Kurama's Day Out
A/N: This was written for the YYH Secret Santa on facebook! My match was Shareese!
—So, I wish I had the confidence to write another person's OC, but I don't, so here is a little Christmas blurb featuring Kurama and Ettie. Sorry Shareese, that I wasn't able to write about your OC, but I hope you'll like this all the same.
Quick one-shot written from Kurama's POV (a first for me xD). Enjoy!
. . .
Etternia was certainly not the oddest of demons I'd ever met. Her drug habit was not astonishing nor was it all that irksome. At first, I considered it a form of disgusting self-indulgence. But upon learning more about her, I discovered that was far from the truth.
Everyone had their vices. And I was not one to judge.
I turned a blind eye to her habit, much to Hiei's chagrin, Kuwabara's disbelief, and Yusuke's indifference. But it was...nice...to have someone like her around. Another who enjoyed plants, that was.
Her addiction aside, she was quite adept at botany. Mostly with plants of the medicinal variety but she knew plenty on poisons and their antidotes as well.
And then there were the seeds.
Seeds, even as Youko, that had never graced my hands. Seeds from a land I had not seen or stepped foot upon.
Priceless for someone such as me.
To the untrained eye, the herbs she grew on her balcony every spring and summer, looked just like any other—from a distance. Get up close and you could see they were plants only native to the Makai.
Dangerous, I'd thought at first, to have them here where their seeds could potentially spread. But her care for them was meticulous, no different than how I would care for mine.
What she lacked was the ability to make them grow at spontaneous rates. And, that was where I came in.
In exchange for some of her rarer samples, I would tend to her plant life so it grew quicker and was useable in a shorter time frame.
In the end, our exchanges became like sordid drug deals, passing off little packets of seeds unbeknownst to the rest of our friends. She gave me the plants from her lands and I gave her seeds I figured would be of use to her. Every time I made a trip to the Makai I made it a point to bring back at least a single seed.
And although it wasn't necessarily a secret between us, neither of us bothered to tell the others. I was certain Hiei would be mildly annoyed and Yusuke would be angry I hadn't told him before he inevitably got over it.
I supposed that was how I found myself in such a predicament. And also how I knew that both Yusuke and Hiei would be sorely disappointed in me...for lack of a better term.
Etternia and I chose to meet up at the coffee shop. She had a delivery to make (another factor of her life she had somehow managed to keep from both Hiei and Yusuke, much to my shock) to a demon in the slums. I figured it would be...ungentlemanly of me to let her go alone. So I offered to accompany her after our usual exchanging of specimens.
I regretted that choice less than an hour afterwards.
What should have been an easy drop off of the medicines she made and doled out to the demons who inhabited the slums, the ones unable or unwilling to receive proper medical care, turned into a nightmare.
How was I to know the demon she planned to deliver to today was an old enemy of mine?
"How...unbecoming," I said with distaste, referring to my current state and Etternia's unusually furious face.
"Unbecoming? That's all you have to say on this?"
I would have shrugged...if the use of my arms was a possibility. Perhaps this would be a lesson to her that helping the more unfortunate was not always the best course of action. These demons lived here for a reason—they hid away like rats because that was exactly what they were. Dirty, disease ridden nuisances.
I did not think my face could be anymore unimpressed.
"Stop looking at me like that. If you hadn't insisted on coming with me this never would have happened."
"Next time I shall allow you to get captured on your own then," I said.
"Oh, how sorry I am to have inconvenienced you," she snapped.
I was starting to see why Yusuke and Hiei found her presence more than just tolerable. Etternia was witty and smart. But in this particular case she'd made such a foolish decision. Her nonviolent tactics would not get her far. And she only managed to drag me down with her.
The seed still clutched in my palm, hidden, grew slowly. A simple vine, but one I could manipulate into any shape I wished. The handcuffs on my wrists came undone with a click and fell to the floor. It freed my hands, but I was still bound with rope, my arms so tightly tied behind my back it was painful.
A second later Etternia broke her bonds into shattering crystal shards. She stood over me, her eyes rather smug but the rest of her face impassive.
"Would you like some help?"
I glared at her.
"Perhaps I should leave you like that a bit longer."
The knots at my back were complicated, but nothing I couldn't handle on my own given enough time. A petty part of myself wanted to refuse her assistance, but the sound of footsteps outside the bunker door had me hurrying her along.
This time, I would not let Etternia try to "talk it out" with the succubus whose name I could no longer remember. I would put an end to it—my way.
She froze the ropes, the chill sending a shock down my spine, and the feeling of foreign youki making me tamper down my natural instinct to defend against it. Even still, I felt my lips turn back into a snarl and gritted my teeth. I must only bare it for a moment. She would not harm me and risk her relationships with Yusuke and Hiei, that much I knew.
"Don't kill her," she murmured, as the ropes crackled and fell to broken pieces around me.
I stood to my full height, a staggering difference when compared to Etternia, and rubbed at the rawness around my wrists, stretching and popping my joints back into place.
"If she will not back down, I will not allow our capture twice."
"What did you do to her to make her so angry?"
I brushed my clothing off, smoothing them until they were nearly immaculate once more. "I believe she is a vexed lover," I said.
Etternia hummed, thoughtful. "Well, she does seem your type."
"And what, pray tell, would my type be exactly?"
I could hear the smile in her tone when she replied, "Tall, brunette, and strong."
"What are you implying?"
"You are quite smart, Kurama. I'm sure you can figure that out on your own."
"You are more observant than I've given you credit for."
The lock clicked in the bunker's doorway and it was thrown open with a loud bang.
"Ah, I see she's brought some...friends," Etternia said.
All I could do was sigh. What a mess I'd found myself in. I must remember not to accompany her on anymore deliveries. She was more than capable of taking care of herself.
The ensuing fight, made more difficult by the fact I couldn't use lethal force, was short lived. My ex-lover only managed to get the jump on us before because of Etternia's insistence that she could be reasoned with. This time, I would not take that chance.
I tied the last of the vines tight around the woman's wrists, the rest of her cohorts unconscious and bound, and said, "There, a taste of your own medicine."
She swore, her voice heavily accented, and bared her rather sharp teeth at me.
"I should have killed you years ago, Youko," she snarled.
"You could have tried," I said, with a smile full of venom. "You would not have succeeded."
She turned away, letting her long hair cover her face. I smelt salt a moment later but felt no sympathy. I was notorious as a thief and a philanderer back in my days as the Youko. If I took a lover it was never for long. She was the fool that ended up hurt when she should have known better.
"Come, Kurama. You've done enough."
I turned to Etternia, ready to snap something rather unpleasant, until I saw her face. She was a little scraped up, a small line across her cheek crusted with already drying blood, but...
There was a glint in her gaze. Something dangerous lurking behind her eyes.
I conceded, if only because I was more curious about her reaction than anything else. She led the way out of her bunker and slammed the door closed behind us. She froze the outside of it over, just in case.
"I only added enough youki to keep the ice there for an hour or two. I'm sure they'll have managed to free themselves by then."
She left the packet of medicine, our original intention here, out in plain view. Charitable right to the end.
"I would like to pick your mind," I said, "the way you acted just now..."
Her back was to me when she said, "I...have little respect for women who let men make them fall apart."
"It sounds as if you are talking more from your own experiences."
She had no reply to that, merely began to walk away, as if I'd never spoken. I caught up to her quickly, grabbing her arm so I could swing her around. Her face was back in that impassive mask it was normally kept in.
"I'm sorry you became involved in this," she said.
"I..." What I originally wanted to say got stuck on the tip of my tongue. My anger evaporated.
It wasn't Etternia's fault. It was mine. I was the one who hurt that woman, no matter how long ago in the past it was. My annoyance over being captured and the weariness in my bones from dealing with not only my own work, but much of Yusuke's as well, made me react poorly.
"No," I said. "Next time allow me to accompany you again."
She nodded, eyes guarded. "Alright," she said.
"And thank you again, for the seeds."
"Likewise."
An awkward silence fell over us and I cleared my throat, holding out an arm, "Shall we?"
I walked Etternia back to her building, the trek feeling as if it took much longer than it actually did.
And my exasperation only grew when we reached her home and found Yusuke leaning against the brick and mortar, angrily jabbing at his phone with one hand as he tried to send a text, a cigarette clutched between the fingers of the other. He took a drag, not paying the slightest bit of attention to his surroundings.
Rather injudicious of a king.
When he eventually looked up from his phone and saw us standing there, his mouth gaped for a moment and then he shook his head.
"Do I even wanna know?"
"Perhaps not," I replied. "I will meet up with you later, to go over some things."
Yusuke's answering nod was absentminded, as his eyes were only for Etternia now. When she reached him he rubbed a thumb across the wound on her cheek, sucking the bloody digit into his mouth afterwards with nary a thought about it.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll see you later man," Yusuke said with a short wave goodbye.
They fell into step with each other, in such perfect sync that I lingered awhile just to watch as they entered the building. Yusuke was clearly worried for her...but his attachment to her was...ill-advised.
Ah well...nothing to be done of it if he was determined. And, I thought as I reached into my pocket to pat the seed packet, she did not come without her uses.
Maybe...
Maybe she would grow to be just as attached. And the shadows she hid behind would pull back enough for us to see who she truly was.
Until then...all we could do was practice caution.
I took one last look at the door they had disappeared behind, slipped my hands into my pockets, and went on my way.
A smile curled my lips.
It was nice...to have someone just as conniving and secretive...as I was.
So long as that understanding was always there, she could do as she pleased. Until the day she hurt one of them.
Then god help her soul.