Disclaimer: I don't own YYH.

Paradox
By: TF

(One-Shot)

He was a waif, a cast-out, and an abomination. He was short, fiery, cold, and sarcastic. He was a killer, a thief, and a brother.

If the world worked the way it was supposed to, the way that stupid baby god said it worked, then he wouldn't be alive. He wouldn't have made it past conception, past the melding of two opposing spiritual energies that had bonded to form who, or what he was today. If the world really worked the way it was supposed to, then he would have been dead like the elders had insisted, instead of just cast out into the wilderness that surrounded the ancestral home of the koorime.

But the world didn't work like that, it never had, and probably never would. He was still alive, and that in and of itself was proof that the world didn't work in the ways it was supposed to.

He sat, perched in one of the tree's on Genkai's land closest to the temple itself, so that he could watch the fey maiden with the blue hair cook dinner for a lumbering idiot with orange hair, and an equally idiotic boy with black hair and one of human kind's largest mouths. That was as close as he chose to get to her, because she didn't know who he was, only that he was always watching. After the last kidnapping that had lasted for five years he wasn't going to let her out of his sight for long unless she was home in the glaciers where it was safe.

Someone made a noise of amusement from below, but he ignored it. The fox was just jealous, and it showed every time he made a point of startling, taunting, or teasing him. The fox didn't have his demon body, so he was stuck being jealous of anyone with talent who did, leaving only Hiei to face Kurama's hidden bitterness.

"Go away, fox," he snapped, crimson eyes glaring down on top of a head of equally crimson hair.

"You're watching Yukina and Kuwabara and growling again," Kurama's voice clearly conveyed his amusement as he looked up with his deep green eyes.

"What business is it of yours?"

"Don't be so touchy, I was just making a comment," Kurama chided, rolling his eyes as the glare directed at him intensified.

Hiei snorted and jumped away, leaving the fox and the temple grounds in a blur behind him. Just because he helped them, and he used the word help loosely, didn't mean that he was obligated to socialize.

He chose to stay on the outside, to watch his sister who didn't know who he was. They shared a mother from the ice, so it was unrealistic to expect her to figure out that her half brother was an outcast of the koorime. He was almost…content to help her from a distance.

Besides, who would want an outcast for a brother anyway? No, she was better off as she was, basking in the attention of an honorable oaf, an ungainly giant with orange hair and the brains to match.

There was always something that needed killing on the Makai side of the barrier anyway. He had better things to do than sit around and amuse the fox.