What Runs Deeper

a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi

chapter twelve
"Nothing To Show"

Mukuro dragged another of her soldiers along the length of the hall with a sigh.

She had been unconscious for two days, but yesterday she had awoken from the spell of the parasite—as it was that, she had been told by Shigure this morning—and she had immediately begun efforts toward seeking out her previous parasite drones (her own men, she reminded herself bitterly) in order to have them taken to Shigure and the parasites removed.

The men were less violent now, and rather more confused and disoriented. From what Shigure said, it seemed that they could assume that the death of her parasite had triggered some kind of chain reaction among its spawn, and now her men were all being freed of the parasites' control.

Mukuro could empathize with them more than anyone, and she was determined to right things for all of them.

Mukuro left her current man in Shigure's care and headed back up the steps of the lab and into the hall, her head beginning to ache with a mixture of stress and exhaustion. Last night she had slept well for a time, but awoke to a nightmare that had her irrationally desiring Hiei's nearness. She sorely rebelled against that notion and got up instead, pacing the halls of the fortress for a long time before the sun rose.

She did not ever want to become a slave to something again.

While searching for more of her men, Mukuro was met with the last thing she had hoped to see—messengers from the nearby patrol and Enki.

Mukuro's patrol had not been running regularly for weeks. The nearby patrol had been reporting to Enki and had to pick up the slack, and that messenger had made his dissatisfaction painfully clear.

Mukuro bullshitted her way through the explanation to each messenger and insisted that an epidemic had swept through the fortress and many of her men, and she herself, were just recovering. They were reluctant to accept her excuse but she insisted that she was getting the fortress back into working order and the patrol would be back to normal immediately.

By the time she had managed to send them each away, her head was hurting more than ever. Now the place on the back of her head where Shigure had cut open her skull to remove the parasite was aching, too, reminding her again of how the entire situation had affected her. So Mukuro found a tree that looked obscure enough to hide under and sat beneath it, resting for the first time in hours.

She may have well been on the verge of sleep when she heard a shuffling in the grass, and she was moved just slightly, but the smell was familiar enough not to stir her.

Then he said, "Mukuro."

She opened her eye and focused on him drowsily, but something about his presence made her heart tremble after everything she had been through since last night.

She needed him, and here he was.

Mukuro opened her mouth as if she might say something, but her throat was constricted by something familiar and she closed her lips and swallowed. She looked at the ground in the sort of small, frail way a dog accustomed to beatings might.

She needed him. She needed him and she was too afraid to even ask of him.

Hiei seated himself beside her in the grass. "You shouldn't have left this morning." He paused, staring ahead of himself, then clarified: "Too much movement will only cause you unnecessary strain."

"There's too much for me to do to sit around on my ass," Mukuro replied. "I have a responsibility to my men and to the demon world patrol, and I left them all alone for long enough." It sounded rehearsed, like she had said it a million times already. But only in her head.

"What happened was beyond your control." She didn't want to answer. It didn't matter, anyway. "Something's on your mind. What is it?"

Mukuro's chest tightened.

She couldn't think of any way to explain how she felt now, and she didn't want to. She didn't want to think on it at all.

She turned her face away from him and tried. "Do you think that . . ." What was she going to say? ". . . I . . ." She what? ". . . am . . ." What was she afraid to be? ". . . too demanding?"

Was that what she wanted to say? It was as close as she could voice, and even that was too much to bear.

She sounded like an insecure girl. She sounded so stupid. She sounded nothing at all like she wanted to sound, but he had asked her, so she could only be mad at him for thinking that. She wanted to hit him for asking her, for making her say this shit.

She squeezed her eye shut. She was too tired and she just wanted the thoughts to stop.

She wanted him to mock her and get it over with.

"Why should it matter?" he asked, almost flippantly.

It was all she could have expected, yet it didn't make her feel any better.

"If it means so much to you, I don't think that you're demanding," he said. "You aren't terribly eloquent, either."

She couldn't think of anything more to say. She didn't want to have to say anything. It was uncomfortable and it was painful and she wanted to pretend none of it had ever occurred at all.

For whatever reason she thought to look at him, but he was staring right at her, confused and intense, and she looked immediately away again as if burned.

He couldn't see what she felt at all. To him, she probably was just being ridiculous.

Damn, if she could bear to leave him, she would be gone.

"That's all."

"Don't lie to me," Hiei said. "Of course that's not all."

He knew, but she still wasn't ready. She still wasn't sure.

She was still afraid to hope.

"Stop," he demanded, as if it would somehow solve everything. "You don't have to fight anymore. You'll only defeat yourself that way."

She thought that she had smothered all her emotions away, and she was ready to accept the silence, but he touched her face, and it burned.

Her worries, fears, and desires crashed down around her.

He eased her to him and she blinked too many times, words tumbling out of her mouth from an inane need to explain herself: "I just need to make things right."

She grasped his arm too tight, fighting down knife points in her throat as she leaned into him, all too easily giving in to this desperation she had promised herself so fervently she would resist.

But it all meant pushing him out of her heart, and with him so close, trying so hard, she could not stand it.

Perhaps he could hate her. But she couldn't lie anymore.

"Fool," Hiei said, quiet but firm as he cupped her cheek in his hand. "You already have."

Mukuro would accept that, but only for how long?

Every thought she entertained now that she was close to him was too much, and she was paralyzed. She could feel the heat of the blood rushing through her, racing with frustration and fear and want.

She leaned into his hand and loosened her grip on his arm, but nothing else.

"Hiei," she whispered.

Hiei watched her for a moment, confusion etched on his face, and finally withdrew his hand.

"Mukuro." Hiei paused. "I don't understand."

He didn't understand, but she wanted him to.

He leaned toward her, lips grazing the corner of her mouth and lingering at her cheek, and her heart fluttered—she found herself grasping for support, her fingers curling around the material of his shirt.

It was enough, and her lips found his, softly, and they fit so well, she thought.

Hiei returned the kiss just as gently, and then drew back.

His eyes reflected a thousand questions—questions she wished she had concrete answers to. But inside, she was just as confused.

"What I want?" she finally asked him. Her gaze wavered a moment, and she felt painfully pinned to her fear—and his expectations—as the words came. "Just your love. . . ."

Hiei watched her for several moments.

Then his mouth slowly curled into a smirk.

"I'll give you much more than that," he said quietly, a subtly dangerous undertone seeping into his voice, and he took Mukuro's face in his hands and kissed her again.

He had taken it in that way.

Mukuro was at once excited and afraid. A part of her couldn't bear for him to see her in this way again, but another part wanted to be able to feel the way she did and share it with him.

She pulled away from his kiss. "Please don't . . . don't think that's all I want from you. Or—even most of it."

Her lips found his neck, the place she remembered taking comfort in once before, and she exhaled. "It feels wrong to want you at all like I do."

Masuyo would be laughing at her. This was what she was made for, she would say.

But Masuyo was wrong. Mukuro was meant only for Hiei.

That was why she had sought him out time and again. She could never harbor these feelings—this desire, fear, happiness, and, strangest of all, love—for any other soul.

Hiei put his arms around her. "Don't explain yourself," he said. "Touch me."

Something in his words disrupted her completely.

She pulled back. "I have to explain myself, Hiei. I can't just pretend that this is nothing to me," she said, more sharply than intended. "My whole life I've hated all of it, and I can't be okay with this unless you know how I feel."

She needed him to understand her now.

She couldn't be alone with it anymore, to yet again hide her fragility and only grow bitterer.

She needed to trust him.

His expression darkened. "Nothing?" he said. "How stupid do you think I am? How could you presume that I don't understand what this means for you—for both of us?"

It was only getting worse. It was only falling apart.

She leaned away from him.

He took a breath. "Fuck," he muttered, hands grasping her sides. "What . . ." He fumbled for words. "What do you feel?"

Mukuro felt angry at him, but more than that, at herself.

She was the problem. She was always the problem, and she would always be the reason that everything around her was always destroyed.

Eri.

Shun.

Ka—

No. No more.

"Fuck!" she shrieked, and her fist found the tree next to them. "Fuck! I don't want this anymore!"

Look at you, you stupid fucking cunt. This is all you can do. This is all you deserve.

She grew still, staring at the tree.

"What do you want from me?" She looked at him, tears suddenly blurring her sight. "Do you want me to make it better? Because I can't." She breathed. "I want to, but I just . . . I can't be whatever it is you want."

"You're already what I want, idiot!" he shouted. "You're the only reason I stay in this ridiculous place day after day, and it's certainly not to watch you blubber like a hormonal teenage girl every time something remotely good happens!"

He stopped her.

He reminded her how stupid she was being.

Emotions were never something suited to her—even now, when it mattered, she couldn't untangle them. Her inability to cope had always been more dangerous than the problem itself.

He was not here to listen to her whine—and she was not either. Why had she even started?

He looked into the distance, and his voice grew quiet. "Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to turn you down?" he said. "But even now, it seems that no matter how hard I try, all I'm able to give you is more disappointment."

Sighing, Hiei looked at her again and said, "What do you want, Mukuro?"

She was done trying to make him understand, because it was not even important enough to bother.

"You're right," she said. "But I don't know what I want. Maybe that's the problem. I haven't even thought about it, I can't stop thinking about everything that I don't want."

She looked up at him, but there was nothing on her face. Nothing more she wanted to show.

She could not open herself up to the pain again.