A/N: This chapter is on the short side, but I have two highly charged scenes on my hands here and I felt they deserved two different chapters.

Chapter Fourteen

"Where's Yusuke?" was the first thing Kurama said when he woke, his words slurred from still being half-asleep as he formed them.

Hiei frowned. "Outside. If you can't sense that, then you need to go back to sleep."

Kurama returned the frown. "I..." The frown deepened. "You drugged me," he said accusingly. Hiei shrugged. "I hadn't thought you would have the audacity to do that anymore," Kurama said, one hand automatically combing through his hair to see if anything else was missing. "It was bad enough that you stole my weapons when we were partners."

"If you don't like it, you know what to do about it."

"Replace that particular seed with one that will poison you?"

"Go to sleep without my having to steal something to force you to."

Kurama glared at him. "First, you should trust my judgment concerning my own health. Second, you could make me fall asleep much more easily by using your Jagan. You steal from me because it pleases you to do so."

"Your body is human. I don't know what the Jagan would do to you."

Kurama sat back on his heels, looking at Hiei quizzically. The admission was out of place--certainly nothing like it had been said in the dozen times they'd had this argument before. "That's why you steal from me? More concern for my health?"

Hiei didn't say anything. Kurama looked like he was debating whether to pursue the topic--eventually something in Hiei's expression or posture must have counseled him not to. "How's Yusuke?"

"Fine. He went outside to mope."

"You two were fighting. I couldn't hear the words, but I could sense it. Why?"

"Why not?"

Kurama paused, and shrugged. There was a certain validity to that answer--there were so many different arguments going between the three of them, and so little that could be changed by any of them, that it seemed almost pointless to know what any one particular fight had been about. "Physically, then..."

"Whatever you did to him worked."

"And you?"

"I can fight if I have to. That's what you need to know, right?"

There was a subtle resentful to Hiei's voice. "Yes, that's what I need to know," Kurama replied, if anything only sounding more resentful.

"You didn't sleep through any attacks. That's not to say there won't be any more, but it is promising."

"How long did I sleep?"

"Nowhere near as long as you were supposed to. Are you sure those plants are working right?"

"It has a lot to do with how they're summoned," Kurama said, a little smugly. "You shouldn't expect it to work as well for you as it does for me."

"It used to."

"Yes, but we used to be--" Kurama cut himself off, and for a moment it seemed he wouldn't continue, but eventually he found words that would suffice. "Different than we are now. Your energy--it was accepted by mine. Or part of mine, even. You didn't have to conceal it, because you running your hand through my hair wouldn't have woken me, even from a light sleep. How did you get it this time, by the way?"

"You were exhausted. It wasn't difficult."

"That's no answer and you know it."

"If I tell you, it will never work again."

Kurama looked at him with unveiled surprise. "Who says you'll ever have occasion to need to do it again?"

"If I'd asked you six months ago if I would ever touch one of your seeds again, what would you have said? We can't know. And you're stupid, Kurama--you really want to die this utterly stupid death of being too tired to fight anymore. I have to know how to do this."

The emotion in Hiei's tone was too blatant to miss, but even so Kurama couldn't name it. Hiei was not looking at him, but rather sat with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched, staring at the ground between his feet. "...So you've decided you prefer me alive to dead," Kurama hazarded.

Hiei shrugged. Then a flicker of a smile crossed his face. "I haven't decided yet. But if someone else kills you, I don't have the luxury of making the decision. If you're alive, I can always change my mind."

The same flicker crossed Kurama's face, then died away. Neither of them spoke for a moment. The silence was not tense--on the contrary, it was almost restful. Certainly enough words had been exchanged--since that first big fight, the one Yusuke had pushed them into, a hundred smaller skirmishes had taken place, every minute detail rehashed and each other them trying to flay the other to the bone. And then--then the sudden battle, in which there had been no room for anger or recrimination, no room for mistrust or slow communication. No room for anything but the way it had been before. It was no wonder they were content to sit in silence for a moment.

Finally, and predictably, it was Kurama who spoke. "What now?"

"Him?" Hiei asked, gesturing outside. "Us?" He gestured vaguely around the cave and at the outside where Yusuke presumably was. "Or us?" And he made a motion with his finger, drawing a line between himself and Kurama.

Kurama shrugged. "Any or all of the above."

"What makes you think I have any ideas?"

"Well I don't."

Hiei smiled without any mirth. "Then I hope the boy's in the mood to make plans."

"He doesn't get a say in the second 'us,' though."

"Doesn't seem to stop him."

Kurama smiled slightly. "No, it doesn't." He paused. "If you believe that you and he are both in condition to fight, I can leave."

Hiei looked at him sharply. "Why would you do that?"

"I was under the impression I wasn't wanted."

"Don't be petty."

"I'm not. Your actions ended the contract. Either it was fulfilled or it was broken, depending on how you look at things, but either way it's ended. We don't have to do this anymore. I'm asking if you want me to leave."

"...That's not for me to say."

"I didn't say I would comply with your wishes."

"But you would, if I said go. Your feelings are hurt, so you're trying to get me to give you an excuse to do what you want to anyway and leave."

"I've never gotten to be the one who leaves," Kurama said contemplatively. "It's always one of you two. Or both, in this case. And you're the one who left when this started; you left Yusuke, too, a little bit after that. And then Yusuke left me and everyone. I can certainly understand the appeal, but given the current circumstances it doesn't appear to work very well. Does it?"

"No," Hiei said flatly. "I can never get rid of either of you. Maybe when you leave you'll do a better job of it."

"You want me to, then."

"I didn't say that."

Kurama looked at him hard for a moment. Then, abruptly, he said, "I'm too tired for this."

"For what?"

"For having to fight you every time I want to know something. I shouldn't have to go twenty rounds to get the answer to a simple question. At any rate, we've argued enough lately that I ought to be able to do it just fine in my sleep. Give me a few minutes to lose consciousness and we can continue."

With that curt dismissal, Kurama turned away--he didn't bother to move, for what illusion of distance could be created inside this cave that they were still, somehow, bound to? He just lay down where he was, the message of his turned back still a mixed one: I won't talk to you coupled with I know you won't hurt me if I look away.

"It's not a simple question," Hiei said, several minutes later and very quietly. Kurama didn't react. Hiei waited a moment, watching him, a myriad of small expressions crossing his face. Then he moved--he didn't really get up, it was more of a crouch, and on his hands and knees he maneuvered himself, spider-like, over Kurama so he was once more in front of the kitsune, and quite close at that.

Kurama shifted irritably, though he didn't regain much space by doing so, and opened his eyes. "What do you want?"

Hiei didn't answer immediately--just looked at him, then moved forward again, closing any remaining distance and completely obliterating the concept of personal space. "In," he said simply.

Kurama's entire posture and expression changed--from hostility to surprise, then to something unnamable. Hiei remained as he was--too close for comfort or discretion (except that it was comfortable, somewhere buried in both their memories), inside the circle of Kurama's energy, inside even the curve of his body. In.

Slowly, without exactly moving away, Kurama pushed himself into a sitting position. Hiei did the same, and then they both leaned against the side of the cave, elbows propped on their knees, silent mirrors of each other staring at the opposite wall. Kurama spoke, in a tone that was light with exhaustion, almost casual. "Let's stop fighting."

Hiei considered this for a moment. "All right."

Neither spoke again. The only movement was when Kurama's head shifted slightly to lean against Hiei's; they sat where they were, silent and weary and peaceful, until gradually they both slipped into sleep, forgetting the need for someone to watch for enemies

By the time the other two actually slipped into sleep, Yusuke had long given up spying--he had had to move away from the entrance before he exploded. He raced out to the edge of the forest and then jumped up and down several times, punching the air for emphasis.

Calmed down slightly, he paced around the clearing in front of the cave, not sure which emotion he was experiencing stronger--elation, or envy. Not envy--longing. Elation for his friends and their success, and longing--longing for that moment he had just witnessed. For that closure; the settling of accounts. Even though very few words had been spoken, the most important things in life were unsaid and Yusuke knew, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was over. They'd already said everything they needed to say, and now the quarrel was ended, the conclusion come to. They could finally move on. That one moment, when the tension had suddenly eased. The tension that had been so tight, so heavy, such a burden that in its unexpected absence they fell asleep leaning against each other.

It was bittersweet, for Yusuke. It was a victory, the first victory any of them could claim since his friends had kidnapped him and he'd begun to reassemble his life. And what Yusuke felt was also a victory, because at least now he knew what he needed to pull himself together--even if he could never have it.

That moment, with Keiko. That ending. She had died with words unsaid between them, died suddenly and without peace, and god I need to know she's at peace, and if he could just have that moment of closure, to say he was sorry and know she forgave him-- "God, Keiko, I'd given anything to see you that one time," he said aloud, through gritted teeth.

A voice spoke from behind him. A voice that froze him, head to toe, on the spot; a voice that demanded that he dare not turn around, for fear there would be nothing there. "I'm right here."