Learning to Live Again

Part 1: Grievances

I still don't own Yuu Yuu Hakusho... gee, saying that makes me feel kinda sad...

Hiei's POV:

I keep looking in all the places,
Where you are supposed to be.
But I never seem to find you,
And you're all I long to see.

I sit, perched on the tree branch just outside your bedroom window, just as I always have.

The moon, full at the peak of the lunar cycle, is casting it's silver rays upon the bare earth. Fine whisps of silver clouds hover omnipresent in the navy sky, silver splinters of stars glitter down from the heavens. The breeze is calm, and loose blossoms dance on the breeze. Just another night.

But now everything is different.

For, you are no longer with us. You haven't been for a week now.

Odd how seven short days can stretch a seeming eternity in wake of such times. You've been gone for such a short amount of time, and I miss you terribly, we all do. For you left us so unfairly.

I curse at Enma, himself, for having taken you, and I curse at every other god who may have had something to do with your departure. What reason could they have had to take you? What gave them the right? You had no right to leave, no right to be taken, your time was nowhere near through.

But I guess the Fates didn't really care about that.

They took you anyways. Well, they didn't...

Tainted blood did...

Leukemia did.

I don't really understand the disease. I never intend to understand it. But, despite my ignorance, I understand this: Leukemia... cancer... whatever it was, it equaled death. For such a thing as a ningen illness to kill you, it must mean death, simply.

But it's not right.

And it's not fair.

"You're gone," The words feel awkward to say, and even more so to hear, but there's no way around the inevitable.

Damn, there's no way around anything...

But I don't want to accept it.

Accepting it would mean acknowledging the fact that you are gone, and never coming back. I'm not ready to believe it. Not ready to give up on the fact that I have lost one of the most significant people in my life. Simply not willing to say "Kurama's gone."

Your death has shaken me up a great deal, I never imagined one single person's death could do this to me. Death never has before. Yet, now, your's is.

I never realized how much you meant to me.

But now that you're gone, that strikes me painfully. Becasue in life you were always readily there, for me to come to. Now you've left me. All alone. And I can't bare that. Because you shouldn't be gone. You should be here, steady, strong, never lacking in words of wisdom and inspiration for me. Yet, you're not here, and never will be again.

How I wish to see your calm, gentle face

How I wish to hear your calm, wise words.

But time cannot be turned, the hourglass dictating our lives is bolted down firmly in the hands of fate. Fate is fickle, unyeilding and evil, yet such a meek presence dictates all our lives. Or rather, the shallow existances we forge out for ourselves on this vast, green planet.

I just can't seem to understand,
What it was that changed your mind.
All this time I thought I knew you,
When really, I was blind.

I remember when you had told me that you were ill. You didn't want to tell me, and you remained adamtly stubborn about it too, but then, you were hospitalized, and you had little choice but to talk. You eventually wore down and told me.

"Why are you in the hospital?" I asked indifferently, sitting on the window pane of your hospital room.

"I've fallen ill," was your simple reply.

"Really. Well, how ill? Since when does the great Youko let himself fall prey to human ailments?"

"I'm no longer Youko, Hiei."

Silence.

"I don't suppose you are."

"I'm not."

"Right."

I sigh silently to myself.

No, you weren't Youko. Of course not, it was apparent, you were Shuichi. But, that still gave you no right to die. Who ever the hell you thought you were, or you actually were, you still shouldn't have died.

You damn hypocrite.

You taught me to cherish life, or at least appreciate it to some degree. You, human-loving bastard, showed me on many an occasion how fragile life is, and told me that it shouldn't be taken for granted, and lived to the fullest with the time you were given.

You damn hypocrite.

I'm sitting at your window in the hospital room again.

"I hear there's a treatment for your illness, Kurama."

"I suppose there is."

"Good, you can get well, and out of this place then."

"I won't."

"Why?"

"I refuse the treatment."

"Baka no kitsune."

"I'm not stupid."

"Then why refuse the cure? Have all the years you spent among the humans addled your brains?"

"The treatment warrents hair loss."

I snort. "Hair loss? You don't even like your hair."

"I don't suppose I ever favored it."

"Then why do you care?"

"My long hair is all I have to remind me of the Youko I once was, and only for the Youko I once was."

"That's a stupid reason."

"Yes, but Youko had long hair. And that long hair gained him the attention of a dear friend."

"A true friend wouldn't care if you lost your hair."

"So, you wouldn't?"

Silence.

Then I darted from the window.

You refused the treatment just to keep your hair attached to your scalp.

Stupid, vain idiot.

You kept your hair because you thought I would turn from you if you didn't have it? You gave up your life just because you were to stupid to realize that if I cared about such stupid things, I wouldn't have come to you in your human form in the first place.

You damn hypocrite.

Giving up on your life just for something like that. Whatever had happened to: 'Life shouldn't be taken for granted, cherish every moment you are given?' Whatever happened to your sense, did humanity rob you of it? You always had such a thirst for life, you really did live up to your own words, but then, suddenly you just gave up.

Why?

I don't understand it.

Why would you willingly give yourself up to the darkness, the end. Death.

Why would you betray us.

Why would you so cruelly leave us all behind, mourning your absence?

Why would you do it without regrets?

Were you just insane? Had all the years living a double-life finally snapped your mind? Or where you just tired of cheating death? After all the times you had, it would come as no suprise. Were you just tired of life? Had you finally gotten bored with the game? Or was it something else? Where you tired of all of us coming to you with our problems?

Tired of all the times I came to complain to you. To vent on you. To rely on you.

Had I truly been the cause?