"Start All Over"
By ss10009
Disclaimer:
YuYu Hakusho does not belong to the author of this story. Those rights go to Yoshihiro Togashi. This fanfiction is created for purposes not associated with profit. Meaning that, if you paid to read this story, well, you're a damn fool.
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CHAPTER 2 - The Family in the Photo
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It was like last night had never happened, Yusuke surmised. His body didn't feel sore, and he felt well-rested. His injuries yesterday hadn't been particularly substantial, but they were moderate enough to leave some lingering pain, perhaps a tiny scar or two. Maybe even three.
Gentle sunlight, vaguely warm and pastel, floated in through the window. With his eyes closed, Yusuke noticed exactly how quiet it was in the apartment he shared with his mother. Not a rarity, considering that Atsuko was often hung over early Sunday morning. If she had made it home yet, that is. Though it was a little odd to not hear some traffic on the streets. Yusuke considered it a blessing and buried his face deeper into his pillow. Just a few more minutes of lying around, thinking of nothing...
Just a few more minutes of a Sunday morning.
Yusuke drifted back off to sleep, and didn't bother with waking up again for another two hours. It felt good to adhere to no schedule, unlike school days where he was supposed to be out of bed before seven.
The operate phrase there of course was "supposed to be." Unless Keiko dragged him out of the house, it wasn't unusual for him to sleep in Monday through Friday as well.
Keiko, he thought distantly, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling. Is she still mad at me?
Of course she was still mad at him. Twelve hours was not enough time for Keiko, not the Keiko he knew, anyway. This would at least stretch out until the first time he saw her in person again. She wasn't going to get over it until she'd slapped him a few good times… But considering how hurt she'd looked yesterday, he was starting to worry that maybe this was more than his average screw up. Things were going to go back to normal between them, whatever the hell that was, right?
Yusuke winced. He'd watched enough TV to know that, to girls, anniversaries were a big deal. Though he'd also seen enough TV to know that guys often forgot about them completely. So... Shouldn't Keiko have expected him to forget? When had he ever been romantic anyway?
He ditched the topic entirely and rolled out of bed. He groaned as his feet connected with cold hardwood.
"What the hell?" Yusuke asked, speaking to no one in particular. "Wasn't there carpet here last night?"
Yusuke frowned, staring at the floor. There was nothing there but dark brown hardwood. He turned around. His bed looked closer to the ground than usual, a change he should've noticed before.
The more he looked around the room, the more foreign he realized it was. It didn't even seem to be his room at all.
Yusuke blinked. Once. Twice. Three times, in quick succession.
"What happened?" Yusuke asked, his voice sounding somewhat dazed. It was understandable to be a bit jostled in this kind of situation, though. Going to sleep in one place and awakening in a completely different place can have that sort of effect.
Yusuke walked to the door. He had to slide it open instead of turning the knob. Yet another difference between his room and whatever-the-hell room this was.
The door wasn't locked, if you could even lock a traditional sliding door, which could've been a sign that he wasn't here against his own volition. Yusuke remained on edge, however.
As he exited the room, he entered a vaguely familiar hallway. He felt as though he could place it, or at least its decor, yet he couldn't come up with a name. His guard eased up somewhat, though. His mind was registering it as a friendly place.
It wasn't until the hallway turned off into a room with a large TV, complete with several gaming systems, that he realized exactly where he was.
Genkai's temple.
This knowledge comforted him, yet raised more questions. Why the hell was he at Genkai's when he'd fallen asleep in his own bed last night? He re-entered the hallway, searching out Genkai in what was beginning to feel like a spider's web. He made up some conjecture as he went.
"I... I must be more banged up than I thought," Yusuke said. "Maybe I went comatose for a while and everyone's stepped out?"
Yusuke paused, thinking about it for a second. He couldn't recall losing consciousness at any point during or after the fight, except for when he laid down in his own bed, at his own apartment, to sleep. It wasn't particularly logical for him to think he'd been in a coma. Especially since, with a glance towards a nearby calendar, it was only the day after the fight. But no other explanations were leaping into his head. Except maybe Genkai kidnapped him for some unknown reason and then left. Which made less since than the coma line of logic. Had Grandma tried to date rape him?
Yusuke shuddered visibly. That line of thought was not worth considering.
He continued to wander down the hallway, still confused.
"Has that photo always been there?" Yusuke asked himself aloud. Genkai's place had always been barren in terms of sentimentalities. But there on the wall was a photograph of her and Toguro. Nothing wrong with that, he supposed. Once upon a time, they'd been pretty close friends. Although, you know, he did kill her eventually. And then he'd tried to kill Yusuke. So, maybe there was something wrong with that. It was weird, at the very least, to see Toguro smiling, sans shades, looking young and happy. Genkai's hair was more pink than bubblegum, and Toguro didn't look demonic at all.
So I'm probably not in a main hallway then, Yusuke surmised. I've never seen that photo before. I must be in some weird part of the house. It's so damn big... This must be one of those hide-it-away-in-a-corner type photos. Wait. Did they even have cameras back in Grandma's day?
Yusuke expected to eventually find some place that he remembered, some place that didn't have odd photographs on the wall. He was only half satisfied. The more he walked, the more he remembered these hallways as the main hallways. But the more he walked, the more weird photos he saw.
The photograph next to the young Genkai and Toguro was undoubtedly more weird. Probably due to the fact that Toguro was wearing a fancy looking suit, and Genkai was wearing a white dress. Like a wedding dress. But that couldn't have been possible because Genkai wasn't married. And definitely not to Toguro. It didn't matter how damn official that dress and the matching veil and the bouquet of flowers in her hands looked. Genkai was an old, unmarried hag, in the nicest sense of the word. She was too busy living in the middle of nowhere and randomly kicking ass to have gone and gotten married.
On the other hand, the photo did look legit.
"Grandma... got married," Yusuke sputtered. "Is that one of those 'What happens in Vegas' type stories? Or...?" Yusuke didn't know how to finish "Or..." and so he remained silent, transfixed on the image before him. His mind was forced through a new series of hypothetical situations as his eyes caught hold of the new photograph, which showed Genkai and Toguro together with a young boy, probably three or four years old. He had dark hair and was wearing a green shirt and blue jean shorts. The little guy looked oddly familiar. Genkai and Toguro were a little older in this photo, though still at least forty younger than Yusuke had ever seen them.
But the next photograph sent his head spinning. Probably because he could recognize himself as the little boy. He was younger here, about six or seven, with a broad grin on his face, wearing a crisp looking gi. Toguro stood next to him, probably about forty, smiling just as broadly.
Yusuke would later consider not passing out right then there and then his proudest moment in life.
With that photo, more came. All of which included him in some form or fashion.
And for a split second, a new explanation crossed into his head.
I'm Genkai and Toguro's son.
But that was just like suggesting that Kuwabara's cat, Eikichi, had drugged him and dragged him out here. And then gotten on Photoshop and printed out these images on the wall.
Somewhere, some place, there was a perfectly logical reason for all of this...
He just had to find that "somewhere" and "some place."
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Throughout the entire house, there seemed to be no trace of Genkai. Meaning that, for now, he wasn't going to be getting any answers. Apart from himself, the temple was empty.
Yusuke had figured that out about two hours ago. And that fact hadn't changed.
Now Yusuke was seated on the floor of the living room, game controller in hand, watching Liu Kang beat the hell out of Shang Tsung.
"Finish him," the game commanded.
"What are the buttons for the flaming death thing?" Yusuke asked. No one answered him of course, going back to the Empty House point. He gave his best shot at the buttons, hoping he'd luck out.
For all the dumb luck Yusuke had had in the past, there wasn't a stroke of it here. After a difficult match, Shang Tsung fell with one punch.
"Dammit," Yusuke swore. "Kurama always remembers the buttons..." He and Kuwabara never had any luck at that matter, however.
He switched the console off and pulled out the cartridge. Opening a nearby cabinet, he replaced the cartridge and fooled around, trying to find something else to do. It felt like he'd played every video game here twice, which was, of course, untrue. Genkai had enough video games to satisfy the needs of even the hungriest gamers.
His fingers landed across a dusty looking VHS tape instead. After a little bit more inspection, Yusuke found it to be the only one within the drawer. He blew across its top and read its title.
Family Memories.
Even though it was several hallways away, Yusuke felt as though he could see Genkai's portraits right in front of him. A wedding. A little boy, himself. Him sitting on Toguro's shoulders...
He shuddered, thinking of what kind of horror movie he must be holding in his hand. But, like most teenagers, he was two things. One, nosy. And two, an avid fan of horror movies.
"Be kind, please rewind," Yusuke muttered, rolling his eyes as he popped the tape into the VCR and re-wound it. Whoever had watched it last had left it at the very end of playback.
Genkai's VCR seemed to be more adept at rewinding than his own (his took about ten minutes, it felt like, to rewind a thirty minute tape), and soon Yusuke was able to press play.
A few minutes later, he really wished he hadn't.
He really wished he hadn't.
The tape began with the sound of noisemakers, the kind you find at a birthday party. And there was some little kid, who, Yusuke realized, a nervous lump forming in his throat, must have been him.
The little guy looked plenty happy, eyes bright and smiling like there was no tomorrow. It felt embarrassing, watching himself so young and vulnerable. So innocent. You could tell by the way his fingers were fat and small that he'd never thrown a punch before or anything.
Not that babies were supposed to go around knocking people out.
Though it would be kind of amusing if they did, Yusuke thought. And it definitely seemed like the sort of the thing that he, as some sort of Mazoku baby, should have been doing.
The miniature Yusuke was wearing a yellow party hat and reaching for one of the noisemakers. "Give me," little Yusuke said, his speech barely coherent in a mess of toddler jumble. The noisemaker little Yusuke was reaching for happened to be in someone else's mouth.
In Toguro's mouth.
Yusuke, the Yusuke who wasn't on screen, spluttered. This tape was moving, digital reinforcement of the photo he'd seen on the wall. Well, not the exact photo, but the idea behind it. You know, the whole paternal Toguro idea.
It was freaky, to say the least.
"Alright, little guy," Toguro said. And his voice sounded gentle and fatherly, like he was going to start cooing at any moment. He removed the noisemaker from his mouth and handed it to Yusuke, who gave a victory coo.
At first attempt to use the noisemaker, little Yusuke inserted it into his mouth the wrong way. After several big puffs of air, there was no satisfying noise to reward him. He started to get frustrated, and, with the way toddler's emotions go, was soon on the verge of tears.
"C'mon, Yuu-chan," a new, female voice said gently. The camera was placed, most likely, on the table, and the angle changed. What before had been a wider shot of Yusuke and Toguro turned into a shot solely of Yusuke. A hand, probably belonging to the female voice, turned the toy around and placed it properly in Yusuke's mouth.
A newly joyful Yusuke drew a large breath and released what was, to him, a delightful sound. He started laughing and the noisemaker fell from his lips. It was the world's funniest joke, apparently, as the little guy was soon caught up in his own giggles.
Little Yusuke eventually regained his ability to breathe and stop laughing, though he was still smiling broadly. "Cake," Yusuke said. "Cake, cake, cake," he chanted.
"What's the magic word, Yusuke?"
"Peas?" Yusuke tried, leaving out the 'L' in a way that Keiko would have deemed "completely adorable." Soon, the space in front of Yusuke, on his high chair, included a tiny piece of white cake.
Yusuke dipped a finger into it, covering one digit with icing and rainbow sprinkles. "Mmm," he said, testing it. His next attempt at consumption wasn't as petite, and he involved his entire hand in the cake eating process. The majority of what he gathered was smeared around his mouth.
Both Toguro and the female voice were laughing. And Yusuke, although he clearly didn't get what they were laughing at, joined in as well. His laughter was downright infectious.
Of course, you can't really infect yourself with something, so the present day Yusuke was just standing there, agape. If he'd started laughing now, he probably wouldn't stop until sedated and in a straitjacket. This…wasn't happening.
The camera on the table was readjusted, and soon both Yusuke and the source of the female voice were on camera. Genkai.
God, he should have known it. The voice sounded somewhat like her, though, again, it sounded younger. And the pictures should've led him to know it was her, but...
And then Genkai lifted Yusuke from his high chair, drawing him to her chest. The camera zoomed in. "I love you, Yuu-chan," she said.
"Lub you, mama," Yusuke replied.
And Yusuke stopped the tape. He couldn't take anymore. He was going to lose it...
"You're not crazy, Yusuke," he began to mutter to himself. In hindsight, muttering to himself wasn't doing anything to help the possibility of his insanity.
He backed into the wall slowly, beginning to feel sick. What was going on? He just wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep until it all went back to normal. It felt like the walls were spinning, but Yusuke knew it was just his head. And whatever the hell was left of his sanity.
"So you're a little crazy, but you're not crazy enough to think up all of this," Yusuke said, changing his mantra. He could only repeat this once, though, because it was somewhat more lengthy than his previous saying.
His body slid down the wall until he was left in a sitting position. His mind was blank.
Or at least it was until an explosion of sound came from behind him.
"HAPPY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY!"
This was met with Yusuke's own cry of "WHAT THE FUCK?"
Yusuke quickly turned, facing the source of the noise. It looked like the couple in the picture, otherwise known as Genkai and Toguro. They were both smiling broadly at him, each holding a present in their hand.
It was some of the weirdest shit Yusuke had ever seen.
He calmed for a second, remembering briefly that he'd already been eighteen. Hadn't he? Yes, he had. He'd celebrated that birthday with Keiko, right? Not too long after he'd gotten back from Demon World. And she'd given him... a special present.
Not elaborating, thought Yusuke, giving a broad, mental grin. This brief distraction was ended quickly as he remembered exactly how strange the nature of the situation he was in was.
"Language, son," Toguro chided.
Son, Yusuke wanted to splutter. He relinquished the urge to do so, however, as he let shock continue to be his driving force.
"Wasn't expecting..." Yusuke said stupidly. He wasn't exactly sure how to finish that line, considering the fact that he hadn't been expecting any of what was happening right now.
"Us to jump out at you?" Genkai asked. "It was his idea, and the fact that you didn't expect it is pretty obvious."
Yusuke laughed nervously. They were walking closer to him now, and for some strange reason Yusuke wanted to run. What had happened to the world? Genkai and Toguro were looking on at him with...love and happiness, essentially. That "it's your special day" feeling was trying to force itself into the room, against Yusuke's will. Like some kind of emotion rapist. It was not his birthday.
Yusuke slowly got to his feet. The question he wanted to ask, you know, "What the hell is going on?", refused to come out.
"This way," Toguro said, motioning towards him. "We made lunch for you."
"Sorry about breakfast, Yusuke," Genkai said. "There were a few last minute details we had to straighten, involving the dojo."
Yusuke said nothing. He followed, figuring that, whatever strange dream this was, because it had to be some lengthy, awkward, detailed dream that just felt really real, he probably wouldn't meet harm by it. Mental scarring, yes. That part had already happened. But would he die? He doubted it. And even if he did, it wasn't like it would be a new experience for him. They say the third time's the charm, after all.
Three pairs of footsteps, Yusuke's, Genkai's, and Toguro's, continued onwards down the hallway. Finally, as they neared closer and closer towards the kitchen, Yusuke's voice began to return to him.
"So, what's going—?" Yusuke's question died on his lips as he saw the feast laid out in front of him.
Tempura, chicken katsu, crab sunomono, blue fin sushi, traditional cucumber rolls, piles of rice, and chichi dango.
The crab alone had him sold.
Questions, Yusuke decided, could come later. Or at least after he'd gotten himself a plate full of food.
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Small talk had been awkward.
Well, in Yusuke's mind it had been. Or maybe it just made him feel like cringing. Everything seemed to flow between Genkai and Toguro, but Yusuke felt like a sore thumb.
He couldn't bring himself to have a civil, mind-numbing conversation with Toguro, because... Well, damn, he'd never done it before. And Genkai, this dream Genkai, was different. Apart from physically younger, caught somewhere between her youthful persona and the stage that Yusuke knew her at now, she was also... softer.
Yeah, she still seemed caustic and edgy, but her personality was different. She seemed to give into sentimentality nearly as much as she gave into sarcasm.
Which, in Yusuke's mind, was friggin' insane.
But he didn't say anything. After the crab had disappeared into his stomach, he worked on the blue fin, and after the blue fin there was still the chicken, and so on and so forth.
In fact, as Yusuke was reaching the end of his plate's contents, he lost his opportunity to say anything at all.
"Eighteen," Toguro said, pushing his plate forward in a way that signaled a transition from casual conversation to serious business. "You've been alive on this Earth for eighteen years now, Yusuke."
"Yea, me," Yusuke said flatly.
"If only we could've had you for all eighteen," Toguro said.
Yusuke didn't even bother feeling confused, or, more confused. Maybe this was an explanation, finally. Toguro had come back from the dead, gotten hitched with Genkai, who'd taken like, shit loads of Botox or something, and kidnapped him in order to play happy family. They'd probably drugged him and made him sign a contract somewhere along the way, too. A guarantee that he wouldn't sue them for mental damages…
"You're going to...?" Genkai asked, her question unfinished as she looked intently at Toguro.
Toguro's response was a nod.
"Son, for a long time there's been something that we've been meaning to tell you," Toguro said, his gaze focused upon Yusuke.
He was never going to get used to Toguro calling him 'son.' He just wasn't. Contract be damned.
Toguro now broke his gaze with his "son," to look towards Genkai.
Genkai spoke, "Eighteen years ago, when you were born... I wasn't the one to give birth to you."
The situation was growing weirder by the second. Yusuke wanted to ask Genkai why the hell she though that he thought that she was the one to give birth to him. Complicated wording for a simple enough question. But he couldn't get the question to come out of his mouth.
Instead...
"W-what?" Yusuke asked. The follow questions of: "Why the hell would I think that you did?" and "I just finished eating, could you please change the subject?" didn't quite come out.
"I... This may be difficult for you to understand, Yusuke, but... Biologically. I'm not," Genkai glanced at Toguro quickly. "We're not..."
Yusuke stared at the both of them, hoping that something would happen in the very near future that gave him a clue as to what the hell was going on.
From his pocket, Toguro extracted a photograph of a young woman with brown hair. She had the unhealthy, yet lively look of a hardcore party girl.
"Atsuko," Yusuke said, staring at the photo. What was Toguro doing carrying around a photo of his mom? Had the final threshold of weirdness just been crossed? God, he hoped this wasn't going to get any worse.
Genkai and Toguro both looked a bit startled at this. They didn't acknowledge what was on their minds, though, and they continued on.
"Yusuke, son, this is your biological mother, your birth mother. Urameshi Atsuko was her name," Toguro said. "You're adopted."
The line was so classic, "you're adopted," that Yusuke kind of wanted to laugh, in a sick way. He vaguely remembered being six or seven and wishing that Atsuko wasn't his real mother. His real parents were the Yukimura's and Keiko was his sister, or something like that.
Of course, nowadays, he was quite glad that Keiko was not his sister. (Again, Yusuke remembered his eighteenth birthday surprise...) And he was fond of his mother, even though she could've done a better job in raising him.
Apparently, Genkai and Toguro had been expecting for a reaction with more grandeur. Yusuke's face remained blank for several moments.
"I don't understand," Yusuke said slowly. Because honestly, he hadn't had a damn clue what was going on for the past few hours.
"You were a little over two years old when you went into the foster care system. Your mother, Atsuko, couldn't take care of you any longer. She had drinking problems, and you... you weren't attended to in the way that you should've been."
Toguro gritted his teeth, in a protective sort of way. Yusuke surmised that he must've remembered a situation where Atsuko had neglected Yusuke. Negligence be damned, Yusuke was way more concerned about Toguro's aggression over his well-being.
It was just wrong. Attempted homicide trumped negligence any day, right? And hadn't that been the gist of the finals of the Dark Tournament?
Genkai picked up the story from here on out. "Being a girl that does martial arts apparently sucks when you're trying to have children, and... Your father and I decided that the only way for kids was to adopt. We got you out of foster care only a few months after you'd entered it."
"Oh," Yusuke said. It was all he could get out. There was a lot more he wanted to say, but he didn't know where to start. This could not be real. Because if this was real, if he wasn't just having some kind of crazy, hyper-sensitive dream, then he was going to lose his mind. "Any moment now," Yusuke said, staring at both Genkai and Toguro blankly, "I will wake up. And none of this will have happened. Right?"
This reaction seemed to be one that Genkai and Toguro had feared. They exchanged looks and began a rapid-fire conversation in hushed tones. Their voices weren't so low, however, that Yusuke couldn't interpret what they were saying. It was a collection of "I knew we shouldn't have told him"'s and "Disbelief is a defense mechanism that lets him deal"'s.
But the more they talked and argued about whether or not they should've told him "the truth," the more his chest constricted. The more he felt like panicking over the entire situation. The more his teeth gritted against each other, and a vain in his forehead, one he'd never recognized before, felt like it was going to pop.
Even as the conversation between Genkai and Toguro died and Toguro turned to face him, Yusuke still felt distressed.
"Son—," Toguro began.
And that one word, that one friggin' word, caused Yusuke to explode.
"I... I can't deal with this!" Yusuke shouted. "You're not my mother, and you sure as hell aren't my father. What the fuck is going on? I don't get it..."
This was another reaction that Genkai and Toguro seemed to have feared and anticipated.
"How is this all even possible? Yesterday was normal but this... I don't understand."
He had stood up from the table now. When he had risen, Yusuke was unsure of. And he wasn't entirely sure of what his next actions would be. Though he was fairly certain that storming off would be one of them. So he did so.
Yusuke left the compound with no further words. Distantly, he could hear Genkai calling after him, and Toguro telling her that she "had to let him go." That she had to let him deal.
Everything here felt so familiar and yet so friggin' foreign.
How had his life been turned upside down like this? Was this some kind of sick, elaborate joke? Who the hell was messing with him?
Find me, then defeat me.
He heard the voice like it was a distant memory, lacking in clarity or even the certainty that it was real. And then it came flooding back to him.
How shitty could his memory get? It had only been yesterday. Warudo had been lying on the ground, dying, and he'd said...
"Soon I'll be quite dead to this world. This world. But you haven't really won, Yusuke Urameshi... Assemble each key player... find me, then defeat me."
All that talk of "this world…"
"An alternate dimension," Yusuke decided upon suddenly. He was walking down the long flight of stairs that led both up to and away from Genkai's property. The words felt foolish as they left his mouth.
Koenma had said that Warudo was rumored to have the power of controlling time and space. But then Kurama had said that the chances were virtually zero that a demon with that kind of power could exist. They were just supposed to stop Warudo from creating chaos on Earth, not from creating a new dimension.
But...
But if it wasn't Warudo, then what could it be? There was no other theory in his mind, no other possible explanation. He'd been pondering the subject for hours now, and nothing had come to him that made a lick of sense. Nothing until now. Nothing until Warudo. It had to be true.
Yet the idea was so mind boggling and troublesome.
Yusuke reached the bottom of the stairs and paused. His mind felt murky and covered in thoughts about Warudo and the possibilities of alternative dimensions. He shook his head.
"I am not in another dimension. I'm Yusuke Urameshi, not Yusuke Toguro. My mom might not know the first thing about parenting, but I still live with her. I'm only Genkai's student, not her adopted son. And I killed Toguro, so there's no way he can be my adoptive father. Or Genkai's husband."
Yusuke paused. "Right?" he asked himself.
He didn't feel very sure of anything anymore.
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Notes:
1 - Mortal Kombat
I'm totally humming the theme song right now, but anyways... This isn't so much a note so much as a confession. I couldn't remember the finishing moves, so I watched a video on YouTube with all of them (nostalgia). However, since there are tons of different versions of Mortal Kombat, I'm not sure which version Yusuke should be playing to have timeline accuracy. But then I realized that this story, this clearly AU story, doesn't have a timeline... Also, I'm not sure if I got/described Lui Kang's finishing move correctly. It was purposefully vague but even then...
2 - The Birthday Party Video Tape Scene
That scene was like, the worst to write. I felt incredibly weird writing it. And when I re-read the chapter before I uploaded, I couldn't even review that scene again. So I'm extremely sorry if there are errors or anything in it. Did anyone not feel weird reading that?
3 – The Condition Genkai's Talking About
If you exercise too much, you can stop getting your period due to a condition called amenorrhea.