AN:This one is quite a bit more serious in tone. As for the question from my latest lovely reviewer, I very well might expand upon the smutty themes, but I'll be sure to up the rating if the mood strikes. 7.
Her blood was like ink.
He blinked, hoping his eyes were merely deceiving him, but alas. It was still there, running in thick, slow rivers along her skin.
It made its trail slow as molasses, spreading its fingers like an opening palm as it ran from an abyssal hole from her neck, struggling to ascend the miniature mountain of her collarbone.
The final light of the day was fading, and the evening sky began to dress herself in mourning colors; indigo so dark it was almost black, deep purples like the bruises forming underneath Botan's eyes, and tiny specks of diamond-starlight adorned her hair just like the tears that slid down Botan's cheeks. All things considered, Botan was still beautiful; in some ways, more beautiful in her sadness. And yet his eyes remained fixed on that ghastly, red parody of a smile on her neck, like a lopsided smile of a child putting on her mother's lipstick. Only the lipstick was moving and Hiei had to remind himself it was not something so innocent at all, but blood, blood, so much blood.
A tiny movement drew his gaze above all that life that was death, and thick, kohl butterfly-lashes fluttered against the tops of Botan's cheeks as they struggled to open. Hiei moved closer with the intention of telling her to stop, although he didn't know why, not that any sound moved past the lump he found forming in his throat anyway.
Finally her eyes opened, and they were bright - so bright - the last light of her life dancing upon the pink pools of her irises to an unheard music. A tiny noise escaped her throat; so fragile and so unlike Botan, somehow reminding him of fallen feathers, as her hand shakily raises to grope at her wound.
Her blood was like an ink that told centuries' worth of stories of life, death, and rebirth as it spilled out from her body. It wrote her story for all to read upon the pale canvas of skin and belatedly he realized just how much she carried within her. How much he never allowed her to show him, how much he never let himself glimpse, what would now be lost to him forever.
How had he allowed this to happen? He had never been so careless in his life. Her presence had been a constant in the back of his mind as he fought off their attackers single-handedly, and everything seemed perfectly fine as the battle was wrapping up.
But then...faster than Hiei could have expected from such a low-class demon, he was there. Blade at her throat, death cry spilling from her lips, ink flowing down her perfect parchment-skin. In his shock, the rogue was allowed to escape.
Now he sank down to his knees and cradled her head in his lap, feeling bitter at the fact he never would have allowed such a tender act to happen between them before now. Before she was on the verge of death.
As her held her close and gently like a fragile doll, he felt his body becoming nothing more than a receptacle for the emotions he could feel rushing through his veins- a molten hot river that threatened to break the dam.
He had to shut his eyes, then, as the feather-light whispers of his name floated past his ears. Had to clench them tight as he bit down so hard on lips lest he do the unthinkable -
"Mister Hiei. Why are you crying?"
A skittish touch ghosts on his cheeks and was gone before the mind could register it. The first thing Hiei saw as he awoke was blue - and his heart spasmed painfully against his ribcage - before he could take note that this blue was lighter, icier. Yukina. There was a single drop of salted liquid pooled upon her finger and she examined it with the intensity and passion of a child.
Not far off from where the two siblings sat were the reikai tantei - all of them - the ferry girl with her face turned up towards the summer sun and looking impossibly, radiantly, alive.
"It was just a dream." Hiei answers too flatly.
One I'll never let be written into reality.