Chapter Four

Yusuke woke, much later, to the end of a blistering argument. He couldn't really tell what it was about, but Hiei was shouting. Hiei had a powerful voice even when he wasn't yelling, so sleep was steadily ceasing to be an option. Yusuke tried to cling to it anyway.

"Am I so distracting to you?" Kurama's voice, quieter but laced with venom, managed to cut into Yusuke's consciousness clearly in the wake of Hiei's bellowing. "That this is the best you can manage?"

The contempt in his tone was unmistakable. Yusuke wished there was some way he could shut his ears as well as his eyes.

"Distracting?" Hiei again, thundering. "Do you realize how little you mean to me?"

Laughter--meant to mock, obviously forced. "If that were true, why would you scream at me? You, who don't consider most people worth your very breath? I know what I meant to you once."

Hiei left the cave. Swiftly, and without comment. Yusuke still had his eyes shut, but he knew Hiei had left because the temperature dropped a good ten degrees. He waited to see if Kurama would follow him, but all he heard was a shaky exhalation of breath, and nothing further. He realized he wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep. "Gotta say," he muttered without opening his eyes, "you two are doing a stellar job of putting aside your differences for my sake. I appreciate it."

Kurama exhaled heavily again. "I apologize," he said. "You were not meant to hear that."

"Couldn't exactly help it." Yusuke chanced opening his eyes, and immediately regretted it. He screwed them tightly shut again, but the light had already pierced his skull and was now buzzing inside his brain. "Kurama? Can you turn those damn plants off?"

He heard Kurama moving quietly around the cave, no doubt gathering up the glowing plants and restoring them to seeds. He thought about saying something along the lines of sorry about trying to kill you back there, but didn't really have the energy. He needed snow too badly.

"Headache?" Kurama inquired, voice soft.

Headache? Dwarves were hammering inside his head, trying to excavate his skull. Also, his skin was prickling and tensing like it was going to crawl right off him, and there was something wrong with his stomach--he wasn't sure if he was hungry or if he needed to throw up. "When does it get better?" he managed.

Kurama hesitated slightly before replying. "I'm afraid it gets a lot worse than this before it gets better."

"The hell."

"I'm not going to lie to you."

Yusuke could tell from the quality of darkness behind his eyes that the plants were all gone; he risked opening his eyes again, just to slits. The only light now was the faint twilight seeping in from the cave's entrance; when Yusuke turned to look at it he could see Hiei's outline clearly defined, not too far away. Back turned. Yusuke noticed Kurama was also watching Hiei. After a moment, he sighed. "I suppose I should apologize."

He sounded extremely reluctant, but Yusuke only said, "Probably." Because he wanted badly to know what they were fighting about. Part of it was sheer curiosity--he'd never known the cause of the sudden anger that had blazed to life between them a decade ago. He didn't think anybody really did, except for the two of them. But it was more than curiosity that motivated him--it shamed him to admit it, but he needed to know how to drive the wedge deeper between the two, make the arguments worse. He knew that the only way he was going to escape from here was to break their resolve to work together. And he would do far more than play two friends against each other, if it meant the return of snow.

Obviously. He'd tried to shoot Kurama.

Kurama had already moved outside, while Yusuke'd been thinking. Yusuke dragged himself forward, one painful movement at a time, knowing that walking would end in falling. He crouched in the shadow of the entrance and waited there, easily able to see and hear them both, for something to happen. Kurama was standing a few feet behind Hiei, watching him; Hiei must have been aware of his presence, but hadn't moved, back still presented to him.

Finally, Kurama spoke, his tone flat. "I apologize, Hiei. I have not been acting like we both agreed to, to put it aside until Yusuke's well. It was wrong of me to bring up the past."

Silence. For all Hiei reacted, Kurama's voice could have been the wind. "Do you accept the apology?" Kurama asked tensely, the edge of the fight still in his voice, ready to flare to life again. It would be so easy, to make them fight.

Hiei spoke, slowly and deliberately, without moving. "If it wasn't for Yusuke, I would kill you."

Yusuke felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him. All the thoughts of trying to make their fighting worse suddenly ceased--because this was not a sentence Yusuke ever wanted to hear from one of his friends. And that it could be Hiei speaking to Kurama was so unbearably wrong--

Kurama replied with the same slow deliberation, his voice menacing and amused. "You would try."

After a short pause, Hiei turned to face him, and there was a ghost of an old smile on his face. It was clear that Kurama's statement had--somehow--ended his anger. "Apology accepted."

Kurama returned the smile, the same way--just a hint, a bare suggestion of a real smile. He stepped forward and seemed about to say something else, but no words came. Instead he offered his hand to Hiei. Hiei hesitated before touching it like he expected it to burn him, the briefest of all possible handshakes. They both sprung apart from the contact quickly, actually moved away from each other. "I'm going out," Kurama said, turning away.

"What?" Hiei said flatly.

"You know." Kurama gestured towards the cave. "He'll die at this rate. I've got to get the first dose." And then he turned and was gone, moving quietly, his hair a brief beacon before he was completely swallowed by the forest.

Hiei stared in disbelief for a moment. "So of course I get to babysit," he muttered. Then he turned back to the cave, saw Yusuke curled up at the entrance. "What are you listening to?" he asked bluntly.

"A couple of jerks fighting about nothing, I guess."

"Don't make me kick that drug-addled head."

"What's Kurama going after?"

"Snow."

Yusuke must have looked well and truly shocked, because Hiei acquired an expression Yusuke was familiar with--the one that said he couldn't believe the rest of the world was actually this stupid. "You've been using so much that your body will shut down without it. You're going to have to taper off. And no, it won't be enough to make you high or let you forget, so don't get your hopes up. And now I have to babysit and make sure you don't try to follow Kurama while he's off playing fetch. Have I mentioned how much I loathe this entire operation?"

"Then why'd you do it?"

"Because of who you used to be." Hiei walked back into the cave.

Yusuke followed, still dragging himself instead of trying to get to his feet. "Well, hell, what about the person you used to be?" he called after Hiei. "Is this supposed to make him come back, as well?"

"What person?"

"The one I knew. The guy who pretended not to give a damn but always showed up in the nick of time to save my ass."

Hiei raised an eyebrow and spoke mildly. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Yusuke wasn't mollified. He had a bone to pick with Hiei, one that had been stewing for a decade or so. Now that Kurama was gone at the constant quarreling between him and Hiei had ceased, it was Yusuke's turn. "You weren't there when it happened," he said bluntly.

"Kurama already went over this. Whatever's happened in the past, we're here now."

"That isn't going to cut it, Hiei. You've been acting like such an ass. I mean, first of all, you just up and abandoned the border patrol."

"That was a long time ago."

"Yeah, well, I haven't had the opportunity to yell at you since then. What is it--just because Kurama wasn't your pal anymore human world suddenly didn't mean a damn thing? I was there, Hiei!"

Hiei's shoulders had tensed up, but he didn't look at Yusuke. He said nothing. "I was there," Yusuke continued, "and Yukina was, too." Now Hiei was positively rigid--as far as Yusuke knew, there'd been no contact between the siblings since their group started its fatal fracturing when Hiei and Kurama split. "And lots of other people I know you give a damn about, even if you pretend not to."

Yusuke's anger was burning itself out, far too quickly for his tastes. He'd always imagined he'd like to have a knock-down, drag-out confrontation with Hiei, but he was in too much pain to manage it. Even his voice was getting tired. "You just abandoned us all, you went straight back to your old habits. You just--you weren't there when it happened," he finished in defeat.

It was a moment before Hiei spoke. When he did, his voice was low and even. "You had your pet fox to see you through it. And as we've both said repeatedly--whatever the errors of the past, we're here now."

"Yeah. Now that I don't need you or want you, you show up. You're great friends."

Hiei looked at him sharply. "You have no idea what's happening to you. You don't even know how often your life has been spared since you came here. I know I've stepped into your fights half a dozen times in the last few years alone, and Kurama says he's done the same. I can't begin to guess how many other people who used to respect you have been saving your life. I spoke to you the first few times I fought for you, but you didn't hear me, didn't remember who I was. You don't remember it now. That's why you've become a slave to snow, Yusuke, it makes you forget. You probably have very few recollections from the last three or four years you've been alive; you've been dying for a long time. I don't think we were a day too soon in doing this. Kurama started suggesting it nearly six months ago."

Stunned with the overload of information--with the sudden altering of his world--Yusuke still managed a defiant, "What took you so long, then?"

"Kurama had to find a way to communicate with me that I didn't immediately dismiss. I destroyed the first messages without opening them, but finally I realized it was about you and agreed to meet him. Then I had to determine if I was able and willing to tolerate his presence long enough to help you. I'll probably end up killing him before this is done."

"That's such bullshit, Hiei." Hiei looked at him with surprise. "The way you say that--everyone can tell you don't mean it. Kurama can tell you don't mean it. You're a terrible liar."

"I can still kick you, you know."

"When will Kurama come back?"

"Several hours. You'll be crawling the walls by then," he noted as an afterthought.

"Great," Yusuke sighed, going boneless against the ground.

"My sentiments exactly," Hiei agreed, going similarly limp against the wall he was sitting by. He sighed, and muttered one last time, "I hate babysitting."