(Eclipse of the Sun: Empty Moon)
Chapter One: Without The Sun or "Lacuna"
Author: AoiHyou
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. Only the plot is mine. All quotes/lyrics have their rightful writers/owners/singers credited underneath.
Warnings: Character death implied, yaoi (slash, malexmale, homosexuality, guyguy, gay relationships) implied, angst. Also. My writing style has changed a lot.
Sequel to: "The Moon's Memory"
Author's Note: I needed a present to give Suki Inari (whose birthday is 9/21/04) and I remembered the sequel to "The Moon's Memory" I'd mentioned. Figuring I could do it, I started... but, of course, it's been a long while and my writing style has changed a lot. So, bear with me people!
Story Note: Suggested that you read "The Moon's Memory" before this. Also, the writing style has changed considerably. There should be three more parts to this. This chapter is just a character establishing one.
Dedication: To Bekah: Sweet Sixteen means upcoming car accidents.
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
-Matthew Arnold
"Why am I here?"
Quiet, the question falls dull in the space where even echoes have long fled and he is just a voice with a thought of who he is. Platinum hair reflecting light and a silver tail wavering uncertainly as golden eyes scour the place, look and study as years have taught him to.
But there is nothing new. There are no exit signs or different lights flickering in through foliage to hint at a pathway out. Just an unchanging clearness, not even white, not ever black. Just empty.
The proposition of silence for an eternity is more frightening to the youko than the alleys of Makai, the dungeons he had once been in, worse than the hunters--
A youko is made for passion. Perhaps not a passion of love for another, but a passion for love. For life. For the wind. For running. For the ivy growing behind the pedestals of justice. For the rush of wind in its hair, brushing its face. A youko is made for passion and silence, silence is only the passion of emptiness, and emptiness is the death to love, its opposite, its contradiction, invisible hands that carry the clear candle snuffer to the flicking light of freedom.
Emptiness is the substance to the chains, the bars, the ropes that cannot be picked or broken or unraveled.
He was prepared for death. He was prepared for pain. He was prepared to live the pains he put others through, the blood stained on his hands spattering anew from his own veins. He was prepared for physical torture. He was prepared for accusing voices.
Keen ears perked to catch the voice of nothing. No accusations. No cries. No choked sounds or the last gurgle of a person trying to speak as blood rushes up their throat, an acidic burn upwards and a metallic taste in their mouth before their eyes roll away to see what he does now-- nothing.
The two sibling listeners twitch expectantly, alienated without even the shush of the wind or rustle of leaves overturned by bugs.
He has died twice now, but he does not know if this is death. The last was a brush, a whisper, something he fled by inhabiting another body, restarting a life that had ended before it had begun. The last death had been something he did not have time to witness, something that, as a silver flicker of a soul ascended to whatever it was meant to reach, had been lost upon seeing kind eyes and a swelled belly with the feel of emptiness within.
Is this death? He thinks.
"Is this death?" He says.
It seems he is already becoming unnerved, speaking where he otherwise would not. The thoughts are not enough in his mind, and he cannot help but try to fill the emptiness as he had done before, though this time even the syllables simply disappear. It is quiet. It is silent. It is still. It is empty. It simply is.
He has been here for a while though there is nothing to help him distinguish how long. His tail swishes behind him much like a metronome, a pendulum, swinging back and forth in the rhythm of expectation as if thinking, and thinking that if it stays constant it can measure the silence until it breaks.
He has found he cannot sit for he is not standing. He has found he cannot lie as he is not sitting. He has found he is, silver hair and crisp white cloths, golden eyes and sharp nails on pale skin, yet that he is not at all, for nobody can witness him and whether or not the tree falling alone in the forest makes a sound, it cannot be heard. There is no verification of who he is other than his name-
Youko Kurama.
Or would it be proper to call him Shuichi Minamino? No. No. That was never his name-
Not given to him.
Yet. It was his name, at one time. It was what he answered to, what he was known as by certain people, and what makes a name, what really makes a name, is how well it is known, how it is known, and the power behind it.
But in such light Youko Kurama is a much more powerful name than Shuichi Minamino. The deaths behind it are hopelessly scattered and the names cursing it are endlessly varied. There is a power behind that name, of which he cannot use unless there were others that knew it. It is a name that only holds meaning if he thinks of the power behind it.
And so, here, in this emptiness...
It is nothing.
So he is nothing, too. In this place, there is no passion, there is no love, there is no wind, there is no grass, there is no voice--
A voice.
"Kurama I--"
"What did you say, Hiei? What did you say?"
Repeating himself. Uncharacteristic of the solemn thief who had only smiled as a goodbye and only laughed humorlessly. He, who never repeated himself for there were other things to do, places to be, treasures to find, people to defile...
Yet here, there is nothing and the question is all he has to cling to.
He'd been so peaceful. The fever in his head, draining away the heat of his soul. The beat of his heart had been uneven and he hadn't been able to see but it had been all right, then.
He had lived long enough. Even now, he could say so. He had seen things from gold and green and he had caught the wind with silver and red. He had danced with white roses, red roses, and even black roses and he had felt everything he could imagine and even a bit more.
He had lived long enough, had thought he was ready for death...
But he had not known what death was. Had not been prepared for this. Was not prepared for this.
But is this death? Another hope, though it is not one he can cling to because he died and as time, no matter how indefinite, draws on, it seems not to matter because this is what comes after his life.
There is a selfishness to him that had shown before, one that is primal despite the resentment it receives at times. He knows he has lived long enough, and yet, faced with this blankness he wishes he were alive. He would kill, at the moment, perhaps not even to regain his mortality, but to feel something, to do something.
But there is nothing.
Nothing at all.