What Runs Deeper
a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi
chapter nine
"Inescapable Strings"
When the two of them had finally caught sight of Mukuro and her parasite-possessed men, the first thing Kirin realized was that they were beating something, and as they neared, he knew it was a demon, and it was still alive.
Soon though, it would not be.
Hiei left Kirin's side and went straight to Mukuro, and Kirin did the only thing he could think to do: he ran to save the nearly defenseless apparition.
Kirin thought he may be able to wrestle the demon away from Mukuro's soldiers without bloodshed, but they were strong. Stronger than before.
The training had certainly paid off, but it had been difficult for Kirin to keep things reasonable. Most of Mukuro's men were unconscious now, though Kirin couldn't be entirely sure that there weren't a couple he had killed. He didn't want to think of it. They were his comrades . . . those he should have been fighting with, not against. He knew them. But not anymore.
A startling crash impeded his thoughts.
Kirin turned his head, the unconscious bird demon he had saved in his arms, to see Hiei fall to the ground at the foot of a tree much like a rag doll.
Mukuro was yards away, staring at him. Then she stood, approaching him with careful, calculated steps.
Kirin called her name out without thinking.
Her head whipped around and the emotion he saw in her gaze was nothing short of terrifying. She snarled at him, but then without warning she collapsed to her knees, a scream tearing from her throat.
Kirin watched in confusion for a moment as she doubled over, but then his legs carried him past her. He had no time left. One or both or maybe all of them would die unless this was stopped.
He gathered Hiei up in his other arm, and he ran.
—.—
In his eagerness to reach safety, Kirin did not at first realize that something was amiss. But the door to Shigure's lab was already open—inside lay only one of the two demons that he had taken from Mukuro's ranks, and Shigure himself was gone as well.
This was bad.
Kirin readjusted his arm to support the still-unconscious Hiei. Apparently use of the Jagan had been an unsuccessful tactic, and now on top of an increasingly furious Mukuro, Hiei now had even more bruises to add to his already impressive repertoire of injuries. One more failed plan, and perhaps Hiei would not even live to see the end of this.
And despite what Kirin thought of him, he knew that if Hiei were to die, their chances of re-establishing normalcy would slim significantly.
"What happened?"
He turned at the voice behind him, finding Shigure having just entered the lab, a somewhat perplexed look on his face and a bag of squid titties in hand.
"One of the men woke up, and it looks like he ran off." Kirin laid Hiei and the unconscious bird demon on the empty table. "We need to find him before—"
And it was then that Kirin's ears picked up the sound of two voices echoing down the corridor: one male, urgent, and the other belonging to a clearly irate Mukuro.
A thrill of genuine fear spiked through him. He didn't need to hear the details of the conversation to know they needed to leave.
"Come on," he told Shigure, and without another word scooped Hiei and the bird into his arms and walked swiftly through the doorway.
By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Kirin knew they didn't have any time.
The voices had already come into the hall, and Kirin couldn't even think to look back as he ran.
That was when he heard the laughter, and it sent chills up his spine. Kirin didn't know when, how or if the attack would come, so he took the first turn he was met with and continued to run.
He was shocked when he managed to find his way out of the fortress in one piece. Mukuro must have decided to let them go for whatever reason or found something more important to distract her, but Kirin continued to put distance between them and the fortress.
It wasn't going to be safe in there anymore—they had no choice. They would have to do without Shigure's lab. They had to stay alive.
Or else everything they had done would be in vain.
—.—
Kirin warmed his hands over the small fire, then lifted his eyes to look at Shigure, whose face was lit somewhat grotesquely by the firelight from where he sat against a tree.
"You think he'll wake soon?"
Shigure grunted. "There's nothing you can do, so quit worrying about it."
Kirin's expression soured. He couldn't just stop worrying about it, but Shigure was right—there was nothing he could do. That was what worried him in the first place.
"I wonder how he's taking this," Kirin said then, quietly.
"How would you take it if your girlfriend was possessed by a parasite?"
"I—"
"That's a rhetorical question."
Kirin stared into the darkness of the trees, imagining the situation with more than a little discomfort until sleep finally claimed him.
Hiei awoke in the still darkness of the early morning to the sudden terrible fear that Mukuro was gone. He stumbled clumsily to his feet, looking wildly about himself before determining that none of the three sleeping forms nearby belonged to her, and then remembered that it was true.
She was gone.
She had not been able to defeat it.
Dark anger and hopelessness swept over him, and he nearly crumpled to the ground again.
Hiei had never had the foresight to imagine he would ever have to leave her. Mukuro was a danger like this—didn't know how to control herself—didn't know where to stop. Her request for him to end her life was a wise one, and a part of Hiei saw it as a challenge, one that his pride viewed no differently than any other fight to the death.
His leg was weak—ankle twisted, perhaps. Movement was taxing, and his entire body throbbed. Were he to face her again now, the death would surely be his own.
But the strings that kept him here ran far deeper than loyalty or honor, and he could not abandon her.
Hiei began to walk.
—.—
For some time, Hiei edged through the brush and trees, and all was quiet except for his thoughts and the sound of his footsteps and breathing.
Then he was being talked at, and his expression contorted.
"Hiei, you can't go back there," said that giant insufferable pest. "You wouldn't last a minute like this."
"Shut up," he snarled, continuing to trudge forward. Then, "Do you think I don't know what will happen?"
"What good can you do if you get yourself killed? Don't think I'm just going to let you waste all our chances at fixing this because you want to be a stubborn dick!"
Hiei paused, but just briefly.
"If you want to fight, I'll gladly oblige after I've finished my business with her," he said. "Now get the fuck out of my way."
He picked up speed slightly, moving past the behemoth.
"Hiei! No one else can help them but you!"
Them.
He didn't care about them.
The only one that mattered was her, and that was all he cared about.
He tore through the brush emphatically, but the idiot refused to take a hint: "I am not letting you go alone," he growled.
"Do what you want," retorted Hiei. "I don't give a damn."
His physical condition lengthened the short travel time to the fortress to nearly half an hour, and by the time they reached it, all the doors on the lower level of the facility were closed and locked.
Immediately Hiei turned to the alternative route of entry—the treetops. But the moment he tried to dart up into the higher branches, his leg inconveniently gave way and sent him tumbling back down to the forest floor.
He muttered some colorful profanities under his breath, and, unwilling to waste any more time, promptly blew a hole through the wall of the giant bug and climbed in, not caring enough to look back to see if the behemoth had managed to fit through.
By following her energy, it did not take long for Hiei to arrive at the dining hall with the mammoth at his heels.
The bitch—that bitch in Mukuro's body—was eating alongside her hoard of idiotic heathens, and when Hiei positioned himself directly inside the door, nearly all of them turned to stare at him in the way that caged dogs would eye a passing squirrel.
He looked past their drooling countenances, spotting Mukuro on the other side of the room.
"Hello, whore," Hiei greeted her. "I'm tired of this. Let's finish it."