Here is the next chapter...this is all about Reiko's past so I suggest all of you take deep breaths and brace yourself...it's intense.

xXDaRkNeSs RoSeInEsSxX - is that a good thing or a bad thing? Just a little nervous...

Gothic-ember- I know how you feel, my poor OC! The clothes thing was supposed to be a humorous thing, glad you liked it! Here is your update!

Standard disclaimers apply

Chapter Nineteen

(Hiei)

Standing in the middle of the room I was at a loss as to what to do, Reiko was scared to go to bed and I couldn't stand in the middle of her room all night. When she had woken up screaming I had instantly gone to her side. It had taken a moment for me to realize that she had called for me and not anyone else. She was still shaking from the toll that the dreams had taken on her. Contemplating my options I decided on the one that had the highest chance of making her feel better. Walking over to the closet I pulled out her new black jean jacket and headed outside. As soon as Reiko breathed in the fresh air she relaxed fully against me. Carefully I set her down on the porch swing that Yukina had talked Genkai into getting and joined her.

"Thank you," she whispered leaning her head on my shoulder. We sat like that for a while and I was a bit surprised by the fact that she wasn't scared or at least wary of me.

"Hiei," she murmured tugging on my cloak to get my attention.

"Hm?" I looked down at her expecting her to be looking up at me but she was staring at her hands.

"Do you think I'm tainted?" The question was so out of the blue that it threw me. What did she mean? Tainted? By what?

"What do you mean?" I asked not taking my eyes off of her.

"I feel like no matter what, that I can't escape from my past. From what they did to me. All the people I've killed." Reiko kept her voice very quiet but I could tell what she was saying was important.

"Everyone has a past," I said the only thing I could think of. "Most people are trying to run from it or forget it."

"I just want it to leave me alone. My past is what has trapped me; it's why I can't move on. All I want to do is tell someone but I'm afraid that no one will understand. No one will care." She wanted to tell me about her past. She didn't want to tell it to someone who she thought didn't care. She trusted me. She was hoping that I would listen to her. Help her like Kurama and Yusuke had helped me.

"Do you want to tell me?" I posed this question praying that it was the right one and it wouldn't alienate her.

"Yes…I want to tell you but…" she trailed off and took a deep breath. "But I don't want you to fond me repulsive afterwards."

"I don't think I could find you repulsive, I've seen some of the hell you went through. None of it was your fault." I spoke the truth when I said that, she was someone to admire for surviving what she had.

"My name's not Reiko," she started. "My real name is Sumiko, I've never told anyone else that. My parents didn't want me, they cast me aside, abandoned me. Midori and Taro, they are my parents. They have no clue I exist, I have given them no reason to think me their child. I was adopted by two humans and I grew up thinking they were my real parents and that I was human." She shivered slightly and I remembered the jacket I had brought with me and helped her into it. "My adopted father Goro was a drunk, every night he came home stinking drunk or got drunk at home. He always beat my mother and I, when I was seven he told me I wasn't his or my mother's and I never would be. It hurt so much because I lost my identity; I no longer knew who I was. When I was thirteen my mother blew my Goro's brains out before doing the same to herself. I was shuffled off to my Aunt Aki and Uncle Akio." She paused a moment to toy with her jacket sleeves, "It was a living hell, Akio did drugs, Aki hated me because I was so different with my hair and my eyes. Their son Yokio was the worst; one night he and his gang raped me when I was only fourteen years old. Goro had beaten the shit out of me but he had never touched me in any other way. I tried to find out of it so I took up drinking like my adoptive father. It took twice as much alcohol to get me trashed than it did to knock a guy twice my size out.

"When I was eighteen I ran away and got tangled up in a horrible relationship with this guy Hiroshi. I thought he loved me for who I was even though he smacked me around…I got pregnant. He was so mad at me, he came at me and I knew in that moment that if I didn't stop him he'd kill me and my child. I killed him with one clean stab to the heart. I watched him die and I felt nothing. No remorse, horror, fear, relief…nothing. I cleaned up and sixth months later I had Jomei, a beautiful little boy, he had his father's black hair and my bright copper eyes.

"About five years later we were picnicking and he fell into the nearby river. I panicked; I didn't know what to do. I flung myself into the river and was able to save him but I died. I went over a huge waterfall and that was that. I met Koenma and he saw that I "potential" so he recruited and I got to be with my son again. But nothing that's good ever lasts. Jomei got leukemia and died before he was twenty. I threw myself into my work and never looked back except in dreams." Reiko glanced up at me before averting her eyes and continuing. "The last assignment I took was to get the information on how to turn dream apparitions like myself into nightmare apparitions. The man who knew died and told me what to do with his dying breath. Zinan had by then figured out that I was a Spirit Detective and to boot I knew the one thing that he wanted to know above anything else.

"Before I could tell anyone at Spirit World I was forced into hiding from everyone and everything. Unfortunately Zinan found me first and I was taken to his stronghold. Every method of torture was used on me over and over again. They beat me, injected poisons and gave me the antidote mere seconds before I would be dead. Whips, the rack, The Pit. It was hell on earth. There was nothing he didn't do. Slivers of glass shoved under the skin of my feet, fingernails and toenails peeled off, broken bones, Chinese water torture. He liked to just talk to me and tell me what he was going to do to me and how. It was fun to him. He enjoyed it. He never learned a thing but I learned everything. How to kill him, to get him to talk and how to escape but I never got the chance. These things around my wrists can come off under only three conditions my doll is found and they are removed from that, Zinan dies and the last one only he knows." I knew she was done, through the whole thing she hadn't looked at me once. Reaching out I placed two fingers under her chin and lifted her face so she would look me in the eyes.

"You're a very strong person, not many would have been able to survive that." I told her and tears filled her eyes as she gazed up at me.

"You don't think I'm tainted?" There was hope shinning in her eyes, something that could so easily be crushed.

"No." All it took was that one word and she collapsed into my arms and sobbed long and hard. She drained the poison from her body. She released all the emotions she had never let out before. After a while when all of her tears had been shed she fell asleep in my arms. Deciding it best not to move her too much I positioned her into a more comfortable position…but I couldn't bring myself to move her from my arms.

(Yukina)

Stretching languidly in my bed I stood up and got dressed humming to myself; it was a beautiful day. The sun was barely over the horizon as I made my way downstairs my thoughts centered on a nice walk and some crisp morning air. As I passed by Reiko's room I peeked in and found her bed empty and her clothes on the floor. Perplexed I stepped in and looked around for Hiei who was supposed to be watching her, he was nowhere to be seen. Thinking hard I went downstairs and silently stepped out onto the porch thinking that the two of them might be in the garden.

Hearing a soft sighing noise I turned to my left and found what I had been searching for. Hiei was sitting on the porch swing his legs stretched out along the length of it with Reiko curled up on top of him her face in the crook of his neck. It was the sweetest thing I had ever seen in my life. Both of them were asleep and they both looked so perfect. Smiling to myself I slipped back into the house a most devious plan forming in my mind but to put it in action I would need a little help.


R&R!