Yukina
Chapter 9: The Edge
Branches scrape against my shoulders as I hurtle through the woods. My blood leaves a sickening trail of crimson in my wake, marking my trail of destruction. I lost my katana somewhere back there. I think I was trying to hack trees and other wildlife to pieces...I must've ended up breaking the damn thing. It's probably lying about a half-mile back.
There was a time when I cared about my katana. Before I forgot everything.
Before I allowed myself to forget her.
I can never abandon my sister again, and I won't. She...she needs me. I've always protected her, even when she didn't know it. It...
It's not fair.
I trip and fall to the dry, cracked earth. A gash rips open on my right cheek as a thorny bush scrapes against me, shredding parts of my clothing.
But I don't care. I pick myself up and stagger on. I am weak. I am pitiful. I have run too hard, too fast, too far, ripping apart everything I can. I'll soon have to face the reality that I'm drained. I have no energy left in me.
How could one mistake change everything? I snatched her away from death so many times before...how could it be that the one instant I am too slow...she could be taken from me? It's not fair!
I have to will myself to keep going.
Because I'm not there yet.
Hold on Yukina...I'm coming.
I grip a tree to my right and lean against it, panting. This is pathetic. I am supposed to be strong. I can't let myself be defeated by the fatigue that is blurring the edges of my vision.
But it's becoming excruciatingly obvious that my grip is slipping. My hands slide off the tree to fall limply at my sides. I feel my knees weaken, and my legs give way. I'm...falling...
Damn. I was out before I even hit the ground.
I get up.
I have to keep going.
I look around, my eyes darting around the foliage. I am thankful no lower class demon came to eat me while I was asleep. That's possibly the most humiliating death I can think of.
My death won't be in vain.
I refuse to be melodramatic and die for a cause, because I don't want to die for a stupid cause. What cause could be worth my life? I want to die for a reason. It's different.
Because I have the most perfect reason in the world.
I regained some energy in the time I was asleep. It's easier to run. The branches don't catch as much. I'm going to get there. Soon.
I break out of the trees' cover and gasp.
This is where she died. I know it the way even humans can sometimes sense things.
And I can see her. She's standing right there, by the cliff edge. She looks sad. Both her eyes are whole, but she's crying.
But those tears are not the crystalline gems I have seen rolling down her pale cheeks before. No. This time very liquid, very red, thick streams of...something are running down her face, opening cuts and burning her fair skin everywhere they touch.
My dead sister is crying acid tears of blood.
But that's not all. Her kimono is shredded, and I can see the wounds that haunt my most terrifying nightmares reappearing to mar my sister's body. The hole in her chest. The bruise on her neck. They all return...one by one with every step I take nearer to her.
To death.
And she stands there and cries and cries. And whispers something.
I cannot hear her no matter how I strain my ears. She is mute. She cannot speak and yet needs desperately to tell me something.
But I just can't make out the single syllable she keeps repeating. It's just one word...a simple message that could be the deciding factor in the most monumental decision I will ever make.
I take another step.
I reach out to touch my sister's cheek. Right below her eye, to wipe away her tears.
And my mouth opens wide in a soundless scream as that same eye splits open above my outstretched fingertips, pouring cascades of ice-cold blood onto my hand and searing pain up my arm and sweeping through my whole body, paralyzing me.
I stare in horror at my crying sister, her tears mingling with her own dead blood flowing out of her ruptured eye. It's the last wound. The final warning as I touch my lone relation, one step away from being with her forever.
As my eyes lock with hers, her lips still form the word I am too blind to see.
And my hand falls through her. She disappears, leaving me to fall forward, looking down to the dizzying drop below as a scene from my past replays before my wide-open eyes.
Her death. She falls and hits the rocks and the water turns red and swallows me up and a mirror shatters and broken pieces of glass destroy my world and a bloody crying child falls down to—
"HIEI!" Someone grabs my shoulder and violently yanks me around, away from the salty scent and my sister. The force of my one-eighty pitches me over and I fall over on top of someone bigger than me, stunned. I am no fool. I know the only one who would have the audacity to stop me is—
"Kurama."
"Hiei, what are you doing?" I glare at him and push myself up, scrambling a few feet backwards. He's keeping me away from the one person who means the most. That's was he was doing all along. And she's the one I would die for. Not him. She's the one I will die for.
I look down at my hand. There is blood on it. Her blood. Because she's what my mind makes her. She's real.
I wipe off the red smears on my pants, where they camouflage with the stains made by my own blood.
"Nothing. None of your business."
He too, stands up. I can see his hurt expression morphing into anger before my eyes. His eyes are smouldering with angry green flames. He has so much to say and no words to say them with.
He stares at me for a few long moments and takes quick strides forward, towards me. I stare right back. Nothing is said but everything is understood. Still...I can think of one simple word that clearly surmises all of his thoughts and desires as he grabs me up off the ground and crushes me to his chest. He still smells flowery, he always will.
LIVE.
He wants me to live.
He holds me to him like he's clutching at water that will quickly slip away from him no matter how tightly he holds on. Just like my memories were, unreachable, unattainable. I shove him away.
"You already know," I hiss at him, knowing that I am right.
He knows exactly what I was about to do before he barged in.
He looks at me sadly, a forlorn expression painted onto his pretty face.
And for a second it happens again, just like it sometimes does.
His face turns into hers. Bleeding and crying, hoping I can save her, just like the day she died. And her hope was killed when she was.
She is mouthing the message I can't understand...a desperate plea from beyond the grave that I am too deaf to hear.
Too blind to see.
And then she's gone, and her bloody tears turn into Kurama's ordinary, transparent ones. Regular, tragic tears that roll down his face and fall to the cracked earth to be slowly absorbed into the thirsty soil.
"I know," he whispers, more tears brimming in his large, wide eyes. I say nothing.
"Hiei, please...don't. She...she wouldn't—" His voice cracks, and he cuts himself off, maybe not trusting his voice.
I turn away to face the ocean. Its waves lap against the rock face so far below, as if inviting me into their depths.
"You're wrong." It's barely a whisper, but I know he hears me.
There is a long silence, and then—
"No, Hiei...no. You are. She would never want this. She would want you happy. She found you. She found her brother. I know she would want her brother to be happy. I know she would want Hiei to be happy."
And he's right. She did know she was my sister. She knew for a moment, because that thing told her.
"An eye for an eye, and a sister...for a sister."
She died knowing it was her brother who failed her...
And she would want me with her. I want me with her. I owe it to her...my only family.
"She wants to be with me." I don't know when I started crying, but I know I am, because I can hear the soft thumps of small jewels hitting hard ground.
"No. She wants to see you happy, whether she can be a part of your happiness or not. I know that's what she would want." I whirl around to face him, startled that he is barely three feet away.
"You don't know that! You don't know that at all! And what if I could be happy with her! What if it is possible? You think you know so much when you know nothing! She was my sister and I want to be with her as her brother and I know she wants the same! We are twins! I've protected her for so long, I have to stay beside her! ...I...I can't fail again."
"She—"
"And stop saying that! She has a name! She has a name that could have saved all my memoies, but you wouldn't say it! She would have told me whatever it took to save my memories! But you! You obviously don't care about me at all! She cared about everyone, she would have helped me. I want to be with my sister!"
"Hiei, she—"
"Why won't you listen to me? Say her name! Say it! Because now I know it! Her name is Yukina! Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—"
And every time I say her name another image of her passes before my eyes. They smash into my subconscious with ground-shaking force, pounding inside of my head, every picture being seen at once, yet separately.
"Yukina—Yukina—Yukina—YUKINA—YUKINA—YUKINA—YUKI—"
My screams are muffled when Kurama once again digs his hands into my back and shoves me against him. I struggle, but he hold me fast, whispering to me.
"No, Hiei. No... That isn't true. You've convinced youself of something you must know deep down Yukina would never want. You can't be happy with her where she is now."
He pauses and chokes back what sounds like a sob.
"And you know what! I don't even care what you think, because I'm not letting you go!"
I stiffen. I can see with shocking clarity what was being shoved in my face all along.
I can see him.
I can see Kurama.
Now I can see Kurama smiling, Kurama helping me practice an attack I had to re-learn, Kurama whipping out a rose from his hair, Kurama taking my hand to help me up when I was so confused.
He was there all along. And I never dreamed there could be someone else who could care as much as my sister...someone I could care about as much.
And now I can see something else. I can see him hugging me, holding my hand when I needed him there. Images created long before my sister's death. Images I had locked away for so long, even after I had accepted Kurama's former friendship.
He has buried his head into my shoulder, and I can feel the vibrations his words make through the fabric.
"No...no...no... I won't let you go."
I gently push him away from me so I can look him in the eyes.
"I'm..." A black, solid tear falls to the ground below me, followed by a wet one from Kurama. The black clatters to the ground and the clear falls directly on top of it, dousing it in kindness, in love.
And before my eyes, the black tear gem—mine, the tear of hate and hurt—turns white and pure.
I tear my eyes away from the tiny, shining sphere and direct them at Kurama's very gem-like green eyes.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Because I have the most perfect reason to live in the world.
His eyes fill with tears that splash down and pool around the single white crystal, as if drawn to it. Each tear makes the tiny glimmering stone on the ground whiter until it seems like it is glowing.
And as I lean in to Kurama's warm embrace and feel his tears mingling with mine, I see something.
I can finally see in stunning relief what Yukina was trying to tell me.
I see her for the last time, her smiling lips forming a word as I close my eyes and lean up towards Kurama.
LIVE.
Well, it has been a beautiful, lovely experience for me to write this. And try to rewrite it. And then forget about attempting to rewriting it. And then scrap that rewrite after neglecting it for a year and re-rewrite it. And then read it one day when I was incredibly bored, become aghast at the multitudinous plethora of mistakes, and re-edit. Well, it's finally done and polished, and thank you a million, million times to everyone who said nice things about this story. I'm reluctant to have to finally say goodbye, but all things must come to an end...so thank you all again, and I hope to hear from you if it turns out this story refuses to die...