Sakyo expected to be protected by Toguro. Kurama expected Toguro to protect him, too. When the Gandaran soldiers swarmed the party, Sakyo and Kurama were surprised together.

"All I ever really wanted was a clean death, Sakyo," Toguro told his employer. "I have no true loyalties to you—if I did, they were severed somewhere along the way. Working for you is no longer amusing to me. It's time to dissolve my employment."

Kurama enjoyed the sight of a Sakyo so deconstructed, his hair in disarray, his suit in tatters.

Sakyo had a difficult death; Yomi kept him alive for a week before he died.

Karasu's death was a nuisance. The man's heart was infected with a parasite, sapping him of strength and weakening him. Kurama took some painstaking measures to recreate the brothel Karasu was held in as a boy. Each rock, each sign, was the same.

His goal was to drive him mad, and keep him that way for a long time, but Karasu picked the lock on one shackle, and ripped out his own heart before he'd been fucked, in Kurama's estimation, near enough.

Kurama wasn't satisfied with that one, not one bit.

Elder was still screaming in horror under the Sin Tree, walled up inside a cave. A rockslide buried him in there—forever.

Bui was buried too, in a cave in the same mountain, warded, with a single fork to dig himself out. But Kurama had no doubt he'd manage it, and he did escape after a scant day.

Yomi gave Kurama leave to burn down the mansion. Watching it, a strange sense of peace fell over him, of finality. Sakyo's associates screamed into a night lit by the massive blaze, but they couldn't escape. They were cooked alive, down to the man—nothing but charred bones in the ashes of the building.

Finally, finally, Kurama was able to ask Botan about his mother.

Koenma had kept her soul, as it turned out, as he had Genkai's. The conversation between mother and son was punctuated by tears on both ends. When Kurama gave her up to go to the lands of the dead, she held his chin in her ghostly hand, and told him to live.

He said goodbye to Hiei, Kuwabara, and Yusuke. Yusuke was the hardest. "I can't believe that it's over," he said, staring into the long bridge between Reikai and the lands of the dead.

"I never saw mother's body," Kurama replied. "But Keiko buried yours, Yusuke."

"I know," Yusuke said, and pressed the sockets of his eyes.

After all the visions he'd had of Yusuke in the mansion, the real boy was shorter and more plain than he remembered. Kurama pressed his hands, and went back to the Makai.

And then there was only one loose end to tie. Yomi dragged him out of the dungeons himself, tossed him at Kurama's feet.

Kurama spoke first.

"Do you know, Toguro? I could have lived my whole life without seeing this, without feeling this. I could have gone on with Yuusuke, fallen in love, kept my ridiculous preoccupations with my own beauty, invulnerability and intelligence. I could have done it, and been happy. Now—" Kurama paused, turning away from Toguro slightly. "Now I don't think I will ever be happy."

Toguro looked up at him, saying nothing, betraying none of the emotions that were thrashing just below the surface.

"But I can't kill you, and I won't watch you killed. That is the last humanity left in me. You won't seek revenge, I'm sure of that. Pursue your dreams of power, Toguro—but indulge them far away from me."

With that, Kurama turned, and walked, his face a mask, to Yomi's raised arm. Yomi placed it on his waist, and guided him inside with gentle ushering strength that nonetheless reminded Toguro of a prized possession finally acquired, and not a lover.

Toguro lowered his head, and sighed. Then, he got up, brushed himself off, and turned to walk away.

"Boy—" he called, on a sudden impulse.

There was no response. He walked out of the city, through the mountains, and the only thing on his mind was when he would next see the sun.

"I think that at last you would understand.

There would be nothing more to say.

You would love me because I should have strangled you

And because of my infamy;

And I should love you the more because I mangled you

And because you were no longer beautiful

To anyone but me."

T. S. Eliot, from "The Love Song of St. Sebastian," in Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909-17

Fin.

End Note: I hope you found some merit in this fic.

Thanks to Blue, Thoth Moon, and Fawx, and everyone who encouraged me or beta'd for me or both around this venture. And thank you, for reading this story to the end.