2197
(Fifty-four years later.)
Hiei woke up, muscles taut, sword hilt heavy and solid and real in his hands. Someone – the Enemy – was in the room with him, threatening and looming and going-going-going to kill him.
He held still as long as he could, daring the other presence to move first, and when he ran out of patience (it wasn't fear that pinned him down) he slashed at it.
The sword pass through nothing and he tried to take stock of the situation, decide if he should call Kurama and Kuwabara and Yusuke back here because obviously there was another enemy –
And then it came flooding back, the two hundred years of monotony and Kurama laying shriveled on the bed and the bioengineered lilies at Kuwabara's funeral and the way she looked at him and said that he couldn't go on alone for ever…
There was a message waiting for her when she came home. That was unusual enough; hardly anyone left messages anymore, instead just logging with the Ethernet that they had tried to contact her and waiting for a return attempt.
But someone had recorded and sent her a five second videolink message, as though five seconds were enough to communicate anything.
She set down her ultrathin carrier bag and touched a control built into her purple, velvety pants, where her fingers fell against her thigh comfortably.
The viewscreen – it covered one whole wall of her bedroom – faded into view, and she missed the first second as she was raising her head.
The message played out the full five seconds, and ended.
She played it again.
Hiei was on the screen, as though he was standing in the room with her. Holo-imaging made the two-dimensional picture layered, gave it depth. She nearly tried to reach out to touch him.
The next time she played it, she took in details. His knuckles were worn and bloody, his skin was pale, his clothes were torn in places and stained in others.
The next time, she saw other things, about the room he was in. Everything was broken and smashed, with chips and pieces fetching up against the walls as detritus like it was a junkyard. There was blood on the far wall, and spiral cracks around a point of impact in the white enhanced-plastic shell over the wires underneath. The right wall had a hole in it, because he'd apparently gone for that one first.
And, for the entire five seconds, Hiei stood at the edge of the second dimension and tried to speak. But he was breathing too hard, and at about the halfway point he rubbed at his temple as though in huge pain. And then he just put his arm forward, reaching for her, and clicked the button to turn off his own viewscreen.
That was the entire message.
Yukina traced the origin and was on the next departing transport.
Hiei hadn't expected her to come so quickly. He wasn't an idiot, he knew enough that she would come when she saw the message he had drafted in his head and then given up on at the last minute.
He just hadn't expected to come through his front door to see her looking out the layered, reinforced glass that looked out over Martian dirt and more sand-blasted colonial domiciles. Her hand was pressed against the window, and her eyes seemed more focused on her fingers.
Hiei abruptly remembered that, even after what had happened so long before, he hadn't bothered to take her off the family register of his 'descendants' and identities.
She said, "What's wrong?"
He ignored the question and worked around her in the tight quarters. His pen-sized computer, which folded out and created projected the image of the screen inside a square area was set down near the electrical charger. It kept a constant field of energy, and spontaneously charged products in reach.
Yukina turned away from the orange-gray window, and watched him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. "What made you break?"
"I didn't," he said curtly.
"You did." She came closer and set one hand on his cheek – in this society, when was the last time anyone had simply touched him for no other reason? "Hiei. You've been bending and bending, and now you've broken. I can tell."
Hiei closed his eyes, and opened then, and leaned into her hand. "I had a dream."
She huffed, maybe in laughter, and hugged his shoulders. She pressed their cheeks together and didn't look at his face as she dug deeper. "What was it about?"
He breathed out, focused on the window, pretended that she wasn't there. "An Enemy. A battle. They were all down the corridor, I could call them back if the sword broke or the Enemy wouldn't fall. And then."
"And then you remembered," she finished for him. "That they're all dead."
He flexed into her, and chose to believe that it wasn't a flinch. "Yes."
He felt her skin rub up and down, and when she moved back, his cheek was wet and he knew very well that he hadn't sunk so low.
She wiped her eyes, and little jewels tinkled prettily on the ground. And then she smiled brightly at him, and shrugged. "What do we do now?"
He turned to the side. "What we've always been doing."
Her voice was quiet, and sure, and just as deadly serious as Hiei had ever been in his long life. "We can't anymore. You know that."
"I know it as well as you do," Hiei admitted, and wandered into his bedroom. He heard her in the doorway – needed to stop thinking of it as a doorway, actual doors inside homes had been phased out as unnecessary material in the weathered little colony – and didn't hesitate before throwing clothes and other random, useless possessions in a bag.
He asked, "You packed clothes, didn't you?"
"Yes," she said, freely, taking this in stride. "Not all of them. Not nearly. But enough to tide for a few weeks."
"Fine. That's enough." He stepped back from the wall panel, now emptied. "Put them away, then. You'll stay here until I can move my finances around."
She came in, nearly crowding him out of the small, damaged room. As she worked, she asked, "What are you planning?"
"A ship. A transport. We'll be transient, we'll be away from prying humans."
She laughed, and it unknotted the tightness between his shoulders. "You're joking. What do you know about running a transport ship?"
He glared, daring her. "I read extensively."
"There's a wide gap between reading and practical application," she laughed, 'accidentally' bumping him with her elbow.
He said archly, "I know practically everything about them."
She giggled again. And then she dropped her arms to her side and said thoughtfully, "I'll sell my home on Earth."
He blinked at her. "What? No. You don't need to do that."
"I'll make another home, Hiei," she said softly to herself. "This ship. It will be home."
"Yukina," he said sternly. "You don't need to do that. You raised children in that house."
"I did," she said dumbly. And then she beamed at him, as though it was the grandest joke she'd ever heard. "I did! Oh. Whatever was I thinking?" She grabbed his hand, and tugged on it until he stood still and looked at her. "Hiei, all my children died." She was still smiling. "And my grandchildren. And my great-grandchildren. I stopped trying to find them after that, stopped explaining myself long before."
Hiei left the room to retrieve the portable screen, and paused at the door. Very seriously, he said, "I will buy it from you, if you're intent on selling it. But if you lost the house forever, you would regret it for a very, very long time."
She smiled at him, and threatened wetness. "Alright. You can have it. What happens to it won't be my business."
Hiei nodded, and went to arrange their future.
Neither of them said that forever was a long time to live with regrets.
