AN: With the worst of the exams and holidays over, I figured I'd get this out in time for the one year anniversary – and before next semester of college begins. Happy New Year, everyone, and my gift to you all is the beginning of true crossover elements. I look for suggestions for the next chapter in your reviews, but for now, enjoy!
David walked into the valley
With a stone clutched in his hand
He was only a boy, but he knew
Someone must take a stand.
There will always be a valley,
Always mountains one must scale;
There will always be perilous waters
Which someone must sail.
Into valleys, into waters
Into jungles, into hell
Let us ride, let us ride home again
With a story to tell!
Into darkness, into danger
Into storms that rip the night!
Don't give in, don't give up
But give thanks for the glorious fight.
You can tremble, you can fear it
But keep your fighting spirit alive, boys!
Let the shiver of it sting you,
Fling into battle, spring to your feet, boys!
Never hold back your step for a moment,
Never doubt that your courage will grow,
Hold your head even higher and into the fire we go!
Are there mountains that surround us?
Are there walls that block the way?
Knock 'em down, strip 'em back boys
And forward and into the fray!
Into terror, into valour
Charge ahead, no! never turn,
Yes, it's into the fire we fly,
And the devil will burn!
Someone has to face the valley
Rush in, we have to rally and win, boys!
When the world is saying not to,
By God, you know you've got to march on, boys!
Never hold back your step for a moment,
Never doubt that your courage will grow,
Hold your head ever higher and into the fire we go!
- excerpt from 'Into the Fire,' sung by Percy Blakeney and Percy's Men, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Chapter 6: A Story to Tell
Hiei does not count time much beyond the passing of seasons, and he does not know much about his own species, so despite having some idea of his age – within the decade, anyway – he has no idea where he is on the physical maturity scale.
That said, for someone who left his father's camp after nearly one and a half centuries of constant battle and bloodshed, another half-century of near-aimless wandering before losing his stone, and a full century of investigating far too many dead ends before finally tracking down this last, promising lead in his most recent half century – Hiei fully considers himself an adult at his sum of approximately three and a half centuries, and is just as certain that he has wasted far too much of his own time already.
He really hopes Shigure can live up to his reputation as the Surgeon of the Damned. He absolutely refuses to have another century of confusing not-memory dreams and random flashes of vivid emotion that he cannot figure rhyme or reason for.
If the stone was suppressing these – echoes, for lack of a better term, then he thinks he wants to learn how to control his own mind before he finds it. He will not give himself a crutch, a weakness for enemies to exploit.
He pushes open the metal door to face a tall back complete with high ponytail and muscled arms. The male hasn't turned around, though Hiei has been (comparatively, for him anyway) noisy enough to politely announce his arrival, something he usually doesn't bother with. His hands don't stop moving; from the back view and with the help of smells, Hiei can guess that he's polishing something, but not see what it is.
The deliberate lack of reaction is a clear non-verbal message – you're not worth the effort needed to acknowledge you, not near dangerous enough.
He understands the truth of that in his bones. Doesn't stop it from rankling.
He displays nothing in body or voice, merely states his purpose, and who he seeks. If this is Shigure, all well and good. If not, he doesn't care to waste his time with this male.
The male who still hasn't reacted at all.
Angry, knowing he is being baited, Hiei can't stop himself: "Did you hear what I said?"
A pause. The male turns, slowly, a tinkling bell accompanying the movement, and faces him, taking in the fire demon half his size in one observant glance that records and dissects but gives nothing away, before turning back to his work. But he's talking now, so that's something.
Even if it's just more insults.
"A scrawny little groundling like you isn't cut out for that kind of suffering." The tone is clinical, and that makes the follow up even worse: "Now, run along home."
Hiei's eyes widen at the insult. How dare this peon insinuate, without any information—
'You're not hurt, are you…scaredy-cat?'
An orange clad arm, a bleeding hand filled with poison – a kunai stabbed straight through the back and the palm –
He comes back to momentarily bewildering pain—when did he get hurt?—and realizes he's shoved his katana through his weaker hand.
"I'm sure that I can handle it," he spits at the staring surgeon, and withdraws the blade in the next moment.
He refuses to let another one of these false echoes ruin a single more fight with blackouts midway through. Particularly since a lot of them seem to involve calling him names.
Shigure – and who else could it be, after all – stares at him for a moment, then nods and turns back to the strange chin hook he was cleaning, beginning to negotiate his next terms, now that Hiei's proved his tolerance for pain: "There's one more condition. I will only agree to operate on those who have lived a life that holds my interest. I'm not about to waste my talents on some insufferable boor, so you'd better have a decent story to tell. So, let's hear it."
…This Shigure is good. He gives nothing away at all. It's annoying, but impressive. Or it would be if Hiei didn't have other things to be doing.
He snorts. Might as well get it out of the way.
A story, huh? He'll give him a story.
"You may regret this after I'm finished," he warns bitterly. "In fact, just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach."
Shigure turns his ear toward him, the light reflecting off the jewelry momentarily making Hiei hallucinate spectacles that aren't there.
Yeah. He didn't think that would put the sadist off either.
Despite his naturally taciturn nature, Hiei is aware of the threat that, should the story be boring, Shigure will turn him down flat and nothing will change his mind. He forces himself to draw the story out in detail, managing to surprise himself with the seven hours he spins it into (it would probably boil down to two hours if he kept to the brief summary of his background and purpose that he'd initially planned on, but that would have left out most of the twenty-plus decades he spent getting here).
He does not mention the echoes. Maybe he should, given the possible medical factor – but something holds him back. He may need Shigure's services, but he is nowhere near trusting the man.
(Particularly when he keeps hallucinating the man's face altered by either glasses or purple eyeliner, in a few cases both, and the level of distrust increases with every mirage he has to shake off.)
In the end, even he isn't sure why the surgeon finally stands at the end and motions him into the operating room.
Being strapped down with restraints goes against every instinct he has, but he submits, grudgingly – brain-connected surgery such as a new eye would require the anesthetic to be left off, anyway (not that he'd take anything that dulled the security of his senses to begin with), and that means he has to be stopped from flinching somehow.
If worst comes to worst, he'll draw the heat away from the cuffs until they ice and break. Not as quick as fire, but he knows these are fire proof.
Then the knife comes down.
The first stage is opening a hole. It is similar to the pain of a sword through his hand, if much slower and drawn out, and far more painful – he can see why Shigure has pain as one of his pretests. Still, it's manageable, even if he's glad for the leather strip he's received to bite.
The second is removing tissue to make a place for the new eye – and suppressing his regeneration from healing it before the job is done. The resulting sensation is similar in form to the one time Hiei was caught in a desert sandstorm without shelter and a cloak already badly damaged from a fight: an endless scouring of the exposed tissue, somewhat less so for the covered bits, and a fire that has nothing to do with heat and so leaving him with no inborn protection from the resulting burns as his outside is slowly scraped away. The only difference this time is that it's concentrated on his forehead and skull rather than his whole body. He's honestly not sure if that improves the experience or not. Still, he grits his teeth; hell, if he could risk opening his mouth without risking biting something important at an unexpected sensation, he might even ask what all the buildup was about.
The third stage is implanting the Jagan and bonding the tissue to its new home – and inducing his body to accept it.
If the first two stages are battering rams, opening doors in his natural protection, the third agony is a bit of quiet, cool and calm.
For the fifteen seconds it takes the surgeon to stop his scalpel, reach for the implant, and lay it in its new home.
Hiei usually has a millionth of an instant of sensory flicker in-and-out as a warning to one of his echoes, and unless he's dreaming, they come one at a time, usually in contexts that make no sense, unless it's possible motivation for fighting (which isn't needed if that's the case, so why –?)
The third wave's calm is a prelude to a tsunami, and it has no warning but words
I'm sorry, Sasuke. There won't be a next time.
Emotional agony of a level of passion the adolescent fire demon has never felt breaks through his too slow, too weak, too hastily erected mental barriers with the force of an glacier's inevitability on a hut of twigs, bound up in the package of ten thousand echoes at once.
Hiei's vision goes white as his mind totters, unable to process them fast enough to recover.
He screams.
I have never before or since experienced the level of flesh-searing pain that was inflicted on me that day.
- Hiei, YuYu Hakusho, Episode 100: The Secret of the Jagan
AN: Aaaaaaand it's here. Crossover fans, we have arrived! Please suggest significant Sasuke development moments for me to use, people!
Next Time: The tsunami of memories overwhelms Hiei.