I'm admittedly stretching the 'interconnected' part on this one, but I hope you'll be able to see a general theme.
I'd also like to take this moment to thank my readers and reviewers. You make it worth writing. Thank you all so much!
300
Yukina sometimes wondered if he regretted it. Fourteen, she thought, is awfully young for anyone, human, or not, to decide what they want, forever and ever.
Not that he had ever showed any signs of regret. Far from it. Forty years in, as she was beginning to be mistaken for his daughter, he brought home flowers weekly, wrote poetry, still told her every day that he was the luckiest person in the world. Yukina happily accepted them, as she had accepted the ring thirty-five years ago.
He accepted much from her as well, though Yukina thought often that it was an unfair bargain. He gave her flowers and rings, and she gave him a childless existence and occasionally frostbite in the moments between wake and sleep, when she wasn't sure where she was, or why a man would be so close. He accepted strange behavior in the winter and stranger in the summer. He accepted her not always being able to live up to his ideals, even his honor code. He gave her all of himself, and accepted all of her.
He would argue with her if she brought that up, though. He would tell her that she gave him joy, and hope, and strength. Flowers, he would say, could never ever match up to that.
She did love him, and she told him that. She didn't know if it matched up, though. She wasn't sure that she knew how to love the way he knew how to love. For him, though, for the man that had rescued her and loved her and accepted her thoroughly, she would try. She couldn't think of anyone more worthy.
Yukina would smile as her thoughts went on that direction. She would tell him, someday, that she was so much luckier than he was.
200
Mukuro smirked down at her heir, currently laid out across the floor. He was cocky, and brash, and rude, the little fuck. She liked that. It's what made him stand out. Hiei never pretended to be humble. It was a nice little change of pace. Not that everyone else bowed and scraped before her, no, but Hiei walked right in when she summoned him, thinking he was her equal. She tried to cure him of that, but even when the kid broke, he was damned well determined to take out everything with him. He earned his spot, she thought as he climbed up, ready, eager to go again. She knew for a fact that she had broken a few ribs with that last hit. Most would have stayed down. Most would've also acknowledge her superiority. Hiei was far from most.
He wiped a bit of blood trickling from his mouth, and she knew if she blinked she would miss him coming at her. She caught him coming in from the side, and blocked his hit deftly, but he was nearly as good as she was these days. She liked that too.
She was gonna keep him around for a while.
100
Most people thought of the wind as intangible, untouchable, but Jin thought that if that were true, if you couldn't touch it, it wouldn't be real, and Jin knew the wind was real like he knew that he hated the feel of the floor. He could touch it. There was a storm brewing and Jin could feel it in his bones, in his fingers and toes. Soon the wind would be whipping up stronger than trees and even buildings. . He would give anything to be able to fight Yusuke through the rain and in the wind, right at this moment.