Disclaimer- I think it is perfectly clear that if I owned YYH, I would be spending quality time with Kuramachan and NOT wasting hours on fanfiction.
AN- I specialize in satirical dry humour, but sometimes I get into a mood and this kind of writing comes out. As such, this is very angsty and disjointed and may not always make sense. It's hard to express emotions properly, and this sort of writing is often the result when you're not very good at it. If you look hard, though, quite a few of the ideas are there.
FlowTen years. Had it really been that long? Somehow he could not fathom that it had.
He shouldn't have been that surprised, really. In the life of a youkai, the lapse was nothing. Yet twenty-five years as a human had taught him that time was something to be saved and treasured, even as it effected the most painful of changes. His mother was aging; he could feel it in subtle variations of her reiki. Even his friends were completely altered from their days as reikaitantei. So many times he had thought they were different people. Not that he saw them enough to know, he mused bitterly. He was always busy with something else. They all were.
The last time the four had been together was Christmas at Genkai's, six months prior. Hiei had made a derogatory comment directed at his long-suffering comrade, and for a moment it was like old times. Kuwabara had gotten angry, Yukina had calmed him down, only making the little fire youkai more annoyed, and Kurama had stood leaning against the wall with a small nostalgic smile. Then Yuusuke had been nearly flattened by the tree, saved at the last second by Hiei's blinding speed. He had laughed off his loss of agility, but Kurama was sharply reminded that his raven-haired friend was no longer a teenaged punk ready to beat up anyone who asked for it and many who did not. He was instead a frighteningly normal young man, seemingly content with his life.
Both Yuusuke and Kuwabara had indeed moved on nicely. They had taken up full-time jobs that required almost no movement, only the occasional walk to the coffee machine. It showed in their conditions, best described as abysmal. Hiei was quite certain that he could have beaten the two of them with all three eyes closed and only a pinky at his disposal, a view he often expressed. They would laugh somewhat ruefully, joined by the girls, and with every sound Kurama felt more constricted.
In many ways, he was human. He acted like a human, he had learned some of the emotions associated with them, and he even felt on occasion that "he" and the youko thief he once was were separate people. He did not steal for pleasure anymore. Maybe he did not do anything for pleasure anymore. The memories of Youko Kurama were too strong, reminding him that he could do so much more than working for his stepfather. He had no need to answer to anyone. For this reason, it was inconceivable to him that the two human-born members of the team simply fell back to become ordinary. They would likely die with almost none of the humans they had saved realizing their gift.
The makai would always be there. His mother had bound him to the ningenkai, but when she died there would be nothing left. He would leave, and never again suffocate under the weight of this life, watching the greatest fighters of all three worlds slowly sink below mediocrity. He told himself daily that he would not follow. Humans lead brief, fleeting lives. There would be no need to linger. He could go back to the way he was.
Or could he? The years, so insignificant next to the age of a youko, had changed him. Perhaps there was no possible way to return to being so reckless, so carefree, so utterly fickle. Maybe he was only meant to be a perfect student. The perfect human. But somewhere he knew that this wasn't true… he was only suited to living in between these two extremes, unable to distinguish himself because he did not even know what he was trying to distinguish. Who was he? What was he?
He had had a purpose, ten years earlier. He may have been in conflict, but he was also his own person, a blend of the two personalities within him. There was something necessary about a fighter who could feel compassion for his enemy, yet still be as ruthless as the situation called for. For the first time, he had been valued by friends who hadn't cared about superficial things. They had supported him even when he had faltered, when he had been defeated. Still, there exist few bonds that are not torn apart by time. Nothing had happened between the four to distance them, but even so they barely spoke now. What had gone wrong? It hurt him to think of times gone by. It is an undeniably human thing to be attached to something that no longer existed, but he could not deny that he wished he could have gone back to the times when all four reikaitantei would fight together.
He had learned, in a class that seemed oh so far away now, that there is something known as the arrow of time. The universe tends toward entropy, greater disorder. We remember that something is whole before it breaks, because when it shatters the order of the universe has been decreased. An act of organization expends energy in another way to ultimately continue this pattern. To salvage what had once been would cost more than the result. Would it be worth it?
He wasn't sure. Maybe he didn't really want to know the answer. He needed to think that in this endless stream of time there was a way to go back. Nevertheless, he could feel the currents carrying him, further and further away…
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Oro... I don't know what that was. Sorry if I wasted your time, but please leave a review if you got this far anyways… arigatou gozaimashita.