A/N: This is a little Hiei POV drabble. Btw, I went back and fixed the first one because uploading anything on this site's crappy mobile app was a huge mistake xD Also, this scene I planned to have just a few paragraphs from this in the main fic, but I have yet to find where to put them, so I guess you can read some of it now.

I do this a lot, write random little scenes and desperately want to find a home for them, but more often than not they get thrown into the pit of no return.

She was acting strange.

That was the first thing I noticed. The second was a bit more complicated.

I could not outright pinpoint what was so strange, I just knew it wasn't like her. And how I knew was where it got complicated.

I could pretend it was the drugs. That was always an easy excuse. But this time I knew it was more than that.

"What...did you just say?"

Her glassy eyes rolled towards the back of her head. "For the love of the gods..." she mumbled. And then louder, "I said would you like to go out for a drink."

"A drink?"

"Yes, like that thing humans often do. A date?"

I blanched, choking on the coffee she'd been kind enough to pour me when I'd arrived. "You've fried your brain one too many times."

"It's an honest question and I would like an honest answer."

"No."

Her face fell but she nodded graciously, keeping her gaze hooded. "I accept your answer. Would you like some more coffee?"

I shook my head. "That's it? No whining or entreaties?"

"I cannot force you to do something you find unpleasant," she said as she rose to refill my mug even though it wasn't nearly empty.

"You had no qualms when you cornered me into taking that foolish EMT course."

"Because that was beneficial for you, this I can't rightly say would help you in any manner."

She sat back down across from me, stirring the two dollops of cream she always placed in her coffee. I would almost say her eyes seemed...forlorn, but I didn't want to read too far into it.

"I avoid pointless human endeavors as if they are the plague. I do not understand why you do not do the same."

She smiled this time, but it was a slip of a thing, sad and broken. Her eyes turned distant and empty, that gaze I so despised. "Yes, but I have no interest in being a demon, just as you have none in being human."

I scoffed, aghast she would even admit to such an atrocity. It was disgraceful. But all her behaviors were, in my eyes.

"Our race is better off without you."

"So it would seem," she said.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room then, the solitary sound of her spoon clinking against her mug grated on my nerves. Entranced, I watched it go round and round, until it created something of a vortex in its center.

I reached out and grabbed her hand, putting a stop to it.

She looked up with eyes so devoid of life I felt sick.

"Stop it," I hissed. "This guise you put on to hide how you feel is degrading."

"According to you everything I do is degrading or disgraceful. It is better to feel nothing than to feel everything, wouldn't you agree?"

I dropped her hand. The spoon clacked against the edge of the mug.

The grimace on my face surely belied the words that came out of my mouth. But I knew they needed to be said...that this was...important.

"You are many things Etternia—you are a good paramedic, an adept strategist. You are strong and capable. And, yes, also a conundrum of epic proportions. A drug addict is the least of what you are."

Her eyes flicked away, towards the wall. She did not smile or even acknowledge the words I spoke, though I knew she heard them. Her gaze was a little less hollow now.

"I won't apologize," I said.

"I don't expect you to apologize for the truth."

What a petulant child...

"Fine. Let's go on this..." I sneered, disgusted, "date."

She smirked at me, eyes alight finally. "Don't strain yourself," she said. And then she pulled out her mobile phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling Yusuke. He should come too."

I sighed, defeated. At least it would be marginally more entertaining with the both of them.

"Fine, get on with it."

I listened to her chat with him for a time, before her voice became the sound that lulled me off into slumber, head cradled within my arms folded across the table. The smell of hot coffee and cream and the medicinal herbs hung from her ceiling to dry added to my sleep addled brain, and soon dragged me away.

I never even considered how big a mistake falling asleep in front of an enemy could become.

And later I was left to wonder when Etternia turned from enemy...to something...else.

When I next awoke it was to find a blanket thrown over my shoulders...and Ettie across from me, asleep as well, her face far more peaceful than it ever was awake.

I rose, sweeping the blanket off and then over her shoulders. I left my hands resting there for a time, feeling the rise and fall of each of her breaths.

How easy I could steal the life from her.

But it was Etternia that taught me there was beauty in many of the living things in this world and the next. That I should not take them for granted.

On her next inhale...I leaned forward and placed a parting kiss against the crown of her head.

She was wrong. There was not beauty in all living things.

But there was beauty within her.

Even if she did not see it herself.