AN: Something occurs to me. Well, aside from "oh my god, yeah, I could update now it's only been like months or something". I have me a whacky story here, built muchly on time running in circles, and here I'm yammering about changing the end. I just want to assure you that (and I realize the muck-pit I'm putting my foot in by saying this on the net, especially in relation to plot, but yes, I am about to quote Lestat on the subject of storytelling) "I'm going to take care of you." All the foreshadowing still counts, and as of last chapter the new ending, though still vague, has foreshadowing all its own. Nothing is random. I have you covered.

AN2: Except in that this thing will not allow me to make line breaks, all of a sudden! So bear with whatever I'm about to stick in until it does let me. Also, I told a lie, because the breaks? They're going to be random.

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Chapter Five

You sleep like the dead.

I didn't, though. Not under normal circumstances. This could be problematic too.

"Shuuchi!" Shiori walked into my room carrying a pile of laundry and stopped, startled. "Oh, you scared me. Why are you back so early in the morning, sweetheart? Didn't you want to stay with your friends?"

I stood, relieving her of the bundle. "As much of a sacrifice as it was, I had to get back. Homework, you know."

She smiled, pulling me impulsively into a hug. "I love you, Shuuchi."

"I know. I love you too, Mother." I held her tight for a moment, then drew back. "But what did you want done around the house that brought this on?"

She laughed. "Foolish." Her eyes searched mine, cheer straining. "You don't have another tournament, though?"

"The chess, you mean," I said calmly before my stomach could drop through the floor. It had done plenty enough of that lately. "No, I don't - why would you think so?"

"It was so abrupt last time, is all," she said dismissively. "Never mind, Shuuchi." A kiss to my forehead and she was gone.

Shuuchi would have walked straight past Yusuke. Shuuchi's chess tournaments would have taken place in the human world, in hotels with working phones. Pity that there was only so much pretending I could do.

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"You had better have a damn good excuse for my just finding out something about you from that ferry girl, after the detective and the human scum both already knew."

Kurama stood from his desk, turning to face Hiei where he perched in the window. "You know, they're just going by 'Botan,' 'Yusuke,' and 'Kuwabara' lately." He smiled, shrugging. "You weren't, in the most technical of senses, there to be told."

Hiei snorted. "You tend to find ways when you try hard enough."

"Generally speaking. I suppose I wasn't particularly anticipating this discussion." He sank down on the end of his bed.

"There is no discussion," Hiei spat scornfully. "It's just another demon. You'll deal with it."

"…Yes." Kurama folded his hands. "Thank you, Hiei."

"If you ever let me find something out after those bottom-feeders again, I'll burn your brain out through your nose."

"I shall take that into account." Kurama sighed. "It's nice to know someone isn't going to need a half an hour of reassurances that I can take care of myself."

"Hn."

"Since you're not concerned…"

"I'm not leaving."

"I see."

Hiei snarled a little under his breath. The problem with knowing someone well enough to read them was assuming you could properly interpret the text. And Kurama's readings were getting careless.

"You took a sword in the gut for Yusuke."

Kurama met his gaze again with a puzzled smile. "Actually, I took a sword in the gut for a spirit detective who had recently saved my life and who, I assumed at the time, had the ear of the god about to sentence me, thereby greatly influencing both my own and my human mother's lives."

"You jumped in front of a sharp object to save the life of a human," Hiei insisted icily. "Nothing you could ever do, nothing that could ever be done to you, will ever lower you further in my eyes."

Kurama lowered his head, eyes disappearing behind his hair. Hiei could see him stifling a laugh. "Thank you again."

"Just don't go developing some sort of Stockholm's."

"It would probably help if I did. For one thing, a crush has never stopped me. And for another… well, there's a bit of a pattern where my exes are concerned, had you noticed?"

"That they're all dead or missing vital parts of their anatomy?"

Kurama raised an eyebrow in a facial shrug. "It tends to keep happening." He blinked very slowly, as if he were wearing weights on his eyelids.

Hiei felt a bit triumphant for having noticed it when, from what he gathered, Yusuke hadn't. He was definitely going to rub his observational skills in the detective's face.

Then he considered the three-eyes jokes and decided to find another realm in which he was superior. Speed, for example.

He caught Kurama's shoulders before his head hit the mattress when his eyes blanked and he fell back.

" 'Cause everybody knows

If you don't mind your mother's words

A wicked wind will blow

Your ribbons from your curls…" Switching veins, Karasu held up a silver chain with a pendant dangling from the end, trailing red. "You know, Kurama, crows are supposed to collect pretty things, not foxes. And I don't like all this talking to people about me. Your private life is none of their concern."

"Don't touch that," I hissed, swiping at it. It dropped to the floor and the ruby center snapped open, a few discordant notes spilling out. "It didn't play that song before…"

"Now, what did that accomplish?" He contemplated me, expression unreadable. "I have been very patient with you so far, seeing as you plainly have a few revelations to make as to the nature of our relationship, but that patience, Kurama, is wearing thin. Dissuasive tactics such as yanking you back here will not be the extent of my vengeance if you continue dragging others into this."

"We don't have a relationship," I answered, sidestepping his threats. "We have… this." I gestured and, in following my hand, noticed that we weren't in the attic any longer. Twenty-foot-high stone walls crumbled all around us in a twisting passageway. Clouds hung limply over the top, filling the labyrinth with mist, tendrils of which curled around the dead vines.

I stooped to pick up the nearest bit of litter - there was so much of it, bleached-white bits all over the ground. My fingers closed around the head of a doll, long black hair streaming down over what should be a back and was nothing instead. "These aren't mine."

Karasu smiled, the real one, which was less unnerving than his maniacal grin, though only in that it signaled a different kind of danger. "Yes." He kicked out, and the finger-bones of a hand small enough to fit in my palm clicked against the stone and earth. "They are."

I opened my mouth to contradict him. He walked away, and I followed him around the nearest bend, avoiding the gray remains of vines clinging desperately to bits of broken children, dolls and bones alike.

I looked up again just in time to avoid running into his back when he stopped, and automatically sidesteped him to see beyond.

The stained-glass door. (It struck me, suddenly, as terrible appropriate as a description - "stained".) I reached up as blood trickled past our shoes, my hand closing convulsively on his shoulder. "Not yet."

He looked at me speculatively, reaching out and running a nail down the glass. It screeched like a blackboard under his finger, bleeding at the cuticle.

I put my other hand on his arm. Desperation tactics, and he knew it, was smiling with the knowledge. I said it anyway - "Take me with you" - and looked back.

Another crumbling stone room, this one with a solitary window through which the space gasped for light. The beach outside was gray and foggy, a trail of footprints leading off into the pine woods beyond.

The bed was the only immediately apparent furnishing the room had - a huge, velvet-covered, ebony thing. I could smell it molding, see where the mattress was slowly caving at one side. The fungus was slowly eating the red away there, turning it black as the frame.

A woman was sitting in the center. Her wavy blond hair hung limp and greasy around a haggard face, once-fine clothing clinging to and concealing her frame like a shroud. She cradled the little boy in her lap, staring vacantly at the wall and rocking back and forth.

Movement made me turn, and I realized that there was one other thing here. It was a large mirror, perhaps five feet by the same, leaning against the wall, facing the bed. The image in it was mottled and hazy, a gray face, a body, an open door, so much blood.

Behind us, a different door shuddered under the force of a blow.

The boy brushed his doll's hair.

"Don't worry, Karasu." She had a beautiful voice, deep and melodic and soothing. She was the one he inherited his own from, I'd imagine. It looked more than anything else as if she were a ventriloquist's dummy, her vacant face and wooden form harboring a voice that still wanted to live. "Your sister will be back with help soon."

"Father's gone mad, hasn't he."

"Father's always been mad, darling." She smiled at her own something-of-a-joke.

"But he doesn't usually -" the door creaked and caved slightly into the silence "- do this."

"No. Not in front of you two. I think he means to kill us."

"Should we go after big sister?"
"You can't go fast enough. You're too small. And I can't ever leave this house, you know that." Never once did she look at him, never did she sound anything but calm.

The door splintered.

She sighed, pushing him off her lap. "Get under the bed. No matter what happens, you be quiet. No matter what - don't say a word. Tell me that."

"No matter what." He climbed down, holding to the edge until his questing feet found the floor, and then, cradling the doll, he lifted the edge of the blanket and disappeared beneath the bed.

My head hit the wall of the labyrinth with a crack that made stars go off in my head, Karasu's nails sinking into my shoulders. I could feel them going through muscle, tearing, and bit through my tongue with not-screaming - luckily, since I would not have been able to forestall it otherwise when the heated air at my torso exploded.

Funny… I'd managed to forget, already, what my own flesh smelled like when it was cooking.

It would have been nice to pass out, but that is not conducive to continued vitality in my world, so I've a habit of not doing it too terribly often. Still. Just now…

I landed on my back, hand cracking off something hard and off-white. My vision doubled and smeared, Karasu reduced to a faceless black pillar with an outstretched hand just before my left knee shattered in wave of heat and I gave up, trying to scream. I choked on the blood in my mouth instead.

If I could think… or move…

His knees slammed to the ground on either side of my hips, one hand cradling the back of my head gently as the butterflies filled my vision with color, streaming past him to gather into a cloud of purple-pink-red-yellow-blue over his shoulder. Some of them were fish.

For a moment, my vision was crystal-clear, and I could see him bending closer, one finger moving over my bloody lips.

By then, the butterflies-some-of-which-were-fish had solidified into a girl, perhaps seven to nine, with red hair floating around her shoulders as if underwater. Her back was to us, arms out as though on a tightrope.

I choked again, forcing out, "Don't you think you're overreacting?" as Karasu's weight pressed against the gaping hole in my middle, and she turned around, face lighting up beneath its clown-smeared makeup. "Hey!" She tapped Karasu's shoulder. "Stop that."

His head whipped around, hair stinging my face. "Why?" He sounded polite, reasonable, and not remotely insane, which was slightly offset by our position and the last few butterflies turning into a hand on the end of the girl's arm.

"Because he doesn't like it. It'd be fine if he did but he doesn't - I can tell. When people that I don't want to touch me do I make them stop but I don't think he can here, so you'll have to on your own because I made you. Where are we?" Her voice wove in and out, dipping up and down and her tone making no sense.

"No place for children," he responded, one hand still behind my head, the other opening. I saw nothing in it, which meant nothing, or something that didn't help.
"R -" I started, and coughed again, agony ripping its way through me on the wings of all the screams that never made it out. It wasn't as if it could possibly get worse, I told myself, and while he was distracted I forced my arms out straight, knocking him off me and to the side before letting my head drop back and trying to find air and the lungs to keep it in.

"Well…" she tapped her lip, looking skyward. "How about this - if you don't stop I'll turn you into an obsessive demon-thing who needs to control everything to feel safe and who can't be with anyone for very long ever since his family died so he just kills everything so he won't feel guilty, and even that doesn't work because he feels very bee-ay-dee afterwards so he just gets to like being like that, and I'll make it so that you've never been anything else."

Karasu stood, brushing himself off and regarding her with a smile. "I apologize, my lady. I had no idea you were quite so… interesting. However, you have things slightly wrong - I am his."

I gasped in enough air to expel enough blood to say, "No. You're. Not."

"Bee-ay-dee," she confided, "spells bad."

To me, Karasu shook his head. "You killed me, Kurama. That creates a bond, whether you like it or not - one unparalleled by any other. And I killed you. We're not so far apart."

She stared at the ring on his finger, hesitating, and then asked, "You're his?" She looked up at him, head tilting back to find his face, one blue eye and one green glinting beneath her stubble-covered head.

"No."

"Yes."

She was plucking at her lower lip now, with fingernails bitten down to ragged, almost-bleeding stubs. "And you'll never ever leave him no matter what with a cherry on top?" Her free hand reached out, palm up.

"You have my word." He placed a ridiculously red, round cherry in the proffered hand.

"Are you going to keep your promise? Everyone used to, you know, and then someone broke the first one and the pieces got everywhere, all big and sharp and important. Then they got broken more and more until the pieces were all bits of sand in everyone's sandwiches, spoiling the picnic and getting under everyone's skin, in other promises and they all break so easy. Like that. They make people come to me, they get so worn away with the sandpaper. They don't even want to but they get used to me - I'm nice, really I am." She sighed, sharp shoulders slumping under the white coat draped over her miniscule form. "But they always leave. I guess my big sister's just prettier. I used to be very beautiful." Her eyes darted around, counting things I couldn't see. "What's the name of the word for when you can sleep in front of someone?"

"Safety?" I tried.

Karasu smiled at me beatifically. "Trust."

"Yes…" she sighed. She leant down, cupping her hands around my ear and whispering without any breath, "My brother left." Letting me go and smoothing her skirt meticulously, she announced aloud, "My brother is that. Was that. I don't know."

I shook my head. "But he isn't. Just because he won't leave - that doesn't make him trustworthy."

She rolled her eyes. "No one ever said worthy." Tapping her lip in thought, she continued, "Well… you know. You did. But. I don't know. Let's leave now."

"I can't walk," I pointed out.

"Why not?" Her eyes were huge. "That must be awful. How do you go places when you're bored?"

"I can't walk at present," I corrected myself. "Because he blew my legs off in a fit of pique."

"So?"

We were walking, the girl in the lead, following a string of butterflies trailing from her hands, which flickered in and out of being insects themselves. "Does it make sense to you," I asked, "his belonging to me now?"

"No," she said reflectively, "he's my sister's by that Standard of Measurement." And again, "So?" She started skipping before I could think of an answer that might stand a chance in the errant winds of her logic, forcing me to hurry to keep her in sight. "One, two, take off our shoes," she chanted, "three, four, don't ask for more. Five, six, clock won't tick. Seven, eight, hide your hate. Nine, ten…" she looked over her shoulder at them. "What's next?"

"Around again," Karasu provided.

"Aren't those awfully close to the real words?" I inquired with hint of sarcasm. Karasu smiled, much too satisfied, and couldn't resist making the same gamble I'd made: "You're still trying to use those plants of yours, Kurama," he said. "They don't work here."

I looked away, as if discomfited. He was right, after all.

"We're out!" She cried, spinning through the next opening.

Following her through, I looked around. "We're not," I said slowly. "We're in the center." The middle of the maze was a large circle of crumbling gray stone, with none of the detritus of the rest of the space; there were only vines, especially thick on the enormous throne at the far left.

"We're out of the maze," she insisted. "Come and meet my friend!" As she danced over, the vines wiggled away like caterpillars, leaving the chair's inhabitant bare. It was a skeleton, every bit large enough for its seat. All the bones remained in place, though nothing held them - all but the head. I glanced around and didn't see it.

"It's sad, isn't it?" She said. "The little lights man took it away when it was the reason he lived here and then still made him live here anyway. Well not live."

I looked out at the passage, past Karasu, who was leaning against the entrance. There was a complete human ribcage nearby. "He did kill a lot of people," I noted.

"No one told him not to. Not in a language he could understand." She patted the hand on the throne's armrest comfortingly.

"He didn't waste too much time trying to learn the local tongue, did he."

Karasu answered me this time: "They had different priorities."

"Yes, those!" The girl straightened abruptly. "I have to go do mine now. A little boy in Nanking just found the leaves-turned-gold in his backyard and I want some too even if they turn back when their wings get dry and rattle."

Karasu nodded. "I hope you find some pink ones."

"Oh, that's sweet." She grinned. "I like you. I wish I'd killed you. But I don't think that would be the same. Would you make the same promises to me as you do to him?"

"My lady," he said gravely, "I would make even better ones. Still, they would, I admit, never be the same."

I shook my head. "Please. He's a lunatic. I don't want him. Take him with you."

She shrugged. "He gets me, but he gets you too. He's not mine. He'll stay another night." She split the air down the middle and stepped through, leaving the breach to shimmer out of existence behind her.

I sighed. "Tell me you know the way out."

Karasu held out a hand, and I took it without thinking (and his was wet and warm and red, the liquid seeping under my fingernails), and then we were back in the attic and Hiei was shaking my shoulders.

I sat up on my bed. "Finally," Hiei groused. "You were out like a human for five minutes straight."

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AN: Yay for Delirium! And yay for Hiei, because "hn" is really all the vocab you need, damnit.

Allow me to be immensely hypocritical and beg for reviews even though it takes me forever to respond to them. Or update. Or anything. But still - reviews! Help support me as I wend my way through college? Think of it as a good deed, O Gentle Reader.