In the Wake of What Follows
Chapter Fourteen: Drowned Sorrows
The kamidana that had been stored in Terra's room was moved to Genkai's. It was closed and covered with talisman papers. They were much more specifically crafted than the ones Terra had seen on traditional funeral shrines. A benefit of knowing the truth of the afterlife, Terra supposed.
Kurama had gifted the house shrine with his flowers - yellow chrysanthemums and white lilies and a vine-like wildflower that Terra couldn't identify but highly suspected was from the makai. Keiko and Yukina had taken care of the washing and the candle and the incense. Genkai's body would be cremated and buried eventually, but for now, they were faced with honoring a lifeless shell.
The woodsmoke of cedar and sage overpowered the room. A clink hit the floor as a tear escaped Yukina's mournful eyes. Terra left the room.
After the numbing sensation of the day before, Terra had felt the sorrow of the funeral with full force. She couldn't handle the physical ache in her chest. There was nothing she wanted more than to feel nothing again.
It was only three in the afternoon, but Yusuke was already hitting the drink. Fairly hard. It wasn't long before Kuwabara joined him. Upon entering the kitchen, Terra found the pair relatively out of it.
"How drunk are you?" she dryly.
"Not drunk enough," Yusuke slurred.
Terra leaned over the counter and took the jug of sake out of Yusuke's hands. He began to protest before he realized Terra wasn't taking it away to stop him, but rather to drink herself. She brought the jug to her lips and chugged for a few seconds and placed the sake back down between them.
Yusuke cheered. "Yeah, getting drunk with Nakashima!" It was a dark sound, a poorly designed mask of delight.
Terra wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "I suggest you find me a tumbler of my own unless you want me to drink all of yours," she told him.
"Why don't you pick on Kuwabara?" he asked, taking another swig.
They looked over at the blubbering mess in the corner and Terra shook her head. "Like he knows where Genkai keeps the good stuff."
Yusuke snorted. "You got that right. Come on, let's ditch this kitchen swill."
After the sun set and the stars came out and Genkai's secret stash was mostly depleted, Terra stumbled outside with Yusuke and Kuwabara at her tail. The night air was cold. A refreshing caress against her wine-ruddy cheeks.
The three of them had been piss drunk by dinner. Keiko had forced Yusuke to leave due to his behavior, Terra and Kuwabara proudly following. They weren't the only ones drinking - Shizuru had pretty rosy cheeks - but the three students of Genkai were getting out of control.
Yusuke stepped forward and half of his leg got swallowed up in the shallow waters that had started to thaw. Apparently, getting half soaked in an ice-cold swamp was hilarious. He burst out laughing and Kuwabara was quick to follow.
"Oh man!" he cheered, crawling out of the swamp. "This is where Kuwabara got pummeled by his first demon. I beat that punk's ass pretty hard," Yusuke gloated, his voice a few degrees too loud.
"Shuddup, Urameshi. I didn't even know what was going on at the time. I could win that fight now, no problem!"
"Yeah, right!" Yusuke pulled Kuwabara into a headlock and started messing up his hair. "You couldn't even beat Terra!"
"Hey, you callin' me weak?" Terra said, pushing Yusuke. He nearly lost his balance, taking Kuwabara down with him. "I should beat your ass."
Yusuke dropped Kuwabara like a hot potato and put his hands up in fisticuffs. "Come at me," he smirked.
"Come on, guys. Don't fight," Kuwabara whined.
Yusuke turned his fists to Kuwabara and took a swing at his friend, who easily dodged despite his drunken state. That might have just been because Yusuke was so drunk himself. Terra stumbled back, her foot slipping on the edge of a swamp puddle. She righted herself turned to start navigating around the reeds and half-frozen wetlands.
She left Yusuke and Kuwabara to their mindless fighting and took another swig of her sake. There was no telling how much she had had that night, but by the droopiness of her eyes and the way her legs didn't want to move straight, Terra knew it was probably too much. She hadn't thrown up yet, though, so it couldn't be that bad.
"Where you going?" Yusuke called out when he realized Terra had wandered from their side.
Terra stopped on the other side of the swamp. There was a gentle slope down a few feet before a drastic ridge drop that got swallowed by the forest. In the distance, Terra could see the city. She had only ever sat on the roof on the other side of the temple facing the sea, although she had never been able to see it. From here, there were lights of skyscrapers and fashion districts and housing developments. Somewhere down there, further on the horizon, was her old apartment. There was her alma mater, schoolmates she never planned to keep in contact with, and thousands of memories among the streets and shops of her, her boyfriend, and her best friend.
The sound of a sliding door called the attention of the two boys, but Terra stayed looking out over the mountain.
"Kurama! Hiei! Come to join the party?" Yusuke yelled.
Kurama shook his head. "Your wives don't wish to come collect you themselves, but would care for you to stop drinking and come inside."
"Fuck you, man," Yusuke said and took another swig from his jug. "They're the ones who kicked us out."
"I expected such a response," Kurama sighed. "I'm going to at least keep an eye on you."
"We don't need no babysitter," Kuwabara mumbled before tripping over, landing on his butt. A splash of muddy swamp water covered half his face. Yusuke's laughter wouldn't stop, even when Kuwabara stood and kicked his friend down into the muck.
"No need for violence," Kurama called over their brawl.
Terra brought her sake to her lips and drank the last of it. She was bitter there wasn't more and tossed the empty ceramic to the ground. The crash of clay brought the attention of the others. Suddenly (or maybe not, her perception of time wasn't ideal), Hiei was by her side. Her numb limbs tingled with the heat emanating from Hiei.
"Hey, waiter. Get me another drink," she mumbled.
"Stop this foolishness."
She was so sick of him. His displays of superiority always grated on her nerves, the way he looked down on her for being human. He was controlling and rude and condescending. Every time Terra thought she was starting to understand the demon, he prodded her in such a way that she forgot why she bothered trying.
"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped.
Her vision blurred as she turned to look at him. He growled in response to her sudden aggression, the low vibration accompanied by a rush of cold energy.
"No," she seethed, pointing a finger at him. "You have no right to be angry with me. I'm angry at you." Her voice got louder on its own, all the emotion inside of her bubbling out like an Alka-Seltzer and Coke rocket. "I could have stayed numb. I could have left and packed this all away, but you made me stay, you ass."
The fire demon's eyes seemed to quiver as they studied her, but that could have just been the fact that Terra was having a hard time focusing. Still, something about him seemed almost alarmed by her outburst. "You're pathetic."
Terra nearly laughed. She was falling apart at the seams. It felt like an appropriate reaction. "You don't think I fucking know that?" she said, lost for breath. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks like all the sake in her system was trying to escape.
The necklace she'd worn all day felt like a brand where the chain met her neck - the weight of the world nestled against her chest. Terra looked out to the city again, the lights shimmering in the distance, blurred by her tears. "I barely even knew her and I'm a fucking wreck. Because I'm pathetic. And I couldn't keep one fucking promise to myself," she spat. She had told Hiei once that there was no point in getting attached. That she tried not to care. It didn't work that way, despite her best efforts. Terra put her hand over where the charm sat under her shirt. "I don't want to feel like this."
"Then move on," Hiei said, as if it were a simple thing to do. As if he were bored and dealing with her emotional turmoil was a waste of his time.
"You're right." This time she did laugh - hollow and mirthless. "I'm nothing but a hypocrite. I came here to cut myself off from the rest of the world, and here I am, holding onto everything." With the kind of strength that only came from an alcoholic stupor, Terra reached for the chain around her neck and pulled. It snapped, the metal pooling in her hand like twin snakes. It's impossible to move on if you can't let go. Terra wound her arm up and then let it go.
As the necklace flew through the air, the ring she had kept against her chest as she slept for so long glinted under the moonlight. The sharp cut of the diamond was like an extra star under the night sky, falling just for them.
It disappeared into the forest below, and only then did Terra realize what she had done. "NO!" she shouted, and ran forward.
She would have run right off the cliff face to get that ring back had a pair of strong arms not caught her - one foot standing on nothing but air. Terra scrambled to get out of his too warm grip. Scratched at his arms, kicked at his legs, screamed and screamed and screamed. She didn't even know what she was saying, if she was saying anything. All that mattered was Hiei let her go so she could find the last thing Jeremy ever gave her.
But Hiei held on, keeping her from falling to her death. "LET ME GO!" she wailed, throat hoarse. "Let me go." Her energy was giving out on her. Too much drink, too many tears. When she finally stopped fighting against Hiei, he let her go.
She didn't know when they moved, but they weren't by the ridge anymore. Terra stumbled and fell against the wooden back porch.
"Careful, Hiei," Kurama chided, coming to Terra's side. She could smell the faintest scent of roses on him. It nearly made her gag. "Come on," he said to her kindly, "let's get you inside."
Terra wanted to push Kurama away. Insist she was fine and continue drinking. All the fight had left her after Hiei, apparently, so all she could do was cling onto Kurama and sob. He tensed in surprise, taking a moment before encasing her in a protective embrace. "Shh," Kurama whispered in her ear. "Everything will be alright."
Terra missed how she got inside, guided gently by cold hands and kind words. Once in bed, Yukina pressed a glass of water into her hands. Keiko helped Terra guide it to her lips. She drank greedily, a soothing elixir to her dry throat. "Not too fast," Keiko said, trying to pull the glass back, but Terra's thirst won out.
"I never puke," Terra mumbled as she held out the glass for more.
Keiko left to get more water and Yukina gave Terra some bread. "Eat," she commanded softly. Terra obediently put the bread in her mouth and ate it like it was a feast of kings. She moaned her love for bread, mouth still full. Keiko came back with another glass for Terra to drink, and the two stayed by her side until Terra finally fell asleep.
The little stream of light coming in from Terra's window felt like fire against her retinas. Her eyes weren't even open, and it was too much. She groaned and buried her pounding head into her pillow. Her mouth tasted like she hadn't brushed her teeth in a month. It was disgusting, yet she couldn't make herself do anything about it. Terra laid in bed for another hour before finally stumbling out to the bathroom.
The warm bath water made her feel somewhat more alive. It wasn't customary to bathe in the morning, but Terra was desperate to feel clean and awake. She stayed until her fingers pruned and then made her way back to her room. Terra found her stash of pain killers after slipping on her glasses. She downed them with water someone generously left by her bedside.
As she set the glass down, light refracted through it and glinted against something else. Terra blinked. She swallowed as if a jagged rock were in her throat. All the tears she shed last night felt like they were ready for round two, but none came. The ring she had thrown off the top of the mountain sat neatly on her dresser, clean and undamaged.
The chain was gone. The only other necklace Terra had was the one she wore to the wedding, but she couldn't replace that pearl with this diamond. She stared at the ring for far too long, unblinking and hands trembling. It felt sacrilegious to wear it around a finger - any finger. Terra was never going to marry Jeremy. It was a future that couldn't happen. She never even got the chance to say yes. To wear it when he was gone felt wrong.
She didn't know what to do with it. Her actions may have been wrong, but her resolution was right. She couldn't move on if she couldn't let go. Terra picked up the ring. She rubbed the golden band between her thumb and forefinger before stashing it with her other valuables. It was a relic, now. It didn't deserve to be hidden away like a forgotten piece of time, but she didn't deserve to wear it either.
When Terra was finally dressed and dry, she wanted nothing more than to curl up in her sheets and spend the rest of the day in dreamless solitude. Her stomach had other plans. In her hungover state, she couldn't refuse a trip to the kitchen - ravenous for the first time in half a year.
Shizuru and Kurama sat across from each other at the tiny kitchen table, chatting over coffee. Their conversation hushed when Terra walked in. She was thankful. Their voices pounded against her skull like a jackhammer.
"Well, you're the first of the three to wake up," Shizuru commented. "I'm surprised. It's still pretty early, and you seemed the most far gone."
Terra shrugged and trudged over to the refrigerator. She thanked whatever deity resided over meals because it was stocked with things prepared the day before. "I once woke up after a night of binge drinking at five-thirty in the morning," she mumbled as she grabbed something at random. It smelled like curry. Terra popped it in the microwave and continued her story. "I then thought it was a good idea to do yoga and read a book. I passed out on the couch around nine and then got up again with my roommates at eleven."
Kurama chuckled into his drink. "Your poor sleeping habits aren't a new development, then."
"Neither are her drinking habits, it seems," Shizuru smirked as if giving Terra a badge of honor.
Terra stayed by the microwave as she waited for her food to heat up, not wanting to crowd the table. "Sleep is and always has been an elusive fucker," Terra said bitterly. "Knocked myself out good last night, though. I think I got, what, a full five hours?"
"Six, actually," Kurama said.
"See, I can be a functional adult. Just add alcohol." The looks the two gave her knocked down her attempt at humor. It couldn't be funny when she acted the way she did. "I was pretty bad last night, wasn't I?"
Kurama and Shizuru looked at each other with uncertainty. It was telling enough. Not knowing what to say was a sure sign that she had gone too far. She'd shown them her open wounds. There was no pretending that she was okay now.
"How much do you remember?" Kurama asked.
Terra pressed her palms onto her closed eyes, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head. She sighed deeply, fighting against her hangover for memories. "Most of it, I think. I remember yelling at Hiei. I know I threw the," her breath hitched. The microwave dinged. Saved by the bell. "I threw it down the mountain. More yelling at Hiei. Then someone else helped me inside?"
Terra took her hands away and looked at Kurama. He was a blur of flesh tones and red hair without her glasses on, but she could make him out enough to tell that he nodded. Terra took the food out of the microwave and began to eat at the counter. It was too hot at first, but that was a good enough distraction. She remembered to pull her glasses back down when she realized Shizuru could have been Keiko if Terra didn't already know who was sitting there.
"My eyesight sucks," she muttered before shoving the rice and curry into her mouth. "I want pizza," Terra whined after a few bites. "Such better hangover food."
"Let me get you some water," Shizuru said, silently laughing at her expense. "You want coffee, too?"
Terra shook her head, mouth full with more curry. "Why don't we have any cereal? Why is everything traditional Japanese?"
Shizuru placed a glass next to Terra at the counter. "Yukina does most of the shopping," she explained. "I'm sure if we went looking there's stashes of snacks around the place.
Terra downed half the water and took a deep breath. She stared at her half-eaten bowl of curry as she gathered the courage for her next question. "I remember yelling," she said, slow and soft as if she could make her voice a distant noise even in such close quarters. "But I don't remember what I said."
There was a beat of silence and Terra was glad she wasn't looking at them. "Well," Shizuru started, "by the time I was out there, you were screaming in English, so I can't help you."
Terra didn't press. She got the impression that Shizuru had been told the gist of it, but this didn't need to be a game of telephone. Terra looked up and caught Kurama's eye. The way he shifted in his seat would have suggested he was uncomfortable, but Terra thought him too in control for such an obvious tell.
"I couldn't have been that bad," Terra said.
"Yes, well, I believe it was," Kurama admitted, a careful consideration to his words. He was slipping into his doctor mask again, the one primed to give a patient bad news. "First, I would like to clarify that Hiei did understand you." Terra nodded. It wasn't obvious the night of the wedding if Hiei knew the language as he kept quiet for most of it. "After you…" Kurama hesitated, playing a mental game of chess with himself to find which words would be easiest to hear. "After you threw your necklace off the mountain, you tried to run after it despite the immediate drop. Hiei caught you. You fought against him." Terra nodded again, she remembered that, for the most part.
She waited for more, but Kurama's tongue became tied. Maybe his halting words weren't an attempt to make himself more human this time. Kurama was actually uncomfortable.
Shizuru took over from him. "You asked Hiei to kill you," she said bluntly, staring Terra down. "Keiko said you said something along the lines of it's not like you like me anyway, just throw me off and all of this can be over with."
Terra clenched her jaw, pulling a deep breath in through her nostrils. Her hands clenched around air as she tried to come to grips with how far she had slipped. Terra had a lot of faults. She'd been to therapists and had Jeremy by her side since her parents' deaths. She didn't eat right and rarely slept more than a few hours a night. Now that she had pushed through not doing anything except the bare necessities, she jumped straight to working herself to the bone. Neither were healthy. Terra was self-destructive. She knew this, but she never could seem to stop herself. Terra was self-destructive, but never suicidal.
The memory of her time in that alley flashed behind her eyes. The horned demon. The tingle of lightning in her veins. The overwhelming need to survive. Terra hadn't wanted to die then, despite everything. Losing Genkai was tough. It was as if all her hopes for a future had been snuffed out when the woman who reached a hand out was no longer there to pull her up. It was tough, but it shouldn't have pushed her over the edge like that.
She had run headfirst off the side of a mountain and then begged the man who saved her from tossing herself over to join the ring. Panic clawed at her throat. Why did she have to be so fucked up? Terra wiped a stray tear with the palm of her hand and swallowed the panic down. "Right." She nodded curtly. "I'll be fine," she told them, not looking their way.
Hiei had told her to move on. Terra hadn't been moving on. She hadn't been healing. She had been pushing everything down and ignoring her problems until she almost let them crush her last night. No. She let them crush her. Hiei was the only reason they hadn't. She remembered the ring that had been sitting on her dresser that morning. Someone had gone back to find it.
"I'm going back to bed." Terra abandoned the last of her meal and rushed out of the room. She was thankful when they didn't move to stop her.
In her room, Terra laid down and stopped trying so hard to hold herself together. At some point, she even fell asleep.
When Terra woke, dusk was dimming the world. She felt out of sorts and a stranger in her own body, as if the heavy shadows had taken her to another place entirely. The feeling left her soon enough as Terra began to move around. She ventured to the bathroom, then to the kitchen for something to settle her stomach.
Yusuke and Kuwabara were both there, hangovers worse than hers still etched across their faces. "Morning," Yusuke mumbled despite the setting sun. They didn't speak past that, none of them quite themselves. Terra grabbed a thick slice of bread and left again, eating it along the way back to her room.
She nearly choked, startled as she was when she entered her room. Hiei was at her windowsill, resting on the lip and staring out at the darkening sky.
"God, Hiei. What the hell are you doing here?" Her cheeks burned, embarrassment coloring her as crimson as his eyes.
"I have questions," he said, a gruff command for her compliance.
She wanted to tell him off. Invading her space, demanding her time. Her behavior last night kept her quiet. "Which are?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe. It didn't feel right to enter her room with him there. This wasn't like the rooftop - a neutral, open area. He deliberately chose to come to her and take over her private quarters for this talk.
When Hiei looked at her, Terra held her ground. "Do you truly wish to die?"
Rip the band-aid right off. Hiei never bothered with bullshit. Silence stretched between them, but Hiei would wait for his answer. She couldn't keep eye contact, giving in to her impulse to look anywhere but him. The grain pattern of the wood floor was of particular interest this evening.
"Humans have an innate will to survive," she told him. "I'm sure demons do, too. People see suicide as the easy way out, as if people are too weak to handle the world around them. But that's not true. It takes so much will power to override our natural instinct to live." Terra had seen it before. Not in person, not the moment of, but she'd lost a friend to suicide. Even at her lowest lows, Terra hadn't been able to figure out how her friend had gone through with it. "You asked me once if I had a purpose. And the truth is most of us don't. We just exist."
Her words hung in the air like a karakuri box to her mind. Hiei wasn't having it. "That doesn't answer my question."
"Sometimes," she spit out. "Sometimes, I hate just existing. And I can't seem to find a way to actually live." Of all her attempts at transparency, of all she told the table after the wedding or all her and Hiei's rooftop chats, that was probably the most truthful thing she had ever said. "You brought the ring back, didn't you?" she asked, looking back up.
Hiei stayed still for a moment, but then nodded.
"Thank you." She wanted to say something, anything, that would excuse the gaping hole in her heart. As if explaining why the ring was so important could release her from the guilt of her actions. "I think most people spend their days waiting," she said, eyes wandering back to the floor. "Waiting for someone to come along and save us from all of our hurt and loneliness. I met that someone. And I lost him. With him gone, I have nothing. No home, no family, no desires for something better. So yeah, sometimes I want to die. But I also want to live. If I can't live with him, maybe I can live for him."
Terra expected Hiei to vanish after that, to speed away so fast he was nothing more than an after-image.
"Anyone who begs for death doesn't deserve it," he said. Terra caught his gaze, surprised. He almost sounded gentle, or at least as far as Hiei could sound. His red eyes turned cold, and for the briefest moment, she felt the chill of his energy. "Despite the treaty that protects humans, remember that I kill indiscriminately. I do not believe in mercy, and I do not tolerate those weaker than me. You're lucky I don't cut you down." Faster than a single beat of a hummingbird's wing, Hiei was behind her, the heat that curled off him the only indication of where he had gone. "I expect you to be up and ready by seven for training."
When Terra turned around, he was gone. She stared at the empty hall for some time before finally stepping into her room and sliding the door shut behind her. Her hands shook and her heart raced. Spending so much time with him, it was sometimes easy to forget that Hiei could be dangerous. The others all claimed him as a friend, but that didn't mean he wasn't still a predator. Terra exhaled deeply and collapsed onto her bed.
Him telling her to keep going was less encouragement and more of a threat.
Somehow, in the darkness of her room, face curved against her pillow, Terra felt lighter. Gentle might be outside of Hiei's wheelhouse, and he was dangerous, but his words had been a call for her to be better. The thought kept Terra awake for some time longer: this was what it meant to have Hiei as a friend.