AN: Have received my first flame. Find it oddly amusing. Still prefer constructive criticism.
We come closer and closer to cannon. Memories mingle. Fewer crossover elements here, as Hiei gets some news and has to make decisions.
Warnings for discussions of death and abandonment this chapter. And mild swearing.
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I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
- Grief, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Chapter 9: Beat upward to God's throne
True to his predictions, once Shigure approves removing the bandages and letting him open the Jagan alone, it's a matter of days before the costly eye finds the place he's looking for.
The stone…not so much.
He tells himself that it's just a matter of time; perhaps it's even for the best that he doesn't see it right now. He doesn't want it getting lost again once he has it, after all. Best to take care of business first, and leave himself as unrecognizable as possible.
Which means no stone to identify him as the Forbidden Child, returned for his prophesized vengeance.
He is once again grateful to his foster family's teachings. A sky island make winged transport absolutely necessary, and such creatures were the bandits' preferred pets. Finding the island is easy, but Hiei cannot fly on his own.
One of the few things he absolutely approves of in the Uchiha lifetime is Sasuke's second summon contract. The memories of flying on the back of his hawk…
Flying outside combat situations was one of the few times the self-proclaimed avenger willingly forgot all thoughts of vengeance, refusing to taint his few memories of absolute freedom with the chains of duty and honor.
Hiei's current mount, of course, is more like a gryphon. Rather than balance on it's back and head, one hand in harness, he rides it like a horse and keeps his legs away from the wings. Not the easiest endeavor, given how short they are. He rarely mourns his lost inches – his small size is a bonus for his fighting style – but he could use a little more to grip the body with now.
Perhaps it's just as well. Sasuke's hawk was a true partner in so many ways. But it was far too large to be even remotely stealthy.
So Hiei forces aside his memories and concentrates on his plan to scan the territory, find a landing spot, and head in for reconnaissance. He didn't exactly have the best viewing spot of the island geography to begin with, and at this point he's been away for so long that even those memories are faded.
It's only when he gets near the village that he realizes the flaw in this plan.
He's never, not once, done stealthy in this life in an area he's already familiar with. And rarely in this sort of territory.
He is spotted almost immediately.
It's his own fault for stopping dead in his tracks for an instant when he sees the woman from the back. For a moment, he thinks it's her, the woman who kicked and screamed for him even as he was dropped.
Then she turns her head and sees him.
There's no recognition in her eyes. Nothing familiar in her scent or face.
This is not anyone he has ever met.
Pure terror fills her face, though he has made no move. She drops her basket and runs toward one of the houses, shooing a girl-child ahead of her and slamming the door.
Hiei cannot believe the feelings of fear and timidity coming off her. Nor that the thoughts he catches, all connected as they are, stranger-male-Fear-Danger-HIdehidehideNOW, are the only thing she thinks of. Pushing her child inside and away, he can understand. Following after her, and seeking no defense for either of them but to hide and hope he would go away?
He does not understand.
His feet move of their own accord, taking him further into the village on an open, leisurely stroll. All he sees are young women his mother's age and children probably as old as him – and still treated like children.
Sasuke, don't come in!
No elders to punish anywhere.
Strangely, while he can feel and identify fear, protectiveness, pride, anger, panic, and some other emotions he does not know from their minds, there are none of the emotions generally classified as 'warm.' Or if there are, they don't feel warm.
Once again, he is struck by the image of stone gods, permanently bound in one apparent form of emotion, be it peace or battle or carnal rapture, but without a heart or brain to give truth, or life, to the image.
Statues. These people are living statues. Ice, not stone, but just as unable to feel. Except when threatened by a flaw, a crack.
He is struck by a sudden image of them fearing his sparks will catch and melt them.
He is also aware that he cannot do this job.
There's no point in killing people just for the sake of killing.
Itachi killed a family he loved because they were about to recreate a war he hated. He killed out of orders and loyalty, and to save his precious little brother.
Sasuke never really had a chance to figure out what that was like, to have a precious person. His automatic life-saving shove at the bridge on Team 7's first mission doesn't count – the Uchiha Massacre was discussed, considered, planned, not a spontaneous sacrifice but a deliberate one. Nor was there a chance afterwards to build a relationship that might require a deliberate sacrifice. Sasuke was too out of practice with people, Naruto and Sakura were too pushy, and then Orochimaru's seal happened, and Naruto seemed to be madly outpacing him, and Itachi showed up – that path was over before it had a chance to bud, let alone bloom.
Sasuke once planned to be a father, even when he thought girls were icky, because at least that meant he could surround himself with Uchiha. Maybe with Karin, once they'd finished with Itachi – she might tease and fawn like a fangirl, but she wasn't going to disobey his orders and do something stupid to save him in a sacrifice play, either. Mainly, though, she was another final survivor, and she knew what was important if something happened again. The kids, plus an adult to protect them if possible, but kids first.
Sasuke didn't love Karin, but he might have learned to care for her somewhat in the way she hoped. And he would definitely have loved his kids, if he was capable of it (he wasn't sure, he might be too emotionally crippled to manage it), and he would have cared even if he couldn't love them. Yes, he could have had a family with Karin – after all, she was the only girl he'd met who both claimed to like him, and honestly didn't care if he couldn't talk about feelings besides hatred and vengeance. That she willingly called him out when he was deliberately being more of an ass than usual was an excellent bonus.
Only then he found out the truth about the Uchiha, and refused to ever risk it again, with Karin or Sakura or anyone.
Hiei is imiko, forbidden. No one would risk him as a mate; hybrids often do well, but hybrids' children do not always. He will never have a family. He accepted that centuries ago after the bandits kicked him out.
He wishes his memories hadn't brought back those wishes.
This village is not what he would call a true village in anything but physical form. These families are not what he would call families, not when he cannot feel any emotion of love or devotion that precludes selfish self-preservation.
But he cannot kill these mothers, cannot orphan these children. And he cannot kill the elders without turning them all against him. Emotionless creatures are not as dangerous, but that can still be very dangerous if provoked. Hiei has no intention to start a battle he has no reason to fight.
He will do nothing, because they are nothing to him. They may be the image of perfection, but that's all they are, an image. Perfection? More like stagmation.
I don't think something like perfection exists, Itachi's voice murmurs from a memory. That is why I think we are born able to absorb things and by comparing ourselves with something else, we can finally head in a good direction.
Wise words, for a human. Hiei can even agree with them somewhat.
It's a cruel mercy, to leave them alive, one they won't even be truly grateful for. Perhaps it's the best revenge to deny their expectations, though.
Even if every instinct he possess is screaming at him that a dead enemy can't get up and put a knife in your back later, so why in the nine hells is he leaving them alive when he's let them see him?!
Fair point. A compromise, then?
He'll keep an ear on the place once he leaves, he decides. If he hears there's another case such as his, or even anything being tossed off the island, he'll come back then and stop them. Permanently. A clean job. But apparently he's too stuck in the shinobi mindset still to do it without more recent provocation.
Or maybe he's just refusing to fall into a Sasuke-pattern. Which killing them out of revenge would risk.
Whatever. He's nothing like that damned human. No matter if they do both like winged beasts. And fire. And swords. And – damnit. This is Itachi's fault somehow, I know it.
Abruptly he hears familiar voices from the clearing ahead; he's left the village and is in the forest. Dampening his power until it is woven into the forest, he strains his ears.
" – Rui, you must look after these while I'm gone."
A voice cracked with age and hoarfrost. It's neutral now, not cold with deadly malice or sugared with pretend sympathy. Leaving somewhere? Maybe he can ambush her if she's journeying beyond the island. Should he, or should he leave her alone? If he reveals himself to her, he must kill her, or she will hunt him forever to stop a vengeance that now will never come.
"Yes, elder, I won't let you down, I promise."
A young woman, calm and respectful as always, mature with adulthood and hard decisions, serene even when she was sad. The voice that asked Hiei to slay her first when he returned to massacre them, and masked her emotions with politeness. His first direct mental contact in this life.
"I shall return on the Solstice."
"Have a safe journey."
The kōrime that ordered his murder picks her path away. The one that tossed him over the edge and offered her life for the deed stares after her leader.
It is more important to speak with Rui while she is alone, and will not raise the alarm, he decides.
Sensing the elder going beyond the range of his Jagan, he deliberately crunches snow with his next step.
She whirls with a gasp, and immediately starts stepping backwards. Just like every other person here.
Honestly, just how scary do they find a male, to flee from a short one of unidentified type? Okay, a short male who managed to find his way up to their impenetrable paradise. Maybe it's understandable, even if he's D-Class at the moment.
"Don't be afraid." He tries to sound soothing, but it comes out as curt. Sakura's voice chides him mentally for his lack of bedside manner, while Naruto's voice snickers. Great. He's imagining their presence in his head. He does what usually works with their real life counterparts and ignores them. "I won't hurt you." That's better, a little more clear sincerity if not soothing.
She's stopped walking backwards, so maybe it worked? For now, anyway. He'll take what he can get.
"I'm looking for a woman I used to know named Hina." He has no idea who his father was, or what he looked like. Hopefully Rui doesn't either. It seems safer than his own identity, at any rate, if he's assumed to be looking for an old lover.
Rui swallows, but nods, and beckons him, turning to another direction. Away from the village.
Has his mother been exiled? Or is this a trap? He keeps his guard up.
Then she leads him to a cemetery. To an ice pillar with Hina's name.
Oh.
Grief and numb shock mix with denial for a single instant. He allows the memories to confuse him for once, mingling acceptance of Mikoto's loss with the discovery of this new loss, refusing to let himself cry. He dares not give himself away with stone tears.
"She – didn't want to go on. Not after she gave birth to a son who the elders chose to exile immediately. She was already weak from the birth. I think she just – gave up. When all her fighting hadn't been enough to save him." Rui's voice is somewhere distant, even though she stands just out of one sword-thrust's reach behind him to his left. "She stopped going outside or eating. She sat close to the fire always, as if trying to recapture his warmth. One day, she sat down there and never got up again."
Suicide, then. From a woman who felt she had nothing to live for.
"Hina also had a younger daughter that she named Yukina."
His posture does not change, but his mind snaps up, even as his mind goes blank. The Jagan is recording this, engraving it into his memory.
He has a sister?!
A younger sister.
He's an older brother.
"And she was the most gentle, beautiful baby that any of us in the Glacial Village had ever seen."
Itachi must be laughing his head off somewhere, Hiei is certain of it, even as a picture from Rui's memory paints itself into his. A happy, laughing girl-child, cheeks still round with baby fat.
Pink skin, not blue or green. Ice green hair.
And red eyes.
Manda and Ten-tails and Raizen's growling stomach. He's not just an older brother, he's a twin.
His mind snaps onto another point – his mother died while she still had a child that needed her to care for it? Suddenly he is much more disappointed in the grave. More like Fugaku than Mikoto, perhaps, if she could focus on one child to the exclusion of the other.
He'd better take a look at Yukina. He might be a killer, but he takes his responsibilities seriously. He can't just abandon her now that he knows about her. Not when Sasuke's memories and his own both offer clear evidence of what that kind of abandonment does to a person. Time to ask to see her, then, and hope Rui will cooperate.
"A few years ago, she suddenly disappeared, without so much as a word. And none of us has ever heard from her since."
Hiei gets an image of a young woman, his age, her back turned to Rui as she packs. Not the full truth, he sees; Rui told her about her brother and allowed her to leave in search of him.
A sheltered ice maiden who makes friends with nature, wears a restrictive kimono, hasn't finished training as a healer, and has no idea how to fight. And is out on a wild goose chase with far too little information.
Has he mentioned that he utterly despises Itachi? Because this is Itachi's Fault. Hiei is certain of it. Once-brother or not, the man had a sadistic sense of humor. And he would think it funny, putting his one-time little brother into the position of protective elder to oblivious younger sibling, while said younger sibling just wants to chase him. Even if Yukina doesn't know it's him.
Damn it to hell.
He's not nearly noble or foolish enough to play Itachi. And yet, it looks like that's all he can do.
He's a touch rough, perhaps, as he greedily plucks the information on his sister and copies it from Rui's mind; she gasps at the touch.
Time to go.
He walks away, forcing himself not to break into a run.
Another flash of memory: he's looking at himself, a baby wrapped in ofuda, with only a tear gem to his name.
She knows.
She gasps. "Wait a minute. Hina was your mother, wasn't she? You're the one, aren't you?!" He hears her trip. Stupid, trying to run in a furisode, even if there's nothing for the sleeves to catch on.
"I am so sorry for what I've done to you." She's weeping into the snow where she's fallen.
He keeps walking, looking neither left or right.
He has a purpose once more.
He's not going to fail this time. Not if he can help it. Because this time, someone's depending on him.
*x*x*x*
My mother's people were a gloomy, timid race. It seemed as if ice was pumping through their veins instead of blood, like their spirits had been frozen, and they were incapable of love. My impulse to kill faded. They were already dead.
– Hiei, YuYu Hakusho, Episode 100: Secret of the Jagan Eye
After I found out about Yukina, a new search began. I knew I would never be able to rest until I found her. [Pause] I sensed that she was somewhere in Human World.
– Hiei, YuYu Hakusho, Episode 100: Secret of the Jagan Eye
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Author's Note: Hina dies after giving birth in the manga, but commits suicide in the anime. I chose to combine the two by having her choose to starve to death out of depression. It seemed like something Hiei would consider suicide and cowardly.
As for him cursing out Itachi…ever heard of the idea that grandparents find it amusing when their grandkids put their children through the same hell they went through raising them? 'May you have a child just like you,' indeed. Hiei must now consider exactly how hard Itachi had to work to keep Sasuke alive and safely oblivious – and now he gets an in-perspective view of why. He'll be considering what to do about it all next chapter.
Next time: a new search begins, and a new purpose for Hiei's life.