Whoop whoop! Chapter 2 up and running. .-. For those of you with weak constitutions viewer discretion is advised… or is it? x3 Just kidding…maybe o_o
The school roof breathed of many memories. Plagued by secret lovers, sneaked cigarettes, and bloody fist fights of all shapes and forms the place was a hallowed sanctuary for ragamuffins and do-gooders alike.
At the moment its caged corners cradled a demon in the throws of a nightmare. Nay, in the grips of a memory much worse than any nightmare…
Small feet of a child pattered down the long echoing hall. With every step the ice bit into bare his legs, but he barely winced anymore at the pain of it. Most of him was numb.
He rushed through numerous rooms, a banquet hall, and icicle gardens but the splendor passed before his eyes unnoticed. Children didn't hunger after such things as expansive estates. Children craved much simpler things, for that was all their tiny hearts could bear. Not thrones or treasure or ultimate power. Merely family, and a home.
The chattering started and the youth had to lock his jaw to prevent his teeth from making any more noise than necessary. It didn't take much to antagonize these women, so he had to conduct himself in just such a manner. Hiei knew that he was allowed to stay here only under certain conditions because of the dictating nature of the all-female race he had been borne into.
He resided in a chamber below the castle's catacombs. Alone.
His room was lush and had been amended with every amenity he'd ever need. His mom had even visited him on occasion. But lately she had ceased her comings. He missed the open sky, though he had rarely ever seen it. But most of all he missed the hands of his mother. So he had set out to try and find her.
The ice apparitions regarded his coming figure with disdain as they drifted away. It hurt, as all wounds do, physically or otherwise but the boy bore their ridicule with a grace and dignity that foreshadowed future years. Let them think what they wanted of him. As long as his sister was safe.
A cry of relief almost escaped his quivering lips when he came upon his desired destination at last. Raising his arm, tinted blue by the icy atmosphere, Hiei rapped on the door. Pulling back his knuckles he let out a breath slowly as the skin was torn away.
Ice. Such cold ice. It took everything but gave back nothing.
A woman of impeccable countenance answered the door then sneered down at him.
He jutted his chin forward and glared into her condescending sneer without flinching. After a moment she leaned back into the room and called out, "Hina, your whelp has come to pay you a visit."
Hiei strained to hear the voice on the other side of the door and felt his frigid soul splinter when the presence he had coveted so zealously denied to see him yet again.
"Send the boy back. I have no time, nor need of his company. He is old enough now to do without. Besides, I already catch enough ridicule for letting him stay here. Make him leave Ruri."
The woman blocking the door turned back with malicious satisfaction to try and do just that when she noticed that nothing was there. A tug at her skirt made her scream and step back. Like an elephant fleeing from a mouse she slammed the large door shut and pulled her gown away from the door.
Hiei tumbled from between her legs and spilled into the room, ignoring his bruises. Ruri shrieked angrily and went to catch him when the voice of the boy's mother rang out clearly in the cavernous chamber.
"Cease this foolishness at once!"
Both kneeled and looked up, one in scathing fury, and one in naïve expectation.
Hina rose from her dais in the middle of the room and the boy felt his breath catch in his lungs. His mother carried herself with all the semblance of a queen. With sea foam tresses and aquamarine eyes, her very nature spoke of water incarnate. Solid and unyielding, liquid and passionate, breathy and delicate.
Her beauty was unmatched in the whole realm and many were envious of her for this alone. As if it wasn't enough to be blessed with an ethereal magnificence, her powers were also coveted far and wide. The woman approached the two prostate figures elegantly.
He was proud to call the woman before him his mother. And when she reached down a smooth, creamy hand to cup his small face Hiei felt he could die from happiness.
Was his mother finally going to acknowledge him?
Her eyes flashed and the youth felt his elation vanish instantly.
"You are so like your father, aren't you? Stupid boy. Chasing after the skirts of women... you aren't even fit to lick the filth from their shoes!"
She shifted and placed a dainty foot out.
"Kiss it."
"But mother I…"
"I said, kiss it."
Pained, he stared into his mother's pitiless eyes. When he didn't make a move to do as she bid she pulled back and kicked him across the room.
He couldn't even yelp out in pain because the temperature of the room had dropped drastically, stealing his breath, robbing him of his very life.
The slippery ground met his throbbing body as it heated up from the pain. At least he was warm in this instance while he was skidding helplessly across the floor. It didn't last long before Hina swept down on him again with all the force of a violent blizzard.
Through the hazey ringing in his ears he heard Ruri open the far door again and call for the other maidens. From out of nowhere his mother conjured a watery whip. Hiei followed her with his eyes as she stepped closer to him, slowly, methodically, as if—instead of preparing to beat her child—she was psyching herself up to take down a bitter enemy.
"You dare to look me in the eye with that face of yours. So like your father. No, he could never look away either. Selfish. Hellish. Beasts!"
She raised the lash against the tired youth who couldn't even bother looking away as it came down across his eye. The footsteps of the other maidens filtered into the room around his pain. Hiei could feel the bludgeoned area already starting to close as he rolled away, screaming and clutching it. Hina rustled above him as he came to rest against the far wall.
The lash came down again and again on his back, his head, his stinging hands, while he tried and failed to guard himself from the blows.
"Get up. Get up! Why are you crying? You want a reason to cry? I'll give you a reason!"
A smattering of applause and giggles broke out at the maiden's rage filled cry.
Encouraged by this she snarled, "Never again will I bear the ridicule. You should never have been born!"
"Mother, please! No more…please!"
"Never again!" She punctuated each word with a sharp kick to his ribs
Hiei couldn't recognize his own screams in the wake of his mother's frenzied beating. They were high pitched, alien and begging for a respite from the agony. But they were all drowned out in the larger cacophony of glee from the ever growing crowd of women surrounding him.
If he tried to block her she only hit him harder.
Finally, Hina grabbed her son by a fistful of hair and hauled him to his feet. The boy stared steadily at this person who was supposed to have been his mother through one bloodshot eye. She wasn't. The maniacal glint in her fixated gaze said animal.
That gleam of insanity.
He grabbed her wrist in a feeble attempt to stay her hand as she raised it against him once more. The watery weapon evaporated in her clenched hand.
A hand that she then used to punch her child in the solar plexus. Hiei's dark eyes teared up when he felt something, somewhere inside of him shatter. He choked as her fist came again, this time on the side of his face.
Another cough rattled in his weary lungs as he was thrown back onto the floor. The child curled himself into the tightest ball he could manage. He was sick of bleeding, and screaming, and begging. And he was sickened that his mother could shatter more than blood with her unrelenting blows. More than bone.
She stopped after what seemed like an eternity. Hiei opened the eye that he could still see out of. It widened a degree until he hissed in pain. The needy squall of a toddler bled through the walls and made everyone in the room pause.
The chamber echoed with cries of elation suddenly.
"Oh, little Yukina calls!"
"She shall be a strong one indeed."
"She is such a dear. Why, just the other day she bounced on my knee and giggled like you wouldn't believe!"
Stunned, the little boy remained curled in his broken heap. The onslaught of cooing from the wenches was more disgusting to him than their previous jeers. How could these people, these… fiends all fawn over his sister but despise him so fully?
In one breathe they could decry him as vermin and raise his sister up with affection. It didn't make sense.
The boy couldn't understand how they had the same mother and yet, their treatments were of a completely different caliber. For the merest inkling of an instant Hiei tried and failed to hate his sister. But that was foolish. He was only glad she didn't have to deal with this.
Alone, he could bare it.
Ruri stepped up to Hiei as he began quivering under the wieght of his heavy burden.
"What shall I do with the wretch milady?"
Hina bent to the floor and picked up two hiruseki stones she had shed while beating her son.
"Dump him over the cliffs. It seems my little display today has put me back into favor with the ladies. His presence any longer would ruin that. Let his selfishness be his undoing."
Hiei didn't protest as he was hauled to his feet and held at arm's length like some piece of putrid rubbish. He didn't even flinch when his mother flicked her wrist and slung a cool chain carelessly around his skinny neck. Dark eyes wandered lazily down and he reached up a bloody hand to trace the priceless gem.
"My last gift to you. Its all you'll ever get from me."
He wanted to look up at his mother but his child's heart didn't have enough strength to withstand against another rebuke. The hairline cracks were growing all the time and the slightest provocation threatened to shatter him to pieces.
Was it so wrong to need his mother? Yes, why else would he be treated like this? Of course it was selfish to crave his mother's love. Of course—
The scream erupted from his chest and shook the vicious stalactites that dripped down from the roof. Like a building inferno he loosed one after another while his mother's chain bit into and seared his neck. In a haze of agony and yearning he reached for his mother but she smiled cruelly at him, unmoving.
He was hauled away and his last conscious vision was that of Ruri's face as he tumbled over the cliffs into an impenetrable and uncertain fog.
Hiei frowned and twitched as he felt something dab at the sweat beading on his forehead. He gritted his teeth and reached up a hand to swat the offending appendage away.
"Yuks, stop it. Go away. Five more minutes", he mumbled.
A slight chuckle, that didn't sound like his sister, made Hiei crack open one eye cautiously. Keen eyes the color of priceless gems glittered mischievously down at his unkempt form.
The shorter boy scrambled to sit up and put as much distance as possible between himself and the boy. Shuichi sat back and propped one knee up, while resting a casual arm on it and leaning back against his other outstretched one.
"Is there a problem?"
"I…you… you aren't" Hiei sputtered lamely.
"I'm not…?" Shuichi arched one finely plucked eyebrow as he trailed off.
Hiei glared and spit out, "You aren't my sister. Where is she? She's the one who usually comes…"
"How would I know? I realize that my appearance isn't the most manly, but isn't that just a little rude?"
Hiei's jaw dropped. Was he getting castigated by this guy? Really? "What are you even doing here!"
The other boy smiled slowly, methodically as he mulled over a careful answer. "I came up here to look for a quiet place to study but someone was already here."
Hiei looked around the rest of the empty space and pointed at himself in feeble question. The redhead nodded.
"Very good."
"Why didn't you leave?"
"Oh come now", Shuichi scoffed as he rolled his eyes, "It's not like you own the place. And you were moaning and carrying on in quite the display so I just had to see what all the fuss was about. Was it a good dream?"
Hiei stiffened and felt his hell fire sizzle. If he didn't get a handle on himself, the human could get hurt. Normally he wouldn't care but, since he was under the employment of a certain pacifier-sucking-stuck up-daddy's-boy, he couldn't afford to make any mistakes that might get him in trouble. He had Yukina to look after and being banished to a hellish limbo wouldn't help that matter much.
The shorter boy reached a hand up and rubbed the back of his tensing neck to try and regain some semblance of control over his snapping powers. The red head watched him carefully but made no move to approach him or say anything else.
Good.
Hiei turned on his heel and made for the stairs to go back to class when Shuichi's dulcet tones gave him pause once again.
"By the way Hiei, how is your dear mother?"
In that next instant all the dark haired boy heard were screams. All he saw was a torrent of blood…
The past drove Hiei to his knees as he cradled his head against the phantom blows of his existence. Shuichi remained sitting and the smile he had kept for so long finally reached his eyes while he regarded the other boy. The shorter demon jerked hazordously and groaned in the throws of his waking hell.