Fourteen
Scales
Water, Kuronue thought. Repeating, over and over again, the kanji flashing in front of his eyes. the sweat of exhaustion covered him, blinding him in turn with the sun and the sky.
It had taken far longer to escape the caves than he'd hoped. The pitiful duo of bandits he and Youko had killed had not been the rule, but the exception from their comrades. The rest of the bandit army (and 'army' was oh-so-fitting a word) had given them a run through a dark hell that Kuronue never, ever wanted to revisit. He was covered still with so much blood and ichor (at least what the sweat hadn't washed away) that the weight was beginning to pull at him, dragging him closer to earth than was wise. Now, far from the mountain and still going, the air provided as little comfort as being under the earth had. And he was still being pursued.
The bandits had been a crushing first wave. Youko, reckless and genius, had caused another collapse, this time of at least a dozen tunnels they could have escaped into with some form of ease. The bandits had come in choking groups, spearing and shooting and cursing and dying all around them, until he and Youko had torn them apart, receiving plenty of injury in turn.
And then, they crawled. Deeper into the darkness, following the smallest tunnel open to them, dirt grinding into each cut, mixing with sweat and blood into black mud that made even Youko's pristine silver hair dull and dark. On hands and knees for what seemed like days, shoving through dark, cramped tunnels like moles, then finally they emerged from the mountain through a hole scarcely larger than a rabbit run, under logs and bracken and more gods-bedamned dirt. Crouching in the underbrush, they caught their breaths, eyes on the blanket of fire drifting from the mountain's peak.
The moment of rest was cut far too short. Patrols reached this far down the mountain, too; bandits, demons and Tengu prowling the area so thickly that it was impossible to stay hidden for long. Youko shouted orders at him over the roar of the fire, directions, timing, vague things. Find a takeoff point, take the sacks, fly south until the waterfall valley. No questions, no looking back. Just fly.
Kuronue managed to obey the first and the last. But he couldn't help looking back, hoping that whatever other traps had been laid for there escape were enough for Youko to handle alone. Now, however, he had his own problems.
His pursuers, two Tengu, he recognized. Hatsumi and Seigaku, the Tengu answer to Samurai. He'd grown up knowing them. He knew how strong they were.
He didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Hatsumi was shouting insults. That was fine and normal; Hatsumi insulted anything that could walk. Seigaku usually played the follow-up, with 'what he said!' and 'Yeah, you tell him!' as punctuation to anything Hatsumi spouted out. Now, however, Seigaku was silent. Kuronue knew what that meant, and strained to fly faster, farther, and out of the range of the best bowman ever born on mount Kurama.
Kuronue heard a hum, and something sliced the air inches from his head into silk ribbons. He saw the gold-tipped, black-feathered arrow continue on its deadly path until it was just a shimmer in the sky.
His wings could not pump hard enough now, even though his shoulders and back screamed with the effort. His lungs burned, his eyes watered, and he swerved, cutting through the air as he heard the crystalline whisper of another golden arrow behind him. Behind him, Hatsumi still shouted, egging on Seigaku for another arrow, another try.
Kuronue cursed to himself. If he dropped the bags he could go faster, maybe even outfly his chasers, dive down into the greenery below and hide. Somehow. Maybe for just a few minutes, long enough to catch his breath, or at least long enough to pray and fight before he died. Knowing the two behind him, if he tried that, he'd have about five minutes, if he was very, very lucky.
And Kuronue knew he hadn't been born under the luckiest star.
The arrow felt like liquid fire. Gold - not silver, as humans in the future would assume - was deadly to shapeshifters like Kuronue. A Nue, a chimera, was immune to the effects if it was in coin or jewelry form, but an arrow dipped in liquid gold, or a dagger with enough gold melted into the iron, was as good as the most potent of poisons to a human. It struck him in the hip and he spun through the air, screaming in pain, the packs and his dagger, which he did not remember drawing, tumbling down with him.
There was the white of lingering snow, the dull brown of mud, fresh green, and then, finally, black.
In the darkness, he heard the sound of silver and blood, and finally drifted away.
Kuronue realized with sudden clarity that waking up was so much easier when the view wasn't the same charm-lined ceiling he'd been staring at for the better part of the last century. The white-washed ceiling here had to take a distant second to waking up with his head in Shuuichi's lap, but-
Oh.
Memory seeped up from the dark and still muzzy parts of his mind, and he recalled the last few minutes before that Shinigami had touched him. The thoughts clicking into place formed a red-hazed picture of sad green eyes and messy hair, and behind those eyes, that gaze he remembered, had seen every day for well over five hundred years.
He groaned, rubbing at his eyes with one hand, a heavy sigh leaving him in the quiet room. He could hear voices off somewhere, distant and vague. Right now they meant nothing to him. Right now, he needed to think, adjust his priorities, find out what that Shinigami had done to him. Then he could focus on just how badly Youko had tried to screw him. Again.
He lifted his hand, feeling an unfamiliar metal weight around his wrist. He looked at it blearily, willing it to make some visual sense until he realized that, yes, it was an inhibitor, and that the softly glowing glyphs around its circumference indicated it was sent directly from Reikai. That meant no killing humans, for one thing. A significant lack of power, for another. Maybe. He turned his focus inward, on the flickering light that was his own youki, and examined it.
He wasn't less powerful than before, which was surprising. Usually a Reikai Inhibitor would cripple a demon until his youki was barely more than a whisper above D-class. Nearly human, disgustingly enough. No, this seemed to cap him at... high C. Nice. Weird, but nice. Either someone hadn't been paying attention when they set the thing's limits, or they'd given him a high ceiling on purpose.
He very much doubted the latter circumstance.
He still felt odd, though. Not quite drained, but tired in a way he hadn't felt in a very long time. Weary as if from physical exertion, though certainly taking a bath and eating wasn't like doing reps with thousand-pound weights. His muscles all ached dully, and his head still, even after schooling his thoughts into coherency, felt like his brain had been replaced by wet cotton.
A moment of monumental effort allowed him to roll onto his side, and he pushed himself up to sit, shoving his hair out of his eyes as he did. Maybe he should have cut it all off... the weight was probably what made his head feel so heavy.
No, that wasn't true. He knew why he felt like shit. He just didn't like admitting it to himself any more than he would have liked saying it out loud.
"Damn," he murmured, pressing his palms against his eyes. The sequence of the last few days still clicked into place, pieces of a machine that he had to put together without knowing what the finished mechanism was supposed to look like. He muttered to himself, reciting facts, implications, conclusion. Always the same picture of sad, evasive eyes and a quiet little frown that he just could not erase from his head.
But, he had to try.
He lumbered slowly to a standing position, his muscles protesting all the while. A second of vertigo made the room tilt dangerously, but he held onto his balance and stood upright, surveying the room.
It was... plain. While technology and clothing and even the taste of the air had changed over the years, evidently architecture and decoration hadn't moved very far beyond what he had seen in the last century. Sliding doors, paper windows; the standard temple room. The familiarity of it was both comforting and unnerving. After all he had seen outside of this place, all of the extreme changes the world had gone through, being in a room that looked as old as he was set back his suspension of disbelief to absolute zero. He covered his face again, and took a breath.
Given another moment, he might have broken down. All of the stimulus, all the changes, all the insanity of the last few days was turning around inside him, looking for a way out. Instead, the door opened, and Shizuru peeked in.
"Oh, I thought you were still sleeping. How you feelin'?"
He dragged his hands down over his head, and forced a smile. "I suppose I feel more alive than I have in years, but living means being... how did Urameshi say it... ah, 'totally freaked out' by everything."
"I kinda know how you feel," she said, leaning on the doorframe. "This kind of shit kind of creeps up on you."
He nodded, and a kind of awkward silence fell over them. He could hear conversation in another room, though it was quiet.
"They're still figuring out what to do," Shizuru murmured, gesturing in the direction of the conversation. "That thing Botan put on you, um... didn't hurt you, did it?"
Kuronue flapped a hand at her "It doesn't hurt. Not more than my pride, anyway." She nodded, and he could see, and was slightly disturbed by, the relief in her face. He wanted to ask, but from the other room he heard a chorus of farewells, with a louder goodbye for Shizuru from the Shinigami. He listened to her departure, and then turned his attention back to Shizuru. "Gone already?"
She shrugged. "I don't think considering - er - Shuuichi's reaction, that she'd want to stick around too long."
He looked at her closely. "What do you mean by that?"
Shizuru held up her hands and mimed a punch. "He almost knocked her block off when she clapped that thing on you. Hiei had to knock him down and take him out of the room."
Kuronue lifted an eyebrow, impressed and slightly confused by that. Kurama knew inhibitors didn't harm beyond exhaustion. Why react so violently? Why the hell would he care so terribly much over something so insignificant?
Curious.
"What is to happen now?" He asked, setting that information to the side. Whatever Kurama's motivations, that was less important than finding out why the Shinigami had bound him instead of taking him directly to Reikai authorities, or why he hadn't been taken already by special forces. In fact, aside from the Shinigami, he'd seen nothing of Reikai since he'd awakened. He mulled these thoughts over as Shizuru collected her own. Obviously, he wasn't the only one having trouble figuring out what to do next.
Urameshi joined them before Shizuru could answer. Kuronue nodded at him respectully, and noticed with more than a twinge of unease that the casual, cool demeaner that Urameshi had shown earlier was gone.
"You're awake," Urameshi said, returning the nod. "Good. We have to get going. Are you good to fly at all, or are you grounded?"
Kuronue blinked at him, slightly irritated at the curtness of Urameshi's tone, but respectful of how the human didn't beat around the bush. It was time now, apparently, for business.
"If I fly, it has to be a short distance, or a glide. The rest of me is fine." Albeit sore.
Urameshi nodded. "'S what I thought. You're going to be sticking with me. Shizuru, you and Kazu are going to head around the east side of the metro, Kuronue and I will take west. Botan isn't talking, so we're going to have to assume what we're in for now is entirely without Reikai support. I've put in a message to Hokushin, so he'll be gathering reinforcements for if things go all wahoonie shaped."
Shizuru sighed, but nodded her compliance. She patted Kuronue on the shoulder and gave him a mock-sympathetic look. "Have fun with wild boy, here. We'll try to clean up after," she said, and ducked out before Urameshi could defend himself.
"Man, she never gives me any credit," Urameshi muttered, before turning his bright, likely usual grin on Kuronue. "Ready to go?"
"What about... Shuuichi? And Hiei?" It felt odd to use that human name when he thought about Youko, when the face didn't match but seemed so right.
"Sticking here. Hiei's gotta let his eye heal before he tries any heavy-duty work, and... well, Shuuichi needs to take a time-out for a while anyway."
"I heard he almost throttled the Shinigami," Kuronue said dryly, enjoying the little fun at Kurama's expense. Urameshi laughed.
"Hah! Yeah, none of use saw that coming. He must like you, to get all protective. But that ain't really the reason. He's got no reiki anymore, and going out in a situation like this might get him killed. And I don't know about you, but I kinda like having him around, you know?"
Kuronue did, and nodded is acquiescence. Urameshi turned, then motioning for Kuronue to follow, out of the temple and down the steps, back towards the darkened city.
Kurama lay with his arms over his eyes, taking up far too much space on the floor of a practice room, thinking of a thousand and one ways the last ten minutes could have gone better. The first three hundred or so were comprised of being fast enough to knock Botan off her silly, airheaded feet. Of course, that was uncharitable considering she had just been doing her job, and was in no way malicious towards Kuronue, but...
Well, this was the reason he had been sent into a different room while Yuusuke gave her a stern talking to. Kurama was obviously biased. And he'd almost punched Botan's skull in. His fist had, in fact, been en route right up until Hiei had knocked him down. After that it had been all confusion and shouting and Kurama being sent to the other room like a bad puppy. He'd thought at first that they'd even locked the door, but a few minutes after his being sent away, Misa ambled in (limping only slightly, and looking just as smug and superior as she always did) and clamored into his lap so she could knead his stomach contemplatively.
Now he lay, glaring at the wall and petting Misa behind the ears. He could only just hear voices in he other room. He was disappointed that no one had taken up his torch and started shouting in Kuronue's defense. Or at least talking in a significantly raised voice so he could hear what was going on without having to listen at the door. When he'd tried that earlier, Hiei had threatened to break his nose.
Conversation in the other room had gone on for several hours now. The boredom and helplessness was getting to him. He hated sitting in the quiet with no plan and nowhere to go. Right now, he wanted more than anything to be alone. Unfortunately, that was impossible. He cursed the fact that all of his friends (and an alarming number of his enemies) could find him very easily, even when he didn't want to be found.
He stared at the ceiling, this dark thought swimming through his mind and noticed suddenly some tiny movement in one corner of the room. He tried to focus, to make his eyes sharper, and grimaced, only succeeding in getting a headache. Count that one up to another thing he couldn't do any more.
He sat up, much to Misa's discontent, and deposited the grumbling cat on the floor, going to the corner. He stared up, glaring at the junction of wall and ceiling, trying to find what he'd glimpsed before.
There.
A spider.
It was just a common, brown spider. He'd probably inadvertently swallowed thousands of the little things in his sleep over the years, and this one was likely as harmless as its dead ancestors. And yet...
He watched the vile, hapless thing make its skittering progress along the wall, to the safety of the corner. He raised his hand, hovering it inches above the bloated little body, following its trail and feeling a surge of malicious, righteous anger. The temple was supposed to be safe. The safe place. Even though evidence of the past had proved contrary, Kurama suddenly felt the need to believe that the safety of the temple could not ever be compromised.
Be brought his hand down viciously, and the little creature died instantly.
And let that be a lesson to you, he thought, feeling half-insane for the phrase. He wiped his hand on his jeans and went back to his spot on the floor, holding his cleaner, though injured hand out to Misa. The pain of motion was like ice on his brain, and he felt more awake than he had since he'd lunged at Botan.
He tried listening to the murmur of conversation again, but listening much harder now. Picking out words - temple, west, reinforcements, war, alone. When his ears grew dull he wrenched his arm, and the pain made everything sharp again. And when finally the conversation died, he listened for footsteps.
He looked up when the door opened, revealing Hiei. He was beckoned from the room, and went with his head down, Misa following with the kind of loyalty only cats possessed, born out of pure curiosity.
"We're staying," he muttered, realizing that the other voices had died not because of a lull in conversation, but because everyone else had left. Hiei nodded.
"Yukina stayed too, to make sure we heal without complications." There was a tone to Hiei's voice, the one that suggested argument in this matter would leave someone with two broken arms. Kurama kept his peace.
Hiei led him into the kitchen, where there was food and tea. The rain had started up again, and was splattering lazily against the glass windows, painfully out of place in the old temple, but necessary. They sat at the table, its wood pockmarked with nearly a century of meals, conversations, debates, and faced each other. The food was ignored for now as Hiei produced a pack of cards and dealt between the two of them, occasionally dealing to Misa, curled on the table's edge.
"You know she always cheats," Kurama said, forgetting himself with a soft smile. Hiei nodded and tapped the deck down.
"She learned from the best," he replied, and they played in silence while the clouds darkened noon to midnight.
The drive back to Tokyo took a lot less time now that the night before. Part of it was that they were going downhill, and part was that Yuusuke seemed intent on cheating death at every corner, guiding the car down steep, slim roads at a speed even demons would feel uncomfortable with.
Kuronue, being a demon, was mighty uncomfortable.
He'd learned the way to survive each stomach-churning turn was to grab onto what Yuusuke called the 'oh shit bar,' a little handle above the window. It was a small comfort that he'd have something to hold on to if the doors suddenly fell off and he found himself dangling over a bottomless pit.
It was a combination of that and the... music that had him more panicky than he allowed himself to be.
"HOW FAR DO WE HAVE TO GO?" He shouted, clutching the ohshit bar and his seatbelt as they took another dangerous curve. Yuusuke glanced over like he just remembered Kuronue was there, and hit a button on the car's panel, cutting off the music. Kuronue silently sent a fervent prayer of thanks to whatever God was near.
"We've got about an hour of driving, so you might as well sit back and relax. Here, hold the wheel." To Kuronue's horror, he let go of the steering wheel and started rummaging behind the seat, leaving Kuronue to guide the rapidly accelerating car down the slick mountain roads.
"Are you insane?"
"God, you're such a whiner," Yuusuke grumbled, taking a black case from the garbage-strewn back seat and flipping through it. The little round things inside flashed by in a parade of color and shine until he chose one, replacing it with another that had been in the car. Then he took the wheel, shoved Kuronue back into his seat, and hit the noise button again. "RELAX," he shouted, grinning madly, "AND ENJOY THE CULTURE."
--
Kurama wasn't used to failure. Defeat, yes. Surrender, sure. But he had never gotten used to the cold, depressed feeling that followed a complete failure.
Right now, he was failing to be distracted from thinking about the lake behind the temple. The lake, and what was in the lake.
He hadn't yet been expressly forbidden from leaving the temple, just temple grounds. Not that he could get anywhere easily, with the rain and the distance and the lack transportation. But the lake...
He looked at Hiei, who had grown bored of cards and now sat with his head down on his arms, Misa curled up at his elbow. He probably wasn't asleep, but he wasn't going anywhere, either.
Quietly, Kurama stood and began to edge towards the outer door of the kitchen, towards the veranda and the forest. And the lake.
"Where are you going?" Hiei demanded from behind him. Kurama didn't turn, and knew Hiei hadn't moved from his half-asleep slump over the table.
"Taking a walk," he replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I have some thinking to do."
"I was told to keep watch on you," Hiei said. Kurama still did not turn, but was sure Hiei's eyes were closed when he said things like that.
Kurama sneered at the trees, his fists clenching in their hiding places. "What do you think I'll do, tag along after them on foot?"
"You've done stupider things," Hiei grunted, and Kurama spun, uttering a snarl that was thoroughly inhuman as he did. That, at least, had not left him. He was still more animal than he would ever be human.
But Hiei's head was up, and he was sitting straight, looking at Kurama with a calm, academic calculation in his eyes. He realized, ashamed, that one hand had flown to his hair, ready to call a weapon that wouldn't come, to attack his friend.
Silence, their ever more familiar friend, lay down between them and stretched, drawing the room into quiet shadows that watched them, curious and bloodthirsty. Kurama, cracking under the pressure, lowered his hand.
"You're still faster than a normal human," Hiei said finally, pushing the silence back. He crossed his arms on the table, and lowered his head onto them. "Use that to your advantage."
Kurama stared at him, unbalanced, unsure, and finally turned, stepping down from the temple and into the quiet green of the forest.
It took every single ounce of effort Kuronue possessed not to fall to his knees and kiss the ground when Yuusuke finally stopped and parked the car. He did stumble out with numb legs, ringing ears, and the unsettling feeling of being pursued by a persistant and eager Shinigami, but managed not to prostrate himself before a jizo statue in thanks.
Yuusuke, unconcerned and still with that grin, exited the car and lit up cigarettes for the both of them. Kuronue could barely hear himself mumble thanks.
"So that's what music is these days," he sighed after a few calming drags of poison. He looked at Yuusuke with a mixture of disgust and respect. "I thought demons tortured their ears. That's kind of impressive."
"What, that? Megallica is tame compared to some bands. I figured we'd need something to get us in the mood to kick some ass." He flicked the cigarette away (half-finished, Kuronue noticed with no small amount of horror) and pushed off from his lean against the car, pacing around the empty street.
They'd seen no humans in the last few minutes, nothing but a few birds, the odd squirrel, but the streets, which had been packed a day before, were completely empty. It was terribly unnerving.
"We've got to keep going on foot," Yuusuke said, suddenly business again. Kuronue watched him pace from sidewalk to sidewalk curiously. He could tell the man was part demon, and that didn't surprise him much; there were a lot of hanyoukai running around. Outbreeding had been common enough before he'd been imprisioned, it only stood to reason the practice had gotten more popular.
What surprised him about Yuusuke was how weirdly commanding the man was, without being... well, a commander. Kuronue wanted to listen to him, to follow his orders, to walk right into the mouth of danger following that cocky grin and careless attitude. And that was even more unsettling than the car ride. He'd never been the following type, Youko being the singular exception, and that had been less following and more...
Not a topic he wanted to be on now. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, standing at ready attention. Yuusuke was mumbling to himself.
"What?"
"On foot, like... there's no running electricity here. I could climb up a phone tower and not get shocked. But there are still lights on in some places. Like there." Yuusuke pointed to a tall building to the north. It was mostly dark but for two windows far up, which glowed with eerie light. "We can't drive up there, so, on foot."
"Something tells me I really don't want to go up there," Kuronue said, gazing up at the window with a feeling of dread.
"Neither do I," Yuusuke murmured behind him. "But we've gotta."
The wind had revived, whipping pine boughs and impossibly tall bamboo stalks in its wake, the leaves swimming through the sky. Cedar rustled, leaves too wet with the soaking rain to move much. Kurama could hear nothing above the wind and the trees. Not the voices of animals, or the soft hum of earth - a sound he'd spent his entire long lifetimes moving to. He felt deaf and helpless, without even the sanctuary of signs to communicate with the world he had worshipped since his birth.
He couldn't hear the soft chuckle of Inari, always a little suggestive voice in his ear. That... bothered him more than anything.
When he knew he was out of easy view from the temple, he dropped to his knees and began to dig. He shoved his hands into the dirt, past pain for now, and felt nothing but cold, packed wetness, smelling nothing but rain, hearing nothing but mud. He wanted to scream, but... Hiei would hear, and the last thing Kurama wanted was to humiliate himself further. The screams stayed in his head, pleading, begging something to speak to him, to hear the sound of a spirit nearby, to know he wasn't completely cut off.
No sound came. Kurama closed his eyes, held up his hands to the rain, and let the dirt wash away. He stood, and continued his walk, mind numbly quiet, ears ringing with the sound of ennui.
--
He reached the lake at a much slower pace than he usually took, but he knew that he had the time to waste. For now, at least.
The surface of the lake was a criss-cross of ripples, an amorphous dance of water and wind. The light had dulled to near-darkness, and as a result the lake looked black and foreboding, the small waves turned into grasping hands. The water wanted him, and he was afraid. He had always been afraid of the water, and that was why he'd hidden it here.
Kuronue's pendant.
The last, fractured piece of Kurama's soul.
It hadn't been hard, that long time ago, to discern that the pendant was indeed the one Kuronue had made for him, and been given for safe keeping. After all, it was a piece of Kurama himself, and sang to him even while the impostor held it in his foul grip. With that, Kurama had been easily fooled until that last moment, when the silver-red arc flashed from the demon's hands.
The demon had died, Yakumo defeated, world saved. All was once again well, at least in the Japanese-speaking part of the world. Everyone had gone on their way - to school, to home, to the quiet hiding place no one could ever quite find.
And Kurama had come here. To the lake where he had prepared to kill Kuronue, to a glowing moon on dark water, where he never dared go deeper than his feet could touch, and even then felt the cold coil of terror on his spine, irrational and childish.
He was prepared, that night, to finally let go. To have that wound closed for good, to let Kuronue die. The pendant had flown from his hand like a small comet, and landed with barely a splash in the middle of the lake's darkness. It took a long time for the red shimmer to fade from sight, but Kurama stood for hours, waiting to be sure, wishing with all his might that he had not just done the thing he had.
Now he stood at the edge of the lake, forced himself not to calculate how long it took for a human to drown, and stepped into the water.
04/23/10
TBC
Always, thanks to HColleen and Osoimaru 3