The return
#12 - Something/Someone Missing
It was a very uneventful day when Youko Kurama returned to the Makai.
Shiori's death a couple of weeks ago had left him with no real motive to stay in the human world, and much of the intervening time had been spent devising a way that allowed Minamino Shuichi to disappear quietly. No one knew what he intended, but he had left behind messages that Yusuke and Kuwabara would find. Everyone else, he had decided, would find out eventually; nobody else knew about his true self in the human world, after all. Besides, he knew that Koenma was watching him with an eagle eye, and his freedom was only assured after he returned to the Makai; staying in the human world was dangerous.
So he had come here alone, disappearing silently in the night, leaving a world behind for good, slipping past the boundary with a thief's ease.
He almost regretted the fact that nobody intercepted his ghostlike entry into his homeworld; he was craving a fight, something to distract him. It was terribly…lonely here, silent and alive in a way that the place he had come from was not, and something caught inside him, something that would have provoked tears or rage – had he been susceptible to either.
Coming back here…it had always been home to him, a place that fit as neatly as another skin, and though he had always been alone, he had never felt lonely. This time, it felt odd, incomplete, something was wrong, missing.
He paused in his thoughts, shocked, as his sharp nose caught a familiar scent.
'So you're here. Took your own damn time, didn't you?'
Hiei lounged nonchalantly in a tree a few metres away.
'Hiei?!'
'If you're this surprised, you're losing your touch.'
Kurama laughed, the shock dissipating as his friend slid smoothly off his branch to land before him, the ever-present scowl just a little softer. 'How did you – I didn't tell anyone I was coming.'
Hiei clicked his tongue impatiently. 'I heard that your mother died. I knew you'd come back here sooner or later.'
'So you waited for me?' Kurama grinned, feeling the pleasant tug of fangs on his lips. Ah, but it was good to be himself again. 'How very sweet of you.'
Hiei remained silent, and Kurama took it for the assent it was. 'I should arrest you for this, you know,' he said finally.
'Arrest me? On the way back home? I believe it's only the other direction that requires you to take me in, Hiei.'
'Back home, hmm,' Hiei said thoughtfully, and one corner of his mouth quirked in what was almost a smile.
The smile spread through him, warming his heart as the humid Makai air warmed his skin. 'Back home,' Kurama agreed, and they began to walk away from the boundary together.
Maybe this was all he'd really needed tonight – a friend who knew him well enough to find him, even when he didn't mean to be found.
The loneliness, he noticed vaguely, was gone.
