AN: Sorry this has taken so long, guys. Figured I'd try and get it up as a Thanksgiving present for you all before I go deal with family.
STORY REC: I have just discovered another Sasuke reincarnated into another anime story. Please check out Obnoxious Bonds, by Kolbie Ru-Ru, if you want to see our dear avenger reborn as a certain Disciplinary Committee Head known as Kyouya Hibari. Highly recommended. Story id 9713661
On this story – Heading closer to the series timeline, can anyone direct me to a really good timeline of events for Hiei's history? I'd like not to get mixed up as we get closer to directly pre-cannon.
And for the crossover urgers? Hiei gets his first direct notification that something might be off in his own head.
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Chapter 5: Kill To Save A Life
No matter how many times that you told me you wanted to leave
No matter how many breaths that you took, you still couldn't breathe
No matter how many nights that you lie wide awake to the sound of poison rain
Where did you go? Where did you go? Where did you go?
As days go by, the night's on fire
Tell me would you kill to save a life?
Tell me would you kill to prove you're right?
Crash, crash, burn, let it all burn
This hurricane's chasing us all underground
No matter how many deaths that I die I will never forget
No matter how many lives that I live, I will never regret
There is a fire inside of this heart
And a riot about to explode into flames
Where is your God? Where is your God? Where is your God?
- 30 Seconds To Mars, "Hurricane"
He lives his life by habit and whim both. Washing, hunting, and cooking is on as regular a schedule as the sun rising and setting—though the Makai has the advantage of a certain demon's stomach's rumbling as a three-times-daily food alarm clock as well.
For all he is a fire demon, Hiei quickly comes to realize that he is a terrible cook. He would much rather steal food than hunt it and turn it over a spit on a fire. But he forces himself to become better. He tells himself he needs to stick to the somewhat wild regions while he figures out what to do, and that requires hunting.
He refuses to admit his distrust of settlements, or the fact that he is unconsciously veering away from thought of stealing. He refuses to admit how he spends more and more time lost in thought, staring into the calming sparkles of his mother's tear stone, until one day he finds out a whole hour has passed without his notice.
He will not admit how used to the soothing effect he has become until he loses it.
Careless of him, really. An oni of no particular relevance or importance or strength or sword skill has seen the gem and attacked him for it. It's the sort of scrap – not even worthy of being called a fight – that he could probably do on autopilot these days if he didn't enjoy bloodshed so much.
They're battling on top of a cliff above a ravine. It adds an element of risk to the otherwise near-boring quality of the scrap. He's even the one with his back to the cliff. Given he is half the oni's size, no doubt his opponent thinks the battle good as won
They lock swords, and stay locked, glaring into each other's gaze, muscles straining with the effort. Hiei reassesses the threat level as his foot is pushed back in an effort to stay upright and off his knees. Time to finish this.
Then stone crumbles under his left foot.
As he desperately tries to regain his balance, shocked at the tables turning on him, the oni's face fills with bestial triumph, and he swings his sword back for a clean decapitation.
Hiei only just manages to lean back enough to save the skin of his throat without going off the cliff.
The string of his stone is not so lucky.
A double slice, and the loop becomes a string, and an untied pendant with trailing ends.
His eyes follow the stone as it drops away from his skin, shock causing him to lose his balance from the cliff, fall with it—
Hiei does not lose.
A graceful arc of his body, turning him upside down and vertical once more.
A swift stab with his bending katana into the cliff face.
A push with his feet, launching him back up the cliff he fell at least halfway down.
And a perfect stab, straight into his opponent's heart.
Hiei doesn't even pause to shake the blood off the blade after withdrawing it (he's never needed to think about killing, just cleanup), just takes two steps to the edge of the cliff and looks down.
All the way down.
To the rock filled rapids below.
A very distant part of him absently considers that he was lucky not to end up in this river during that long-ago fall.
The rest of him is reeling at the knowledge that the stone—his stone—is gone.
And there is no way to retrieve it, though he only consciously acknowledges the fact after a week of traipsing the river and checking to see if the string caught on anything.
He hadn't realized how much he valued the feel of the string, the weight of the stone. His neck feels strangely, unpleasantly bare.
And that doesn't even begin to go into the strange dream that started after the loss.
It plays like a memory, his memory, but it's nothing that's ever happened to him.
The memory holder sits next to a boy in nauseatingly bright colors, who is talking through a mouthful of noodles at a volume that has no business being so close to the ear of the addressee. The clothes are strange, as are the smells and background sounds, but they are blurred beyond any attempt at recognition.
It doesn't matter. For some reason, he's focusing on the necklace in the hollow of the boy's throat. It has three stones, not one, and they're cut very differently. But the sensation of looking at it is the same as the necklace that man used to wear, once. It has the same feeling of importance. Clan-importance.
He wakes with a silent gasp on the third morning of the dreams, mouth immediately narrowing into a frown.
Hiei has always known that the unknown is dangerous. His own treatment in his first few hours is proof of that.
Now there is unknown, and it's not from an outside source.
This…is unacceptable.
Hiei rises to his feet, methodically setting himself and his surroundings in order, hiding traces of his night spent in the tree.
He didn't know just how much he needed the stone until now.
He is a bandit, the son of a bandit. He is the one who takes; no one takes from him!
Except someone has.
Well, then. He'll find the village and the stone. And get these nonsensical dreams tucked away wherever they came from as soon as he's thoroughly investigated them.
And he knows exactly how to kill three birds in one stone, too.
It's time he started retracing the story he heard around the campfire one night, back when he still had uncles and a father.
It's time he found himself a Jagan eye.
As I set out to find the Glacial Village, I was faced with new opponents, each one trying to take away my stone.
Eventually, one of them succeeded.
I hadn't realized until that moment how important it was to me. And I knew I had to do whatever it took to find not only my mother's village, but her stone.
- Hiei, YuYu Hakusho, Episode 100: The Secret of the Jagan
AN: Next Chapter: Shigure's Surgery Room