Sorry for the delay. New job is keeping me busy. And tired. While it will take a while to fully adjust, rest assured I don't intend to do another vanishing act any time soon. (crosses fingers)

I'm very proud of this chapter. Hope you like it. I experiment with a different perspective in this first part…one that I've never attempted before…so please be lenient.

It seemed that her head had just hit the pillow when the commotion came at the tent flap.

Being the camp's head healer, working from dawn until dusk to save life and limb of the brave youkai who fought to rescue their home from its new ruler – she found these things rewarding. Rewarding…and also exhausting.

Being able to contribute to the effort was what was important though. Finding a way to be useful…helping the sick or wounded and easing the pain of the dying…in a way, these things brought an unprecedented amount of joy to the quiet koorime's life. When the call came for help in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning, she was more than happy to push aside her own needs in order to offer help. Some of the humans who had come over had even began to assist her, and though they had no powers of their own, their hands were greatly appreciated. Healing would provide the much needed bridge between their peoples, and she was able to be a part of it.

The commotion at the entrance grew louder. Yukina quickly slipped a robe on over her sleep clothes and lit a candle. She was just turning away when a youkai burst into her sleep quarters without warning, pushing back and even ripping the curtains that served to partition her off from the rest of the tent.

"Y…Yusuke-san?"

The dark haired detective had been missing from the camp for nearly two months now, and his sudden reappearance – dirty, disheveled, tired, bloodstained, and incredibly thin – was shocking to her.

More shocking, however, was the ragged bundle that the detective dropped unceremoniously onto her bed.

"Heal him," Yusuke ordered, his voice a rasp, his tone barely civilized. His eyes were wild.

"H…Hiei-san?" it couldn't be – he didn't even look alive!

Yusuke's head jerked to the side, as if he was listening to something, and he scowled darkly. "Just – stop, I - !" he looked at Yukina again, eyes so sharp that she jumped a little. "The bastard is driving me crazy!" he snarled, clawing at his hair. "Damn it, will you please just heal him?"

"Did…did you…?" Yukina couldn't finish the thought.

"You mean did I do this to him? I wouldn't…okay, so we did fight a little, but I…I mean, this was…don't you even - !"

He was rambling. Yukina frowned, concern momentarily shifting to the young detective. Not for long, however – his needs were clearly not as pressing as those of the smaller demon. She moved her hands to pull away Hiei's clothing, noting in the back of her mind how it smelled and how the cloth was stiff with filth. She wondered how she would ever manage to convince the brash Yusuke to let her take a look at him as well.

And then she caught sight of Hiei's body, and promptly forgot about Yusuke.

Hiei's skin was as thin and white as paper, and nearly completely transparent. It seemed she could see the entire system of veins running through his frail body, and those veins, to her horror, were clogged with something thick and black and vicious.

"Poison?" she demanded, hurrying to check him more thoroughly. Yusuke didn't answer, but she didn't need him to. The darkness seemed to have spread completely through Hiei's body, the most concentrated areas in one shoulder and one side of his face.

He was still breathing – slow and deep. His demonic core was still functioning, but barely. It was as if his body was performing the most minimal tasks necessary to keep him alive.

What was more, her senses told her that there was something else wrong – terribly wrong. Something she couldn't see with her eyes.

As if something was…missing.

"Hos is it he still lives?" she asked, tenderly smoothing hair back from the unconscious youkai's face. "The amount of poison in his system alone…"

"Does it really matter?" Yusuke asked anxiously. "Just heal him. You can clean this shit out…can't you?"

Yukina's core ached for his obvious pain. She hadn't realized the small, fierce Hiei meant so much to the detective. The desperation in his voice made her want to cry. "I can heal him," she had no doubt about that, "But…"

"But?" he pressed.

She dropped her eyes, unable to face his lost expression. "But even so…he may not ever wake."

"You just get him healed. I'll worry about waking him."

There wasn't really a good way to communicate with a soul. They didn't speak – they were different from ghosts, after all.

Hiei's soul communicated through urges – sometimes subtle, sometimes violent. If Yusuke let his guard down for even a moment, he would find his body in motion without his consent.

And even though Hiei's soul couldn't speak, it wasn't as if Yusuke couldn't understand him. Thoughts, memories, feelings that were not his own flickered though his mind without warning at all hours of the day or night. Sometimes he answered out loud, just to make it easier to tell whose thoughts were whose. For all that Koenma claimed souls were stupid, Hiei's seemed fully aware that Yusuke's body was not his own, and that the safety and health of the broken shell they carried with them was of the utmost importance.

Hiei's soul bore it quietly as its body was stripped and washed. It seemed surprisingly embarrassed, but it behaved itself overall. The twin tear gems which would have given his identity away to his sister had been hidden away in one of Yusuke's pockets days ago, so nudity was, in the soul's opinion, the worst it would have to bear.

And then Yukina drew a knife on him.

Alarm flashed through the soul – the only warning Yusuke got before finding himself on his feet.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, the words coming from wit mouth through no permission of his own.

Yukina was not afraid of him. She didn't hesitate; her hand was steady as she cut three small gashes into the skin above where Hiei's demonic core would be.

"The concentration is here. It is better to enter as closely as I can," she answered. Yukina picked up Hiei's left hand and, working with delicate precision, cut a small gash in each of his fingertips. For all her frail appearance, the blood didn't bother her. In her own way, Yukina could be every bit as hard as her brother when she needed to. She picked up his right hand. "The poison will leave from these points," she explained. She made the cuts then moved to his feet, cutting the bottoms of each of his toes. "All of the healing in the world would be useless if the venom had nowhere to go."

"…that's gonna hurt like a bitch, isn't it?"

Still, pain was better than death.

The soul pulsed in annoyance. Yusuke attempted a smile.

"Just glad it's not me," he said weakly.

"Don't sit down," Yukina moved to Hiei's head and leaned over him, placing her hands firmly on his shoulders. "I need you to hold his legs."

There was definitely something wrong with Hiei that went far beyond the poison. He was empty. A shell. A breathing corpse.

Yukina closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, calling up her healing powers from deep within her core. It wasn't pointless, healing him. She had to believe she wasn't wasting her time. Yusuke Urameshi believed he could make the small demon wake again, if only she could heal his body. If anyone could do it, it was him.

She had to trust, and hope, because it was so very important.

She drew out her power, sharpening it, picturing fine-tuned surgical needles. Then, holding her breath, she dent it plunging into Hiei's core.

His body arched – an involuntary muscular response – and it took all of her strength just to hold his shoulders down. She didn't look at Yusuke to see if he was holding his legs – at this point, it was too late to stop.

She threaded her power through his veins, and the toxins fled before her. She heard Yusuke mutter something foul as the first drops of the taint – dark, thick, and evil-looking – began to drip from Hiei's fingers and toes.

"Don't let it touch you," she cautioned, mind set on her work, as she heard the worktable they had moved Hiei to begin to bubble and sizzle and hiss as the toxins boiled on its surface.

"Son of a bitch…" Yusuke breathed.

Poison was the most difficult malady to cure with youki. It worked itself into every inch of a person's body, making its eradication a complicated and lengthy process – not to mention messy, painful, and dangerous. It would have been more efficient to use medicine – to let the body's own systems work the toxins out – but she didn't question why Yusuke had brought him to her instead of to Kurama. While medical treatment was faster and healthier, it was also less likely to succeed.

More, there was no telling how Kurama would have reacted to seeing his dear friend Hiei in such a state. It was kindest not to ask such a difficult task of him.

Yukina lost track of the hours as she worked, chasing the venom along the endless maze of Hiei's veins. Her assistants came for their shifts in the med tent, wounded were carried in and out, the sick came to ask for help, all as was normal.

Yukina did not leave her post, did not pause for even a moment. All who asked for her were promptly sent away.

The poison dripped from Hiei's body, the sun arched high in the sky, and Yukina's powers continued to burn a fiery-cold, cleansing path through Hiei's body.

Yukina hadn't moved in a long, long time. She hadn't spoken, hadn't blinked, and barely appeared to breathe.

Hiei, too, had gone still hours ago, but Yusuke didn't dare release his hold on his legs. The poison had eaten fist-sized holes in the thick wood of the worktable, as well as shallow indentations on the dirt floor below.

Even Hiei's soul had gone quiet within Yusuke's body. Waiting, breathless (if such could be said of a soul), anticipating. Yusuke could hear the goings-on in the rest of the tent – the sick, the injured, the healers – but still, behind the flimsy curtains that separated them from the rest of the tent, it felt as if they were worlds away.

At last Yukina moved, drawing back, breath coming out of her in one long sigh. Her eyelashes fluttered, her body swayed with exhaustion. She slowly lifted an arm, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her arm.

She moved as if her entire body ached. Yusuke stared at her as she moved to get bandages.

"His body is clean," she said, speaking before he had the thought to ask. She tucked a bottle of disinfectant under her arm and returned to the table. "Aside from these minor wounds, he is completely healed."

Yusuke didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything.

Yukina began to clean and wrap the wounds on Hiei's hands. She worked in silence for a moment before her eyes rolled up slowly to look at him.

"Wake him."

It wasn't an order or a challenge. She simply wanted Yusuke to fulfill his end of the bargain.

"Y' hear that?" he mumbled, amused to feel the soul begin to stir. "Time t' go home."

"Yusuke-san? I'm sorry – I couldn't hear you."

"Sorry…wasn't talkin' t' you."

She blinked in surprise and Yusuke arched his back, stretching backwards. For the first time in hours he actually saw Hiei – actually paid attention to the sight of the small, thin body laid pale and bare on the table. His mind had begun to numb to the sight of him but now, like a bolt of lightning, he saw him again.

And he realized that he had no idea how to put a soul back into a body. No idea how to get it out of his own body.

The soul laughed at him. It brushed aside his control and bubbled up within him and his hands, moving of their own accord, reached to catch it as it slowly began to emerge from his chest.

Yukina gave a loud gasp.

It hurt – losing Hiei's soul. It hadn't thought it would hurt. He hadn't expected it to feel like a fist through the heart, to steal his breath and take the strength from his limbs.

"Son of a…fucking bitch - !" he wheezed, stumbling against the table. Suddenly the battles, the weeks of travel, the sleepless nights, the stomach-gnawing hunger all hit him at once, barreling into him like a locomotive.

The soul sparked, dark and fiery and impatient, in his hands.

"I'm…getting' to it…ain't I?" he demanded.

"Yusuke-san…is that…?"

He pushed – with the remaining strength in his body he pushed at Hiei's soul and slowly – terribly slowly – it began to sink back into his body.

"About…damn time, too," Yusuke said, swaying. "Another day of puttin' up with your shit…an' I woulda' killed you myself!"

"Yus - !"

He fell forward, the world at last consumed by darkness. Yukina's startled cry was the last thing he was aware of for a very long time.

Tbc

Type with the "help" of two spoiled rotten lap cats.

Some of you called it. Congrats. I made it easy for you…this time.

Response to unsigned reviews:

neuroticsquirrel - indeed

kit-kit - well? Now you know. (grins)