A/N: Okay! Just barely got this out before I have no internet for a week. I've spent a lot of time working on this (really, really difficult) confrontation, and I know you've spent a lot of time waiting to find out WTF happened, so I hope this chapter satisfies.

Chapter Ten

For a moment after Yusuke left there was no movement, no sound--just the echo of his words. At least have the decency to say whatever it is you need to say.

Finally Hiei pulled his katana out of the wall, and slowly resheathed it. Kurama responded by turning deliberately on his heel, crossing his arms, and showing Hiei his back--an indication that he was not prepared to listen to anything Hiei had to say, but also on some level an indicator of trust.

Despite the waves of silent fury pouring off Kurama, Hiei spoke. He spoke very slowly, his words chosen carefully and his tone void of emotion. "I--took advantage of the circumstances to hurt you," he began. "At that moment in time, I wanted to hurt you as much as I h--as much as I possibly could. And when Shiori came into the room and I realized she'd heard everything, I saw an opportunity to make you believe I'd set you up. That I meant for her to hear." Kurama was still as stone. "So I said--what I said--and as soon as I saw the betrayal on your face I left. I didn't look back. By the time I could make myself think about it, I couldn't have set the record straight even if I'd wanted to. The battle lines were too clearly drawn between us. So I let it go." Hiei shrugged. "But the truth, if you want it, is that it was an accident. I didn't know she was there or that she could hear us any more than you did and I--regret it," he finished awkwardly, so quietly it could barely be heard.

Kurama didn't answer for a long moment. He was still as hard and unmoving as stone. "Do you," he finally said, just as quiet. Deadly quiet.

"Yes," Hiei said defiantly. When his only answer was more silence, he pressed, "Do you believe me?"

Kurama was still facing the wall, but Hiei noticed small things--his breathing was becoming more rapid, his arms shaking. The ice retreating. "Do you realize..."

His voice was shaking slightly too, though he tried so very hard to control it. "Do you realize everything she heard? Not just about who I was. The things we were fighting about. The words you were calling me. She saw our demon bodies. And then you left. You left me to explain it all to her just seconds after you had--after that argument, Hiei, when I didn't know if you were going to try to kill me or if I would ever see you again and then--then she came into the room, and you looked right at me and said now we were even, now I didn't have any secrets from you or anyone. And you left."

"I remember how it happened," Hiei cut him off coldly. Silence. "Well, believe what you want. It was an accident."

"I... know."

Hiei stared, incredulous. Kurama still didn't turn to look at him. His tone held hate, just as before, but he said, "I didn't know it until you said it out loud. But--it never sat right with me. It wasn't something you would do. And it was so stupid of you--to destroy my family secrets when you knew how fast I could retaliate. I told myself that your anger had overpowered reason--but I suppose some part of me never accepted that you'd done it. So--I do believe you. And it makes no difference."

Hiei was silent for a moment. "Why didn't you?" he asked finally, quietly. "I kept waiting, all these years, for Yukina to come after me. I still don't think she knows. Why not retaliate?"

"I thought about it," Kurama admitted readily. "It's not my style, but I thought about it. But I've always believed that Yukina's knowledge of you would bring you joy in the end, not suffering. And I have not been inclined, these past years, to do anything that might bring you joy."

Hiei was silent for a moment before replying. "And you think it doesn't matter? That you know the truth now?"

Kurama finally turned to face him, spreading his arms slightly. "How could it? I still did exactly what you think I did, Hiei. No one lied to you about that."

Hiei's face hardened. "So I wasn't supposed to be angry?"

Kurama didn't answer for a moment. A long moment, in which the tension escalated almost exponentially. "Not like that," Kurama finally said. Then he corrected himself and said, "Not like this. Of course you were going to be angry. But not like this."

"Not like this? You took the thing--"

"Don't!" Kurama's composure suddenly evaporated, his eyes flashing as he cut Hiei off. He spoke quickly. "Don't start talking about who took what from whom. Whether you meant to or not, you shattered my life with Shiori. Then you left. That was everything that mattered to me."

"You took the thing that mattered most to me."

Kurama laughed.

Hiei felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. It was chilling, that laughter--cold, mocking, so out of place in this detonation of a decade's silence. "What could I have taken from you, Hiei?" Kurama asked incredulously. "What could I have possibly taken from you? When did I ever give you anything? Promise you anything? How could I take something from you that you never had?"

Kurama's words were meant to cut, and they did. It took Hiei a long time to answer. "I meant," he finally managed, "that you took my independence." And it was anyone's guess whether that was, in fact, what he had meant.

Kurama's laughter ended. "Your independence was what I gave you."

"You gave me my independence! You gave it to me. I'd rather rot."

"Well, I judged it best--"

"You judged it? Without consulting me, you decided it was best for you to make a whore of yourself to Koenma in exchange for the key to my cell?!"

"Would you really rather be sitting there?!" Kurama's hands were clenching like they'd love to wring somebody's neck. "Koenma is a pampered little princeling who can get anything he wants from his daddy or his army of ogres. I used the only weakness I could exploit. That's all."

"You kept doing it," Hiei said coldly.

"Yes--yes, Hiei, every time you would do something that normally would have landed you in a--"

"Don't you dare blame me for this." Hiei's eyes were on fire, and the air around him rippled from the heat he was putting out. "Do not dare."

Kurama eyed him for a moment, his own anger momentarily cooled. "No. You're not to blame for my actions. Nor am I to blame for your reaction to them. I did what I thought was best, Hiei--that's all I ever should have had to say to you on the matter."

"So why keep it a secret?" Kurama was silent. "If your actions were so fucking noble, why hide them from me? Why should it matter if I knew?"

"Do you like seeing the bars of your cage?" Kurama replied quietly, after a pause. "Would you have enjoyed knowing?"

"Better than your lies. That was why I was angry--because you had lied to me."

"You don't expect me to believe that's the only reason."

"How would you have reacted, Kurama? If you were in my position?"

"I would have asked--"

"You would have had my head!"

"No, that's what you wanted to do. Let me be perfectly clear, Hiei: I do not believe I did anything wrong. That I--"

"You fucked him, Kurama! Over and over, behind my back!"

"So?" Kurama's voice was tight. "When did you ever ask me not to sleep with anyone?" Hiei was silent. "Normally I would phrase that question 'sleep with anyone else.' But you and I never slept together."

"I didn't need to be sleeping with you to be disgusted by what you were supposedly doing for my sake."

"We never even kissed."

"What the hell is your point?"

"The point is, how can you justify being so angry at me for something you never asked me not to do?! How was I supposed to know that you would consider it the betrayal of a lifetime if I slept with someone for other reasons? I can't--"

"What the hell are other reasons?!"

"Reasons other than desire or affection. You seem to feel as though I was giving Koenma something that belonged to you. But the things that belonged to you, I never... I never. They were yours," he continued, giving the lie to his mocking laughter earlier, his claim that couldn't have taken anything from Hiei. "Even if we never spoke about it. Even if you refuse to acknowledge it now. But my body was not ever amongst those things. You never asked for it."

"I shouldn't have to tell you not to who--"

The rose whip cracked against stone. Far from Hiei's body, but close enough to cut off his words. "I won't let you call me that anymore," Kurama warned, his voice almost civil in comparison to the edge of his whip, or the edge in his eyes. "I don't care who's right or wrong, I've heard enough of that to last a lifetime. More than enough," he added, his eyes glittering briefly gold, and Hiei knew what he was thinking: that it was one of the words Shiori had overheard. "You're a demon, and what you're saying is pure human drivel," Kurama continued when he had collected himself and his eyes were green again. "You know how often sex is a part of business contracts in Makai. You must. And you must know that sex and love are separate. I loved you for years without laying a finger on you."

"Why do you keep insisting--"

"Because if we're going to argue about this after ten years of silence, I'm not going to lie. No matter how much it might spare our pride."

"...Put that thing away."

Kurama made no move to withdraw his whip. "Have I made my point?"

Hiei did nothing for a long, blank moment—then he nodded curtly. Kurama's whip contracted back into a rose—slower, it seemed, than it normally would have—and was put back into his hair with shaking fingers. Neither of them looked at each other. Kurama's use of a weapon had brought the anger and tension to its peak; now it was like their rage had burned out in all the revelations of the past few moments, and they were survivors wandering in its wake. Unsure what to do or say.

More than one longing glance was thrown at the cave entrance, but neither fled. The silence became thicker and thicker until Hiei finally shook his head and said, "I don't understand you."

Kurama took his time before answering. "That much," he said simply, "is clear."

"Did you—do you honestly expect me to believe that your actions were out of concern for me?"

Kurama looked at him, then away. Too exhausted for anger, it was clear that Hiei's words had hurt. "That is what I would have expected you to believe ten years ago. But now… I suppose it doesn't matter. So long as we can maintain a semblance of peace until Yusuke's well."

Hiei looked at him sharply. Kurama's words were an attempt to halt the fight—to cut it off cleanly, even though they weren't nearly done with it, and Hiei had to decide whether to follow his lead or drag it out. Whether or not to agree that, aside from Yusuke, they had nothing to do with each other.

"I thought you said that if we were going to finally fight about it, we shouldn't lie," Hiei eventually replied.

Kurama glanced sidelong at him. "I didn't."

"You said it doesn't matter as long as we can help Yusuke. But if it didn't matter, we wouldn't bother fighting about it."

Kurama stopped to consider that—logical as ever, even in the midst of their argument. "As much as I hate to admit it… you're right. But I don't know what to make of it." Hiei raised an eyebrow. "We've been very clear that if it wasn't for Yusuke, we'd just as soon kill each other. But we wouldn't fight if it didn't matter. So where does that..."

He trailed off, but Hiei could finish the sentence perfectly well on his own. He gave in to exhaustion and slid, back to the wall, to a sitting position. On the other side of the cave, Kurama did the same. "As long as we're admitting to things that someone else was right about," Hiei muttered, looking at his feet. "I—never did ask you why. Let you explain." He glanced at Kurama. "So tell me now, what you would have said then. Why."

Kurama regarded him tiredly for a long moment. "Because I wanted to," he finally said. "That's the only reason. It was never my job to protect you. I just wanted to. And," he added, "I'm not sorry for it. Nor will you ever make me sorry for it. Not even with the—with the way we relate to one another now. I don't regret what I did for who you used to be." He paused briefly. "The act meant nothing to me. I had no idea it meant something to you. But even if I had known, there was no contract between you and I. We had no agreement, we made no promises, we set no rules. So everything I did, I did only because I wanted to."

Hiei was silent. He was silent for so long that Kurama spoke again. "Hiei--I think one of us should go. I know we're not done talking about this. But right now we're both..."

"Disoriented," Hiei filled in for him. "You really thought I set you up."

"What was I--" Kurama bit off the end of the angry response, and instead said simply, "Yes. And I've spent the last ten years believing it, and I hated you for it, and I need--"

"Time," Hiei concluded, finishing his sentence again. He was staring moodily at his katana, and after a moment launched into an apparent non sequitur. "Fox--when I heard--" He paused a moment to make a face at the katana, apparently gathering his words. "When I heard that she was dead, I thought about coming. Even though I knew it would result in homicide. I didn't like the thought of you alone."

Kurama tensed some, but merely replied, "I wasn't." Hiei glanced at him questioningly. "Yusuke was there. Keiko was still alive," he added for clarification, "so he was in one piece."

"Think we'll see him like that again?"

It had been an idle question, but Kurama's eyes flashed. "I didn't set this whole exercise up for my amusement, if that's what you mean. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe he could recover."

Hiei held his eyes and nodded, slowly and just once. It was an old trick for diffusing Kurama's anger, and it worked as well now as it had a decade ago. They lapsed back into silence for a moment. Kurama was studying Hiei, studying him without any attempt to hide it, which always made Hiei twitch. "What?" he finally snapped.

"Are we allowed to ask anything? Any questions we want?"

"I fail to see how it could possibly hurt."

"Did you love me?"

Hiei answered him with a look. There had been a time when Kurama would have accepted the look as answer enough, but today he shook his head. "I need to hear it. I never heard you say it."

Hiei scowled at his katana again, as though it were responsible for all of this. "Yes," he managed to say, just barely loud enough to be heard.

Kurama nodded. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, and moved unsteadily towards the entrance. "Someone really ought to go after Yusuke before he gets eaten."

Hiei thought about calling him back, but couldn't think what words to use. Kurama hesitated on the threshold, almost as if waiting for the call that didn't come; then he moved on again, not having once looked back, and left Hiei in the fading light.

A/N: Now that the cat's out of the bag, I can finally give credit where credit is due. This whole story sprang into existence as a result of my reading "Stalemate" by BlueUtopiah, which you can find on this site in her collection of short fics. Go read it--I have a huge Koenma/anyone squick and now I'm writing about it. That's how good it is.