In the Wake of What Follows

Chapter Twenty-Two: Untethered, Contained

Death followed Terra - or at least, that's what it felt like. People die. It was a fact of life that everyone had to come to terms with at some point. People die, and life goes on. Whole civilizations fell - communities were lost to time, bloodlines ended, and eventually, everyone would be forgotten. What was strange about it all, was being the survivor. To be responsible for the memories of someone once living was a heavy burden.

Her parents' grave had been clean when she visited. Flowers she hadn't brought were sitting in the vase attached to the headstone. Her parents had paid a lot of money while they were alive to make sure they were well taken care of after they died.

Three years had already passed since the accident that took her mom and dad, and very nearly herself. Terra still had nightmares about it from time to time. But mostly… she was tired. Tired of being afraid. Tired of feeling lost and alone. Tired of hurting.

When she looked down at the polished headstone, the only thing Terra felt was detached. Those graves weren't her mom and dad. Her mom and dad simply didn't exist anymore. And the worst part was… she was starting to forget.

Terra remembered so much about her past, her family, her life. But memories could be false. They didn't recall everything correctly. And the mundane, the little things that made her parents them and not just anyone, was what had become fog in her brain. It was like trying to watch a movie without her glasses on. Blurred.

It was overwhelming to realize that someone who had been so prominent in so much of your life was fading into the background.

Terra felt guilty, more often than not. That she survived when others died. That she wasn't making use of her time among the living when she was intimately aware of how short life could be. That she was failing in her one responsibility of keeping their memories alive.

Survived by their daughter, the obituary had said.

The guilt only gnawed worse at Conner and Heather's graves. Conner, who Terra failed to grieve in her eclipsing bereavement of Jeremy. Heather, who Terra had failed to notice was on her way to dying long before she committed suicide. Her friends were gone and never coming back. She hated that the only way to move on was to replace them. She hated that Heather had become some mementos - a goodbye letter, a handful of photos from theatre camp, a cheap nickel friendship necklace that Terra had lost her half of back in middle school. She hated that Conner was quickly becoming her friend from college instead of her best friend. She hated that Heather had long been her friend grade school instead of the friend she knew all her life. She hated that these weren't changes made by time and distance and drifting away from each other, but that they were possibilities ripped out of her.

And they were all fading. Memories of memories. As if her mind were rejecting anything that wouldn't benefit her future.

At the same time, Terra knew it was her ill brain speaking in extremes. Depression made everything… harsher. Having studied psychology didn't make her any better at handling it, it just made her annoying aware that she was being irrational.

Making new friends wasn't betraying the old ones.

Moving on wasn't spitting on her past.

Not visiting graves didn't mean they weren't still in her heart.

Healing wouldn't make her forget.

And forgetting little details wasn't desecrating their memory.

The crushing guilt liked to tell her otherwise, but Terra was getting better and finding something new to focus on. Her near-obsessive attention to one goal or another was only a patchwork job at best, but it helped. Maybe, Terra thought, if she did enough, she would find the right thread to follow and finally figure out what it was she was going to do with her life.

Terra had come to Australia for a reason, and had made her peace as best she could. Maybe it was a shoddy job. Maybe the respects she paid the dead felt compulsory rather than genuine. Maybe maybe maybe. It didn't matter. She was trying. That was what Terra would focus on. For the first time in a long time, Terra was trying. To move on. To look forward. To live without the weight of all the deaths and tragedies that had been following her heart for far too long.

She'd take what victories she could claim.

And it was time to look forward.

Terra left Australia with questions and a map to answers. Unearthing them, now that she knew where to dig, was more straightforward than anticipated, yet far more surprising than what Terra had been expecting.

The temple her great grandfather once trained at was far in the north. She was glad it was summer. The temperatures never dipped too low, even at such high altitudes. These monks lived at an even high summit than Genkai did. Luckily she was able to take a taxi most of the way as the mountain itself was a popular destination, and the shrine and temple were often frequented by tourists and locals alike, who would only bother to hike the last half kilometer.

Terra stayed with them for two months.

She had only planned to take a day, maybe two, to see if anyone there had remembered Nakashima Ryunouske, or if there were any record of him in their archives. She had, for some reason, expected this to be a standard research project, not unlike interviews she conducted for her psychology degree. Her family seemed so far removed from the world of demons - from spirit energy and psychic territories. It didn't matter that this whole quest stemmed from the revelation that Ryunouske had once competed in a tournament of otherworldly creatures. Terra's father had been a salaryman for Sony. It was her mother who had a life story pulled from a film - a ballerina with a broken ankle turned fashion influencer for a top magazine. The biggest drama on her father's side of the family was that he had left Nintendo when that was the company that made their fortune. She never expected magic and monsters to be lurking in that history.

It found her soon enough in the present.

She had entered the temple area with a bunch of tourists and proceeded to make a prayer as was customary. Her hands clapped, her head bowed, and by the time she opened her eyes and turned around, a monk, liver-spotted and adorned with a heavy medallion, stood behind her waiting. His wrinkled mouth turned upwards into a hesitant smile.

"I see why you have come," he chuckled, voice wan with age. It was then Terra noticed the man was blind. His eyes were cloudy and spotted, unfocused. And yet he looked right at her. "Follow me, daughter of Mao."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Kurama mused as he sipped his coffee.

Terra rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, rudely balancing on the back two legs. She figured it was fine. There weren't many patrons around. "Don't go all pretentious I-read-books on me. We all know Alice in Wonderland."

Kurama's flat smile tightened a pinch, carefully amused by her as usual. "Perhaps. But you must admit. It is curious. You traveled there to learn more about your ancestor, and instead learned more about yourself."

"That was always the goal, smartass. It just came from an unexpected direction." Terra picked at a hangnail and tried to ignore the twist in her stomach of all she was unloading onto Kurama. "The Priestess of Mt. Mashu," she muttered, still in disbelief. "Their temple hasn't had a proper shrine maiden since my great grandmother passed, apparently. Ryunousuke was supposed to be training how to be, I don't know, pure and at peace, and hormones got the better of him and he knocked up the temple girl."

"You said this blind monk was able to tell who you were upon entering the area?" Kurama asked, putting all of Terra's stray threads of story together.

She nodded. "Genkai and Rizu both thought my energy felt like the man they knew, but," she shrugged, "this monk knew both my ancestors and pinned me more towards her."

"A priestess. Could explain the particular quirk of your energy," Kurama said, carefully setting down his coffee cup. "Someone trained to cleanse the land of dark energies, banish demons, ward off evil? If she were the real deal, someone with strong spiritual powers, it could have been passed down to you."

Terra nodded. "That's what Yamamoto-sensei suggested."

The blind monk at Mt. Mashu had not only identified Terra as the descendent of their esteemed priestess, but also the struggles Terra was having with her own energy. It was as if, without his eyes, he could see more. A memory of Hiei's third eye surfaced when she had that thought. There were many ways to see beyond the visible, after all.

Terra and Yamamoto had sat down for tea and he noticed how her energy brimmed beneath the surface, not unlike how Genkai and Kuwabara and described it. Brimming, boiling, ready to bubble over and burn.

"It's uncontained," he had commented. Terra didn't understand. Her energy had always been contained, too contained. It wouldn't leave her body. Yamamoto shook his head and touched the medallion that rested heavily around his neck. "Now that you have learned to turn it on, you must also learn to turn it off, or else seal it away. Otherwise, it might one day attack more than just the darkness."

Kurama looked her over anew. "I've never heard of such a thing."

'Yeah, and you never heard of someone with my kind of energy in the first place," Terra snapped.

Kurama raised his hands in mock surrender. "I do not mean to sound as if I do not believe you. Simply, it is very rare when I learn of something new in the three worlds. And so far, you've done it twice. Quite a feat."

Terra smirked and wrapped her hands around her mug, but the smile quickly faded. "It's why I wanted to come see you," she admitted. "I don't know what carrying that energy around like that for so long might have done to me."

Kurama understood. "If you'll allow it, I can give you a physical at my apartment."

"Buy a girl dinner first," Terra joked. She understood that this was better done off the record, what with the supernatural being involved.

"I don't think it would be very smart of me to be making advancements on you," Kurama laughed, a sly glint making his green eyes even more unnatural.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Because it was surely more than the words themselves.

He merely waved his hand in front of his face as if to dismiss her suspicions like smoke. "Nothing, nothing. Come, let's finish our drinks and I can make sure you're healthy."

She let it go, but didn't forget his coy smile. They talked of the others for a bit, Kurama updating her on the rest of the gang still in the human world. He hadn't heard from Hiei since he left for the makai. "Are you planning to see them?" Kurama asked. "I know they would all be happy for your visit."

Terra shrugged. "One thing at a time," she told him.

It wasn't that Terra didn't want to see everyone else. They had become her friends. In her time away, she had been surprised by how much she missed them. It was good, she reminded herself. It was a sign she was moving on. It was what she needed.

But for now, she needed to take care of this first.

"So," Kurama began, changing the subject as he pulled out a coin purse to pay the tab. "What sort of training did they have you doing at this mysterious mountain?" His sly smile came back, amused at the situation.

Terra smiled in response, both at his gentle joking and the memory of her time with the monks. "Dancing."

On the way to Kurama's apartment, Terra explained.

At Genkai's, Terra had been so embarrassed that Hiei had caught her dancing. She remembered the way her blood boiled at his remarks, judging her for learning something meaningless to fighting - as if she should have planned to be a fighter her whole life. Dance was special to Terra. It connected her to her mother. It let her safely release her emotions. It was something she had enjoyed for much of her life. But she had never considered it sacred.

Until now.

The monks of Mt. Mashu taught Terra many traditional dances of the shrine maidens. It helped channel her energy for what, in many senses, it was designed to do. Terra had seen a few of these dances over the years at festivals. They were detailed, subtle and precise. They were beautiful. She had never before believed the dances cleansed the land of miasma or created protective barriers, but the longer Terra steeped herself into the world of the supernatural, the more she knew to be true.

"It channeled my energy correctly," Terra told Kurama, "or at least that's what Yamamoto claimed. He said I can use it to make wards, break curses," Terra shrugged. "Barriers. Maybe even heal, if I can figure out how to keep the part of my blood that poisons demons out of the mix."

"Only if you're intending to heal demons," Kurama pointed out.

Terra let her head roll to the side to give him a look. "Half my friends are demons."

He smiled, slight and genuine. "I suppose they are."

It wasn't long before they reached his apartment. Terra followed him upstairs and waited in the living room as he fetched his bag. The place was sparsely decorated, aside from the number of plants. There were a few photos of the gang and Kurama's human family. He didn't appear to have a TV, but there were plenty of books lying about. Terra wouldn't be surprised if he had a room dedicated to being a library. Spoiled brat. Most people in Japan lived in a studio while he had a multi-bedroom just for himself.

"Snooping?" Kurama asked when he returned. "I'd be careful, some of these plants can bite."

Terra laughed. She hadn't strayed far, only taken a moment to look over the family photos.

Kurama started with a routine physical. He checked her lungs and her heart. He asked a series of questions Terra expected at a doctor's office. She answered. Then he took out some items of non-human origin and began to check her over again.

"What are you looking for?" Terra asked.

"Abnormalities. They may be hard to detect as your energy is quite different from many other psychics, and I don't have a base to compare to."

"How vague of you," Terra huffed, but stood still as he continued to survey her. Kurama was meticulous with whatever he was doing, but quick and efficient. There was a surety with how he moved his hands that only came from expertise. The way Kurama moved could have been a dance all its own.

When he was done, Kurama sat back and gave her his patented doctor smile. "I don't see anything amiss. You seem to be in perfect health."

"Physically, at least," Terra joked, flopping into the armchair. She stared out the window of Kurama's living room chin rested on her hand as she leaned upon the armrest. It had a decent view of the city and even the mountains beyond. Genkai's temple was among that skyline, Mt. Mashu far off in the other direction.

"You seem pensive," Kurama commented. "Should I make us some tea? I know we just came from a cafe, but the scents are soothing. Or perhaps I could offer you a game of chess?"

Terra smirked into the palm of her hand. "Trying to get me to talk more than I already have?" She hadn't forgotten Kurama's claim that it was best to converse over a game of chess.

He chuckled and stood to gather the tea and chessboard. "You seem as if you need to talk, is all. Not that there are secrets of yours I'm trying to learn."

"This time," Terra tacked on.

He laughed again. "Yes. This time." He set the board and pieces down in front of her. "Come, set it up while I put the tea on. Tell me what you want to get off your chest."

Terra toyed with the white queen, a smooth marble that looked hand-carved. This was a well-loved and old set, probably cost a fortune. Terra wondered if Kurama had stolen it. "My goal had been to learn more about myself, if I could, from my past. And I did, unexpectedly, from Mao. But I also got… a lot of the answers about Ryunouske I had been looking for."

"Such as?"

Terra put the white queen in its place, the king and all his men to follow suit. "He wasn't a good man."

Yamamoto was biased, that was clear to see. He had forgiven Ryunousuke, after all these years, but still resented him for abandoning the monastery. For impregnating their priestess when a child would interfere in her duties. For taking their teachings and using it to consort with devils. Terra could see through the bias, at least mostly, to look at the facts presented to her.

"He had known Toguro, the Toguros, as kids. They had trained together before finding their own masters. It was opportunistic serendipity. Toguro needed a team. Ryunousuke needed the fortune promised for winning the tournament to pay for a new life as a father."

Kurama came back round with the tea just as Terra placed the black king, carved of a smooth onyx, on the board. "Association with Toguro doesn't necessarily mean your ancestor was bad."

Terra knew that. Genkai had been on that team, after all. And she'd joined because she believed in him. "He gave the Toguro's blackmail material on Rizu to get him to join the team."

Kurama paused, halfway to the table. "Rizu must have been a good fighter to go out of their way to bring him on board in that manner." He set a mug down by her side, a second in his other hand, and sat across from her. "From what Hiei told me, he was quite strong as a demon."

"Yeah, that's the other thing." Terra chewed at her bottom lip and finished setting up the board. "They used to be human. How… how did that change?"

Kurama shrugged. "I don't know the logistics, but it was their wish upon winning the tournament. You could ask for anything."

"And Ryunousuke asked for a fortune." She looked over the chessboard. Every game started the same. Each side with the same weapons at their disposal. The only advantage was of mind and experience. How immeasurably different were games of chess to martial arts tournaments filled with mystical abilities. How frighteningly similar. "What did Genkai ask for?"

Genkai had invested in Nintendo, the same as Terra's great grandfather, but from the records that Trisha had pulled, it seemed Genkai's money had been given some years later. Unrelated.

Kurama rolled his eyes, a bitter distaste to his smile. "To be left alone by that twisted committee. They did, for fifty years. Then Yusuke came along and forced her hand again."

"So much for any wish," Terra remarked. Genkai truly had divested herself from her old teammates, at least. It was humbling, in a manner. Despite the mountain of coincidence that put Terra into this world with these people, it was nice to have a reminder that Genkai had chosen her for her, and not her blood.

They began their game, but Kurama had always been too good at reading her. "There seems to be more weighing on your mind. Not to push, or distract from the game," he added.

"You're right," Terra said. It was something that had been lurking in the back of her thoughts for a long time, possibly before she even realized it could be a reality. "I can't ask why they wished for it. I doubt anyone would know."

When Terra stayed quiet too long, Kurama nudged her foot with his own. A prompt to talk as much as it was to move her next piece. Terra sighed and moved a pawn. "How would a human go about becoming a demon? How did a committee of humans manage to grant that?"

"Why do you ask?" Kurama intoned, voice careful with hidden scrutiny.

"I just… doesn't seem possible. For all I've come to learn about the world, for all the new realities I've had to adjust to, humans and demons are intrinsically different. Yusuke being a half breed is one thing. You and your fuck-all circumstances is one thing. But to simply become… a demon?'

"Unfortunately, it is one great mystery I do not have an answer to. Perhaps Koenma would know. He did sanction the Dark Tournament to help prevent rioting among demons in the human world."

"Do you suppose it could be a similar manner that you turned human? Transfer of a soul into a new body?"

Kurama shook his head. "No, I know that they keep their body. Whatever process they went through changed them. In some ways, I think it even darkens their souls. Having been stripped of their spirit energy, it must have changed them to the very core." He took her bishop. "I believe I have too, in many ways. Although I like to think some of that was choice."

They continued their match, Terra changing the subject, asking after the others. Kuwabara had started his dojo, a small crop of student boarders staying for the summer. Young kids with psychic powers needing to learn control, some delinquents not unlike himself who needed to learn discipline. Some, a combination of both. Yukina was excited to be meeting more people, to take care of young ones and cook lots of food.

The rest were much the same. It had only been a few months. Tomio was learning how to walk. Keiko was angry at Yusuke for taking time off work to train for a tournament he had promised he wouldn't fight in.

"How far away is that?"

"Only a month now. Yusuke decided that, while he won't commit himself to being a king of a different realm when he's a father in this one, no one should be able to win that title if they can't beat him."

Terra laughed. How very Yusuke. "And Shizuru?"

"Much the same, I imagine."

"You imagine?" Terra quirked an eyebrow. "You haven't seen her in the last three months?"

Kurama took her other bishop. "What's with that tone?" he challenged.

"Nothing," Terra smiled. She had noticed the way the two of them had been sniffing around each other. It wasn't much to go on. They could just be close friends. Which if that were the case, Kurama would have more to report back on than the same, he imagined. She would drop it for now.

"If it's not my place, I can stay behind, but I was wondering. Would it be alright if I came to the tournament? Not to compete, obviously, but," Terra shrugged and captured a pawn. "I think I'd like to go."

"Why? If I may ask."

There were a lot of things Terra could say to that, but she took her time before responding. Her friends would be fighting in it, risking their lives for the attempt at a crown. It could be the last time she saw some of them. Terra, more than anyone, didn't want any more deaths, but she'd rather not wait here only to find out later. Although, that wasn't it. Not completely.

Terra hadn't felt… as if she were a part of this world long before she had discovered the existence of the other realms. Since before her parents died, even. She had thought it normal escapism, a desire to get away, to start over. Every teenage fantasy. Terra grasped desperately at anything that could ground her. Jeremy. Grad school. The idea of a career, a life, a future. But now, without those things, she was untethered.

Hiei had described the makai with such detail that, despite the bloodshed, despite the ruthlessness and scents of rot and decay, it sounded almost beautiful.

She captured Kurama's knight and found herself smiling, if only a little. "I don't know what I want from my future, in the long run," she said, the idea not filling her with a sense of dread like it had so often in the past. "But, I guess I want to take a page out of your book." She toyed with a marble horse head, running her fingers over the grooves of its mane. "You did what wanted to, what you needed to, for however long you wished for. You lived in the now. Sure, you made plans, but they were adaptable. You can't calculate every variable. Life isn't a game of chess." Kurama chuckled at that and moved his queen into a place that would likely end the game in a few more turns. "I want to do that. See where it leads me."

"That still doesn't explain why you want to visit demon world."

Terra laughed and moved a pawn. "No, I suppose not." She looked over at Kurama. The demon turned human, the man who chose this world over the one he was born. "I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. It just feels like something I'd like to do."

"I'll accept that," Kurama said, taking her queen. "For now."

She laughed. Of course. Kurama could wait for the answers he wanted, but he would always get them.