A/N: Thanks to everyone reading, especially those who took a moment to review!
Anomura the Padowan: I'm so glad you liked this, and that you remember it from before. Hope it'll live up to your expectations.
lunar-eclipse24: Don't feel bad about the constructive criticism. I'm so glad I was able to get rid of some of the stupid typos I'd made. I'd feel kind of silly if I went back after a month or so and realized I'd gotten some basic grammar wrong and left it for the world to see. And thanks for the Kuwa and Keiko comments. I love Kuwa, even if he doesn't really fit in my love-triangle-esque stories, so I try to fit him in how I can.
MAEL: Wow, crazy-good memory! I'd actually lost the typed version of some of these chaps I had the first time around due to a corrupted floppy disk, so I had to do some guesswork when I retyped them. I still had the handwritten version but it wasn't all edited.
Snowkitten: Thanks for the glowing review. Hope to keep hearing from you!
Disclaimer: Eh, too sleepy to think up something cute. Read previous chapters.
Chapter 2
Kurama's POV
Only nine days since the fateful end of the Dark Tournament, and already Koenma is announcing his need for our assistance again. For Kuwabara, I would assume, the summons is only a request, but Hiei, Yusuke, and I are duty-bound to attend the Prince's meeting. My sentence still has not been served for stealing the Mirror of Forlorn Hope, and I accept my punishment without argument.
Hiei, on the other hand, is more difficult to convince.
"I went through the foolish Tournament for that child, didn't I? I battled the Saint Beasts at his order and didn't let his detective die. I've more than made up for taking one sword." He'd been sleeping fitfully when I found him; probably he has spent the past few days training to the point of exhaustion. He'd been fairly unhappy when I'd woken him and has been complaining with every breath he's taken since.
I smile patiently, crossing my arms and replying to my fuming friend, "Thievery from Enma's vaults usually carries a much higher punishment than this. Trust me, I've been sentenced to his dungeons more than once. We should feel lucky."
"You always found a way to escape the dungeons." Hiei's crimson gaze turns to me accusingly, although his predicament is all my fault for not finding a way to escape Koenma's parole.
"Don't complain so much, Hiei. I rather enjoy helping to save the world on occasion. And you have to admit, the battles are at least entertaining."
Even this does not improve his sour mood. His smirk is a bitter one before he responds, "Are you sure you're not just 'addicted to pain'?"
My own smile fades, and an unexpected chill rushes over me.
"Don't quote him, Hiei."
"You don't be so sensitive, fox," he replies in a tight, sarcastic voice that contradicts his blithe words. "You killed him, after all."
"I'm serious." Brushing from my eyes the bangs that the heavy rain has matted down, I meet my partner's eyes and repeat coldly, "Don't."
He stops walking, and I do as well, though I'd prefer to reach Yusuke's apartment, where Koenma told us all to meet, as quickly as possible to get out of the rain. I should have brought an umbrella with me to school this morning; my roses told me it was going to be wet.
"You're actually still afraid of him." Hiei's voice is more angry than incredulous. I avert my gaze, hating as always the feeling of weakness that thoughts of Karasu always leave me with.
"It's been two days more than a week since I almost died fighting him." My throat tightens at the memory of those fiery explosions tearing me apart piece by piece, and my voice shakes slightly despite an attempt to remain calm. I had never in a thousand years, not even when I'd dangled on the edge of death seventeen years ago, experienced a pain even remotely like that which I had felt during my final match of the Dark Tournament. I've had a nightmare about it every time I've attempted to sleep since, and even in the waking world that torment and the creature that dealt it have never been far from my mind.
Suffice it to say that I've spent most of my nights lying awake.
"If someone became that obsessed with you… to the point where he wanted to kill you just so you could remain in his mind 'perfect' forever… his own and no one else's… then I would like to see you brush aside your fear so quickly."
Hiei's eyes show regret briefly, but it disappears the moment his mouth opens, and the ease with which he speaks then is infuriating.
"But you were Yoko for a thousand years. Aren't you used to followers with that kind of obsession?"
My eyes darken. His bad mood will only get him off for so much. It's true that Yoko did have a following. In that time I was hunted to be a trophy for many. Some valued my power, some my unparalleled skill as a thief, but in many cases I was sought after for the simple reason of my beauty. In all those thousand years, though, in all those confrontations with half-mad men and women, absolutely none ever managed to make Yoko feel as powerless as Karasu had in those few days I knew him.
Perhaps Shuichi is just that much weaker than his demon counterpart.
Turning, I begin to walk again- more quickly now- towards Yusuke's apartment building.
"Then it's too bad that I'm not still Yoko."
.-
"Hey guys! Come on in." Botan greets us at the door, voice as usual unbelievably perky as she ushers us inside. "Goodness, you two are soaked. That's the great thing about being able to become non-corporeal whenever you want, you know. The rain just goes right through and I'm well… right as rain!" She laughs cheerily and I smile, more in awe at her unending supply of good humor than at her pun.
Hiei stalks past us without a word, as I pause to remove my muddy shoes. I place them next to Kuwabara's damp sneakers and Yusuke's, which seem soaked through, and then make my way into the living room after Botan.
Kuwabara is already arguing with Hiei- something about how rude he is not to have taken his boots off at the door like everyone else- and Koenma is in his teenage farm, sipping what looks like soda from a wine goblet. Yusuke is just entering the room from the other door, changed from his school uniform (I assume he'd been in school, but of course I can't be sure) into a black tank top and a pair of dark blue jeans. He's rubbing his hair dry with a large white towel.
"Hey, you're here." The detective holds Hiei's gaze for what feels like an unnatural amount of time. Then he turns to me, hands freezing his assault on his hair as he looks me over almost curiously. "Wow…" The word comes out awkwardly, as though had he choked upon it, and is followed quickly by a cough. He clears his throat before speaking again, more clearly his time. "You two look half-drowned."
Hiei smirks, but the amusement doesn't carry to his eyes, which are peering at Yusuke with an unwarranted coldness I have come to expect from him in the past week.
"Yes, one tends to become wet when walking in the rain."
"Well, I don't want you people soaking my house. My mom just had the mob remodel our floor." Yusuke smirks as half the room does a double-take. Kuwabara jumps, and then peers at the floor under him with wide eyes. After several seconds pass and the group has sufficiently recovered, Yusuke looks back at Hiei and continues, "Come on, I'll let you borrow something."
As expected, my partner shakes his head.
"I dry quickly," he replies, and begins to heat his body so that Kuwabara jumps for the second time in thirty seconds, shouting angrily.
"Fine." Yusuke shrugs. "But if you leave huge puddles you're mopping them up." A short pause- Yusuke seems a bit dazed this afternoon… I wonder if he's not feeling well?- and then he turns to me. "Kurama?"
"We do actually have a mission here," Koenma complains, and his spirit detective shoots him a quick, angry glare.
"Lighten up. This'll take five minutes. Come on," he adds to me, disappearing back through the living room door to what I can assume would be his bedroom.
"Kurama."
Hiei's soft voice catches my attention, and I turn to look at him. He holds my gaze for a moment before looking down, not speaking. I shake my head, and begin to follow Yusuke, hating the clenched, sad feeling in my chest. After all, this is Hiei I'm talking about. What had I expected from him? An apology?
.-
"Here." As I peel my soggy off-purple uniform top off my shoulders Yusuke steps away from his closet holding a jade button-down shirt I've never seen him in before. "Wear this." He turns to me, and pauses as I pick up a towel to dry myself off. He frowns at me as I wipe my arms dry, and then, with a strange, half-puzzled look on his face, he steps forward.
"I'll get your back." He takes the towel from me without waiting for my consent. "It's hard to reach."
I murmur a soft "thank you," but he's already at work, rubbing the soft fabric of the towel with surprisingly gentle strokes across my bare back.
It only takes moments, but instead of moving away he begins to towel my hair, combing through it with the finger of one hand and patting it with the towel in the other.
"You shouldn't walk around without an umbrella like that," he chides me softly, sounding quite unlike himself. "It's going to take hours for this to dry."
I smile at his concern, replying, "I'm used to it, Yusuke. I do live with it day-to-day, after all." The towel has fallen from his hands, and he's now combing both hands through my mane of tresses, brushing over the nape of my neck in a hauntingly familiar way.
"You'll ruin it if you don't take better care of it, Kurama."
Why does he sound so much like…?
The fingers move to my left shoulder blade, and I tense as his warm touch continues down my back towards my waist.
What is he…?
"Yup," he announces suddenly, stepping back and breaking the room's building tension. "You're all dry. Go ahead and change. I think we've bugged Koenma enough by taking this long."
Leaning over, he grabs the towel and strides out of the room, seeming much more his usual self. After he swings the door shut behind him I reach to my pants and unbutton them, sliding off the clingy fabric and reaching for the black cotton replacement Yusuke had laid on the bed for me.
I can't believe that my heart is almost racing from something as simple, as silly, as that. For a second I had almost been picturing Karasu standing behind me instead of my friend. Simply because Yusuke had been standing behind me, had touched and commented on my hair, I had been literally frozen with fear until he'd stepped away.
My fear of Karasu is not fading, though he is long gone. It's even beginning to impair my judgment.
Grabbing the green shirt, which, I realize as I touch it, seems to be made of a fine silk I wouldn't expect Yusuke to own- I hastily button the lower four with trembling fingers and then give up on the rest. Taking a breath to compose myself, I sort my school uniform on the hangers I'd taken my current outfit from and leave them on his closet doorknob to dry. Then I step back out into the living room, where the other five are waiting.
Koenma has already begun to talk by the time I walk into the room, patience clearly having reached its end once Yusuke rejoined the group.
"…proven yourselves recently in the Tournament, but I don't want you getting big heads about it. There are still plenty of dangerous demons out there. Father's allowed me to try and handle this without his help, but we only have five days or he swears he'll sink Japan like Atlantis to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands."
Moving to stand next to the couch arm Hiei is perched upon I use my weak telepathy to ask him without interrupting the Prince.
So, what's the mission?
Hiei's gaze flickers to me for only an instant as he responds.
Hn, the child hasn't even gotten to that yet. He's just been wasting breath warning us how important this will be.
I nod, tuning back in to the verbal conversation in time to hear Koenma say, "…retrieve the three stones that were stolen. It is imperative that you have them in under a week."
"You could try being a teensy bit more descriptive, you know. Fill in the whos, whats, wheres… all that fun stuff."
Yusuke grabs the cup Koenma had been drinking from earlier as he speaks, and takes a quick gulp, making everyone in the room wince and Kuwabara exclaim, "Eww, Urameshi. That's unsanitary."
The detective shrugs, setting the cup down. "I was thirsty. Anyway, it's not like a god's gonna have diseases or anything."
"Not normally," Koenma agrees, now frowning at his drink suspiciously, "but I don't want to acquire any from you."
"Aww, come on, pacifier breath. Do I look sick to you?"
"You always look sick to me."
Watching my friends' easy banter I find myself calming just a bit, the nervous clench of my chest unknotting. Yusuke… it's only Yusuke; one of the people I know and trust most in the world. Yusuke, who has proven his willingness to die for me on numerous occasions. Shuichi Minamino might not be so accustomed to taking lives or obsessive admirers as Yoko was, but that is no excuse for this haunted feeling I have, this morbid belief that Karasu may not be gone after all.
He is gone. I killed him.
There is nothing else to it than that.
TBC
A/N: Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you can now take a moment to send a short review, whether it's praise, criticism, or both. The next chap should be up in about a week.
OH! And if anyone has a copy of "Bleeding Hearts" I would be forever indebted if you sent it to me. The corroded disk that was holding a few of these chapters was also holding my only typed copy of that, and it'll be hell trying to retype it all the way I had it before. Please let me know if you have it!!
