Yukina was right about the mushrooms. While the centipede crawls along the stream, a patroller eats one on a dare, and from what Yukina can understand there's little left of him beyond a purple gas. She has to leave before hearing the rest of the story, his teams' laughter ringing in her ears.
Meanwhile the rest of the patrol is made responsible, a disgruntled Mukuro tells everyone over her telepathic intercom. The fortress locks down, dispatching a team to clean the area and test the stream for poison. Everyone else is stuck inside. A quick poke around the fortress tells Yukina she's better off staying out of the way, forcing her back to the room she's been trying to avoid while awake.
Long emptied of necessities she's transferred to the chest, her suitcase has collected a film of dust. She runs a finger through it, absently drawing a cat. Kazuma taught her his method—two circles for the head, two triangles for each ear, ovals for eyes…her finger veers off, stretching a whisker down the side of the suitcase.
On her way to the bed she almost trips over a tray. She stacks it with the dozen others she's keeping in a frozen corner of the room. She means to eat, but each time another is delivered it goes on the pile. The stack serves as her timepiece in place of the clocks and calendars that humans consolidated into phones and tablets, keeping each second at their fingertips. If not for the food, she'd lose track of the time of day now that she's stuck inside, and then the days themselves.
She falls back on the bed, convinced she'll stare at the ceiling until the next delivery, but her lids shut of their own accord. In her dreams the human that died trying to save her from Tarukane is Shizuru. Kazuma bursts in, begging Yukina to leave, but she refuses to budge from the chair, telling him no, you'll die next. When he grabs her arm, his hand catches on fire. As he screams, the fire spreads, fanning out into wings that flap to the ceiling and beat against the metal. After the fire dies, Yukina is alone in the room, and the dream repeats.
After countless cycles, she bursts upright with a gasp. Her fingers twine in hot sheets, and flames tower around her. The bed Shizuru lent her is on fire. She has to escape, to warn someone. She…
She blinks enough times to see. What she mistook for flames is the red wall, and the heat is only Hiei, curled up on the foot of her bed. She hasn't seen him since that day in the forest. She watches his chest rise and fall until Mukuro enters with a tray of Yukina's usual fare along with a chunk of raw meat.
"I thought you'd be awake," Mukuro says. She nods at Hiei. "Our little bullfrog is another matter." Her gaze passes over him to the stack of trays on the other side of the bed. "If there's something wrong with the food, say so."
"No—it's fine, thank you. I just wasn't hungry."
Mukuro snorts. "I suppose that's why you passed out? Hiei freaked. I finally sent him on a training mission so he could come hibernate with you."
"Hibernate? How long have I been asleep?"
"Hard to say, with everything else breaking down around here. A week? Two?"
"Weeks?" Yukina may have slept this long in the Glacial Village, but she always took care to rise with her human family.
"Eat up. If you pass out again, I'll earn a reputation as a poor host."
Mukuro manages to wink, a feat with one eye. Smiling weakly, Yukina reaches for the food before remembering Hiei's warning. Mukuro is standing beside her bed, closer than she's ever been. Close enough for Yukina to catch a whiff of rot on her breath that takes effort to identify.
"You eat humans."
The accusation doesn't faze Mukuro. It's hardly something to hide in Demon World…from anyone except Yukina. Her outstretched fingers curl up, returning to her side.
"She has no choice," Hiei mumbles. Only his Jagan is open. "And it's not like anyone lets us harvest them by—"
"Don't defend me while I'm right here. I might start thinking you like me."
Yukina doesn't see how he reacts, as she's wrinkling her nose at the meat on the tray. "Don't worry, that's just Hiei's," Mukuro says. "We keep the human separate."
It's too late for reassurances, as Yukina's empty stomach is trying to wretch, the smell of death invoking memories twisted with dreams.
Since Yukina's apparent age and lack of a legitimate paper trail rendered her ineligible for most school and employment in Human World, she often did housework. Keeping food warm proved a challenge before she learned to control her powers, but she could prepare ingredients methodically. Kazuma taught her how to peel apples to look like rabbits, and Shizuru taught her how to prepare Kazuma's favorite meals. Yukina delighted in mochi, though she had a private love for anything spicy.
She doesn't care what she eats now as long as her own hands prepare it. When she's well enough to walk around, Yukina shows up unannounced in the kitchen and says that while she's grateful to whoever has been preparing her food, she'll start cooking for herself. At the sight of her, demons shut containers she knew better than to look into. Eventually she's ushered into a room with a small stove and given a stock of ingredients. "You can keep what needs to be kept cold yourself, can't ya?" they ask, and she agrees, setting about fashioning an icebox after they've left.
In the following days any interaction she's had diminishes. When she must speak with someone she's polite enough, but any experience she gained in Human World at earning smiles flees in favor of a still tongue and blank expression. Mukuro checks on her a couple of times, but at Yukina's behavior Mukuro becomes more brusque and stoic than usual, ultimately avoiding her altogether.
Whenever the centipede climbs over a hurdle, the stove goes out and Yukina's ingredients are jostled. At some point she gives up and eats raw vegetables, not wanting to faint again and worry the others—or see if they'll no longer be worried.
But they were, she reminds herself. She doesn't get far with the thought before picturing her friends on the demons' plates.
The centipede comes to rest at the peak of one of many rocky hills, Yukina sees when she goes outside. Wary of losing her footing, she doesn't stray far, looking out over the bumps that stretch to the land beyond the Glacial Village looked this treacherous when she first left. Even so she slipped and slid onward, accumulating scrapes she kept as tokens. All she cared about was putting distance between herself and the village's icy inhabitants, those who'd hole up alone and condemn others before giving them a chance.
Though she's anchored, Yukina feels nauseas. Maybe she's been hasty. Maybe she should have asked Hiei to finish his explanation.
A growling stomach leads her inside to cook a proper meal. As she does, an idea comes to her, and she begins preparing more ingredients.
A couple of hours later she seeks out Mukuro. She finds her hunched over a blueprint, directing Hiei to hold a sample part one millimeter higher—no, one lower… When Yukina interrupts, he drops the part with a clank.
"What is it?" Mukuro asks without looking up. While she still has the nerve Yukina sets down a tray on the one clean corner of the table and steps back, bowing.
"I know you've both been working hard, so I brought you some stew."
"You're trying to change my diet," Mukuro says, sounding neither offended nor impressed. "What makes you think I haven't tried everything already?"
"I'm sure you have, but your kitchen was nice enough to supply me with ingredients imported from Human World, and I thought maybe if you ate the things humans got their nutrients from…"
They stare at each other, Mukuro unreadable, Yukina's eyes cranked up to meet hers without lifting her chin. Mukuro arches a brow at the food. It was boiling when Yukina dished it, but now it emits only the barest whisper of steam.
The silence breaks when Hiei slurps the last bit of broth from his portion, which Yukina didn't see him pick up. Though the knot between his eyes confirms that meatless human food isn't to his taste, Yukina beams at the empty bowl. Mukuro sighs.
"I might as well try, is that it? A few vegetables can't kill me." Despite Mukuro's hesitation, she downs the entire portion in one set of gulps, gnawing the more fibrous vegetables with the oddest expression while she wipes her face on her sleeve. Yukina manages not to fidget.
"Is it all right?"
It becomes harder to stay still as she waits for Mukuro to answer. Silent, Mukuro pales, her eye widening. Without further warning she smacks the table, making the tray crash to the ground.
Yukina flinches. "Um—"
"Get. Out."
Frozen with shock, Yukina looks to Hiei for guidance, but his gaze is fixed on Mukuro. Thawed from the shame burning her, she scrambles to do as Mukuro said.
Yukina returns to her room, not because she wants to but for lack of anywhere else to go. Having forgotten to eat her own meal, she sits on the bed with a growling stomach, both longing for and dreading an intrusion. The suitcase in the corner mocks her. Before she's managed to unpack it, she might be asked to take it and leave.
She sees Hiei after he's already latched the door. She half-rises, stabilizing herself with a hand when she realizes he's glaring at her.
To anyone else in all three realms, it would come as no surprise, but she's never truly angered him. She was naïve enough to think she couldn't.
"How is she?" she asks. "Did I make her sick?"
"She's fine. She's not that weak." He sticks his hands in his pockets, not exactly softening but clearly trying to stay composed. "You didn't know this, but Mukuro's body isn't something to be experimented on."
Yukina's cheek feels hot when she clasps it. "I wasn't—I didn't think—oh, no…"
Battling expressions betray a war between Hiei's protective instincts. "Just don't do it again."
He jerks his head toward the door. A moment later Mukuro enters, her grey complexion the only sign that anything happened. Yukina leaps to her feet and asks fretful questions, the words spilling out.
"I told you a few vegetables wouldn't kill me," Mukuro says. "It was just a minor malfunction."
"Still, I made assumptions and tried to change you and might have gotten you sick, and—and I'm sorry for my disrespect."
Yukina bows low, dearly hoping the apology is enough. If Mukuro decides she's not welcome, she'll be stranded.
"She's precious Hiei," Mukuro says instead. "How in Yama's name…?"
For a second all air is sucked from the room, but Mukuro has more subtlety than that. "…Did she travel through two worlds on her own back when we had no patrols?"
Relieved, Yukina stands upright. It's a constant reaction to her—sweetie, her friends said fondly and demons here say with spittle at the edge of forked tongues. She doesn't feel sweet. She feels as if icicles hang from her insides, stabbing down whenever something jolts her. But she inclines her head and explains, "It was difficult. My footwear wasn't made for traveling long distances, so my feet blistered, and I had to bandage them."
Mukuro chokes, reigniting Yukina's worry. But Mukuro only releases a chuckle, which Yukina's giggle tentatively echoes.
Yukina doesn't realize her stay at Mukuro's has a 'normal' setting until she returns to eating regularly and avoiding Mukuro's feeding. The fortress drives through open land, where Yukina can wander without losing sight of it. She steps heel directly over toe along cracks where grasses fight to grow, trying to forget the slant of Hiei's eyes.
While he's avoiding her again, she can see him if she seeks out Mukuro. The sight of her still makes Yukina's stomach tighten, but she tries to speak to her host, however briefly—for courtesy and curiosity's sake, though it gives her a chance to observe the relationship nobody can quite explain.
They rarely face each other. Oftentimes Mukuro will be buried in machinery like when Yukina first met her, and Hiei will be leaning against some surface nearby, sharpening a weapon. She'll ask him about the state of affairs anywhere from the nearest hallway to the other side of the realm, and red irises will be shut off from Yukina's view as the Jagan glows.
When they walk together he keeps to Mukuro's right side, where her nose must obscure part of her vision. Between the two of them they have four eyes. The thought amuses Yukina, but it also sends heat down her spine.
Sometimes they'll both fold their arms and lean against some wall or table, wearing matching smirks, and Yukina will remember a possessive thought she once had and feel incredibly foolish.
The centipede parks between a pair of plateaus, and Yukina squeezes between the fortress and the rock, wondering at the sort of friction that produces sparks.
In her dreams the wings of fire drum against barred windows. The talismans Tarukane hung crackle, preventing them from slipping through the cracks. Yukina sits in the chair, unmoving as burns appear on her hands as if she'd touched the talismans herself.
When she wakes they're as unmarred as fresh snow, sweat clinging like condensation. A heart beats at the back of her mind, something she didn't learn hearts could do until she first cried against Shizuru's chest. She rises, her feet carrying her down the dark hall, its walls seeming to pulsate around her.
Her nose catches a familiar scent: blood. Her pace quickens, stopping in front of a tall door. Head pounding, she strains to make out its edges, to remember where this is. It hits her just as the stench prods her to open the door.
The lamps glow enough to make out Mukuro lounging across her bed, her usual accoutrements set aside. The stench worrying Yukina enough to override her embarrassment, she opens her mouth to apologize and ask—but then she sees Hiei kneeling beside the bed, his bandages and shirt in a heap, Mukuro's right hand in his hair. Yukina covers her face.
"I—I'm sorry. I smelled blood, and…"
A blast of heat passes her as Hiei bolts. She lowers her arms to hug herself and takes half a step back before she spies the katana on the ground and the necklace around Mukuro's neck.
Her heel hovers. The hand that claimed Hiei toys with the stone. "Well?" Mukuro asks. "Didn't you want to know something?"
"Is he all right?"
"He'll live."
"Is he all right?"
Her own tone catches Yukina off guard. "So he's not the only protective one," Mukuro murmurs. "Yes, don't worry about him. My reputation as a tyrant may precede me, but him, I take care of."
Holding onto any one thought is like snatching at a snowflake in a storm. All Yukina knows is that veins born to carry ice are filled with lava.
"I suppose I should clean the place, if you're my visitor," Mukuro says, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. Yukina can't manage to say that it's fine, really, she didn't mean to intrude. Following Mukuro's gestures, she sits in a chair and stares into her lap while Mukuro puts away Hiei's things. When Mukuro settles across from her, Yukina stifles a gasp. From a distance the lighting hadn't shown her all that Mukuro's undershirt doesn't hide, or her face without headgear.
"Do I disgust you?" Mukuro asks.
"No! No, I just…"
"If I minded, you would not be sitting here to see it." At that, Yukina resists looking away. She hadn't wanted to stare, but she realizes Mukuro is extending a gift. The patches where Mukuro's skin has been burned away resemble the centipede's walls, as if the fortress itself birthed her, and her damaged eye seems to examine Yukina even though it can't.
"He comes to me of his own accord," Mukuro says when Yukina doesn't speak. "You know he never would, if it wasn't."
Yukina knows.
"Why do you have my necklace?"
"He let me borrow it. I thought you gave it away."
"I did. I didn't want it anymore."
Mukuro fingers the stone so delicately it's hard to believe her hand is metal. "That's fortunate for me. Your people's peaceful nature emanates from it. It calms me when nothing else can."
The stones have given Yukina so much grief that that's difficult to imagine, but she decides she's glad. "Did Hiei tell you about it?"
"I've learned many things from Hiei, and many on my own." It's the sort of answer Yukina would expect from Kurama, one that lets a dare slide off. "I was once king of a third of Demon World, you know."
"Forgive my insolence."
Mukuro cocks her head. "You use politeness as a veil. Unlike him, you won't open your mind to me at all."
While being analyzed so bluntly disturbs Yukina, the idea of being more closed off than Hiei stirs indignation. "You've shared much with me tonight. I can try."
Mukuro bends over the table to ghost her fingers across Yukina's forehead. It's like an invisible knife slices it, searing her, but the presence that pokes at her mind chills her down to her toes. As exposed as a bare human in a blizzard, Yukina can't help throwing up guards to push Mukuro out. Mukuro retracts her hand.
"You're jealous of me." Hearing the bits of ice and fire she's been struggling with named so simply makes Yukina drop her head.
"I…I'm sorry."
"No, I'm relieved. I'm jealous of you, too."
"What…?"
"Neither Hiei nor I is the type that is easy to form relationships with, let alone maintain them. You, he cares about no matter what."
Yukina doesn't know what to say. Mukuro stretches, arching her back.
"Let's talk about something else. You've now lived in very different parts of Demon World, along with Human World—that's fascinating. Tell me more about it."
Not wanting to think about her life before she met her friends, Yukina describes moving in with the Kuwabaras, their shopping trips and their three toothbrushes lined up on the counter. Mukuro's face is pleasant enough, but blank, as if Yukina is speaking a different language. She backs up and talks about the Dark Tournament, which makes Mukuro lean forward, asking about fighters that Yukina strains to remember. And then she bends under the strain, remembering she won't be returning home to clean Shizuru's ashtray or help Kazuma feed the cats or even watch him fight for his life, and she excuses herself to retire to bed.
Yukina doesn't return to her room. Like a moth to a flame, she remembers Kurama reciting from a collection of English idioms. She finds Hiei in a corner of an abandoned storeroom, licking his wrist. He's covered himself with his old coat, which he pulls over his hand as she approaches, slowly like she would a stray.
"I'm sorry for intruding before. Will you please show me your wounds?"
Seeing the walls converged behind him, he leaps onto a box. "I thought I warned you about this."
"There's nobody around." Her head has cleared, or at least numbed, enough to exude calmness as she steps around a crate full of tusks. "It's only me."
So as not to pin him down, she lets her gaze wander. The only light comes from a tube of glowing liquid that reaches up to the ceiling, casting a blue edge around everything. Shadows obscure the rest: racks of weapons, barrels of fluid, pipes that look like intestines. A massive mace rests against the far wall. Nothing prevented Yukina from stealing into the room.
"I just want to see," she says, reaching for him. His hand darts down to grab her wrist.
They both freeze, registering that he could snap it, that he can't. The dragon stirs, sensing a threat, and Hiei's grip slackens the way Yukina's does when she cradles a bird.
"I warned you," he repeats. The angle of his brow can't come together over his wide eyes. The tube's light turns them blue, harkening back to the people of the Glacial Village. For an instant Yukina considers grabbing his sleeve just to see if he'll fend off the other hand, to see what she can get away with.
He cares about you no matter what.
If she takes advantage of that, she'll ruin any chance they have. "I'll back off if you let go."
His fingers uncurl, remaining stretched before him. Quickly she takes a step back, folding her hands behind her. He presses against the wall, his lips moving soundlessly as if ordering the dragon down.
"Well, you have me here. What do you want?" he asks once it stills.
"Right now, I would like to look at your wounds."
"I can't show you these. They're…private."
"You showed Mukuro," Yukina blurts. The blue glow reflects off of slits.
"That has nothing to do with you."
"I know, but…" Her hands wring behind her back. "You told me being with others was dangerous. You two are obviously close—and I'm glad! I am. So couldn't we spend time together, too, if we're careful?"
"I also told you Mukuro is stronger than I am."
"And I'm weaker."
His silence answers. A few decades ago, she might have agreed, but too many people have shown her different types of strength.
"Running and hiding isn't proving your strength," she says. "Aren't you the one who always finds a way to bend the world to your will?"
The appeal to his pride is a gambit, but one she hopes will pay off as she watches him fidget. "What are you getting at?"
"I'll become strong enough that you don't have to worry about me. If—if in exchange… You try to make me happy."
"Impossible."
"Which part?"
"All of it."
She breathes deeply, forcing the breaths not to sharpen, her chin not to drop. Watching Kurama has taught her a little about gambling. "Would your teammates expect you to say trying is impossible?"
His nostrils flare. "Incredible. You can be a little shit, if you want to."
"I'm not in Human World anymore," she says. "So I'm adjusting. You can, too, right?"
After staring for a long moment, he shakes his head. "You and Kurama adapt too much—and manipulate too well. Fine. I'll take up your challenge. But understand, when I compete, I don't lose."
She resists a smile. Maybe by the time he realizes that if he wins, she wins, it will be too late for him to bow out.