldn't take a potentially life-changing decision lightly. He's playing Wendy's role, but he doesn't have her personality or immaturity.

Those of you who've seen the 2003 live-action film Peter Pan will probably recognise some imagery and bits of lines in this story. The film is my favourite adaptation of Peter Pan to date, so it's a big influence.

Hiei talks a lot in this chapter. I'm not sure if it's a little out of character, but it's necessary to the plot xD Just chalk it up to this being an alternate universe version of him.