Disclaimer: YYH is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. If I were him I would be creating more manga, not writing fanfiction.
A/N:
Many, many apologies! I am down on my knees. I had essay after essay in my history course, then swimming championships needed to be planned, and then finals week popped up out of no-where, and now I'm on vacation again.
So we left off with Hiei coming to terms with Asha's odd habits and strange ways. Kurama was still asleep, fighting off the Makai poison, and we learn a little bit more about Asha's past. Verily, the chapter starts.
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...the mystery unravels.
Three weeks had passed since Hiei's night visit to Kurama and Asha. Kurama still had not regained consciousness, though he was expected to any day now. Asha kept up her vigilant watch, caring for the kitsune with something akin to love. Or so Botan's romantic imagination thought.
This particular morning, Asha could be found kneeling on the floor by Kurama's infirmary cot, her arms crossed on the mattress, her chin resting in her arms. The sunlight filtered in through the window, its beams gently warming Asha's pale skin.
She opened her eyes...her world was surrounded in complete dark, but for the figure that slowly came towards her.
"Kurama?" Asha's voice cracked with sleep.
"The time has come. Why should I not kill you?"
Asha blinked. In truth, she had been expecting this question for over a month, yet she had no prepared answer. Realizing she was sitting on the ground, she rose to stand in Kurama's presence.
"Honestly, I don't really know. All I can say in my defense, is that I spent many years on my own, never worrying about another person, not ever having a partner to watch out for, or have watch my back. I suppose I fell back on old habits in that cave. I had been so focused, for so long, on taking revenge upon Toushi Koi, that...I...I wanted to be free of his terror, and I thought of that only. When you screamed to me...I heard danger and leaped. I did not think, I didn't...I didn't think of what would happen to the tantei that I had coerced into coming." Asha choked. She had not noticed she'd begun to cry. "I sound like an idiot."
Kurama watched her thoughtfully, then said, "Wake..."
"...up. C'mon Asha, rise and shine!"
Asha swatted a hand at Botan. "You are far too bloody cheery in the bloody morning, you bint."
Botan only laughed. "Wake up, raise your head! Kurama's awake!"
Asha jolted up, her silver eyes immediately locking with emerald ones. In that moment, an understanding passed between the two. It was not a moment of professed love, or an oath of undying loyalty. It was not forgiveness, that Asha received from Kurama. But it was hope. Hope that someday in the future, Asha would make up for her mistake, and that one day, one day her relations with the tantei could be mended.
"Hello." Kurama's voice was soft. No hint of anger, of rage, no sign of any ill feelings toward Asha could be heard, or seen in his eyes. In fact, they looked almost kind.
Asha laughed for joy. "Haha! Ladies and gentlemen, el zorro is back!" Asha stood, and walked out of the room with a smile on her face.
Yusuke walked into the room as Asha walked out. "Botan...has Asha snapped or am I just out of the...Damn! Yeah Kurama! Awake at last. I mean, I've heard of a kitsune needing their beauty sleep, but I think you took it a little bit too far."
"It's good to see you too, Yusuke." Kurama smiled.
A shadow appeared over the window sill. "About time."
Kurama chuckled. "It's good to see you as well, Hiei."
"What are you going to do about Asha?"
"Not one to waste time, are we, hm? Yes, what are we going to do about Asha."
"Did you just speak about yourself in third person?"
"No Yusuke you dolt, it was fourth person."
"Wha?"
"Nevermind. Here Kurama, I figured a little breakfast would be in order. Don't worry, Koenma was bringing it up anyway, I didn't do anything to it." She grinned. Koenma walked in then, proving she spoke the truth.
Kurama took the tray from her hands, and lay it on his lap, covered by thin, white sheets. "Thank you," he whispered.
The room stayed silent as he ate his breakfast. At first, he tried to eat politely, and slowly, but he gave up once he realized how famished he was. He gulped down his milk, and patted the edges of his mouth with a napkin-- "Now he decides to have manners," muttered Asha.
"What are we going to do with you? You betrayed me, but...each of us can attest that it is not easy to break habits overnight. Used to fighting alone, it is understandable that you would remember only yourself in a moment of fight or flight. I say we put it up to a vote."
"Democracy?" Asha's voice was slightly higher than normal. "You're putting my life in the hands of democracy? I don't know about you, but I've seen how that system works in the United States and it has bunches of flaws..."
"Large scale issues of the process have no importance here," Kurama stated gently. "And do not forget, your other crimes must be taken into account here as well."
Asha silenced, a little shocked Kurama was being this kind in his dealing with her.
"Let's call Kuwabara."
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Once Kuwabara had joined the rest of the tantei, Kurama presented the options.
"The choices, are that Asha is killed,"--she cringed. Kurama flicked his eyes to her, then panned them back around the room. "Asha is killed, imprisoned without bail, restricted on parole, or given a second chance as a free woman." He looked at his companions, and seeing they were all ready said, "All those in favor of Asha's execution..." None raised their hands.
"All those in favor of imprisonment." Koenma raised his hand. The rest looked at him scathingly. "What?"
"All those for parole." Hiei, Yusuke, Botan, Kuwabara, and Kurama himself raised their hands. "That settles it. Asha will be restricted on parole, and must, after her involvement with Toushi Koi is finished, do service for the Reikai."
Koenma spluttered. "I hardly think that we should allow Asha to..."
"No." Hiei interjected. "Toushi Koi must be stopped now, while Asha is still sane."
Asha looked inquisitively at him. "So you're saying I've been going insane?"
"More or less." Kurama picked up the thread. "Your thoughts have focused for so long on revenge, that you've slowly been consumed by that thought. You think of it obsessively. It haunts your dreams, and it even makes you forget about the people you are fighting with."
"So because she's so obsessed with it, that's grounds for calling her insane?"
"Precisely, Yusuke." Kurama said.
"How long?" Botan asked.
"Yes, how long have you been going insane?"
"Is that an order, Koenma? To tell you how long I've wanted to kill Toushi Koi?"
"I can make it one."
Asha sighed. She focused on Hiei, who met her sad eyes with his firm ones. Tell them. She knew then that Hiei had discovered the truth. And Kurama had had six weeks to think about it, so he probably knew the truth too. 'Yusuke would get there eventually,' Asha thought. 'That's half, so I may as well.'
"What I told you before we attacked the cave, was partially the truth. Everything I told you about my friend is the truth. We were inseparable, we loved each other like sisters. And I lost her to Toushi Koi. However, the timeline I gave you was completely wrong.
"I did meet Arianna in sixth grade. And we did become close friends fast. But we knew each other for far longer that three years before she died. Six years later, we were seniors in high school. We were going to graduate three years before the roaring twenties: 1917. It was strange for girls to still be in school, but we stayed. I wanted to be a nurse, that passion brought on by the Great War. Arianna was the only person who could make me laugh, the only person I could tell anything and everything to. The only person I had ever managed to love. The day she died, we had walked back to her house, to sit and study for our final exams, in the terrible heat of a southern Californian summer. We were in her room, our books surrounding us, unable to get anything done in between our bursts of laughter. Then we heard the crash, a shotgun fired, and the screams...God, the screams. Arianna jumped from the desk chair, and I tried unfolding my legs and grabbing for her at the same time...I missed. My fingers brushed her skirts, too little, too late. I pushed off the floor, running for her, but she was already at the bottom of the stairs, kneeling by her dead parents. I slipped on them—the stairs—and was sliding down on the shards of glass from the broken windows, as Toushi Koi murdered my best friend, my sister. He yelled his name in victory. I can still hear the ringing, still feel my hatred, still taste the bile as the last thing I saw before I fainted, was Arianna's empty eyes."
Botan held her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. Kuwabara was much the same, his small black eyes enlarged, and afraid.
"What could I have done? Nothing. I was lucky to have passed out, else I would be dead too. Apparently the monster didn't stick around. A neighbor had called the police, and it was they who found me unconscious, but alive. The same could not be said for my friend or her family.
"It was all over the newspapers: Family killed, best friend turns mute. Oh how I wanted to strangle those bloody reporters. What absolute bastards. Would anyone believe me, if I told them a humongous demon had killed members of the community? I lived in the hospital for a time, until I was sent to an insanity ward for talking to myself. In actuality, an old, bent demon had appeared to me in my room, and asked me what I wanted most in the world. I would liken to him to Rumpelstiltskin, but I think Rumpelstiltskin would've been far more benign. I told him I wanted to take my revenge on Toushi Koi. The demon asked me what had happened. The rendition I gave him was...dramatic, and so they had to bring four grown men to drag me out of that room, and all the way to the insanity ward. Some odd days later, I had no way to keep track of time, the demon reappeared. He granted me the powers I would need to defeat my enemy, in exchange for my first born, and some petty assassin's work. I agreed to his terms. I broke out of hospital building when they next opened the door to bring me food. I ran, following the demon apparently only I could see. Eventually, he brought me through to Makai."
"From California? How?" Kurama asked.
"I suppose it had something to do with the number of earthquakes going on in the 1918-1923 years. I was forced to remain at the hospital for a year, making it 1918, and then it took four more years for me to learn the Makai language that R'ki'stuq spoke well enough to go with him. And then the earthquake of Kantou happened, and it was time to go. Perhaps the earthquakes made the barrier unstable enough in the entire Ring of Fire area that demons were able to travel back and forth between continents. It'd be something to look in on, Koenma, if I were you."
"Get on with it, onna."
"What, you don't like my story?"
Hiei only glared at her.
"Sheesh. Talk about a tough audience. Anyway...I spent twenty years working for R'ki'stuq and his clan. It was a learning experience, that's for sure. I was forced to push past the pain that they would deal me, then go on missions—small and unimportant ones. They forced me to survive. They trained me in their shinobi arts. Once, I was almost killed during a training session. Needless to say I worked harder then ever before. I started working on my own. Learning languages, history, martial art forms from other places in the Makai, and in Ningenkai. One night, I went to a bar, got pregnant, waited six months and then gave birth. I gave the child to R'ki'stuq, and when I saw his grin, I walked into my tent and didn't come out for supper that night.
"At last, he let me go. It was then 1948, and the demon clan I had stayed with was dwindling. It was probably a point of honor that an outsider would not see them die, and go extinct. I was left to my own devices. I spent years trying to pick up the trail, if any, that Toushi Koi had left behind. I started my search in California, and worked my way back to Japan. His tracks eventually led me to search in China and Tibet. Soon, the new millennium had crept up on me, and I still did not know where my prey was, except that he had not left Japan for ten years. So I assumed he was still within the borders...somewhere.
"I needed more money, so as an aside I had taken up assassin for hire. I had a skill, and I used it as a means to an end. It's a highly paying job, but all that money got used up by plane tickets, boat tickets, and other transportation methods that I had watched been invented. Marvelous things, them. I even got a computer at one point, and learned how to crack so that I could get into underground info sites and stuff like that. Rather, it was a lot of fun. At last, in 2004, I got a tip. In the Yakuza records, which they were fools enough to place on hard disks so that a skilled enough...very skilled cracker could get to them. And in them, was a reference to a terrible man by the name of Toushi Koi, who was a murderer and criminal. Even the Yakuza didn't know the half of it. The records said he was in Osaka. Superimpose a Makai map on that, and he was somewhere in the Rekuti region. A region I happened to know very well. I searched that place with a comb, every crevice, every cave, except one. The one I was going to, when you," Asha looked pointedly at Hiei and Kurama, "stopped me. The one in which we found Toushi Koi when I brought you along." Her fingers drummed on the hilt of the falcon sword from the cave, which she had taken to wearing.
"So it's 2006 right now..." Yusuke began to do the math. "Where you seventeen or eighteen in highschool?"
"Eighteen. There was no such thing as 'skipping a grade' back then."
"1917 minus eighteen...that's..."
Asha rolled her eyes. "Is it that hard?"
"She was born in 1899." All heads whipped around to stare at Kuwabara.
"Nice job, for a baka."
"Which means that you're 107 years old." Botan said.
"Wow...that's old. And you only look like your what, sixteen?"
"I'm sure if you look close enough, you can see the lines." She leaned over, resting her hands upon her knees, her long hair falling to surround her face.
"So you've been on a wild goose chase for forty-eight years." Koenma sighed. "That's a very long time."
"I think, also," Kurama began, "another reason your mind has been degenerating over the years, is because you are human. Despite whatever gifts you were given, your body is still human. There is only so much a human body can take."
"R'ki'stuq took that into account. My body will be fine for as long as I live."
"Physically, anyway. Your bones, your muscles, your eyesight and your speed. All that is a physical movement that, as you say, will stay in tact. However, your mind, your human brain, cannot be changed. It is that, which has been dying. Your obsessive nature concerning Toushi Koi, plus the degeneration of your mind, has factored into your insanity."
"Really? How interesting."
"The sooner we take care of your demon obsession, the sooner we can slow your insanity."
Asha turned to Hiei. "You care?"
"I don't, but he does." Nodding to Kurama, Hiei turned, and flitted out the window.
Kurama stared at Asha, a strange light in his eyes, as if he were battling with some emotion.
"I have more paperwork I need to do. Botan, come along." Koenma left, bringing his ferry girl with him.
"Hey, Kuwabara, bet I can kick your ass."
"No way! You're on, Urameshi!"
And so they left too, leaving Asha standing uncomfortably in the middle of the floor, under the relentless scrutiny of Kurama.
"Can you stop?" Asha sounded vulnerable.
"Stop what?"
"Staring at me. Stop staring...I don't like it."
"Very well." Kurama looked away. Asha looked so...small. She was, he supposed. The top of her head would barely reach the center of his chest. But her bearing. Even in vulnerability, she could most likely bluff her way out. Her stance was always cocky, her head held high. Her eyes were usually cold, even if she wore a smile. But now...now they looked...
"Uncertain?" Asha offered.
"How did you know that I...
"Was thinking about you? It was another part of the gift. Not outright telepathy, more like...a skewed version of empathy. I can sense thoughts, especially if they are about me. It's a perk, as long as I want to know what people think of me." She grinned.
"You're very--"
"Strange?"
"Not quite what I would have said--"
"But I know that you all think it. You're probably right, too. It's hardly healthy for a human to obsess over revenge like I am."
"There are those who do it."
"And look where they end up. Mental institutions. Anyway, most of them seek revenge on other humans, not demons."
Kurama raised his left brow, as if to appraise her. "Don't give me that look fox."
"What?" he asked softly.
"I don't like being looked at as if I'm..."
"Merchandise?"
"Not how I would've put it, but--"
"That's what you were thinking."
"Way to shove my habits back down my throat."
"It's not intentional, I promise."
"Uh huh..." Asha trailed off. She noticed that during there exchange, she had gotten closer to Kurama's bedside. "Could I see your sword?"
She drew it quickly, and skillfully. "Here."
Kurama held the hilt in his right hand, his left passing lightly over the blade. "I know far less about swords than Hiei, but even I know I good sword when I see one."
"Mhm."
"Wait...what's this?" Kurama's head bent to look more closely at the blade's stem. "There are characters here. Chinese characters."
Asha's head neared Kurama's. "What do they say?" Kurama looked up into her eyes, now filled with curiousity.
"You can't read them?"
"Hardly, I can just see barely see them."
"Ah. They say...can you understand chinese?"
"Uh...no."
"The characters say:
The sun will rise, the sun will set
Your prey will fall, that much I'll bet.
Hold fast your fears,
Hold back your tears,
A friend's hand is a wondrous thing,
For only this will justice ring.
Bearer of this sword stand tall,
With me your enemy will surely fall.
"A message."
"Mierda. A magic sword."
"It would seem so, Asha."
"So if I can cut Toushi Koi to pieces with this thing, he shouldn't come back like he did last time?"
"Hypothetically."
"Yes or no, Kurama, yes or no."
"Toushi Koi should stay dead. There are, however, no guarantees."
"Hey, the magic sword has spoken." Asha closed her eyes for a moment, giving Kurama a better view of her scar. He contemplated it. Asha didn't even bother to mention it during her tale, but perhaps they'd be treated to the story of her scar soon. She breathed a sigh. "It's hard to believe, that after all these years, I'll finally be finished."
"Then you'll have community service to do for Reikai."
Asha grimaced as she opened her eyes. "Just my luck."
She turned to walk out. She spun quickly, lifting the sword out of Kurama's hands. "Hey! Detective! Tantei! Check out this awesome magic sword!"
Kurama shook his head. Sometimes, Asha was like a child, at others, she was wise beyond her...well, no, he couldn't really say that. But she was wise. He only hoped she would be more careful this time round, as she reaped her revenge on Toushi Koi.
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A/N:
I'm not quite sure where all these words came from. I sat down this afternoon, and it all just kind of...flowed out of my fingers. And I promise, promise, to get another chapter out within the next two weeks. There are two or three more chapters left.