A/N: Language warning
Long chapter warning (but it's okay, because plot happens)
Recap: Hiei and Botan learned that Yukina has been kidnapped by Tarukane and is being tortured for her tears, Hiei continued his education of Botan in the ways of lurv, and Yusuke settled in for another night at Kurama's place, where Kurama began explaining their upcoming mission to him.
Chapter 12: What They Say
Botan's mouth had been hanging open so long that her throat had become uncomfortably dry. Her eyes were almost as bad, because she was barely blinking as she stared at Hiei's back. He was standing by a broken section of wall, looking out towards the setting sun. At a quick glance he looked quite casual standing there, but after staring as long and hard as Botan had been, she could see that he was tense. He was wearing only his long pants, his upper body bared and every muscle visibly tight, sinews occasionally twitching by his neck or shoulders as though he was on the verge of pouncing at something. Which he may very well yet do, she thought, hunching her shoulders protectively over the still fragmented communication mirror she was cradling in her hands.
"Tell me more about Hiei and his sister and I won't call Kuwabara."
"Bribing a demon is not appropriate behaviour for a spirit detective."
"I'm not your average spirit detective, and you're not exactly an average demon."
Silence again filled the room – save for the faint whistle of the wind through the broken parts of roof and wall around them. Botan was too confused to think straight: it had been enough of a revelation to learn that Yukina was Hiei's sister and not his lover, but that she was also an ice demon – the opposite of him – and that she was being forced to cry by a human was simply too much. She wondered how it was that Hiei had not started yelling and breaking things yet.
"I first met Hiei about a year ago."
The audio feed the device in Botan's hands was picking up was almost too clear for comfort: it was as if Kurama and Yusuke were sat right in front of her.
"We happened upon each other when a demon – Yatsude – was causing trouble near my school. A friend of mine was kidnapped by Yatsude's aides and Hiei had been led to believe that Yatsude had gained strength recently from eating an ice maiden – his sister Yukina. Hiei did not willingly tell me the details of his reasons for wanting Yatsude dead. He was severely injured after fighting Yatsude's henchmen and then me, and during his sleep afterwards he spoke of Yukina, and I managed to convince him to tell me the missing details when he awoke. Hiei was born to the clan of ice maidens, who reside in the glacial village, a remote floating island within demon world that is isolated from all other life and home only to the ice maidens. Their clan consists entirely of women."
"Wait, what? Hiei's a girl?"
"No Yusuke, Hiei is a man. Which is why he was cast out of the ice village at birth. The ice maidens fear men, and when one is born into their clan they always cast him out immediately."
"Well I can understand them casting the little bastard out, he is a nasty traitor, but that still doesn't explain why he's a fire demon."
"That is part of his curse. The ice maidens reproduce automatically, giving birth only to female ice demons. On the very rare occasions that an ice maiden becomes impregnated by a man, she will give birth to a male child with the power of fire. The ice maidens consider these children to be cursed. They are very strong, very are violent and their powers of fire threaten to melt the very structure of the ice village itself, and so they are always cast out. Usually they die when they are cast out, but Hiei survived. He was raised by a band of thieves before they too cast him out for much the same reasons the ice maidens did: he was too strong, too impetuous and too untrustworthy. Hiei chose to have a jagan eye implanted through surgery, which robbed him of his strength and forced him to retrain. He is still not as strong as he was before the operation, and may never be that strong again, but he considered the sacrifice to be his punishment because he had lost the hiruiseki gifted to him by his mother upon his birth. He got the third eye implanted to help him find the stone again, but, try as he might, he could never trace it. He did, however, manage to locate the elusive ice village with the aid of his jagan eye, and he returned there in search of his mother. When he got there he learned that she had passed on, but that he had a twin sister: Yukina. He sought her out, but never revealed himself to her. He considers safe-guarding her – albeit it anonymously and from a distance – to be his primary duty in life."
"Shit. So even Hiei has a weakness?"
"Everyone does. You have Keiko, I have my mother and Kuwabara has… Megallica… And Eikichi…"
Yusuke's laughter made the speaker of the communication mirror quiver in Botan's hands. It was a pleasant sound, but it did nothing to awaken her from her trance.
"So have you ever met Yukina?"
"No. My knowledge of her is limited to what Hiei, and now Koenma and his sources, have told me about her. I have now seen her face though. I have a picture of her here from Koenma – as you can see, there is little family resemblance between the siblings."
"No shit, she's really pretty!"
Botan tensed as Hiei let out a particularly animalistic growl. He did not move, but she held her breath and remained tense for several seconds regardless in anticipation of him rounding on her and tearing apart the device in her hands.
"This is like a bedtime story: it's beauty and the beast!"
"I'm glad you're taking a light-hearted approach to this, Yusuke. The man who is imprisoning Yukina – Gonzo Tarukane – is a famous criminal whose reputation precedes him across all three worlds: human, demon and spirit. He will have some powerful and conniving demons in his employ, and reaching Yukina will be no easy task."
"I've seen you fight Kurama, I reckon the two of us together can take on anything the bastard sends our way."
"Your confidence is inspiring. I suggest we leave in the morning. It's quite far from here, but I have a map of bus routes and I have planned our journey out already."
"Great. Hey, you're more organised, smarter and way, way stronger than Botan: maybe you should replace her as my assistant on a permanent basis?"
"…I don't think so, Yusuke. Please don't misunderstand me: I have no desire to ally myself with spirit world, least of all to pursue and battle demons stuck in the living world, just like myself. I am only doing what I must to clear my name of the charges levied against me for the theft and misuse of the Forlorn Hope."
"…You're a real ray of sunshine, you know that?"
"It's not personal, Yusuke. You seem like a very honourable, loyal and reliable friend, but, as a spirit detective, you are standing opposed to me and my kin."
"I guess so."
"Will you be staying here again tonight?"
"Um…"
"It's perhaps easier if you do. That way we can be sure we catch the right bus together."
"Right."
"Switch it off."
Botan tensed again at the sound of Hiei's voice, surprising herself as she did so as she had been sure that she had already been as tense as she could possibly be. Kurama and Yusuke continued making idle chat about Yusuke's school still being shut and Kuwabara's inevitable curiosity after they set out on a mission without him, but their casual words suddenly seemed painful to listen to.
"Switch it off!"
Botan yelped and began frantically pushing at buttons on her communicator in an attempt to silence it. She sighed in relief when she finally managed to cut Yusuke off mid-sentence and she began to relax, only to yelp out in alarm again when Koenma's voice began emanating from the communicator.
"What is wrong with you, ogre?" he said. "You never get it right!"
"I'm sorry Sir!" George replied.
"Switch that fucking thing off!" Hiei roared, rounding on Botan with a look she was sure could have killed a weaker soul than her own.
She began fumbling with the switches again and, after twice more flicking through fragmented parts of Yusuke and Kurama talking and Koenma and George arguing, she eventually found a dead line and the room was silent once more. She carefully placed the device down before daring to look at Hiei again. In the dusky conditions of the unlit room, his eyes appeared to be glowing, and his shoulders were again heaving from his deep, laboured breathing.
"We…" she began weakly. "We have to get out of this city. If the SDF catch you Hiei, they'll…"
"They'll what?" he echoed, stalking away from the opening in the wall.
He arced around her in a strange action that made her feel as though she was a deer being hunted by a half-starved hound that was trying to corner her and preparing to move in for the kill.
"Hiei, Lord Koenma showed you great clemency when he allowed you to accompany Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama on the mission to this castle," she said carefully. "You broke your promise, you betrayed his trust, and he will not be so lenient again. He gave you a second chance and you ruined it. He won't give you a third chance. If the SDF find you Hiei, they will probably kill you on sight."
"Hn."
Botan sighed.
"Is that really all you have to say for yourself?" she asked, pushing herself up to her feet.
"What else should I say, ferry girl?" he spat angrily. "You've got that stupid smug look on your face again, I suppose you want me to admit defeat. You want me to tell you that you and your stupid little ferry girl guidebook were right about me, is that it?"
Botan's face dropped. That was the last thing she had expected him to say. Was that really all that he was thinking after everything they had just overheard?
"Hn, you were only half right anyway," he growled. "You were about my mother not loving me, but I wasn't the one who left her, she was the one who abandoned me. Now you know the truth. Now you know everything. Are you satisfied now, you interfering hag?"
Botan shook her head. How could she be satisfied with something like that?
"You misunderstand me, Hiei," she said softly. "I know you despise my kind, but surely even you must acknowledge that, for all our faults, we ferry girls are not vindictive creatures. Another soul's suffering could never be a source of joy for us."
"Hn, spirit world stock answer number 138," Hiei grumbled. "Did they teach you specific responses to deliver to unredeemable souls like mine or did they simply give you a formula to apply to any situation and create your response from?"
Botan shook her head again.
"Hiei, I feel no satisfaction or joy out of learning what I have tonight," she insisted. "And I know that my guidebook advised me to offer you a hug and a shoulder to cry on, but I think you're far past that point. I'm sorry that you've felt so much pain in your life, but you should know that just because you have experienced a lot of pain and faced many hardships and overcome terrible rejection, you should not always expect to face those same obstacles in your future. Nobody is destined to be miserable forever Hiei. Nobody is in charge of your happiness but you. If you choose to be angry, bitter and hated, then that is all you ever will be. But it doesn't have to be that way."
"You can stop the spirit world bullshit philosophising, it won't work on me!" he warned her. "You don't know what pain, hardship or rejection is! How could you? You said yourself: you've never been alive to feel how could you possibly understand any emotion, negative or otherwise?"
"What do you want me to say to you, Hiei?" she asked. "Do you want me to tell you that some lives are filled only with pain and misery? Because I can tell you that honestly if that's all you want to hear. Some lives – demon and human – are so terrible that death is the most pleasant experience for them. I've collected souls of children who have been abandoned, starved, beaten and abused. I've collected souls of people who have witnessed misery and suffering their entire lives and have died slowly and painfully at the hands of the one person they loved and trusted. There is plenty of pain and misery in life if you actively seek it out, Hiei. But there is also plenty of joy and kindness if you look hard enough for it. Some souls are born victims, just like you were. Whether they remain that way for the rest of their lives or not is a decision that only they can make."
"Are you implying that I chose the life I've had?"
"Of course you did."
Botan screamed out in shock as she suddenly found herself airborne. She did not see what Hiei did exactly, and it was not until she had fallen to the ground and laid there long enough for the dust to settle and her body to ache on the points she had landed on that she noticed the newly created hole in the floor of the room.
"You're treading on very dangerous ground, ferry girl," Hiei's voice growled at her.
She looked about but could not see him anywhere. She could not decide if she was pleased that he had vanished or not, as she was terrified that he was about to kill her. She knew that she was risking invoking the full might of his wrath with her words, but she had to persist. She had a point to prove, and she was not about to back down. Ordinarily she would be too terrified to continue as she was vulnerable to terrible physical torture in her human body, but three things were over-riding her fears and giving her the strength to continue: ferry girl duty, the fact that she was likely to die soon anyway and the idea that maybe if she finished what she had started she could help Hiei find some peace of mind.
Because apparently she cared about his happiness.
Ferry girl duty. She had been trained to help all lost souls, and this was almost the same situation. She was just acting on instinct, nothing more.
"It's easy to be hated," she said, grabbing at the rubble about herself. "It's much easier to make someone hate you than it is to make them love you. And you can make everyone hate you, but you can't make everyone love you."
She strained to pull herself back up to her feet, wincing and twisting awkwardly as she felt the pain of multiple points of injury. She quickly sought out the flattest piece of rock she could find and sat onto it.
"It's also easier to hate than to love," she continued, placing a hand over a bloodied scratch on her forearm. "Hating doesn't require any effort. You don't need a reason to hate. Love is much more difficult. You have to trust, you have to respect, you have to honour and you have to care. With hate you just have to hate. Much easier."
Botan lifted her hand. She had done a rather poor job of healing herself, but she had multiple wounds to tend to, and she did not want to waste all of her energy fixing just one. It would be wiser to reduce the pain and extent of each wound first and then use what energy she had left to completely heal the most inconveniencing wounds.
"Hn, idiot," Hiei's voice answered her.
She did not bother trying to locate him. He sounded about half the length of the room away from her, in the approximate direction of the doorway to the stairwell, and that was all she needed to know.
"Hate is every bit as consuming and important as love," he said.
"I never said that it wasn't," she replied. "I merely pointed out that it was the path of least resistance."
"I've always been hated," he said. "But unlike you, unlike the idiots of spirit world and the miserable cretins of the human world, I don't care about it. Anyone who meets me hates me. I see it as my duty to give them a reason to feel that way. Contrary to what you think, ferry girl, hate needs reasons and motivations and other emotions to keep it alive too."
"I don't hate you Hiei."
"That's because I've given you plenty of reasons to!"
Botan's head jerked up and she frowned in confusion. She looked about herself and finally spotted Hiei, standing slightly to one side of the doorway to the stairwell, his position somewhere between a fighting stance and a poised-and-ready-to-flee pose. It almost looked comical.
"I said I don't hate you Hiei," she called over to him, being sure to put extra emphasis on the word "don't".
He opened his mouth and there was short pause before he made a strange noise and then closed his mouth again, scowling at her angrily.
"People always hate me when they first meet me," she added. "But my approach to that is the opposite of yours. I like to prove them wrong. I like to give them reasons not to hate me."
"People hate you because you're annoying, stupid, clumsy, nosy, interfering and redundant!" Hiei shot back.
Botan sighed.
"No, they hate me because I'm death," she said.
Hiei visibly twitched.
"Nobody likes seeing a ferry girl, because it's confirmation that they're dead, and most souls are in denial during those first moments of death," she continued. "They hate me because they think it's my fault that they're dead. I take them to the afterlife, and once there, they can never return to their former life, and so they blame me because I was the one who took them there."
"…That's not why I hate you," he growled in a low voice that was barely audible.
"That's something of a contradiction of terms isn't it?" she muttered, lowering her eyes to a tear in her pants and poking at it experimentally. "Though perhaps not, since you claim to enjoy hating things. I suppose you hate so much, you even hate your own lover."
She lifted her head again and fixed her eyes onto Hiei. She had not considered anything that she had said before then to have over-stepped any sort of boundary between them, but she knew that her last statement had been a move too far. She was not about to take any of it back though: it was only the truth, after all.
"You're not my lover in the conventional sense," he reminded her. "And even when I have taken a lover in the conventional sense, I've never cared for her. That's not how demon world love works."
Botan thought about making a snide remark about Hiei yet again hiding behind the term "demon world love" but changed her mind when she started to hear music and voices drifting up from the city below.
"Your nightly worship festival begins again," Hiei drawled sarcastically.
"I might join them," Botan said haughtily. "Tomorrow will be a busy day if Yusuke and Kurama are going on that mission, I might as well have some fun whilst I still can."
Botan spent some time healing the remainder of her wounds, feeling quite pleased with herself when she managed to get most of them down to mere red marks that barely hurt at all. She was so pleased with herself that she at first did not hear the strange sound coming from the other end of the room: and when she did hear it, she almost could not believe it. She turned her head towards Hiei, and looking directly at him she was able to confirm that her ears were not deceiving her: though she had to wonder if her sanity was slipping. Or maybe his sanity was slipping.
Hiei was openly laughing.
"Hiei?" she said, feeling more afraid of him now than she had when he had seemed ready to kill her. "A-are you feeling alright?"
"Never better, ferry girl," he replied, grinning at her in a way that was equally as disconcerting as his hearty laughter had been. "Can you hear what I can hear?"
Botan paused, listening carefully. She sensed that he was asking her a trick question, but she tried to consider it regardless.
"All I can hear is the music from the festival," she eventually concluded.
"Exactly," he replied, his grin widening to give the illusion that his face had been split in two.
"It… Sounds like a different sort of music they're playing?" Botan tried. "More drums and punctuated singing?"
"Well done," Hiei said. "Perhaps you're not so hopelessly ignorant as you appear to be. I think I'll join you at the festival. It promises to be the perfect distraction to get me through tonight."
"…Why? What does this sort of music and chanting actually mean?"
"Someone wishes to challenge you for the position of ruler of the city."
"Oh, well that would explain why they're yelling "cut down the–" wait, what?"
"You've been issued a formal challenge for your leadership of this city. If you don't accept it by dawn, the challenger will win by default and evict you from this castle by force."
Botan gasped.
"They can't do that!" she wailed. "I never even wanted to be the leader of this city in the first place! It was all just a misunderstanding!"
"You attended the ceremony they held to induct you into the role," Hiei pointed out. "You formalised your position, and now you're formally being challenged."
"What should I do?" she asked.
"There's only two things you can do," he replied. "Fight or surrender."
"Well then I surrender! I can't fight, and I don't even want to!"
"If you surrender, you must let the new leader kill you."
"What?"
"That's the only way leadership can be passed on: through death. Either you let him kill you or you fight him and whoever survives the fight takes over the city."
"A fight to the death?"
"It's the demon world way."
"I don't like the demon world way of anything!"
"I know. That's part of what makes this so damn funny."
Botan began panicking: what was she going to do? She could not fight a demon, but she was not willing to lay down and let one just kill her either. Why had she had not just smacked that stupid bird and taken back her Concentration Ring?
"What do you think, Hiei?" she asked, turning to him in the hope of getting an honest and constructive opinion from him.
"I think you're fucked, ferry girl," he replied, his grin widening again to become positively maniacal.
Hiei was once more reminded of one of the delicate deer in the forests of demon world as he watched the ferry girl approach the fire, her eyes wide with fear. She had insisted on changing back into the ceremonial white dress and head wreath she had been gifted upon being crowned leader of the city of ghosts and apparitions, presumably because she thought dressing for the occasion might save her the trouble of facing what lay ahead of her.
"Lady Botan, welcome!" a young female leopard demon greeted her, smiling too cheerfully and bowing too steeply to be taken seriously. "Katsu here wishes to challenge you for the position of leader of the city. Do you accept his challenge?"
Hiei snorted quietly in amusement at the demon's name, but his demeanour quickly changed when an enormous wolf demon stepped forwards from the crowd. He was easily twice the height of the ferry girl – were he to stand up straight – his back hunched over and his knuckles almost dragging along the ground. His teeth were dirty and his eyes bloodshot, and he had the distinct look of desperation and unending viciousness about him.
"Do you accept my challenge, Lady Botan?" he asked.
Hiei almost collapsed when the idiotic ferry girl pulled a ridiculous cat face and pawed coyly at the air between them.
"Meow?" she whimpered.
Silence filled the air and hundreds of eyes fixed onto her in a way that told Hiei that, even if she was somehow able to defeat her challenger, the remainder of the citizens would slaughter her anyway for being such a fool. He sighed and then moved over to stand at her side.
"I think you're forgetting something, woman," he said, addressing the leopard girl.
"Oh?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.
"Yes, idiot," he replied. "The lady is my lover. Before anyone can fight her, they have to be able to defeat me, first."
Hiei did not bother looking round when his ear was slapped by blue hair as the ferry girl whipped around to stare down at him in shock.
"Well that is tradition," the leopard girl agreed.
Hiei nodded and then turned to the ferry girl.
"Stand back," he whispered to her.
She muttered something unintelligible, but stumbled back regardless. The others all moved back accordingly until there was a large space around the fire and only Hiei and the challenger were left standing there.
"You think you can defeat me, little man?" Katsu asked.
"Only too easily," Hiei flatly replied, drawing out his sword.
"You're using a sword?" Katsu asked, narrowing his eyes. "Aren't you going to use your powers?"
"I don't need to," Hiei replied.
"You arrogant bastard!"
Hiei smirked confidently. Katsu was strong in comparison to the average cretin in the city, but he was not strong enough to worry Hiei. In fact, he doubted he would even break a sweat fighting him. He contemplated feigning weakness and prolonging the fight to make the ferry girl worry, but it then occurred to him that he was not really sure why he would want her to worry, and so he decided against it.
He had enough problems plaguing his conscience without the ferry girl popping up and adding to them. He had to defeat Katsu, get through the night, plan for his chance to escape the next day when spirit world opened a breach in the barrier around the city again and make sure Yukina was freed from that human tyrant who had managed to get his filthy hands on her.
"Die!" Katsu hollered, charging at him at a speed that was painfully slow for a demon as fast as Hiei to witness.
Hiei sighed, almost bored by the lack of a challenge, and held his ground, waiting for the wolf to hurl himself at him and then slashing frantically at the air, being sure to cut the beast into as many pieces as possible before he was forced to leap back out of the way. As he had expected, Katsu fell to the ground, tried to stand and then fell apart, blood staining the ground around him. Hiei made to shake the excess blood from his sword but the leopard girl hurried forwards and offered to clean his weapon, bowing profusely as she did so. Realising that she was no threat, he decided to trust her with the sword and handed it over.
"You saved my life."
Hiei moved his eyes to the ferry girl, who had put a hand on his shoulder and had whispered her words so close to his ear, her lips were almost touching his skin.
"It was my duty," he replied.
"…It was?" she asked.
She straightened up again, looking confused and stupid.
"We're lovers," he reminded her.
"Yes, but I didn't think chivalry came into it," she replied.
Hiei was more insulted by her reply than he would ever admit to, but he hid the wound to his pride as best he could.
"You chose me as a partner, so all challengers must first prove they can beat me before they face you," he explained.
Her face twisted further and he could see that she understood even less about demon world culture than he had assumed she did.
"In demon world, any lasting partnership between lovers can only happen if the pursuer proves to their chosen one that they are worthy to be taken as a lover," he tried. "You wanted me for a lover, so you fought me and defeated me, and because you proved yourself to be stronger than me, I accepted you as a lover. Any challenger seeking to replace me as your lover or to replace you as leader of the city must first defeat me before they challenge you to any sort of fight."
"So you're pretending that I chose you so that I won't have to fight anyone and no-one will realise that I'm not actually a fighter?" she asked.
"Exactly," he replied.
"…And you're so vain and stubborn that you'd rather people thought I was stronger and more powerful than you than they thought that you had chosen me as your lover?"
"What?"
The ferry girl made a knowing, smug noise and smiled, her eyes rolling up towards the sky.
"What?" Hiei said again.
"It's not true of course…" she muttered. "Because actually, you chose me as a lover… And you are stronger than me, so even though we didn't fight, if we had, you would definitely have won…"
"I didn't choose you as a lover," he growled at her.
"Yes you did," she said.
"No I didn't. I'm just proving a point about what love actually is."
She lowered her eyes to him and gave him an almost sympathetic look, and he was strangely glad that the leopard girl returned at that moment, carrying his newly-polished sword.
"Here you are, Sir!" she said, holding it up on the flats of her hands.
"Hn," he grunted, snatching it from her hands.
"And may I just say Sir, you're very lucky to have such a powerful lover," she said.
Hiei paused, his sword half inserted into its scabbard.
"I've seen what Lady Botan is capable of," the girl whispered. "She's very strong!"
"Go away, or I will kill you," he whispered back, dropping his sword into its sheath noisily.
She leaned back, her eyes moving to the ferry girl.
"We were just discussing our love, actually," the ferry girl said. "We don't always agree on the definition of love."
Hiei growled but both girls ignored him.
"Well there's four definitions of the word "love", isn't there?" the leopard girl said.
"…Four…?" the ferry girl asked, glancing darkly at Hiei.
"Yes, four."
"I thought there were only three? Demon, spirit and human?"
"…What? No, there are four – unless you decree that there are three of course, Milady!"
The leopard girl hurriedly bowed to the ferry girl, who waved off her gesture dismissively.
"Four definitions?" she asked.
"Yes Ma'am," the leopard girl replied. "There's platonic love, like the way you love a friend, there's familial love, like the way you love your parents or your children, there's erotic love, like the way you love a lover and then there's romantic love, which is also how you love a lover."
Hiei swallowed carefully as the ferry girl turned on him, glaring at him with a look that was almost intimidating.
"Oh really?" she asked.
"No," he replied. "Here in demon world only erotic love exists."
"That's not true," the leopard girl said.
Hiei snarled at her and she cowered back from him fearfully.
"Hiei, that girl is a demon, of demon world, and she just said that romantic love is a type of love," the ferry girl said.
"That girl is also an idiot," he replied. "And she's talking about love across all three worlds. In this world, only the erotic kind exists."
"What about the familial kind?" the leopard girl whispered, pointing at a pair of lizard demons fussing over their child.
"In my experience, that doesn't exist here either!" Hiei snapped at her.
"But that's only in your personal experience," the ferry girl pointed out. "It looks like it does exist here for other people."
"And the platonic kind," the leopard girl added, pointing at a group of men sat in a circle playing some sort of drinking game and laughing heartily between themselves.
"Not in my experience is doesn't!" Hiei insisted.
"Not in your experience, but it does for others," the ferry girl said again.
"And the romantic kind," the leopard girl whispered.
Hiei balked when she began waggling her finger between him and the ferry girl.
"We're not romantic lovers," the ferry girl said, patting the leopard girl on the shoulder. "We're just erotic lovers."
"Oh," the leopard girl said. "I thought you were both."
"Oh no sweetie, there's nothing romantic going on here!"
The ferry girl laughed and Hiei had to turn away from her. He had always hated any mention of the word "romance", and frankly he was proud of himself for never having even attempted to indulge in anything remotely "romantic" in his life.
But it really pissed him off that the ferry girl did not think their relationship was romantic.
"Hiei?"
"Hn."
"Are you alright?"
Hiei jerked his shoulder from her as the ferry girl started to touch a hand to it. She had dismissed the leopard girl, and whilst he was glad to be rid of that idiot, it did now mean that he was alone with the ferry girl again.
"It's okay Hiei," she said quietly. "I understand that you hate romance. You probably don't even believe in it. It works for some people, but not for others. Disliking it doesn't make you strange or unique."
"I feel the same way about romance as you do about simple eroticism, woman," he replied.
"Well… Lately maybe I'm not as disgusted or opposed to that sort of love as I once was," she said.
Hiei smiled to himself. His plan to corrupt her seemed to be working.
"It's quite liberating, actually," she continued. "In spirit world, it's frowned about to just indulge in such affairs so casually, but despite what they say, I think the sort of loving you've been describing has it's own place amongst… The other definitions of love. It's less restricting because there's not the pressure of trying to be perfect for someone, or the fear that it might end. I know it will end and I know we're not perfect for each other, but it doesn't matter because neither of us are attached. Like you said, it will run its course and then we'll go our separate ways."
Hiei nodded, surprised to hear her speaking to frankly and to be demonstrating such a clear understanding of the points he had been trying to make.
"And it can be quite sweet, too," she added.
That sounded a bit more like the idiotic ferry girl he knew.
"Sharing everything. Sharing our bodies, sharing our food, sharing our… Thoughts and feelings…"
Hiei narrowed his eyes.
"Not quite, woman," he said, turning his head to look back over his shoulder at her.
"No I suppose not," she agreed. "Since you have no feelings to share."
"And you have no thoughts to share," he shot back.
To his surprise, she smiled.
"I'm going to ask you a question, and if you don't want to answer it, that's fine," she said.
"Your amateur philosophising doesn't count as thoughts of substance worthy of sharing," he said.
"No, it's not about that," she replied. "It's about the hirui stone your mother gave you. The one Kurama said you lost. He said you had that jagan eye implanted to help you find it. Did you ever eventually find it?"
"No," he replied.
He had thought that she might have asked about Yukina or one of his past lovers, so to hear her voice such a simple question was something of a relief.
"Do you have any idea why you can't find it?" she asked.
"The ice maidens hide precious stones by swallowing them," he replied. "Whoever has my stone has swallowed it. I won't find it until they choke it up."
"How did you lose it in the first place? Was it stolen from you?"
"Hn, not likely. I lost it accidentally, in a fight. It was cut from around my neck when my opponent tried to slit my throat and missed. It fell into a river and I spent days searching the water, but I couldn't find it."
"Someone else found it first?"
"Obviously. Demons were always challenging me to fights because of it. I was famous as a bandit carrying a priceless jewel, so I was hunted for it. I never thought I would lose it."
"It was an accident though."
"A lucky shot."
"So then why do you blame yourself so for losing it?"
Hiei turned fully around to face the ferry girl. She had that sympathetic, amateur psychotherapist look on her face again, and he sensed that she was building to something. He knew that he ought to just tell her where she could shove her questions and theories, but for some reason a part of him felt quite pleased to continue the conversation, and so he decided to indulge it for the time being.
"I was careless," he said. "The stone was important to me, looking after it was my responsibility, and I failed."
"And now looking after Yukina is your responsibility," she said.
"Exactly," he agreed. "But I won't fail at that."
"You know, it is sad that you've lost the stone and you can't find it," she said slowly. "But at the same time you should be pleased that you managed to hold onto it as long as you did. Weren't you just a baby when you were cast out of the ice village? And even though you were just a baby you managed to defend the stone from thieves?"
"Yes."
"That's amazing."
"The bandits who raised me tried to take it daily, but I was usually too fast and too strong for them."
"…Usually?"
Hiei stopped. Before that day, he had only ever spoken to Kurama about any aspect of his life, and it had been strangely easy to talk about his past with the ferry girl so far; but she had just touched on a slightly sensitive subject. He did now know if she was aware of why he was silent or not, if she had deliberately backed him up into the corner he now found himself in, but either way he did not want to talk any more.
"I suppose that was why they eventually cast you out," she said when he did not answer her. "They couldn't get the stone from you, so they had no more use for you."
Hiei flinched slightly. Again he was unsure if she knew just what effect her words were having on him.
"They only kept me around because they thought one day they might manage to take it from me," he said. "And because I was small enough to fit into air ducts and fast enough to make a good decoy in a raid."
"Convenient then, for both of you," she said, sounding a little too casual. "You needed a family and they needed someone small and fast."
"I didn't need them," Hiei muttered.
"You were a baby," she pointed out. "You needed someone to feed you and wipe your bottom until you could do it yourself."
Hiei glared at her angrily but she looked strangely confident and unaffected.
"Would you say that you loved any of those bandits in the familial sense?" she asked. "Or perhaps even just in the platonic sense?"
"Absolutely not," he immediately replied. "I already told you that my heart does not suffer such foolish nonsense."
"Because of the curse, of course. What was it that you said? "A strong body, a determined mind and a numb heart"."
"Exactly."
"So you probably didn't really care when those bandits cast you out."
Hiei clenched his fists at his sides.
"What's your point, woman?" he asked tightly.
"I just wondered if you'd ever experienced any sort of family life," she said with a shrug. "You never felt a sort of brotherly bond with any of those bandits? Or perhaps even a sort of father-son bond with any of them?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but of them all, I found their leader the most tolerable. He taught me many things and in some ways he was like a father in my life, but I never cared for him."
"Never?"
"No."
"Because he cast you out?"
"No, because he hunted me for my hiruiseki too."
"So you couldn't even trust him. I can see why trust is an issue for you. Obviously he was never fast enough to catch you then?"
"He caught me many times."
The ferry girl's smile faded. She looked like she was starting to regret having been so insistently inquisitive, but Hiei had passed the point of logic: if she was going to persist with her interfering then she was going to have to deal with the consequences.
"They took it in turns to chase me," he continued. "They chased me for hours, sometimes days. I was considerably faster than them all, but – especially when I was very young – I was incapable of planning ahead. I could only run so long before I had to stop to drink, eat or just collapse from exhaustion. When they caught me, I had to fight. Sometimes I wanted to fight, sometime I didn't. I never wanted to fight the leader, I felt indebted to him because of the shelter and sustenance he had provided me with in my early days, and so I never did fight him. I found that the only way to stop him taking the stone was to curl over and just let him beat me until he tired himself out."
Hiei glared hard at the ferry girl, unsure if the paleness of her complexion and wideness of her eyes denoted fear, sadness or both.
"Is that what you wanted to hear, ferry girl?" he asked her.
She shook her head.
"Why don't you make yourself useful?" he said. "Gather some food. I need to stay by the communicator tomorrow, I won't be able to hunt, so we'll need provisions to see us through at least the next day. Take as much as you can, I'm going to get some water."
He did not wait for her to answer him, instead taking off in the direction of the river as fast as he could, hoping that he would find containers on the way there. Although he had meant to shock the ferry girl, he could not help but wonder why he had told her as much as he had, or why it had felt strangely easy to do so.
Something very strange was happening, and he hoped that it was just the effects of his concern for Yukina's welfare making him feel so unusual.
Next Chapter: Revelations continue (on both sides) as the lines between demon world loving and spirit world love become increasingly blurred and the mission to rescue Yukina gets underway, with Yusuke and Kurama reaching Tarukane's mansion and facing off against the various fighters he has waiting for them. Chapter 13 – Draining All Of Me
