WARNING: The ending is NOT happy. Don't like, don't read. S'why part of the genre is TRAGEDY.
Chapter III: The Fallen Interlude
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I do not know what his words are to me as I turn my back on him and walk inside; the sound of them strikes me but the words themselves are lost behind the door sliding shut, leaving the syllables muted behind the Plexiglas, dull thrumming against my eardrums. I imagine them to be bitter, full of the anger that is reciprocated between us. Most probably they are screams of my cowardice — that I should walk away from him at all shows my complete unwillingness to stand before the demons I shackled some fifteen odd years ago, and he surely sees it so much as I feel it in my bones. And, no doubt, he is calling me out on it.
I do not know, nor do I care, if he is still there on the porch once the door closes behind me, effectively separating me from him once again. Knowing him, I imagine he has left; out of anger or out of sadness matters little. He just is not the type to come crawling back. That he has once already tonight is a surprise and a miracle. That he will do it again, remaining outside even a blink longer than necessary only to run after me once more is an impossibility. Stubborn and set in his ways he may be, but a fool he is not and he knows the dictum 'once bitten, twice shy' as well as any demon.
I run my hands through my hair in agitation, willing my thoughts away from him, admitting that while those I do harbor toward him are far from congenial, the fact that I should dwell upon him at all in light of the situation is an aberration in itself.
A sigh falls from my lips and I cringe at the deflated sound. What a fine day this has turned out to be, I think, ever the cynic, as I make my way through the living room and the bodies still wandering within the suddenly unwelcoming walls.
I tense as I brush against a shoulder here, a forearm there, as I push through the congested room and wonder why, all of a sudden, the slightest touch from these familiar bodies, however fleeting, makes me feel like an unwelcome guest in the house, a filthy home wrecker.
"Stop this nonsensical thinking," I mumble to myself in a last ditch attempt to assure myself that the feeling of foreboding is wholly misplaced and that I am making a mountain from a molehill. "You are blowing things out of proportion — worrying too much for your own good…"
"Kurama, m'man!"
I turn, startled, and my eyes land on the familiar, looming figure of Kuwabara heading towards me with Yukina hanging off of his arm in time to their two adorable twin girls latching themselves around my calves. They squeal in unison, sing-song voices, "Uncle Kurama, Uncle Kurama!"
Dutifully I tick my lips into a small smile, fully aware that it does not reach my eyes and hoping that Kuwabara and Yukina will chalk the half-mustered attempt up to exhaustion from a long day, rather at irritation at having been sidetracked in my quest to find my lover.
"Good evening, Kuwabara," I address lightly, nodding as I add, "Yukina."
"We were hoping to catch ya, man," Kuwabara replies while shaking his head at the sight of his two young daughters tangled around my legs. Yukina calls them off with a gentle reprimand and the two scamper back to her side, eliciting a more pronounced smile of thanks from me.
"Were you?" I inquire, hoping not to sound too prompt, but making apparent the fact that I have places to be.
"Yeah," he shrugs, pulling Yukina into a one-armed hug and taking the proffered hand of one of the twins in his free hand. "See, the girls' bed time is long-past, and me and Yukina need to get back home."
"Ah, of course," I nod in fervent agreement, glancing down at the girls who are trying to hide their fatigue to the best of their six-year-old abilities with little luck. "Well, thanks for being able to share this day with us — I know it meant a lot to Moriko to have you all here—"
"Yeah, of course," he waves the comment aside offhandedly, adding, "she's family to us, you all are, it's not like we wouldn't have come. Anyway—" and here he stops and has the grace to look puzzled and worried all at once.
"Yes?" I prompt, hoping he will soon make his point.
"Well, we tried telling Yuusuke this. But last I saw him he was stumbling towards you guys' bedroom in a real state. I tried callin' out to him, ya know? But Urameshi — he just kept on, like he didn't hear me." He shrugs at this, a stiff half-rise of one shoulder, and gives me a worried look.
I worry at my lip and I see that the action elicits a spark of deeper worry in Kuwabara's dark eyes. Even after so many years I have always been careful about hiding my more negative emotions, worry included. That I so freely show my worry over his words by gnawing at my lip probably unnerves him. As well it should, if I am to be completely honest.
"I see," I begin slowly, another sigh rolling from my tongue. "Thank y—"
"Kurama, ya know, I think today got to him," he cuts across me then, all of a sudden, striking me momentarily dumb with the observation, the honest, raw sincerity and concern of it. "What with Moriko's luck and… well, Keiko being… well. You know…"
I nod, glancing over my shoulder towards the hallway that leads into our shared bedroom. I hope the action will signal to Kuwabara not only my desire to be exactly where he seems to think I should be — with Yuusuke — but also to gather myself against the sudden stinging moisture behind my eyelids that I cannot allow him to bear witness to.
"I think you should go be with him, man," he tells me then, clapping me suddenly on the shoulder with such gentleness and force all at once that it sends tremor through me and all I can do is nod in agreement, because he has no idea how right he is.
And how wrong he is, all at once.
"Of course," I mumble then, careful to keep my voice neutral as I add, "it was good to see you all, and thank you again. But, I think I should take care of things." And then I excuse myself and head with no more distractions to the bedroom, where I will confront the man I love.
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As I stand before the door I wonder what I will say, what I will do. In seeing Hiei and I as he had, however mislead they were, Yuusuke had made assumptions — and for this I cannot fault him because I will readily admit that I would have done the same, were the roles reversed. I know that damage has been done to our relationship and no matter how much this pains me, I must be able to shoulder it. How much damage has been done remains to be seen. And while I know I am ultimately innocent of any wrongdoing and that whatever foul things he will say to me are unwarranted, I know they will sting nonetheless.
My hand lingers on the doorknob, conscious of the possibility that the catch may not give if I try to turn it. And I wonder what will happen if this is the case. If he does not wish to see me, speak to me, or even just let me explain, there is nothing I can do. And while this seems to be unfair because I know I am innocent of wrongdoing, ultimately, it all falls back on those conclusions Yuusuke drew from the few moments he saw of Hiei and I. For as adept as I am at reading my opponents' thoughts, for being able to see anything five moves ahead in time, even I can not see how this will play out. And this uncertainty sits poorly with me. I feel utterly ill.
"Enough," I sigh, resolutely after a further moment of silent mental deliberation. "Whatever awaits me behind that door, or in front of it, be it the case, I have to face it. Putting it off will only worsen things," I tell myself, knowing that the words are true, even if this knowledge does little to ease the ill feeling in my stomach.
I sigh, one final hopeful breath, and turn the doorknob. Much to my surprise, the jamb gives way and the door swings open unobtrusively on weathered, creaking hinges.
Much more surprisingly, I am not greeted with a flying fist to the face the second I clear the threshold into the room.
Not dwelling on this small miracle for more than a fleeting moment I call out a tentative, "Yuusuke?" as my eyes skin the room, knowing that regardless of if he answers, I will find him if he is, indeed, in here, as Kuwabara had suspected he would be.
"Yuusuke," I call again, more softly, taking a few tentative steps into the room when I see him sitting on the bed.
The room is set up so that one sees the bed first upon entering the room, as it sits with the headboard against the adjacent wall, the bed centered in the middle of it. A matching end table sits along either side. My bedside table harbors a picture of Shiori and a single red rose in an ornately carved crystal vase. Yuusuke's has a picture of Moriko as a baby in her grandmother's arms and, normally, a picture of he and Keiko in front of her parent's Ramen-ya the day of his proposal.
At the moment, I only see Moriko's baby picture.
I assume, with a pang of jealousy and disgust — disgust because I feel jealous at all — that because his back is turned to me, he is holding the picture himself.
"Oh, Yuusuke," I whisper, more to myself than to him, though perhaps because of his heightened demonic hearing abilities he hears me. "I am so sorry…"
When he does not acknowledge the apology, and I little expected he would, seeing as it had been barely audible, I take a few more tentative steps into the room, closing the physical distance between us while still feeling the unimaginably huge chasm of emotional distance between us — the magnitude of which threatens to steamroll me at any given moment.
When I am close enough, I reach out a hand, willing myself to even just clasp him on the shoulder. But even though I had not been subjected to an angry fist upon entering the room, I still do not know how receptive he is to my touch right now, so I hesitate. And when I see over his shoulder that he has indeed been commiserating over the old photo of Keiko and himself, I let the hand drop altogether, a thread of pain slicing through my heart at the sight. I know he is aware of me, knows I am in the room. But I respect his choice to acutely ignore my presence, painful though it is for me to do it.
And then, with the subtlest shift of his body on the mattress and the slightest movement I notice something else in his hand. I watch as he sets down the picture with reverence, head bowed, his gaze never wavering from its focus on his younger self, and start in horror when his hands take to cradling a small, black handgun.
A knot forms in the back of my throat and I am aware of the keening sound I am making as I attempt to force some meaningful words past the thing, but nothing except a strangled sort of choke will meander past my lips. And when I gulp to clear my throat, it feels like I am swallowing a ball of sandpaper.
But the effort allows a meaningful, albeit winded, "Yuusuke!" to croak past my suddenly dry lips.
Then he turns to me, chestnut eyes a blank space. Once, when I looked into them, I could see his soul and the unabashed love and thanks he felt for me staring back at me. Now they are empty, one-dimensional and cold. He is looking at me in a way that says he is not at all seeing me and is probably beyond seeing anything at all.
And it stabs me in the heart, doubles me over inside, to see him regarding me this way.
"Kurama," he says, quietly, so quietly that the grief in the syllables crashes into me and winds me, sends me onto the bed beside him, because my legs have fallen out from under me and I am powerless to support my own weight.
He flinches at the proximity and moves a bit to put distance between us. For as small as the gesture is, it feels like a slap in the face to me, and I have trouble looking up at him. I know he is watching me. Since he turned to look at me initially those haunted eyes have not strayed from me for a second, and now, now I am having trouble meeting his gaze.
I do not want to let him see into my eyes this way, do not want him to see the pain this causes me. Even now, after so many human years, bad habits — particularly ones harbored by my demonic alter ego, as it were — have proven difficult to break, and to show my emotions so unabashedly has never been easy. Now, when it should be second nature, when it is of the utmost importance and may be the only thing left for salvaging our mangled relationship, I am having trouble. And I curse myself mentally for my reluctance.
Finally I manage to drag my eyes to his level and I like the look in them, the pain on the blank surface of them, even less than I had before seeing into them eye-to-eye. But I do not look away as I tell him, confidently, "Yuusuke, Yuusuke I am so sorry. What you saw — it was a mistake. It was not what you think, I promise you."
At the words he looks away from me, head hung, and goes back to regarding the pistol in his hands that I do not like and am trying to figure out how to take away from him.
To give him a minute to allow my words to sink in and to let myself contemplate how to wrangle the small handgun from him, I twist on the bed so that I am facing the closed bedroom door that he still has his back to, sitting cross-legged on the bed as he is.
Suddenly I feel the mattress shift beneath my and I cut my eyes to the side to see Yuusuke shifting on the bed. He does not come flush with me, to face the door, but moves in a sharp ninety degree angle so that he is looking at my profile. The scrutiny I feel under his gaze this way is uncomfortable, but bearable, and I shuffle my shoulders uneasily to push the feeling aside.
Then, suddenly, he tells me, in a voice that is no less wounded than it had been when he had stuttered my name out on the porch earlier, "you know, I don't know what to think, Kurama."
And to be perfectly honest, although I had figured this conversation would not be easy and that he would doubt my words, true as they were, hearing him admit that he truly does not believe me, outright, cuts me deep and leaves me feeling utterly raw inside. Part of me had truly hoped — however naively — that since he loved me, he would accept my words point blank and that would be the end of this nightmare.
"I know, Yuusuke," I assure him in my best understanding voice, though to say as much feels like I am cutting a piece of myself away. "I understand that after what you saw, it is hard to accept my words for what they are," I add, alluding to the fact that I accepted and had expected his conclusions.
"You know, Kurama," he tells me then, almost candidly, except that I know the nuances of his voice well enough to know he is only attempting to mask the pain, "I know how you felt about Hiei…"
This takes me aback, and I reel at the blatant accusation in his tone. But before I can get the words out to deny it, he continues on.
"—Not unlike how I felt about Keiko — feel, really, but you know that —" he adds as an afterthought, before continuing, "I guess… I guess the only difference in our circumstances—," and here he swallows hard, "—is that Keiko left and can't come back and Hiei… well…"
"Wait, wait," I cut in finally, managing to find my voice after a long moment of stunned disbelief. "How can you even suggest that, Yuusuke? After all of this—" I wave a hand in front of me, suddenly angry. "How can you think that after everything we have both been though, that I could still feel that way towards him?" I am pleased that at saying 'him' in allusion to Hiei, my voice takes on a note of anger.
Good.
"Kurama," he tells me then, and there is a sigh in my name that sounds remarkably calm, and almost demeaning. "It's okay. D'you think I wouldn't do the same if Keiko were still here?"
And this, more than anything else he has said to me, stings.
More than stings, my conscience admits, grudgingly. Utterly shatters me, is more like it.
"That is… different," I assure him, my voice catching only slightly as I say the words. "You did not have a choice in letting go — I did."
"Doesn't matter," he tells me, quietly, and there is finality in the words — in his tone overall — that sends a chill racing down my spine and elicits a shudder from me.
When his fist closes around the handgun, up until now nearly discarded and forgotten in his motionless hands, a breath catches in my throat and regardless of whether he wants my touch I reach out a hand and lace it over the top of his, to still his hand. I feel a tremor run through him from the contact but I ignore it in light of the sudden change in circumstance.
"Yuusuke," I warn, fear warming his name as it leaves my lips, "Don't. You know this is not the answer — if you would just listen — if we could just talk—!" I plead, my hand clenching around his.
But he tugs his hand harshly and even with my hand clenched around his, physically he is more powerful than I am and the effort on my part is wasted as he struggles to bring the muzzle to his head. "I'm sorry, man," he tells me, shutting me out effectively by not even acknowledging me by name as he twists the metal deathtrap in his hand.
Acknowledging that his physical ability and power surpasses mine I finally bring my second hand to the weapon hoping that, despite my physical disadvantage, two arms will outdo his one. "Yuusuke, please," I grit out between clenched teeth as I struggle against him for control of the firearm, managing to pry the thing down from his head a bit and at least force the muzzled away from anything that, if shot, would result in immediate death. This, if not as effective as wrestling the gun away altogether, was better than nothing. I would rather have him injured than dead, I rationalize, as I struggle against him trying to point the thing back at his skull.
"Kurama, I just—" and the voice is strangled, full of the strain of fighting against me as we grapple for the pistol in his hand — grapple for his bid on life.
Two-to-one odds that his morality won't pay out, this time, I realize, knowing that if he succeeds, Koenma will not give him another chance, seeing as he has already had more than the average human.
"No, Yuusuke," I tell him, heaving a breath before finishing, "No, because I owe it to you to explain this—"
"It's not necessary, man," he refuses stubbornly, "I understand. Hiei—"
"—Is a bastard," I finish, adding, "and you are the man I love—"
And all of a sudden a creaking of metal interrupts us and, unexpected as the noise is in the context of our argumentative, raised voices, we both jolt in surprise, and the gun fires off a shot that rips through the air like a crack of thunder in close quarters.
BANG.
And just like that my hands fly from the firearm and I turn to Yuusuke full on, not caring that his eyes are utterly petrified and hardly aware of the resistance he offers up as I all but fall upon him in search of bullet holes and unnecessary bleeding.
It isn't until I here my name called, with so much shock, that I come to my senses and finally stop long enough to look Yuusuke in the eyes. Only then do I realize that he is not even looking at me with those wide, terrified eyes.
He is staring at the door that stands cruelly open, and shows a thankfully vacant picture of the living room. I guess Kuwabara had convinced the others to leave since my disappearance into the bedroom, and no doubt Moriko had taken off with everyone else in pursuit of spending the night with a friend, as Yuusuke had promised she could do.
Thank Inari for that, I breathe in quiet thanks.
But why Yuusuke is staring so unabashedly this way confuses me. No one is here — no one to know of our quarrel, no one to know of this escapade of his (for which I am eternally thankful that Moriko seems to have vanished), and no one to hear the gun go off.
Except…
' And it is then that I see it. What he had been staring at; what my own eyes had probably purposely overlooked out of disillusion or shock, or whatever emotion may have stemmed the lapse in my comprehension of the situation…
"Kurama, I'm sorry…"
And I hear the gun drop from Yuusuke's hand, momentarily stealing him from danger, as it lands with a muffled sort of thud against the comforter. And I hear him take a harsh breath. And I hear my heart, loud in my chest, and I hear the static in my brain and a million other insubstantial things aside.
And I see Hiei, on his hands and knees, painting the pale gray carpet of the bedroom crimson. And his eyes, as stunning as ever, linger on me in wide-eyed surprise and I cannot look away. And then he opens his mouth and I see a word forming on his tongue, but it is lost to a gurgle of frothy blood that spills from his lips.
And I see him fall, in slow motion, to collapse against the floor, a grotesque puppet.
And then I hear Yuusuke say something that sounds vaguely apologetic and I feel his arms embrace me hesitantly and feel his head come to rest against my shoulder. I feel shaking — but if it comes from me or him or the both of us, I am beyond knowing.
And I do not know how to feel.
There is horror at the sight before me. Yet, there is peace in the arms around me.
There is sadness in the picture painted forever in my mind, burned onto the back of my eyelids, and that I know will be the source of countless nightmares to come. Yet there is unimaginable joy in knowing that if I fall apart, it will be in the arms of someone capable of putting me back together.
There is guilt that comes from unrequited love and guilt from love borne of second-handed natures. But there is also acceptance of the fact that not all things are meant to be, and second-handed or not, nothing must be perfect to be genuine.
There is a sense of unimaginable loss. But there is a sense of insurmountable gain as well.
There is an end.
There is a beginning.
And Fate, it seems has come full-circle, leaving me just where I was some fifteen years ago when he walked away. Because even today, I was not the one to make the call, ultimately.
Hiei left me then, and he left me again today
Whether it is merely coincidental that it should end like this — and I should take comfort in knowing that this time around at least I have Yuusuke — or truly Fated, I do not know.
But it is painfully ironic.
You see, fifteen years ago Hiei had told me "Kurama, we aren't meant to be together," and although I had sensed the lie even then for what it had turned out to be, he must surely have known something I had not when he had said it.
Because, obviously, we were not meant to be.
If Fate was any indication.
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Author's Ramblings: So, this is the final chapter of X Amount of Words. It was going to be two, ending initially at the BANG and leaving room for a nice little cliff hanger. BUT, I didn't figure I'd have it in me to make the short bit after that into a fullblown chapter, so I just smooshed it all together, leaving this as the end result. I know the ending is rather abrupt and I know that they are rather out-of-character. I didn't know how to get the story to go where I wanted it to without it happening. And as much as that saddens me, I guess that's life. But please tell me what YOU think in light of their characterization, plot, abruptness, the ending over all...... anything. Honest opinions are greatly appreciated.
So leave them at the door, name intact?
Blackrose