Warnings: None
NOTE: This chapter is about Kurama's past and history, and was included mainly for the benefit of readers who are fans of "House" but who are not familiar with "Yu Yu Hakusho." YYH fans might find this to be a recap, of sorts, that provides window into Kurama's mindset at this point in his life.
Fixing Foxes
Chapter 05:
"DNA"
In the weeks that followed, Kurama found himself preoccupied by the concept of DNA.
Deoxyribonucleic acid. The building blocks of life. A chemical structure passed from parent to offspring, granting said offspring traits and abilities developed by their ancestors over the course of evolution's required millennia. DNA was biological inheritance, and a testament to nature's enduring hand.
Kurama had learned the basics of biology in school, alongside his human peers in the classrooms they shared. To the other children DNA had been a mysterious, almost metaphysical concept, something to be spoken of but never seen with the eyes, touched with the hands, or experienced in a way that made it concrete. In a way that made DNA feel like it mattered.
In contrast, DNA mattered very much to Kurama.
In this way—and in many others—Kurama was not like the other children.
Kurama had never known his parents. Not his true parents, anyway.
Centuries before, he had been born as a fox cub to fox parents. He was weaned alongside siblings whose faces he could not recall and who had never been given names, and left to fend for himself. His earliest memories began in a cool forest, and in them, he was alone. If Kurama thought back hard enough, he could vaguely remember warmth, and soft fur, and darkness—but nothing more.
Then years passed in a forest's shade: years spent surviving, hiding, seeing, absorbing. With these years came experience—experience that turned him from mere fox to sentient animal, and from sentient animal to full-fledged demon capable of assuming bipedal form and using speech. Somewhere along the way, he earned the name Kurama. As a demon he became a thief, renowned throughout the entirety of Demon World, a king in his own right.
A king risen from the lowest form of beast to the highest form of predator.
And then he had been killed.
Kurama admitted he had been sloppy that night. Nostalgic, he had taken his old form—that of a massive fox with many tails, a tail for each hundred years of his long life—and raided a castle rumored to hold forbidden treasure.
It was a trap, of course. He failed to notice the warriors atop the battlements until they attacked. Kurama tried to flee, but his enemies proved too many. He had been chased and then slain like the animal he had begun life as.
Kurama was a wily creature, however. As his body lay dying, he forced his soul from his flesh and fled. A risky move, to be sure. Souls are fragile without a body to house them. Demons often ate souls for their supper.
He knew he was not safe in Demon World…so into the Human World Kurama fled.
No one would think to look for him there, surely. Not when, as a demon, he had killed so many humans simply for sport. He flew through the Human World as a naked spirit, disdainful of the people he passed over, until he found what he was looking for.
Shiori.
Or rather, the unborn creature inside her.
The fetus (it couldn't be called a baby yet) had not developed enough to acquire a proper soul. Kurama possessed the empty, growing shell, wrapping the scant cluster of cells around his spirit to protect that most precious part of his Self. There he waited, merging with this new host body, feeling its human energy mesh with his own demonic aura in a heady cocktail of meeting powers. But then his demonic power faded, hibernating within the human flesh, until he appeared nothing more than a typical human fetus to any untrained eye.
Soon, he was born. He was aware when it happened. He blinked in the harsh light and tried to speak, but could not. His voice, his eyes, his hands, his demonic energy, his birthright—they would not obey him.
In body, he was a baby. In mind, he was a demon still.
Shiori named Kurama 'Shuichi.'
She did not know her son already had a name. A name he chose for himself long before Shiori was even born.
Time passed, and Kurama grew.
Kurama was not like the other children. He knew things. He had experienced things that made the humans appear no more than animals in his eyes. He did not seek to forge friendships with his peers. He preferred to play by himself.
That's what the adults thought he was doing, anyway. Playing. In truth, he was planning. Deducing when his energy would replenish and regain its former demonic glory. Predicting how old he would be when that happened, and what Demon World would be like when he saw it again. Dreaming of the day he would return, gloriously reborn, to Demon World, and leave behind the woman who had birthed him.
The woman who had birthed him.
Shiori.
Kurama was grateful to her, in a way. She provided food. Protection. She gestated him, unaware of the powerful creature she carried inside her, and she loved him with every ounce of her pathetic human heart. Her kind eyes, warm hands, soft words, nurturing nature—so unlike the animal parents who had abandoned Kurama the moment he was weaned. So much more loving. So much more devoted.
Despite her devotion, Kurama thought little of Shiori. He felt even less for her. She was a simple human, with simple human desires, and not enough complexity to merit his attention.
She was a means to an end. No point getting attached. He'd leave her one day, anyway.
Kurama went to school to please her. He played with the other children to keep her from asking too many questions. But, he learned to read without her help, and he learned to write and count when she wasn't looking. He watched the news and understood conflict, pain, war, without need for explanation—without emotion, even.
He had killed before, in Demon World. He'd killed hundreds, for crimes as minor as regarding Kurama with too bold an eye. The atrocities on the television paled in comparison to the tortures he'd dealt with his own clawed hand in Demon World.
Thus, he never required his mothers' comfort, because he never had bad dreams. Nothing in Human World scared him.
He never needed his mother to explain the sun or the moon, because books told him the truth of those things (the humans, for all their weaknesses, knew more about the world than demons).
He never sought out a hug, or a kiss, or a compliment, or a bedtime story, or a lullaby.
He drew Shiori no pictures, like the other children drew for their mothers, nor did he ask for his mother's company when he sat by himself after school in his room.
Shiori would often drop to her knees and ask Kurama about the toys he played with. He'd always humor her, at least for a while. But then she'd see the pitying look in his eye, realize she was the one being humored, and trudge away with head hanging low.
Kurama…he just didn't need Shiori.
But she needed him.
He saw the longing gleam in her eye. He saw how often she tried to help him, tried to play with him, tried to bond with the son she'd birthed. He understood that human mothers felt an instinctual urge to bond with their offspring. He understood that the denial of that bond caused his mother pain. He understood his distance, his disregard for her attention, wounded Shiori deeply.
But, he didn't care.
Or rather, he tried not to think about her pain.
Avoiding her pain meant he could ignore the traitorous ache he felt in his chest when he observed her crying.
She was a means to an end. No point getting attached. He'd leave her one day, anyway.
So: Instead of spending time with his mother, Kurama stayed in his room. In private he regained access to his demonic energy. His old power felt muted, though, and distant. Accessing it in full would take time, and much practice. Practice is what he did instead of bonding with his mother. He watched her wither, saw her warm eyes grow dim as he rejected her over and over, until she finally left her son—the old soul trapped in a young body—alone.
Ah, solitude. Peace at last.
And then came the day she'd nearly died for him.
On that day, everything changed.
The context of the moment hardly mattered. He'd climbed up on a cabinet, forgetful of the weakness of his eight-year-old human body. Plates spilled from the shelves, crashing onto the floor in sharp shards, and then he fell. Shiori cried his name and dove, arms slamming onto the broken glass, cushioning his fall, keeping him safe from harm. Then she'd sat up, blood pouring from the wounds, so much blood, she'd sliced an artery for certain—and smiled.
"Are you all right, Shuuichi?" she asked.
She showed no concern for herself.
She showed only love for him. For the cold, condescending creature who had never thought of his own mother as a somebody.
For the first time in his long, short life, Kurama felt something for his mother.
That something, to his immense chagrin, was love. Connection. Because try though he might, he could not deny the pull of their shared DNA.
He ran to the bleeding woman, threw his arms around her neck, and cried like the child that, in many important ways, he most definitely was.
From that moment on, Kurama vowed to never let Shiori suffer again.
That's why Kurama wouldn't give his DNA to House, in the end.
Kurama had been birthed by Shiori, but he had been born with red hair and green eyes despite his biologically Japanese parents. His demonic form hadn't possessed that coloring. If that coloring hadn't come from Shiori, or her deceased husband, or Kurama's past self…where had it come from?
Answers—fractions of them, at least—came when Kurama got his hands on a biology textbook in middle school. He read about DNA with wonder. Demons didn't know about DNA. They were concerned with power and fighting, not exploring the world through science. The human discovery of DNA explained the connection he felt with Shiori, but what did it imply about his power? About his demonic heritage? About his future?
What would happen if he allowed his DNA to be tested?
Were the laws of human flesh immutable, concrete…or had his human vessel been warped by the tenor of his demonic soul? Would a test show that Kurama had not come from Shiori in all the ways she expected? Would it show odd genetic markers, uncommon chromosomes, unexplainable mutations?
Kurama feared his demonic soul had warped his human body's genetic code in some fashion. That was the only explanation he had for his odd coloring.
Would explicit discovery of his potentially odd DNA damage the bond Kurama had finally forged with Shiori?
Would he be detained by scientists, and studied for his unusual biology? For his potential as a freak of nature?
Kurama did not know. But if a DNA test could sever the connection he had with his mother—
At the thought, his blood ran cold.
No.
No DNA tests. If the results showed his DNA was in any way abnormal, the stress of such a revelation could kill Shiori.
Part of him suspected that he had caused her disease. He'd broken her spirit and made her susceptible to it, at the very least. He'd been trying for years to make up for how badly he'd broken her, obsessively nurturing their bond ever since that day she'd nearly died for him. Although doctors had replenished her lost blood and sewed up her wounds at the hospital, Shiori never recovered. Not fully. She'd never been the same since Kurama had broken her, when he was a demon trapped in a child's body, unwilling to treat her with dignity or respect—or love.
He would not let her suffer more at his expense.
Kurama would never let House take his mother away from him.
'Over his dead body,' as the saying goes.
NOTES:
That last line is ironic, if you've read/watched Yu Yu Hakusho. Considering what Kurama is prepared in the anime to do to heal Shiori…
Anyway. Wasn't planning on writing a chapter about Kurama's past, AT ALL, but I realized if any House fans who haven't watched YYH are reading this, they might get a bit lost. Hopefully this chapter helped explain some of Kurama's background. Plus I liked looking at why Kurama is so doggedly against that DNA test, which a few YYH fans thought didn't make sense. Hopefully this helps.
Summary: In the Yu Yu Hakusho anime/manga, there are three world—Human, Demon, and Spirit World. Humans live in Human World, and demons (AKA supernatural creatures) live in Demon World. Spirit World is basically the afterlife.
Kurama used to be a demon in Demon World. He got killed, sent his soul to Human World, and sort of "laid low" in a human embryo until he was born (souls are delicate without a body, so he took a body to keep his soul safe). He's been recovering his demonic power slowly over the years. For a long time he meant to return to being a demon, but he grew to love his mother after the falling-plate-incident, and decided to remain (mostly) human for her sake. Hope that makes sense! Ask me if you have questions and I'll try to explain more.
Also, Kurama can control plants. That's important. He was a nature spirit in the form of a fox, back when he was a demon, with silver hair and golden eyes. Very pretty.
SO SUPER FLOORED by the response after posting the previous chapter. Could hardly believe so many were still around for new chapters! Hope this one is nice. Next chapter we'll get narration from a surprise source…wait for it! MANY THANKS to those who reviewed: Cookizilla, Kitsune-Ryu-Neko, YumiStar, Guest (x2), Here Forever, phoenixfirekitsune, Sanguinary Tide, theNewDesire, rya-fire1, jcampbellohten, Yuki F. Karasu, Nekogami Bastet, GeEKy-nERd, Orihima-San, KiraiAnca, Procrastilove, matchynishi, RandomCitizen, RedHerring1412, HevenSentHellBroken, sprcerousfang, Aria2302, and GoldenRat.