Captive, Chapter Two: Realizations
Disclaimer: I own no Yu Yu Hakusho characters or ideas. This fic is inspired by RitSuYue and several fairy-tales, including Rapunzel, The Sun's Child, Baba Yaga and a multitude of other stories involving people locked in tunnels/towers/pits/rooms/underwater palaces. It is also inspired by the book Zel by Donna Jo Napoli, the Goddess of Rewritten Fairytales. Go read her books!
A/N: Special congratulations to everyone who got the reference! For those who didn't, Baba Yaga is character from Russian folk tales; she's very old, has iron teeth, eats lost children and lives in a house on chicken legs with a fence built out of the bones of her victims. She travels around in a mortar and pestle, (one of those things people use in the kitchen to mush things up,) sitting in the mortar and pushing herself off the ground with the pestle. Baba Yaga is one of my favorite mythological figures EVER! Her and Loki, even if he's eventually very evil. And Hephaestus. Along with Hermes and Artemis! Okay, and Ganesha. And the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. And Athena! And of course demons of all kinds! In case nobody's noticed, I love mythology! Lots and lots and lots!
After her meal Botan fell asleep again, energy obviously still low. Baka onna, thought Hiei. She should have known her limits better.
He sat in his window, restless. Normally he would be training in the little space he had right now—there was an extra room below this one, the only other room; it was bare except for a small closed-off space for a privy. He didn't want to leave the girl alone, though, if only because he didn't want her to find out his 'other' persona as the Forbidden Child, mass-murderer, which she would if she saw him training; only one demon in this country used a katana and had scarlet eyes. One or the other, but never both. He definitely would keep the using-a-sword part hidden. Not because he cared, he told himself, but because he didn't want to deal with a girl in hysterics because of who he was. Who he had been.
Hiei knew that nearly everyone would react that way to him. He was known for a lot of crimes: murder, mass killings, theft on a large scale, pyromaniacism. Horrible, inhuman acts, more than he could remember... It had all blended together in his mind. For a long time he had reveled in the blood he shed, smirked at the stench of death in the air.
He was the Forbidden Child: he had been cast out of the holy floating island of the Koorime, cursed because of events he had had no control over. His birth. He had been marked as evil since his conception. His very existence was a blot on the Koorime existence. (1) And he had never been loved. Never been cared for. And why should he care about the world that he had been cast into? He should at least deserve his status as a child born of sin, destined to be worse than his beginnings.
So he had taken his revenge against the world, and laughed, bitterly, at the Koorime cringing as they watched from above. People spoke of them as Goddesses, powerful and perfect, but he knew better.
Nobody knew he was part Koorime. Part god. They just knew him as a monster who had terrorized the country, then disappeared because of the actions of King Enma. That Koorime blood had been the reason he was imprisoned... Enma feared that he would lead the people to revolt, rise up against him, his blood making him the center of a revolution.
It always came back to that Koorime heritage.
He no longer lived for killing. He no longer felt the need to satisfy his cold, ice-sharp anger with death. He had had... A long time to think, locked in this tower. A long and lonely time. He had found a hard peace, inside of him. A bitter reason. By facing his anger, he had come to understand.
The Koorime were so desperate to hate him because of their failing strength. They needed the assurance of their powers, the prayers that kept them convinced that their power was still strong within them, not weakened by time and delusions.
They needed to believe they were more than they were, and any perceived weakness couldn't last; they were killing themselves through their desperation.
The people and demons on the solid Earth, the people who had cast him out when he had first fallen (no, he had been pushed...) to the ground had hated him because there was nobody else to hate. He was merely a convenient scapegoat...
Their attempted lynching had been the start of his murders.
But... He thought he understood them now. It was a bitter peace, but it was still peace.
He hated everyone who had been unfair, on some level; not a conscious one, but on some level he hated, and on some level he knew he hated. He understood motives, and understood why just killing everything that crossed his path wouldn't work, even if he wasn't captured, the way he was...
It was an odd mix of yearning and self-hate when he thought of his past. He had been free, back then, even if he felt a strange guilt for all the destruction he'd caused. Now... Now everything was useless conjecture to appease his mind alone; he was incased in this tower, unable to escape. It didn't matter now what he thought of his past, and killing people, the Koorime who had cast him out, his imprisonment. What was done was done.
At some point in his inner debate he had started pacing. Botan had woken up as well.
"Deep thoughts?" she asked him.
"Hn."
Botan looked affronted. "Hmmph," she huffed. Hiei pointedly ignored her.
"This tower's so high..." pondered the girl, mostly to herself. "It feels almost like it floats."
Ironic, thought Hiei. I escape one floating prison for another, even if one's only a prison metaphorically speaking and one only floats in a metaphorical sense.
He was careful to keep his face empty, blank.
"You must like your privacy to live so far out in the middle of nowhere, in a tower without a door," said Botan.
If she knew... Thought Hiei. Fortunately she didn't; her comment had proved it. He was infamous for everything he had caused, and... somehow the thought of Bota--the onna--hating him, even if it was deserved, somehow hurt.
He knew it was easier to become attached to something named. It would be easier in the long run if he didn't grow attached to Botan. The onna. Baka onna.
He tried to keep on telling himself that...
Botan watched with slight concern as her words seemed to send her host into a daze. "Ummm... Hiei? Excuse me? Are you alright?"
Her words seemed to snap him back to reality. "Hmn. Fine." He gave her a slight glare, to discourage the line of inquiry. It had nothing at all do with forcing her away from him. Nope, nothing.
The glare was frightening enough to make Botan feel like edging against the wall.
He's certainly... intense... she thought.
The awkward situation (Botan freaked out, Hiei struggling emotionally and trying to push Botan away,) was interrupted by the arrival of another person at the window.
"Hey, Hiei!" said a loud and sort of instinctually annoying voice.
"Yusuke," said Hiei, monotone.
The boy jumped off the window into the room, glancing quickly around at it. He didn't fail to notice the blue-haired girl with purple-pink eyes in Hiei's bed.
"Well," smirked the boy. "Looks like the Forbidden Child's got a girl in his bed after all..." He trailed off suggestively.
Yusuke's off-hand comment set off a chain reaction he certainly hadn't foreseen. He had expected blushes, a frantic explanation, denial, threats from Hiei, maybe.
Botan's eyes widened as the sentence registered. Puzzle pieces clicked into place. The locked-away tower in a remote area. Demon. Red eyes. No door, meals delivered. A bandanna covering his forehead, where a third eye would be...
Damn, thought Yusuke. She didn't know…
Panic set in. Botan could feel her breath, harsh in her throat, her pulse beating wildly. The Forbidden Child... She knew what he had done; It had been years since he had disappeared—been locked in this tower, this very tower!—but she had heard stories, seen long-lost limbs, scars, people disfigured by terrible burns. She had left flowers on the fields of graves, when there was nobody left in the family, neighborhood or town to leave them.
She was sitting in his bed, had eaten his food.
I'm going to die... God, I don't want to die, I'm not ready...
Hiei watched as her eyes widened with panic and horror; he could hear her breathing heighten, her heartbeat pick up, her face blank with the shock. A simultaneously sharp and dull pain throbbed in the pit of his stomach, a responsive hurt near the vicinity of his heart. A single breath came out as a near-silent sob of pain.
It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, concrete proof cementing together a conglomeration built of guilt, pain and loneliness in equal parts, and now this stabbing painful hurt...
Slowly, carefully he approached the girl, feeling this inexplicable need to comfort her...
Botan's eyes snapped to him as he approached. Wild, chaotic panic danced in them, making them fever-bright. He reached out a hand, though he was too far away to touch her, and the girl flinched away from him. Instinct (2) and an innate sense of self-preservation kept her from bolting, or trying, but Hiei could see her shaking heavily.
Hiei dropped his hand and backed away, his own breath coming faster with the intensity of this emotional pain... It shouldn't hurt this much. She was just another girl, another panicked person who thought they were the next victim. She shouldn't matter this much after just a few days...
"I'll deal with it; you go down to the second floor," whispered Yusuke. Hiei nodded once, instinctively keeping on the stone mask that blanketed his expressions. He supposed that he no longer had any reason to hide his emotions, but it was an automatic response now, especially when his emotions could be conceived as a weakness.
As Hiei opened the stone hatch leading to the second floor Yusuke slowly walked over to the girl, hoping that his very definitely normal appearance would calm her down. Sitting down next to her on the bed he put a comforting hand on her shoulder, patting it gently as Botan's panic receded, offering silent support. Yusuke Urameshi wasn't the brightest thing on two legs (or four...) but he knew what to do in this situation, at least.
Eventually Botan's breathing returned to normal, her eyes taking on something at least fairly close to their typical bright spark.
"Hiei is the Forbidden Child?" she asked, eyes steady as they looked into Yusuke's.
He nodded an affirmative.
Botan frowned, unconsciously biting at her lower lip as she thought. Yusuke was very tempted to tell her she looked unbelievably sexy, did she have a guy yet? but resisted, partly because of the situation and partly because of the sheer unadulterated bloodlust, all targeted at him if he thought any more about it at all, coming through the mental link Hiei had opened up between them.
"And he was imprisoned here by King Enma."
Another nod.
"You and Kurama are his wardens?"
"Yes and no..." said Yusuke, speaking for the first time.
There was a few moments of silence.
"What am I missing?" asked Botan, eyes sharp.
"Good question," said Yusuke approvingly.
Hiei felt a rush of relief. Maybe... there was a chance... that she wouldn't hate him, fear him... He crushed that hope. He would spend a week or so on the floor Botan wasn't on as she healed, helped by Kurama and Yusuke, before she would leave, happy to leave him behind. Soon he would be a bad memory, a real-life nightmare, and nothing more. Not... human (3). Never a person.
Hiei? What can I tell'er? sent Yusuke mentally.
Everything, said Hiei after a moment of hesitation, attempting to sound firm in his decision. The mental words came out almost like a question.
"Hiei... Is part Koorime," began Yusuke. Botan's eyes widened considerably. "He was thrown of the floating island of the Koorime because of his birth: his mother was Koorime but his father was a fire demon. He was named the Forbidden Child, a child of taboo, and thrown off the island when he was only a few years old. He had barely landed in this country before he was attacked by a mob... They were the first people he killed. You'll have to ask him why he killed all of the others.
"The rest of his years when he was famous you know and've heard about." Botan nodded, an unneeded confirmation. "Finally he was captured by King Enma and imprisoned here in this tower; Enma didn't want to kill him and risk angering the Koorime, and he didn't want Hiei to use his Koorime blood to cause a rebellion. He settled for locking Hiei up in a castle in a remote forest, heavily protected with warding spells and completely isolated.
"I've known Hiei for... Years, now. He's one of the few friends I've ever had." Yusuke gave a mental check and firmly closed the mental link. Hiei let it lie closed.
"I'm going be frank here," said Yusuke, voice low and fast. "Hiei's lonely, more than he realizes. He's scared of people and how they see him—everyone in his life has hated him, from the Koorime to this entire country, until he met Kurama, and then me—and he's afraid of how people see him. Worse, he's too... Resigned. He doesn't believe he has a reason to live, doesn't think anything will change, thinks his entire life's been ended and this is just time to reflect on mistakes he'll never get to fix. It scares the shit out of me, Botan."
"Why are you telling me?" asked the girl, voice troubled. Conflicted.
"...Because I think he loves you," said Yusuke with a defeated sigh.
(1) Yukina probably won't be in this, just for simplicity's sake. If anyone really wants her included, tell me in a review and I'll consider it. At this point in time, Hiei has no idea she exists. Maybe after Hiei/Botan romanceness occurs.
(2) The way I figure it, demons are just so much more physically capable than humans that any fight-or-flight instinct would be useless; instead, the most likely to survive in the genetic pool would be the ones that hid. Therefore, humans in this AU hold still when they're threatened. It all comes down to genetics... MiGod, I'm talking about genetics and demons and how they affect each other, in the footnotes of a fanfiction no less, aren't I?
(3) There are no good words synonymous with 'humanity' that work for races other than human. The person who designed the language obviously didn't think it through... I mean, demonity just doesn't work, does it?
A/N: What a terrible place to end! I'm such a mean author. .:sigh:. But this chapter was lots of fun to write and I know exactly what to write next so the next update should be soon!
Please read and review! I won't know what to improve on if you don't tell me!
Thank you so much to all my UNBELIEVABLY MARVELOUS REVIEWERS!
Shout-Outs:
Vindiya: Well, thank you very much! And I completely and totally understand your comment about most writers making Hiei terribly un-Hieiish... I'm glad you think I have him in-character!
Hiei's Ice Maiden: All of your misspellings are forgiven! I do it too, so it's completely understood. I'm very glad you like my story so much! Thank you very much for reviewing!
Robin Autumn: Good guess! I'm pretty sure that yes, Baba was the Turtle Hermits' sister, but DBZ tends to borrow stuff from other sources, so you caught a reference instead of the original! So close! Anyways, I'm very glad you like my story! Thank you for reviewing!
ellamr: Your English is very good if you're still just learning! Thank you for reviewing!
Fudge Cake a la mode: Go Kurama fan-girls! I'm very glad you thought I had him in-character. Thanks for the review!
BlueGreenGrey: I'm glad you like it! I'm doing my best to update soon!
Asanisan: Well, I think I said everything I had to say in my email to you, so thank you again for taking the time to tell me what you thought of my story! I always think reviews offering advice on where to improve are the most complimentary! Again, thank you!
Anya Observian: Very close to what I've heard! About Baba Yaga, that is. Isn't she so cool? Like I said, one of my most favorite mythological characters ever! Thank you very much for reading and reviewing!
Dargarent: Thank you for reviewing! I'm very glad you like my story; I hope you continue to do so!
Aiiro-bara: Cute? Really? .:is very cheerful and happy:. It's nice to see one of my favorite return reviewers find another one of my stories! Thank you!
Miss Kyoshi: I'm very glad you like my story so much! Thank you for fav-and-c2ing it! Good job, going and doing research!
Shoujo Bat: I'm very glad you like it! I did my very best to update soon; I hope you like this chapter just as much!
RitSuYue: I'm very glad that you (the inspiration of all this!) like this fic! I have to say, I'm having LOADS of fun with it, although I'm not being the good girl I should and starting the romance off to a slow start... I guess I can only be patient on one fic at a time. .:smirk:. Thanks for the review! I hope you like this chapter too! (Heh... That rhymes!)