Nanashi paced in her room, up and down the front of the bed. Asa had left to her rooms to get medicine she figured she would need for Hiei. Jiro had left to get Hiei and bring her to him. She felt so alone, full of mixed up emotions. The two strongest were worry and anger. Worry about Hiei and Jin. Anger at the king and Sakyo. She started when Asa came back into the room first with a bag in tow. She sat the bag down on the nightstand and then stepped over to Nanashi.
"Sweetness," she said, taking Nanashi's hands in hers. "You need to promise me something." Nanashi met Asa's eyes, nodding. "No matter what state your friend is in, you will not seek revenge on the person or people who did this to him."
"What?" Nanashi breathed out, unsure.
"Promise me," Asa implored, hands gripping Nanashi's tighter. "You have to remember, being angelic makes you more vulnerable to evil. If you allow that darkness to set into you, you'll become a monster that will have to be killed."
Nanashi squirmed under Asa's gaze and the weight of her words. "I promise," she said with all the honesty she could muster.
Asa pulled her in for a tight hug. "You're still so young," she breathed over her. "Half a wolf cub still in your own right." She kissed the top of her head affectionately.
Asa pulled from her just as the door to the room opened. In walked a tall man with odd mo-hawk. Nanashi hardly noticed him though because all she could see over his shoulder was Hiei.
"Put him on the bed, please Chu," Asa instructed, stepping over to the bed and throwing the sheets to the side.
Chu carried Hiei over and plopped Hiei down on his back on Nanashi's bed. Nanashi gasped at the sight of him, so thin and so weak looking. Even Asa was frowning down at him.
Chu commented, "doesn't look like the same guy who was undefeated in the fighting pit."
Nanashi felt a mix of both hate and revulsion burning through her. Asa turned to her. "Remember your promise to me," she instructed. Nanashi nodded. "Can you be here? Can you handle this?" Nanashi nodded, refusing to separate herself from him that easily. "Chu?" she said, turning around to the man behind them. "You're dismissed. I think we'll have plenty of people in this room right now."
"No problem," Chu slurred, leaving the room. He looked rather exhausted himself.
Asa turned herself back towards Hiei. "I'm going to need to strip him down and examine him. You can look away if you are uncomfortable." Asa settled herself down next one side of the bed, and Nanashi on the other.
Nanashi shook her head, helping Asa undress him. She let Asa take off his pants and boxers though, with her feeling uncomfortable at the idea. Asa frowned at that, face looking annoyed and concerned. She went over his body, healing any injuries she could see. She then looked over his torso, frown at the sight of his hips. They looked swollen and red. So did the front of one of his thighs.
Asa seethed, stepping away from Hiei and the bed. "Dark crone," she spat the words out like a curse. "He was given to a dark crone." She paced away from the bed and then back over again. She rummaged in her bag, thinking aloud, "forget that promise, I want to kill that Sakyo myself." She busied herself making her own healing draft. "Bone infection in his hips and upper leg. Of course she wasn't careful."
"What's a dark crone?" Nanashi asked nervously.
Asa turned to face her, her face was cross, but Nanashi knew it was not at her. "A demonic type of witch that harvests living creatures and uses what she takes to perform her magic and craft her potions."
The idea of it made her stomach clench in cold terror. "What did she take from him?"
Asa looked up at her. "From what I can tell, she took a lot of bone marrow, blood, fat, fluids, gall bladder, part of his liver, and appendix. He can live without those things, but it doesn't look like his body was given the time to recover, hence the bone infection."
"Will he be okay?" Nanashi asked hopefully.
Asa gave her a patient look. "I'll give him medicine that should kill the infection, but it seems like he has been battling with it for a while." Asa had a draft brewed up. "Help me sit him up." Nanashi looked over at her and did as she bid. Asa held her hand over Hiei's infected thigh, tapping it. Above his leg came a zoomed in hologram of his femur bone. Bit of gross looking greenish-blackness were in and around the white bits. "Ugh, disgusting," Asa swore at the sight of the infection there.
Nanashi felt herself panicking internally. 'Is there anything you can do?' she thought to the wind serpent.
'There is something I have done before,' the wind serpent purred in her mind. She got a flash image of Kaze sitting next to another angel, wind serpent no where in sight. 'I have been used before to help kill off an infection in a friend of my former master's. I can do that again in you like.'
"Yes, please," she said out loud in a rush. Asa looked at her confused. She gave Hiei the medicine she concocted.
"We'll start off giving him this mix of antibiotics once every four hours and see where he goes from there," Asa said, resigned.
'I can kill it, you just have to stay awake and give me your energy while I work,' the wind serpent explained. 'I do need to enter through an open wound or something.'
'His Jagan eye?' she suggested, recalling Hiei once briefly explained to her what it was and how he got it after they fought off those doxies. That felt like such a long time ago...
Nanashi reached over to Hiei, pushing up his headband. "Do it," she said.
Asa still looked over at her in curiosity. "Who are you talking to?"
"My wind serpent," she answered.
"Oh, that's right," Asa mused. "The angelic weapon you inherited from that dying angel..."
Nanashi hummed, "um, he it says it can help," she started slowly. Asa was watching her carefully. "It can enter his blood stream and help fight off the infection. But only through an open wound or something like that. Through his Jagan Eye is possible. I just have to stay awake though is all while it works." She closed her lips, feeling a bit embarrassed by how she explained it.
"It couldn't hurt," Asa responded. "It's your choice, but it could be the thing that saves his life."
Nonverbally answering, Nanashi sat down next to Hiei's head, tugging off his head band. While his two normal eyes were closed, his Jagan eye was open. She vaguely recalled asking him once about it. He had told her he got it from a demon surgeon in return for a sworn secret he had not revealed. Gingerly, she placed her right hand down over his forehead, watching her wind serpent slither down her arm and into his Jagan Eye and body. She gasped in the sudden shock and intimacy of it.
"Are you alright, sweetness?" Asa asked her with concern.
Nanashi nodded in answer. "Yes."
Asa stepped over to the other side of his head. She touched the outer edge of his ear. Quietly she asked, "have you looked at his ears before? Really looked at them?"
Nanashi looked down at his ear closer to her. She studied it, not really knowing what she was getting at. "No."
Asa whispered, almost nervously, "they're docked at the top tip and the lobe. He's demon, right?" Nanashi nodded mutely. "Demons, like humans, have rounded ears, but elves have pointed one. Half elves has a mix of the two." Nanashi nodded, recalling what Jin's ears had looked like. "Only a half elf trying to hide his half-ness would have his ears docked like that."
Nanashi looked down at his ear one more time. Gingerly, she ran her finger across the out edge of his ear, feeling the slight raise of scarring beneath her fingers.
A knock came on the door, much to Nanashi's annoyance after that. She just wanted to be left alone with Asa and Hiei and her own thoughts for now. Yet Asa rose up and answered the door anyway.
"It's Jiro," Asa informed him.
Nanashi groaned under her breath. She did not feel like dealing Jiro of all people at the moment. Yet she felt like she owed him for getting Hiei to her. "Let him in," she begrudgingly consented.
Asa gave her a concerned look, gesturing to Nanashi with her hand.
'Cover him up,' the wind serpent told her. 'Over his chest.'
She did as she was bid clumsily, covering Hiei up to his chest with her blanket. Asa nodded over to her and then beckoned Jiro into the room.
"Angel, my angel, how is your friend?" he rushed out a bit too loud for her comfort. He stood next to her, swallowing thickly and looking down at Hiei in distasteful curiosity.
Nanashi hummed, her head feeling too fuzzy to find the proper words. Asa thankfully answered for her, explaining the bone infection and how Nanashi's wind serpent was helping him fight it off.
"Oh my angel," he said half boldly. He sat down next to her and took her hand. Holding hands with him felt so strange, wrong almost. "How can I help you?"
He a pleading, almost pathetic look in his eyes. She looked down at her lap. He was so eager to please her, so eager to be with her, albeit in a forced way. He only wanted her because she was half angel. He only wanted her because the king told him and him alone to pursue her. Jin might have been thinking like that, too, for what it was worth. Ruka had been, surely. She cast a slide long glance at Hiei. He had not been. He had kissed her before she ever knew she was angelic.
Asa spoke up for her. "Perhaps you could get her something to eat or drink? Something gentle on her stomach. She was not feeling well earlier."
"What would you like, my angel?" he asked her eagerly. His hand tightened around hers.
"Something gentle," Nanashi answered wearily.
"Yes, my angel. At once, my angel," he responded, rising up to his feet. His hand stayed rested in hers though. He bent down, trying to kiss her. She gasped, pulling her away without really thinking about it. "What's wrong, my angel?" he asked her, voice dripping with rejection. "Is it because you're unwell?"
His hand still held onto hers. "I thought you didn't like those who were 'half breeds?'" she blurted out. She pulled her hand away from his, meeting with some resistance on his part.
"Nanashi," Asa hissed over to her in warning.
Jiro stood over her, drawing himself up as high as he could manage. "You're impossible," he said. "The union of an angel and a human. That might as well make you an elf. You're different. You're better than any half breed ever could be."
She gaped at him in surprise. She thought about how she was treated growing up under the belief that she was half demon, half human and so treated inferior for it. Then of what Jin had told him about being a half demon, half elf and the only way he got to work in the royal stables was being the best by far at working with hippogriffs; so good that his breeding could not get in the way. How Kurama had mentioned being seen as lesser for having a human body, but a demon soul. She then thought about Hiei laying unconscious, having his ears docked so to hid his own breeding as a half demon, half elf from the world.
"No one's better than anyone else. Not in the way you're talking about anyway," she challenged quietly.
He looked down at her disbelievingly. "I surmise that's just your illness talking. Otherwise..." his voices trailed off, shaking his head haughtily.
"Get out," she answered, frowning up at him. She pulled the bite back from her tone. "Please leave my rooms. I am tired."
Jiro looked both angry and wounded at her. "You are sicker than you realize. No wonder the king has ordered you stay in your rooms for a day." He left in a huff of insolence. She was glad to see him go.
"Why did you do that?" Asa hissed over at her. "At the very least he is your ally her at court. Discounting his opinions so rudely in his face will not help you any."
"His opinion is stupid," she muttered. She felt the sudden urge to cry all over again. She closed her eyes, taking a deep, calming breath.
'You should have slapped him,' the wind serpent commented coyly.
She held back the smile threatening to cross her lips.