Accidents and Aftermath
Chapter Thirteen: Possibilities
By Dreaming of Everything
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho, or the poem "Proof," which is by Emily Dickinson, or the quotes, which are from Julian of Norwich and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Author's Notes: It's over. Done with. Finished. Complete.
I'm a little bit heartbroken.
Seriously, though, I've gotten very attached to this fic, for a variety of reasons. (I will probably rant about them sometime at my writing livejournal, dream (underscore) it (underscore) all (dot) livejournal (dot) com. Feel free to stop by, and if you do, please comment! I am a friendly person, really, and I'd love to hear from you.)
While Accidents and Aftermath is complete as of this chapter, I am (shameless plugging starts here) starting another Hiei/Botan fic. I am incapable of not having one going at all times, apparently. It's tentatively titled Just Another Traditional Love Story and will be, in fact, a traditional love story. Only with more Hiei/Botan. I think it'll be a good change from A'n'A, not that I haven't loved writing it. (I have, for the record.) (Again, probably more on this at my LJ.)
When it comes to this chapter, I have to warn that it's ridiculously long. I blame my outline. Which I also wrote, but hey. Seriously, though—the longest chapter I've ever written, by 4 pages and 2,000 words. The previous record-setter was a Naruto oneshot 28 pages long—this one's 32 pages, and 13,200 words or so. I really didn't want to cut this into smaller pieces, though…
oOo
Although my author's note(s) is (are) ridiculously long at this point, I'd really like to thank all my readers for this fic. It's been a long trip—I started writing this fic in August 2005. (This probably won't match up with the first post date, though.) Some particular standouts are Robin Autumn, RitSuYue, tsukigana, graviola, Thunder Ring, TheUniverseBeyond, MystiKoorime, MiaHime and Animoon. Also, MoonlitSorrow, who's new here but pretty awesome anyways.
In particular, I'd like to thank omasuoniwabanshi, who has (literally, I think) reviewed every chapter of every Hiei/Botan fic I've written to this point, minus the weird oneshot, which means 25 reviews. And they are all fantastic. It means a lot. Thank you for putting up with me this long, and with this much grace!
oOoOoOo
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere else insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were simply necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn
oOoOoOo
Botan looked into the dregs of her cup of tea, and wished she could see—well, not the future, really, but at least the truth—in it.
She wanted to know. She wanted to understand. She wanted to forgive, but she didn't know anything, didn't understand anything, couldn't forgive anything.
But she could try. And she was trying.
Hiei's parting words echoed through her mind: "I'll go." Said just like that, simply and (pained) and harshly—but none of his not-quite-anger had been directed at her.
And her own words, in response to him: "But come back."
Then there was what else he had said, earlier. "Because I didn't want to hurt you anymore." "And because I am never going to be enough." "I'd thought I'd changed and then I did it again."
He wasn't supposed to be… human some part of her mind insisted.
And what he had said felt almost—familiar. It shouldn't, though. Hiei had never said anything like that to her, before. He'd barely had the courtesy to use her name. He never said anything like that to anyone.
But he had watched her as she slept. She frowned. What had he done all day? Just watched her…?
Some part of her remembered the vague murmuring of his voice washing over her in waves, calm and soothing despite everything that had happened. Despite how his voice sounded pained, raw and vulnerable.
Botan didn't know if Hiei would come back at all. She didn't know when he would return, if he did. She didn't know if he would ever let himself be that emotionally vulnerable around her again.
She should probably contact the Spirit World. Someone had probably discovered she was missing, by now, and with Hiei gone as well, there was a chance that someone would assume the worst. Not any of the Tantei, of course, but you never knew.
oOo
Botan was amazed by the chaos that greeted her as she opened up a link to the Spirit World. "Hello?" she said, questioningly. None of the ogres rushing past Koenma's desk seemed to notice. "Hello…?" she tried again.
"Botan!" said Kurama's voice, coming from the left of the screen. He moved until she could see him through it; he looked remarkably relieved.
"Kurama," Botan said. "What's going on? Is there some sort of attack? Is Enma returning?"
"We've been looking for you," he said. "You just disappeared out of your bed, nobody had the slightest clue what was going on…"
"I wanted to go home," she said, feeling a tinge of guilt. It was true—she had wanted to be in her own apartment, her own space—but it still wasn't the driving reason she'd left. Not a lie, exactly.
Kurama eyed her, his calculating glare going right through her. Botan smiled weakly.
"I'll tell you later," she said, voice soft but intense, urgent. "I'm at my apartment in Ningenkai," she continued, louder.
"Wait, is that Botan?" said Yusuke's voice from off-screen.
"Yes," said Kurama simply.
"Thank goodness!" said Koenma's voice. "Where is she, Kurama? Is she okay? Nobody's asking for a ransom or anything?"
"No, it's fine. She left of her own volition, and she's in her apartment in the human world right now."
"Are you okay?" said Kuwabara, appearing in the view screen. "You're not hurt, still feeling okay?"
"I'm feeling a lot better, actually," Botan said, surprised to find it was true. "I sprained my ankle, and I've got a few cuts and scrapes, but I'm fine other than that. The wound—" (the wound that Hiei had given her) "—in my side is fine. It's starting to close, around the edges, now that my healing ability's recovering."
There were sighs of relief. In the background, Botan could hear orders to stop search parties and bring them back home being handed out.
"This… This was all about me?" she said weakly.
"We had no idea what had happened to you!" half-yelled Yusuke. "You can't just disappear like that and expect nothing to happen, can you?! And when you're already hurt…"
"I'm sorry," said Botan, face flushing painfully red. "I— I didn't think that it would be this big of a fuss…"
"I'll send someone to go pick you up," said Koenma.
"Please don't," said Botan. "I'd rather stay here."
Koenma looked at her, eyes penetrating just as far as Kurama's had. "Okay, then," he said. "If it's what you want. I want someone to go check up on you, though, get you groceries and make sure everything's alright."
"I'll go," said Kuwabara and Yusuke simultaneously.
"I'm going as well," said Kurama quietly but emphatically.
"Yes, sir," said Botan meekly. "Kurama, Kuwabara, Yusuke, thank you."
Botan cut the connection with considerably more relief than she was used to. Whatever she had expected, she hadn't expected that! From the looks of things, Reikai couldn't have been running at more than a quarter its regular capacity, if that. That that would happen was… Unthinkable. And all for her…
Despite all of her worries, and despite the embarrassment, she felt her heart fill with warmth at the knowledge that they had done that for her. Shallow as that might sound, they had been worried about her.
oOo
Botan was puttering around in the kitchen, trying to think of something to make that sounded good to her still-slightly-touchy stomach. The fact that Yusuke and Kuwabara had picked up the groceries hadn't helped. She was lucky she had gotten fresh vegetables at all, she supposed.
She jumped a little when the doorbell rang—she wasn't expecting anyone. She had thought that everyone had already visited her, and left once Genkai had picked up on the fact that she had been a little overwhelmed, and forcibly chased everyone out of the room.
"Hello—" she began brightly as she opened the door, the word catching in her mouth as she recognized the person she was facing. She ignored the way her heart stuttered, and didn't flinch back. "Hiei," she said softly.
He didn't respond for a few minutes, and Botan thought he wasn't going to. A brief rush of anger (and something else, something indescribable) flooded through her, mixing with the fear—he had never really acknowledged her. She had always been the useless one on the team.
"Botan," he said, just as softly, and Botan's head jerked up, the spark of anger in her eyes fading quickly, at the edge he had given the word—it was pained and accepting and sorrowful, all at once, with a depth to it that was filled with something intense and rock-solid-steady and peaceful, and she shivered to hear it.
It was funny. Hiei had never bothered to knock, before. The few times he had deigned to enter her apartment, he had snuck in through a window, door or balcony, just showing up and announcing himself when he saw fit. He'd never asked to be let in before, not even to the extent of knocking—which was just a way to announce your presence and request entry, when all was said and done.
The two of them were standing like gaping idiots at the front door. Behind Hiei, she could see a slightly peeved older gentleman trying to get past the two of them with several bags of groceries.
She took a step back, to give Hiei enough room to enter; he jerked back at the movement, though, backing up against the wall behind him faster and more fluidly gracefully than any human could manage. Her neighbor seemed to have noticed that at least something was off—he frowned heavily in the direction of the demon, glaring through slightly smeared glasses.
Why had Hiei backed off? Had it been to… to avoid her?
Hiei started a little as his darting eyes finally caught onto the man. His expression shifted, and Botan suddenly had the impression that he hadn't realized the man had been there, before. That was more than unusual. Hiei never dropped his guard, certainly not when there was only Botan around and he was in unfamiliar territory, and even then it was unthinkable that the ferry girl would actually be more on top of a situation—any situation—than the fire demon.
"Excuse me," said the man stiffly, striding past the two frozen beings taking up the hallway.
The two stood utterly still as the man walked between them, then shuffled into his own apartment after fumbling with his key. Hiei stayed where he was, back glued to the hallway wall, as far away from Botan as he could physically get while still remaining in the hall.
"I'm… sorry I'm doing this to you," said Hiei lowly. "I should have known—I'll go."
"What?" said Botan. She sounded honestly confused, startling Hiei into looking up to meet her befuddled eyes.
"Come in," she said, possibly on automatic, still standing to one side and holding the door open.
Hiei's eyes sharpened and cleared. He hadn't realized that she hadn't been trying to put more distance between them, the opening door leaving them close together, but had instead been trying to give him room to enter her apartment.
She hadn't been backing away in fear. She had been inviting him into her home.
"Please, sit down," said Botan. "I'll go get the tea." Her mind was clearly elsewhere as she worked through the niceties of social visits, even though it was just Hiei who was there. Hiei, who wouldn't bother with basic manners like 'don't insult your teammates and friends,' let alone delicate matters like 'it's rude not to offer a seat and food or drinks to a guest.' Still, it left Botan with something to do while she worked her mind down from its panic and prepared herself for the coming conversation. Hiei was glad of the courtesy, for the first and probably last time in his life.
After a few minutes, Botan emerged from the kitchen, two cups of tea and some snacks with her. Her own cup was a chipped mug, Hiei noticed, although his own was much nicer. He stilled himself as she approached him enough to set the tray she was carrying down on the coffee table, waiting until after she had retreated to her own seat, kitty-corner to his, before he gathered up his own cup.
The silence was long and heavy, and Hiei was painfully aware of the heavy ticking on the clock Botan had on her wall. He hadn't remembered it being that loud, the few other times he'd been there. Maybe she'd replaced it. It was hard to resist the urge to smash the thing, or at least move it somewhere very, very far away. He would have entertained the idea as a way to pass the time, but the atmosphere was too tense, what would end up being said too momentous, was too repressive.
And then there was how Botan would react to him drawing his sword around her at all, especially without any obvious threat, and attacking something, even if it wasn't her. That wasn't funny. It was painful, in a way he hadn't felt for a long, long time, and never exactly like this.
The quiet clink as Botan set her mug against the glass surface of the low table between them was just as magnified in the quiet.
"What—What did you do? While you were—" she broke off, and didn't finish the sentence. She didn't actually say "while you were watching me," but they both hear the words anyway.
Hiei shifted uneasily, but he owed her the truth.
"Mostly, I watched you," he said, and his eyes catch the tremor that runs through her, the motion faint enough that it's possible that it was entirely possible that it had been completely subconscious, never even noticed by her preoccupied self.
The two sit in uneasy silence, Botan playing with the handle of the empty mug she had picked back up, just to give her fingers something to do.
"Sometimes, I talked," said Hiei, voice almost rushed, even though he had tried not to make it sound like he was being harried, hurried, by his own nervousness. By the weight of the confession he was about to make.
Botan looked up, but she didn't ask the question: 'What did you talk to me about?' went unsaid., the non-words falling into near-silence like rocks into a still pond, creating ripples against the smoothness of the water.
Hiei was looking away, a barely-there, nearly-invisible blush rising to his cheeks; Botan would have been tempted to laugh, maybe even despite what had happened, but for the fierce, hooded look in his eyes as he stared at something across the room and behind her, eyes just over and to the side of one of her right shoulder.
"The first— conversation I had was… Was admitting I was guilty. To you. But more to myself. But it was very quiet in that room. And it made me feel better. Although in a way it made me feel worse.
"And I did a lot of thinking. It took—" too much thought "—a lot of thought to just to realize that I felt guilt at all. To confess to that, even if just to myself." And your unconscious, possibly-dead body.
"So I began to understand myself a little better. My second realization was…"
His blush grew heavier.
"…Was that I… I wanted people to care, even though they didn't." Botan started a little at the words, eyes jolted halfway to Hiei's face from her down-turned inspection of her knees before her gaze returned firmly back to where it had been.
She didn't say 'But people do care!' even though she knew they do, because some strong part of her can't admit to that, not when even the strongest parts that made up who she was were terrified, wanting to flinch away from the frightening-despite-it-all figure seated harmlessly across the table from her, picking at a loose thread in a cushion.
"I realized I respected you, for everything you did. You were always… positive, cheerful, and I never understood that. I… I hadn't thought that you must have had your problems as well, and I never saw you… Give in to that."
Botan looked squarely at him, this time. "Neither did you. You almost had me believing you—" she sounded almost betrayed.
"I never had anyone I could speak to. I had no one, because no one even knew I was— capable of feeling anything. You weren't. You aren't. Anyone I could have approached… They would have laughed, or— Nobody would take me seriously, believe me, if I approached them with something like that. People nearly expected it of you, I certainly did, but you never gave in."
Botan's stunned by the pure, raw emotion in his voice, the aching need. The loneliness. It hits her like a punch to the gut, and it hurts so much it takes away her breath. She's always been sympathetic, but she had never imagined something like this, not in Hiei. Her mind and heart don't want to believe in it. Some part of her is crying out to it in turn.
"And I realized how much everyone needed you. How much I needed you, because nobody else ever believed like you did. You could bend iron around your will, and you never gave up hope. Yusuke would never stop fighting, but you just believed. It wasn't expecting something, or hoping for something, but pure conviction. None of us had that.
"So I began to understand that we all needed you, just for who you are. Even though you can't fight. And sometimes you—bothered me—" Botan lets out a sharp huff of breath, eyes narrowing into a glare although they don't lift, and Hiei breaks off slightly, breath coming slightly ragged, before he continues. "—but I hadn't realized why. I'd… Never liked to rely on anyone, and I'd never understood you before.
"Or myself. I was afraid, Botan." There's that pain again, his words almost a plea, carrying some heavy, deep understanding that Botan feels like she's drowning in, unable to understand. And what he's saying to her—she'd have laughed, if someone had told her, before, and after the incident she would have felt betrayed and afraid. "I'd never been afraid before. I'd never admitted it. But you made me do it. I was afraid of losing you." His eyes are suspiciously bright, as if he might cry, Botan realizes with pained surprise, horrified at the very thought—how would she react to Hiei crying at all, let alone crying around her? He'd never trusted her enough to show her that he had any emotion at all. Before all this. Her mind's fuzzy, having trouble grasping what he's telling her, and crowded with empathetic pain.
"And I was afraid of you living." Botan sucks in a deep breath and tenses, drawing back a little, afraid that now she's going to die after all, for a brief second, until she looks up to see that Hiei's drawn back as well, more than she has, pressing himself against the bright floral pattern of the cushion behind him. He looks terrified, but she doesn't know what of. She doesn't think he's going to kill her. "Because you would… React like this." The words are spoken softly, and Botan has to strain to hear them. At first, she thinks she must have misheard, because it just doesn't make sense, that Hiei would be afraid of having what he has always wanted: Fear. Respect.
"You're not yourself around me, like this. You're not who you really are. It hurts." The words are bleak, and instead of that overwhelming emotion there's just looming, gaping nothingness in his tone, an empty chasm of non-emotion.
"Because…" He faltered, and Botan couldn't understand why. He has said more than she's ever heard him say before, and said things she had never imagined he even felt, or recognized, or would share. He was silent so long that Botan was certain he'd finished, and she was about to say something—if only she could think of something, could process what she's been given, could understand—when he started talking again.
"I realized I loved you." And then he was gone, blurring past her fast enough that she threw herself backwards against the chair in surprise and fear—so hard that it tipped over, sending her crashing to the floor—although he was already gone by then, moving too fast for her to keep up..
She sat on the floor and cried. Half an hour later she realized she was bleeding, so she got up and bandaged the slight scrape, and the reopened cut caused by her trip across the park carried by Hiei. She had forgotten to turn off the teakettle, and it had boiled dry, the metal glowing a dull red. She turned the heat off numbly, and left the kettle to cool on the stove.
oOo
Hiei had never liked to cry, and it wasn't just because it was showing weakness. The murky, cracked and flawed gems he produced along with the tears always seemed to mock him.
oOo
Hiei loved her, Botan thought numbly, and she couldn't think of a reason why Hiei would have said something like that.
Unless it was true.
Because it couldn't be true, but Botan couldn't think what sort of advantage that sort of confession would bring. It gave an explanation of what he did while she had been sleeping, at least a little, but there was much better ways he could have done that, without sacrificing that much of his dignity, his image as the removed, cold, calculating warrior. Maybe he was meaning to make himself seem more human, less threatening? You'd think he would have been more believably in-character, though, if he had tried that.
Botan made herself a cup of warm milk, careful to turn off the heat even while she ignored the creaking of the cooling teakettle. She was careful not to think of anything Hiei had said, and fell asleep quickly.
She dreamt, though, and tossed in her sleep.
oOo
She is underwater, and water is flowing past her. It is gentle, enveloping her and body-warm, soft and comforting.
Snatches of conversation, half-caught, flow past her ears on the current, catching against her body and breaking like bubbles, popping their sounds against her. She listens, and the words are eerily familiar. It's Hiei's voice, she realizes dimly after what feels like hours. It's hard to tell. She's certainly heard a lot of words, by now. The tone their spoken in ranges from sad to angry to bitter, but it's never happy. It's never unemotional. That seems somehow wrong. Not that Hiei's not happy, but that he seems to care so deeply. For her, if the conversations are true.
She can't move, but that's alright.
oOo
Hiei would have left by now, but Koenma had sent him orders to stay in the area. He could tell that Kurama had been involved.
He would have ignored the instructions, but he couldn't bring himself to force Koenma to send the only friends he had after him. He knew that there wasn't anyone else on Reikai staff who had half a hope against him. There hadn't been when he had first been brought in, and his skill level had improved exponentially. They had all become more powerful than he had ever imagined.
He was pretty sure, though, that he wouldn't have left even if he hadn't been ordered to stay.
oOo
Botan woke up with a headache at five in the morning, and stumbled into the bathroom to fish painkillers out of her medicine cabinet. She woke up again at six, then again at eight. She crawled out of bed and into the living room at nine.
She resisted the urge to be self-pitying and indulgent, then berated herself when she gave into it anyways. Then she cried for a while at her utter incompetence, her inability to deal with anything.
And then she thought about Hiei.
His words from the day before kept slipping through her mind, winding through her thoughts like eels. They were echoed by her dreams, but it felt more like a memory.
What she remembered… Some people remembered what happened around them when they were comatose. She had just thought that she hadn't… Had she been wrong?
It's surprisingly easy to change your world-view, Botan knew. She had done it, more often than most people had. What was hard was changing it when you didn't really want to, deep-down inside. Even though she maybe might.
There were all these disparate images. Who was Hiei? There was the creature she had fought with, when she had first met him, a ruthless demon who would do anything to further his own means. There was the surface-Hiei she had worked with, a cold and removed person who would never lower himself to her position, had no tolerance for her uselessness and even less for her personality. There was the deeper-Hiei of that same time period, the one who fought alongside Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama, would fight for them and with them, the demon with a strong sense of honor and morals.
There was the nightmare that had come down on her out of the dark, transfixed by battle and simply throwing her aside, wanting only to fight even if that meant killing his best friend—regardless that he wouldn't admit that that's what Kurama was—and not caring about anyone, anything, except for the heat of battle.
There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, gloating. There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, transfixed by guilt. There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, desperate and alone and afraid and needing her. That was the Hiei who loved her.
Hiei, who said he loved her. Hiei, who had tried to kill her. Hiei, who had stayed by her side.
oOo
She couldn't sleep that night, even those she was tired, heavy with the sort of exhaustion that seeps into your bones and aches. She left her bedroom because of the flickering shadows cast by the clouds scudding through the sky and over the full moon, but the gloom and still-creaking teapot in the living room was worse. Finally, she found her bathrobe and slipped it on over her pajamas, then quietly left her apartment for the roof of the building.
The roof was cold and slightly damp, but it wasn't raining. Botan found a slightly drier spot in the lee of a chimney, and sat with her back against the brickwork, watching the constantly-shifting patterns the clouds formed against the night sky. It used to be that you could see more stars, but with this sort of light—from the moon and the city—there were only a few. She half-wanted to make a wish, but didn't.
And then she cried again, because it was surprisingly easy to cry, during the bright night with the clouds rolling past above her head and the wind moaning through the rooftops of the city and blowing her hair into her open mouth, sticking it to the tears on her face, when she was gasping in the cold night air, almost painful to breath.
oOo
Hiei watched her, and hated himself for it.
At least she wasn't sleeping.
But there wasn't anyone else watching her, and Botan was never weak but she was also never physically strong, even at the best of times, and she had just come out of a coma.
He turned away when she started to cry, and waited until she got up to go back inside before he looked again. He tried not to listen, and hated himself for doing that much. But it was important that Botan be safe. He had to be there.
And he could turn his head away from her when she cried. And ignore her gasped breath and the muffled half-sobs. And give her whatever privacy he could manage.
He left, to return to the park, when she crawled back into bed.
oOo
Botan woke up without any memories of her dream, and without the prickly-crawly sensation that someone had just been whispering to her, murmuring. The memory made her shiver, and it was partly fear and partly uncertainty and partly the strange intimacy of the situation she had been in.
Botan wondered where Hiei was, if he had left for the demon world, after his confession. It would fit what she knew of him, but very little he'd done in the past few weeks did. She might need to reevaluate.
She didn't know what to think.
Botan wondered if she could trust him, and then wondered if she couldn't. Nobody had ever told her they loved her, before. It hadn't been… lonely, but it felt that way now. She hadn't been alone, though.
She was pathetic. She was being targeted, that was the only explanation; nobody else Hiei interacted with would serve as a foil for the sort of dating-scheme she must be involved in: the rest of the Tantei was male, Yukina was his sister, Genkai was old (actually, so was Hiei, come to think of it,) Keiko was human—and another person he had tried to kill—and Shizuru was a) violent and b) related to Kuwabara.
She discarded the theory a few seconds later. Hiei didn't have the interpersonal skills to pull something like that off.
And it—it just felt wrong somehow.
(And she remembered. She had snippets of him talking to her while she was unconscious buried in her mind, kneaded into her subconscious. You couldn't fake that, not even when you were Hiei.)
But could she trust him? She didn't know. He had come back. She had already trusted him enough to talk to him, even after she had confronted him. She had been afraid of him, for everything he had done, when he had appeared out of nowhere to catch her as she stumbled (while she had been looking for him, true,) but she had also been angry, for how he had hidden until then. And he had taken her into his arms and carried her home, to a cup of hot tea and a change of dry clothes and indoor heating, and she had still been afraid, but she had been afraid and… and… and something.
And he had said he loved her. It felt unreal, impossible, even now—what, two days later? It didn't even feel that long ago. She still didn't know what to think.
Did Hiei love her? she asked herself, and some part of her answered, deep and instinctive and sure, yes. Her rational mind dismissed it, but also catalogued reasons why, to counterbalance the list of reasons why not. Another part of her just remembered Hiei, suddenly in front of her, sword a blur, appearing out of the dark.
Botan consciously willed her mind to silence, and got out a pad of paper.
First came a list:
1. trust Hiei
2. love me?
3. my feelings—unknown
4. What do I do?
5. and how.
Botan paused, staring hard at the paper. Idly, although her eyes were still focused fiercely on the list in front of her and suspiciously bright, she pressed several deep lines into the paper with the tip of her pen.
She stirred suddenly, tossed her head to shake off the tiredness that had settled—she hadn't been sleeping well.
She ripped off the page, and set it above the full pad of paper, on her desk. She drew to columns on the second page, and labeled one "Pros" and one "Cons." After a minute's pause, she wrote "Does Hiei Love Me" at the top.
She filled in the negative section first, starting at the top and working down.
Tried to kill me.
Manipulative.
Inhuman.
Has only ever loved Yukina.
Never even liked me— presi president precedent
Unlike him.
Way to gain back trust?
Or just confuse me
Tried to kill Kurama
Tried to kill Keiko
Tried to kill Yusuke and Kuwabara
Killed others
Stolen
Tried to take over the world
Doesn't make sense
Possibly gone already
She paused for a minute, then crossed out the last line. She looked the list over for a minute, then started on the other side.
Nothing obvious to gain
I'm not an obvious choice
Seems to honestly care
Really did talk to me while I was asleep, I think
Embarrassing
Not sort of declaration of love you'd use to seduce someone
Unless that's on purpose?
Has helped me—in the woods
Seems frightened of me
After another pause, she crossed out seems frightened of me, then continued writing after another moment.
Has helped me—in the woods
Seems frightened of my reaction to him.
Has changed
Fought to save Yusuke/Kuwabara/Kurama
Fair—sense of justice—moral code
Botan looked at the written-on page for another long moment, idly drawing and re-drawing a rough circle on the bottom of the page.
Finally, she added I want him to love me at the bottom of both pages.
She wiped away a few stray tears off her face, and went to make herself a cup of tea. A few minutes later, she left to go buy another tea kettle. Her old one was still creaking.
oOo
Do I trust Hiei, Botan asked herself, waiting in the check-out line at the store, her new kettle held in her hands. She didn't let herself answer, not consciously, but it took more effort than she had imagined it would. She had always been good about not letting herself know what she was thinking.
"Excuse me, but it's your turn to check out," said the woman at the check-out desk, her tone implying that it wasn't for the first time, either. Botan jumped and blushed. "Oh! Excuse me!" she said, blushing with embarrassment, trying to hurry for her wallet and hand the tea-kettle box to the cashier all at once.
She left the store still blushing, but it left her mind quickly. "Do I trust him," she whispered, nearly silent, before she caught herself—she was on a public street, for goodness's sakes!
She finally let herself answer the question as she lay in bed that night. Do I trust Hiei? Yes. I trust him to save me from anyone, except himself, and sometimes my own self. So yes, I trust Hiei that much.
Even if she had loved him—and she didn't, and hadn't—she wouldn't have trusted him enough to say so, not to him. Not even if he had done so first. So Hiei trusted her more than she trusted him. He wasn't as weak as she was.
His words echo across her mind. "I realized I respected you, for everything you did. You were always… positive, cheerful, and I never understood that. I… I hadn't thought that you must have had your problems as well, and I never saw you… Give in to that. I never had anyone I could speak to. I had no one, because no one even knew I was— capable of feeling anything. You weren't. You aren't. Anyone I could have approached… They would have laughed, or— Nobody would take me seriously, believe me, if I approached them with something like that. People nearly expected it of you, I certainly did, but you never gave in."
It was funny, what you find inside someone when they break, some part of her thought. She wanted to cry again, but she had done enough crying already. It was getting ridiculous.
She shook her head, sharply, to clear it.
"I don't want to do anymore of this," she said, after another long, silent moment. She didn't want to deal with this instability, unknowingness, this doubt. Her constant back-and-forth debates weren't getting her anywhere.
Not that there was much else she could do. She didn't even know if it mattered, especially when it came to anyone other than her. Especially when it came to Hiei. For all she knew, he was in Makai or further—or only-Koenma-knew-where, but on Earth—to escape the humiliation of his confessions.
Some ice-shard-sharp part of her mind said, voice cool and calm, that it might just be her that he was escaping. Botan shivered.
She was crying again anyways, but she just ignored it this time, although the salt was stinging her irritated, rubbed-dry eyes. She sniffled miserably.
And she was normally so cheerful! Really, what had happened to her?
Well, she had been poisoned, and so had Hiei. And he had tried to kill her. And— And—
From there, it was painfully complicated. Well, it had been complicated to start with, but the welter of events that had occurred, all at once and all-of-a-sudden…
Botan let her mind drift, not thinking of anything for once. It was restful, peaceful. She shivered after a few minutes, and moved into her bed, wrapping her comforter around her shoulders, displacing her smooth sheets to burrow her feet underneath them, although she didn't lie down. She yawned helplessly anyways. Sleeping had been difficult, the past few days.
She wondered where Hiei was.
oOo
Botan woke up still half slumped-over on her bed, although in her sleep she had shifted the blankets to cover her more fully.
She moved out of the uncomfortable position stiffly—sleeping that way, especially on her still-healing cuts and bruises, hadn't been a good idea. It had still been the best night of sleep she'd had since before the attack.
She shivered in the cold air of the room as she rose out of her cocoon to look at her alarm clock, red letters glowing dimly in the darkened room. Five thirty in the morning—a truly ungodly hour if there ever was one. She sighed, slumping back on the bed, then hurriedly burrowed back under the covers. She bit back a totally inappropriate curse, and let herself fall back into a dim half-sleep.
She pulled herself out of bed fifteen minutes later, shivering in the cold air of the apartment. It had cooled sharply overnight, although the rain clouds hadn't left. The sky was still the same steely gunmetal gray.
Her legs and joints were aching, and she felt utterly, inappropriately, old. She did her imitation of the old woman two floors down and an apartment to the right, giggling slightly—she was fairly decent, if she said so herself. (And she did have to be the one to say so. Some things did not leave the privacy of her bedroom.)
She sobered after just a few seconds. There were some things she didn't want other people seeing, and she had been watched before. And she didn't know where Hiei was, and he had promised he wouldn't look, but Hiei wasn't the sort to let a petty thing like words get in the way of something he wanted to do. And even if he didn't have any darker ulterior motives, Botan easily believed him capable of ignoring her wishes—even if he did care for her—to make sure that she was safe, if it was what he wanted.
As safe as she could ever be. She had almost been killed by one of her friends, one of the people she trusted, almost been killed by the man who now professed to love her. She had been surrounded by the four best fighters in all the three worlds, some of the most powerful beings who had ever existed, and she had almost died, cut down by one of their own. Not a victim of friendly fire, exactly.
She put on some of her warmest clothes and then rifled through her closet until she found the coat she wanted—the big, ugly, very warm one—and headed out the door, dropping her house key into her pocket as she went. Just like she remembered, her gloves were still stuffed into that same pocket, left over from the last spell of cold weather. She pulled her hood down over her ears, and zipped the front up the rest of the way. Botan set out for the park with a determined stride, ignoring the twinge of sore muscles from her legs, the stiffness of her ankle, the pull of the scars and scabs where Hiei had cut into her side.
A walk would do her some good.
oOo
Botan was halfway through her second circle of the park nearest her house—not the one that Hiei favored; this was much more civilized, less wild—when she finally slowed down. Her breath was coming hard, visible in the cold morning air. It had started sleeting, the past days' rain just starting to freeze. Nothing was worse than sleet, Botan thought. At least snow was pretty.
She just stood there for a few minutes, the trees dreary and gray around her. It was a winter morning, but her mind was, for once, blissfully clear of any problems other than the fact that she was losing feeling in her fingers, despite the now-soaked-through gloves.
"Botan," said a quiet voice, still a fair distance off and to the right. She turned to face him.
"Hiei," she said in quiet response. "Oh. I almost thought you had left."
He looked down-right affronted, and, ordinarily, Botan would have giggled at the sheer absurdity of that expression on his face.
But then he looked away, and the expression was even less funny than it had been to begin with.
"Yes," he said, voice low, and dark with somehow unthreatening implications Botan didn't even know how to begin to decipher.
"Thanks—thank you," she said, not sure why she said it at all, not sure why she had corrected herself, used the more formal version.
"Were you following me?" some wary part of her asked, after a minute. Hiei drew back again, taking a few smooth steps back, as if she was dangerous, and possibly going to attack him—not that Hiei would ever back away from a fight; the only people less likely to were Yusuke and Kuwabara—but still, if he had been anyone else (except for Yusuke and Kuwabara) the thought would have stood.
As if she was possibly going to attack him, her mind whispered back to her, and Botan knew that she had attacked him, really. And Hiei had backed away. There wasn't a rush of power, no smug self-satisfaction, like she half-expected there to be; there was just a blank confusion, an utter lack of understanding: the world just wasn't supposed to work that way.
Of course, the world hadn't been working right for a while. That was the problem, really. Not that having something to blame like an flawed operating system for the world made the problems go away.
"I guess I just keep on finding you, then," she said, with a small private half-smile at the ground, one that faded quickly. She couldn't see Hiei, but she wondered if he had flinched again.
"Yes," he said, and the grief, the pain, in his voice made Botan gasp.
"What…?" she said, and didn't know where to go from there. She didn't know what needed to be asked, anymore.
"I never meant for you to have to see me again," Hiei said, and Botan was drawn to look at him, lifting her head up to meet his eyes—his own gaze was firmly centered on her—which were wide with that welter of emotions she still couldn't name. Any emotion she could come up with seemed… Insufficient.
"I didn't… Didn't want to…"
Hiei's breath was harsh with frustration, with sorrow, with impatience and too much patience and love.
"I didn't want to make you go through what you keep on putting yourself through, damn it all," he said finally, voice low and angry. Botan would be afraid, but even she can tell that none of the anger is directed at her. She can hear the self-loathing in Hiei's tone. "I frighten you. You can't relax around me, can't even forget I'm there. You can't even ignore me. You fear me, and it isall. My. Fault Even if I wanted to force my presence into your life, anymore than I already have, I would never really be around you again—and I'm not, because you're not yourself around me. You shouldn't be this frightened of anything, this untrusting, but you are and I know who caused the problem. I know you do, too. And so I tried to leave you—
"But you keep on tracking me down, Botan, you keep on finding me. I can't even leave you in peace, can't even give you that much. You asked me to come back, to go into your home a second time, and I'm not good. My best intentions aren't enough when you are asking me to be near to you, even when you react with fear and panic and near-panic and mistrust. Of course I came."
Hiei broke off suddenly, taking the breath in to say more but not. He frowned darkly, glaring, and turned away from the woman in front of him. He fought back the urge to cry again: he had some pride.
"Oh," said Botan, sounding stunned. "You—You sound as if you really do… do love me."
Hiei was 20 feet away from her and turned to face her before Botan could blink. One hand was grasping hard at the hilt of his sword, hard enough that his knuckles were white, and the sudden movement and the hand at his sword was enough to make Botan's own breath come sharp and afraid, She backed up another step, pressed her spine into the rough tree trunk behind her. She could feel drops of sap against her skin, and knew there would be more in her hair and along her back, but couldn't make herself care.
"I— I—" Botan said.
Hiei forcefully pried his hand of his sword hilt, held his hand stiffly open at his side, then laughed, but there wasn't any humor in the sound. "No. Of course. I should have known better, to think that you would just take me at my word. I should have known. You wouldn't have believed me even before I had almost killed you—the second time, at least. You didn't know me before the first time, really. But now? I'm a fool."
"I don't know!" Botan half-shouted, half-yelled. "I don't know anything—"
There was the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path. Hiei was suddenly gone—probably into the bushes or up a tree, Botan knew. She didn't think about how he could be anywhere in the clearing, and she wouldn't know.
"Miss?" said an older gentleman, coming into view around a bend in the path. "Is everything alright? I heard shouting."
"Oh!" said Botan, quickly drying her errant tears on a sleeve. "No. No, I'm, um, practicing for a play. I wanted to try it outdoors, right? I'm stuck on this one point, and I don't want to try it around the rest of the cast until I get it figured out. I'm so sorry I disturbed you! I'll try to be quieter, okay?" She plastered on the sunniest smile she could manage and prayed.
"No, of course! A play. You're very convincing—I could have sworn you weren't acting out a thing. Well, I'll leave you to it—don't want to interrupt your creative process, you know. I was in a play once, actually. Wasn't any good at it, but it was demmed good fun. Well, I'm glad everything's okay…"
"Thank you!" Botan called out to his retreating back as he left, breathing a sigh of relief after he'd fully disappeared.
Slowly, Hiei drew back out of the bracken and underbrush he'd disappeared into. Silence fell, broken only by the piercing shrill of a bird further in the forest.
"I want to trust you," Botan said finally. "I don't know why, but I do. I don't know if I can."
"Why?" said Hiei, voice filled with desperation and disbelief and hope.
"I want to be a better person than I am," said Botan. She wondered why she was telling him this. She lifted a hand, wiped the melted sleet that kept on trickling onto her face away.
Hiei looked baffled, before his face returned to what she had begun to think of as the default: pained and fierce, still shuttered but more vulnerable than she had ever seen him before. More loving. More hopeless.
"One of us has killed people," he said softly. "You don't even know the extent of the crimes I have committed. Even the ones you are aware I have committed are… unforgivable."
"You were trying, too."
He had been. "But 'trying' is not enough to make up for what I have done. It's all I could do, but it does not make me a good person."
"And I want, more badly than I should, I want someone to love me." Botan smiled bitterly. "It makes it very hard to trust you, because I know I want it. Just because I want to know that I am a good enough person that, out of a world full of other girls, someone would choose me. It's stupid, and silly, and selfish, but I want to be loved, even if it ends. Even if I don't love that person back."
Hiei flinched again.
"I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't expect you to love me." His tone was flat, expressionless, to hide the pain.
"Yes. I don't love you." Botan's voice was equally flat, but Hiei couldn't tell what emotion it was hiding. Her face was calm, composed, serene.
Hiei was careful not to flinch, this time. He knew it already, and it would be stupid to react to a known fact.
"But I trust you more than I think. This park is utterly deserted, right? You could force me to take you to the demon planes and then kill me once we arrived—or just set me loose without your protection, which would do the same thing—and there's a good chance you would never be found. You could hold me hostage, and get whatever you asked for, within reason—Koenma's protective of the ferry girls, even if Enma wasn't. It would have been easy to slip a little extra poison into my bloodstream while I was sleeping. It would have been beyond easy to just stay and watch me after I had slipped in that park, and maybe even left while the wind and the cold and my wounds finished me off. To be very sure, you could have helped them along. You didn't, though. And I'm here, alone, when nobody knows I'm here, in this park, with you, and I am afraid but it is not because of what you might do to me. And I am aware of how very much more capable than me you are, don't worry."
"You should be afraid."
"But I'm not, particularly. Why? Are you going to hurt me?" Her tone was for a polite question.
"No." There wasn't any hesitation in Hiei's immediate response. "But you don't know that. You shouldn't trust me, shouldn't rely on me, shouldn't believe in me, after what I've done."
"I've done it once, already."
Hiei just looked at her, gaze slow and steady and hurting with the slow, smoldering pain of acceptance.
"I am afraid of you," said Botan. Hiei looked away. "But I am not afraid that you will hurt me." Her voice was soft and rich and deliberate.
"You don't make sense," said Hiei, nearly snapping at her, his attitude and tone closer to what it had usually been, before he had tried kill her.
"I'm afraid of being underwater, but I'm never really afraid I'm going to drown," said Botan. "Just because something frightens me doesn't mean it's a reasonable fear, and that I really think there's danger involved." She leveled a cool gaze in his direction, position offering a challenge.
Hiei turned smoldering eyes towards her, then drew his sword, shifting into a new position, blade lowered in her direction. Her breath froze in her throat, and she flinched backwards as she fought the urge to throw herself back, away from Hiei. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. There were fresh tears running down her cheeks—no doubt her face was red and blotchy. She knew her eyes would be irritated—they were burning from the new salt, but she couldn't blink. It would mean looking away.
A few seconds later Hiei dropped the stance, sword slipping back into the sheath. He half-turned away from her again, walked another ten feet away, slowly and cautiously, as if the ground had become eggshells underneath him.
"I am sorry," he said lowly. "I shouldn't have done that. I didn't—mean to threaten you. I've never meant to frighten you, but that was—
"So much worse. I just threatened you. I just—I'm sorry, sorry."
Botan let herself collapse, falling to the ground as her knees gave out, still pressing her back to the pine behind her for the slight comfort of having something solid behind her. She knew she was sobbing, and after a minute she raised fingers caked with dirt from where they had clutched at the ground to scrub them off her face, smearing mud over herself. She wiped them on a corner of her shirt, then tried again, but she didn't want to let her eyes leave Hiei's. She didn't want him to move when she was looking somewhere else—it would leave her not knowing where he was, exactly, even if it was only for a short while.
She should have known better than to challenge him, even wordlessly—and she had not been wordless. She should have known better than to push him, because he might love her—and he might not—but he had never tolerated her, even when she was being polite. She had never been stupid enough to seriously antagonize him before, and it was even worse now.
At least she was still alive, and unhurt. It was probably more than she should have hoped for, all things considered.
She shifted slightly on the ground and shivered. The sleet had started falling again, and she was wet through from the puddles of icy water she had sat in.
Hiei took a step closer to her, and her drifting concentration snapped back to attention. "Yes?" she said, voice wary. She tensed.
"Botan. Listen to me. Please." The clear desperation in his voice was enough to make her pause.
"I'm sorry. For everything I've done: for how I treated you before, for attacking you, for not leaving, for threatening you now. I'm not patient, and it hurt to have you stand there and—
"I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."
Botan choked on a sob that was halfway to being a laugh. "You keep on saying that," she said, "but then you do the same thing. All over again. It makes it very hard to believe you."
Hiei didn't reply, his face turned firmly to the side.
"I should go," he said, and Botan knew that he was talking about much more than just leaving the park.
"Ignoring it won't make it go away," she said, feeling old and tired.
"It will make it easier for you," said Hiei wearily.
"Don't you think you should ask me that?" snapped out Botan, with more vitriol in her voice than she had wanted. "You keep on saying that you're doing this for me, but then you never ask me what I want."
There was a few more minutes of silence, before the older gentleman from before came walking back around the corner and into the small clearing they were in. "Miss?" he said, looking alarmed. "Miss? Are you alright?"
"Oh, yes!" trilled Botan. "I tripped, I'm afraid—I'm very clumsy, really—but thankfully one of my friends—that's him over there—happened by. He's already made sure that I'm okay."
The man was still frowning slightly. "Okay, then. You should get her inside, though," he said, turning to Hiei, who tried to tone down the glare he was leveling at the man. "It's bitterly cold out today, and you're looking awfully cold, miss."
Botan blushed. "Thank you for your concern. But I'm fine, really! Especially with a friend here to help me."
"Goodbye, then," said the gentleman, leaving with a hesitant glance back over his shoulder.
"He's right," said Hiei a few minutes after the man's departure. "You're too cold. This weather—I should have thought of it. I—shouldn't forget you are human." He was far more upset than her being a little chilly warranted, Botan thought. Although she was awful cold, now that she thought about. It was still sleeting. She was glad she had worn her good coat.
Slowly, she rose back up to her feet, using the tree trunk to support stiffened legs and her still-healing cuts and ankle. She still didn't want to reveal her vulnerabilities, not with Hiei there—not that it would make a difference, and not that he wasn't already aware of them.
She was colder than she had realized, was her first thought, as she stood hesitantly, half-leaning against the tree. The chill breeze that had sprung up stripped what little heat she had still had right out of her, and the cold was enough to make her ache fiercely.
"I need to go home," she said. "To warm up." She took a step that went mostly out to the side, then another. She bit back a curse when her ankle wobbled, aching—she must have put it through too much, what with her walking this morning and then sitting on it the way she had. Her healing ability wasn't working well, either, and so she needed to stop relying on it. Irregardless, she took another step. All she could do now was get home, hopefully without too many looks or remarks at her mud-smeared, wet, tear-stained, bedraggled appearance.
"May I help you?" said Hiei softly, as if he was having to restrain himself from helping her, regardless of her wishes.
Botan shook her head stubbornly 'no,' although her mind flashed back to being held as if she was cherished, being cradled warm and protected against the inhuman heat of Hiei, soaking into her skin. She ignored the hopeless, helpless way he was watching her as she walked away from him, on her own.
She bit back a scream of pure frustration as her leg gave out under her. "Would you… help me," she said, voice refusing to make it a true question.
Hiei slowly circled around until he was back in her line of sight, then slowly walked towards her, moving like someone coaxing some skittish wild animal that might break and run at any time, but was just as likely to lunge forward and attack.
He hesitated and stopped a few feet away from Botan. She dithered for a few minutes, but understood the unasked question—what was she comfortable with letting him do?—before she stepped forward herself, closing the distance between them.
The step unbalanced her again, sending her lunging for something to hold on to before she fell, a very human instinct—she caught his elbow, and he stilled underneath her while she regained her balance. Slowly, in fits and starts, they arranged themselves around each other: Hiei tucked under one of Botan's arms, warm and solid against her side, each with one arm wrapped around the other, like a pair of sweethearts out for a walk. Botan was still shivering, as much with nerves as with cold, now.
Botan was sure that they looked a sight as they walked back to her apartment, clutched around each other desperately, both wet and herself covered in mud, even on the mostly-deserted still-early-morning streets—especially since she thought it was a Sunday—but she missed it if they did. (Probably a blessing in disguise, she was embarrassed enough without making it fully mortified.) Hiei certainly stood out, even all by himself.
All her attention was caught up in Hiei being so close to her, so unignorably present: his smell, not the same as the familiar smell all humans had in common, that smell that was only human, but similar to it, and overlaid with the smells of ash and smoke. And his warmth, like she had remembered from when he had carried her, back in the park: he was fiercely hot to her cold skin, almost enough to hurt where the small stretch of bare skin between her coat sleeve and her glove lay against his neck. She found herself shrinking against him when a fresh gust of wind blew through, and knew he could feel it, too; he would tense underneath her, making her own breath catch in her throat with more than just the cold, although she didn't know why.
oOo
"Don't go," Botan turned to say at him, not sure why she was saying it at all, as she limped down the hallway towards her bedroom and bathroom. She was so cold…
She thought about running a bath, but started a shower instead, aware of Hiei waiting for her outside. While she was waiting for the hot water she stripped out of her clothes and investigated her wounds. Mostly, she was healing nicely, but her ankle was looking swollen again, and was tenderer than it should have been.
Botan shrugged it off—nothing she could do about it, really, but be more careful—and made a note to go digging for the crutches she had gotten that time she had broken her leg.
At first, even cool water was enough to make her skin smart with pain. It took her a while to ease herself into the running stream, and then a while longer to slowly increase the heat until she felt warm inside and out. She stayed in five minutes past that, just reveling in clean, hot water and simplicity.
When she finally walked back out into the living room, Hiei was still standing where she'd left him: a short ways away from the door, slightly behind and to the right of one of her armchairs.
"Please, sit down," she said. She thought about saying more, but didn't know what.
Hiei sat down in the chair. Slowly, still moving stiffly, Botan made her way to the other armchair, curled up in it. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked, because she did.
"No," said Hiei, blunt. After a second's thought, he added "No, thank you." He sounded awkward and embarrassed. After he didn't add anything else, Botan tried to stand. Hiei was on his feet within the second. "I'll get it," he said, moving towards the kitchen. "Your ankle's hurting you."
"Thank you," said Botan, a little dismayed by his reaction. How badly did he want to help her?
…and why did these sorts of situations always end up with tea in Botan's living room, after a shower, a change of clothes and a check-up on her health?
She stayed where she was while the small noises of someone working in a kitchen sounded. After a few minutes they stopped, although Hiei didn't reappear.
After a long, silent, pause Botan stood and limped her way towards the kitchen.
"You shouldn't be walking—" began Hiei as she stood in the doorway, leaning against one hip to take some of the weight off of her foot.
Botan shrugged, too tired for words even though it was still morning, and Hiei fell quiet.
"…How do you work the stove?" he said, quietly and reluctantly, after a few more seconds of stillness and silence.
Rather than trust her voice, Botan moved forward to do it herself; she flinched when Hiei's hands came up to rest firmly against her sides, supporting her as she leaned awkwardly over the stove to work the dials, still trying to keep off of one of her feet. She flinched, but she carefully stilled herself almost as soon as she began, cutting the motion off. She murmured a quiet "thank you" for the support, but Hiei still snatched his hands away as if she was burning once she was more firmly planted. She could feel the heat his hands left even after they were gone.
"The tea is in the lowest shelf of the upper cupboard to the right of the stove," said Botan after a few more seconds of silence. This time, Hiei was the one to mutter his thanks.
The two moved slowly back into the living room together after the water had been poured, and the tea given a few minutes to steep. Hiei matched himself to Botan's slow pace, carrying the tea but willing to drop it without a second thought if it looked like Botan was going to fall or slip, and Botan slowly, leaning against the wall for support, unwilling or unable to ask for help.
Botan drank her tea black as a rule, but she found herself wishing for milk, sugar or lemon to fiddle with. She was still staring into her teacup as if it was going to come up with an answer to all her problems, but she could still feel Hiei's eyes on her. Eventually, she found the strength to look up: he was carefully looking away from her, and Botan found herself the one staring at the other.
He looks very sad, Botan thought. And very severe. Almost… Yes, definitely, out of place, here in this very every-day apartment, when he doesn't know what to do.
She found herself, unexpectedly, wanting to comfort him. Hiei shouldn't look out of place, anywhere; his easy confidence and lack of caring were part of who he was. She didn't know what to do with the impulse.
She wanted to say something like "Why are you here, when you're so clearly uncomfortable, when I've never been enough for you to bother with before? When I can see that you don't want to be here, and you even flat-out say as much, and when I don't really want you here, either, and we both know that as well?"
What she ended up saying was "Are you sure you don't want some tea? …Or something else to drink? Food?'
"No," said Hiei. After a minute, he added "Thank you." The word sounded foreign to him.
"Uh," said Botan, then blushed. "That is, I mean, if you're sure?"
"You're hurt. You shouldn't be moving around."
"…if you want something, would you get it for yourself, then? You can just help yourself to anything, and I can just shout out the answers to any questions you might have from here."
"I'm…" Hiei paused before he finished the sentence. "fi—not hungry."
"Oh," said Botan. "Okay." She winced a little, hesitated. "Are… Are you sure?" She cringed a little as she said it, as if she was afraid of Hiei's reaction.
Hiei gave her a look that almost wanted to be amused—and would have been, if it hadn't been for where he was, what he had done. If he had been with anyone else, or if he had been anybody else.
Silently, he stood up—still moving slowly even for a normal person; it was probably glacial, to him, Botan knew, but she recognized the effort, and appreciated it the little she could, for the thought behind it. For the slight peace-of-mind it bought her—and walked into the kitchen. He came back out a few seconds later with a glass of water. Botan squashed the urge to force tea and cookies on him.
For one thing, she didn't think that Hiei was the tea-and-cookies type. Of course, she had never thought that Hiei was of the falling-in-love variety, either, and look where that had led. And he kept on saying he'd fallen for her, of all people, and if she'd thought about who Hiei's type was, someone like her (and she wouldn't have considered herself at all) would have been very, very close to the absolute bottom of the list. The most likely candidate would probably have been a stoic warrior princess—demonic, of course—also looking for a convenient relationship. In that sort of context, 'convenient' meant 'somebody who doesn't talk to me.'
She certainly couldn't imagine Hiei as the boyfriend type. Married—kinda-sorta-maybe, but not really. Mated, or whatever else demons in general called it—more probably. Dating? She couldn't see him taking anybody (taking her) out to movies and concerts and whatnot. It just… didn't fit.
She couldn't imagine him cuddling with her on the couch, under a few blankets (although maybe not, considering his temperature, another part of her mind mused) with mugs of cocoa against the cold. She couldn't imagine him touching her much at all, certainly not just for the sake of it—she couldn't see him hugging her, or reaching across to brush a strand of hair out of her face, or holding her hand or, yes, snuggling. She couldn't even imagine him eating cookies.
Yeah. If Hiei was going to have hot drinks at all, it would probably be coffee. Black coffee. Or possibly green tea—she preferred black, herself, but she guessed it was because of who she had been before she had become a ferry girl.
Shut up! Botan thought, hard, at her mind.
She really was going crazy.
But it… Wasn't like that. Hiei had carried her home, cradled in his arms, her own arms wrapped around him in an awkward half-hug. Hiei kept on catching her when she fell, and Hiei had walked her home. Hiei had hovered while she had walked the short, un-hazardous distance between her own kitchen and living room—and considering the size of her apartment, that really, truly was not a long ways.
Hiei was sitting in front her sipping at a glass of water because she had insisted in every way there was, short of actually ordering him to eat, that he have something. Hiei had jumped at the chance to make her tea, even though he hadn't wanted any himself.
Botan wondered, surprised at the ache that sprang up in her heart, whether or not the touching and the thoughtfulness and the helping would continue if she asked him to stay. (Not with her, of course, but around. Asked him to stay with the team, to stay in the neighborhood, more or less.) Whether that careful tenderness was just some sort of bizarre, guilt-induced side effect that would slowly fade.
She wanted to see Hiei back to being himself, but she didn't want to deal with being who she was to that Hiei again. She liked being somebody special.
"Touch me," she said slowly, voice distant. Then she realized exactly how that could be interpreted, and blushed heavily. "That is— I— Oh, drat it all." She stood, lurching to her feet; Hiei followed her, far more fluid, hovering as if unsure of what to do. Botan reached out, took his wrist, laid his hand over hers. His fingers closed, gently, a seemingly instinctive gesture. There was that warmth, again, and that near-reverence. Botan wondered what, exactly, caused it. Because she was still letting him touch her, despite everything? That she let him that close, even after what he'd done?
He reached out with his other hand, hesitantly and still moving so slowly, to steady her, arm fully extended across the distance between them (the coffee table was keeping them apart, Botan thought wildly, irrationally amused by the thought) and he hesitated, drew back the slightest bit before he gently braced his arm against her hip. Botan took a swaying step forward, as if hypnotized.
…or tried to, anyways. Her knees jarred painfully against the table, making her squawk with surprise and pain. She covered a grimace at the noise she ended up producing. Across from her, Hiei dropped his hands as Botan's crash into the table ended up pushing it into his own knees. Again, Botan could feel the ghostly, fading patches of heat his hands had left against her skin.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she managed to gasp out.
Hiei simply shook his head, wordlessly.
"Oh, I'm so clumsy sometimes, I can't believe I did that…" Botan trailed off. There was water and now-cold tea spilled over the table as well, threatening to drip down onto the carpeting.
"It's nothing," said Hiei quietly. He hesitated, then started speaking again. "It's nothing. Botan, you should sit down."
"But the tea—" Botan didn't care much for the carpets the apartment had come with, but she didn't that stains would improve the effect, even if they did help the rather unfortunate color.
"I'll go," said Hiei shortly. He walked quickly to the kitchen, then back out again, with a dishrag. He was careful with the cleaning, running the cloth under the overhang of the tabletop to catch spare drips.
"You can just leave the rag in the sink," Botan called out after him as he returned to the kitchen with the wet dishcloth.
There was a small noise of affirmation. "Thank you," said Botan softly, although she knew that Hiei would hear her, no matter how softly she spoke. The response had surprised Botan, slightly. She still wasn't used to…
To all of this, really. To every new development, starting with the most recent development—politeness—and moving on back: the thoughtfulness, and before that the talking, and before that the confession, and before that the watching, and before that the attack, and the half-remembered, one-sided conversations that had, supposedly (and probably, even she had to admit) happened in-between Hiei almost killing her and Hiei claiming that he loved her.
"I think I bruised my kneecaps," said Botan, because she needed to say something.
Hiei turned to the side, hiding his face from her. She probably could have seen it, if she had tried, leaned far to one side, but she didn't want to suffer the embarrassment doing something like that would cause. Surprisingly, she hadn't caught any amusement in his expression as it had flashed by.
"Why are you here?" Botan asked finally. She still couldn't answer any of the questions she had on her list, but now it was as much because there was too much to say as it was because she didn't know. There weren't words for half of what she was feeling, and maybe more.
Hiei didn't answer for a long, slow, painful minute.
"I don't want to leave," he said finally. Botan waited patiently for the rest of his answer. "Even though I should."
"Alright," said Botan, finality heavy in her tone. They both knew that what she talking about wasn't anything little or inconsequential, anything temporary. "Please stay." She wasn't sure why she was asking this, of Hiei of all people, but it was the right thing to do. That would have to be enough.
And Hiei looked at her and burst into tears.
oOoOoOo
"That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough."
--Proof by Emily Dickinson
oOoOoOo
Botan did another nervous round of her apartment. There simply wasn't anything left to do. She re-straightened the curtains, but it just creased the fabric more, and she gave up in disgust after a few seconds of fidgeting.
Then she went into the bathroom and checked her hair again. She was moments away from taking it all out, bobby pins and everything, and starting again entirely when she heard a steady knock on the door.
She resisted the urge to run to answer it, but only because she knew he would hear it. Botan took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out again, slowly—and then she giggled nervously, because calming breaths only ever did so much.
And then she went to answer the door.
"Hiei," she said softly, as she pulled the door open.
He inclined his head stiffly in greeting. "Botan," he said, voice awkward, but she thought she could see genuine warmth in his eyes.
"Please, come in," she said shyly, looking down to brush at a nonexistent crease in her skirt as she stepped aside so Hiei could enter.
This time, Hiei didn't hesitate or argue. He still didn't look comfortable in her living room, but somehow the situation made it alright. That, and she had seen him at ease there, before. Usually only when the rest of the Tantei was around, but that was enough.
"I've just got to get everything put into the basket," explained Botan as she left Hiei standing in the living room, calling over her shoulder as she moved into the kitchen. She didn't even try getting him to sit down and relax, and knew that he would probably appreciate the gesture, if he recognized what she was doing. Botan had to say, she didn't feel much like relaxing herself at the moment.
She was suddenly glad for one of her mid-morning bouts of nervous energy—the one that had resulted in all of the picnic things arranged in careful order for packing in specified places. The plates and cutlery were already in place in place in the picnic basket, cushioned in the blanket, and most of the non-refrigerated items, except for a few things that needed to be stuck in at the top, so they wouldn't end up crushed. They were placed carefully on the counter, next to the basket.
It was a matter of seconds to get everything together, especially considering her still-tense state.
And then it was time to go. Botan checked her reflection once more, quickly, then hurried back to Hiei.
It wasn't every day that she had a real date.
oOo
Hiei wasn't sure, but he thought that Botan had taken extra care with her appearance. He couldn't really tell the difference, much, but the thought that she had wanted to look nice for him was… extremely appealing. Heartwarming. Comforting.
He glanced sideways at her, and resisted the urge to reach to the side to touch her—run his hand along hers, maybe—at the sweet, unaware half-smile on her face. It grew into a full one when she noticed him watching, and Hiei smiled, almost a little shy, back.
He didn't object when she reached out to grab a hold of his hand, as if she was being a little daring—he didn't really think that either of them knew what to do, which made him feel better. But it was nice, having her fingers tangled in his. Her skin was always cool and smooth, and her thumb was smoothing a circle into his hand, although he didn't think she was really aware of what she was doing. She did things like that, Hiei had learned, and then got embarrassed when she noticed what she was doing.
They were close enough that he could feel the electrical tangle of her energy shuddering along his skin, and he was still ecstatically happy that he could feel that, that he hadn't ended up killing her after all. No matter what happened, that would have been enough, that she had lived.
He was almost as happy that he was with Botan, though, around her at all, and that Botan was at least considering loving him back. The whole idea of 'dating' seemed simultaneously silly, frivolous and sensible at the same time to him, but it only seemed wondrous when he thought about Botan and himself.
No matter what happened, Botan was alive, and that was enough. And he'd had this—holding hands, and shy glances, and Botan at least willing to consider him and love in the same sentence—which would always be more than enough, and more than he deserved.
"Oh! I hope it doesn't rain," said Botan suddenly, breaking the silence, as she peered up at the sky, shading her eyes with her free hand. "It's looking kind of cloudy. If it rains, we'll have to do something else today and go one the picnic sometime else. Oh well—there's always tomorrow!"
And there was always tomorrow. And Botan seemed to think that she would be there, and that was enough for Hiei, and more.
oOoOoOo
"And all shall be well,
and all manner of thing
shall be well."
--Julian of Norwich
oOoOoOo
--End Accidents and Aftermath--