A/N: "What You Will" was the original title for "Twelfth Night".
Chapter 33: What You Will
"I think I already know what you're going to say to me. And whilst I know that you are justified in saying it, I just want you to know that I already know it, and everyone else has already said it to me. And I'm sorry."
Yusuke snorted.
"If you're sorry, then obviously you don't know what I need to say," he said.
"But I do," Yukina insisted. "And I am. Sorry. I am sorry."
"Okay here's how I see it: when we went on this stupid mission for Koenma, some pretty major shit happened. First, me, Kuwabara and Kurama all got a virus that should have killed us. Then I got an arrow shot through my leg. Then I got the crap squeezed out of me by Fabio's dumb tree. Then a bunch of stuff happened with your crazy ancestors but then we went to spirit world, and I had to open that second gate."
Yukina blinked up at Yusuke, but he continued forcing her along at a pace that was, for her at least, somewhere between a brisk walk and a jog, and he kept his face forwards, never once looking at her. He looked determined, but also slightly bored – which was not much help in gauging his mood or meaning, since that was his usual, default expression in any situation.
"I know I caused you a lot of trouble, Yusuke," Yukina said carefully. "But I am still so grateful that you helped me free my people, that we were able to give them a choice, and that some of them actually chose to help, to liberate themselves–"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah," Yusuke cut her off. "Look my point is this: Genkai taught me that the important thing about teamwork is understanding that there's no "me" in team… Though when you think about it, there sort of is, because you can't spell "team" without "M" or "E"… Anyway, the old lady said a team was only as good as the people in it, and that a team could only work as a team if every person in the team understood what everyone else could do. And, y'know, I guess that's why Koenma put me with Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei – we understand each other and we work well as a team. Well, maybe Hiei and Kuwabara don't really understand each other, but they work well because they know each other's powers, right?"
Yukina shook her head, her hair scratching against Yusuke's armpit.
"And Genkai also said sometimes when I failed at something I should stop and think about what happened and why I failed," Yusuke continued regardless. "And last night, I got to thinking about the mission we just did, and I don't think I failed this time. You see?"
"I'm sorry, no," Yukina quietly replied.
"I thought about how that mission would have gone if Hiei hadn't been sick, if he'd come with us instead of you, or how things would have been if it had just been me, Kurama and Kuwabara, and it made me realise something: all the shit that happened would still have happened anyway."
"…Well, maybe without Hiei, your team wouldn't have stormed Illyria and stopped the auction. And maybe even with Hiei you wouldn't have done that."
"No, it's not like that. Think about it. With or without Hiei, it still would have been the same: we got sick as soon as we went to demon world – Kurama probably would've gotten worse first, because he went to demon world first to investigate the virus – and I still would have been shot in the leg, only now I'd have a hole there, and Fabio's tree still would have caught me, only this time it might have broken more than just one of my ribs, because I would have been real sick by then. Do you get me now?"
"No. Should I?"
"Gees Yukina, it's no wonder Kuwabara couldn't seal the deal with you!"
"What?"
"I'm trying to tell you important stuff here!"
"And I'm trying to listen…"
"Okay, so how about this: if you hadn't come on the mission with us, the virus might have killed all three of us – especially Kurama, who caught it first – and I would have been limping around because I had a hole in my leg and then Fabio's tree would have crushed me to death. Our team only worked this time because you were a part of it. You were the "T" and the "A" in this team."
"Excuse me?"
"Well, Genkai said there's no "me" in team, but there is, so I guess what she really meant was that the important part of a team is the "T" and "A", which, this time, was you. You brought the "T" and "A" to our team, and that was actually pretty cool."
Yukina yelped as, a few seconds after he had finished speaking, Yusuke stumbled to a halt, roughly recovering his arm from around her shoulder. She watched as he rubbed at his chin and squinted up at the sky as though deep in thought.
"Wait a minute…" he said slowly. ""T" and "A"? Oh, now I get it! It's because you're a girl! "T" and "A"! Why didn't I get that before?"
Yukina gave Yusuke a look he would normally have received from her brother, but he failed to notice her pains.
"I knew the old lady was just making fun of me when she gave me that whole "no me in team" crap…" he muttered.
"There's no "I" in team," Yukina said.
"Well obviously not!" Yusuke scoffed. "That would be teami! Hm, Teami… That sounds like a good name for a stripper…"
"Yusuke, Genkai told us there is no "I" in team," Yukina patiently replied. "It's one of those wordplay lessons taught to help you remember an important point about the word in question: the letter "I" isn't in the word team, but also you can't effectively work in a team if you only think about yourself, so, in order to gain a team mentality, you can't think of "I"."
"Right…"
"Do you understand now?"
"Sure."
"Really?"
"…I prefer my explanation. I brought the "me" and you brought the "T" and "A"."
Yukina sighed quietly.
"Is that a veiled compliment?" she asked.
"A what?" Yusuke echoed. "Gees, you've been spending so much time around Kurama, you're starting to sound like him! Look, I just meant that we couldn't have done that mission without you. And I guess if you had come to us the first day Koenma told us about the mission and asked to be a part of the team, we never would have let you. I see why you had to do what you did – though, you know, you could have done a few things a bit better, like not used all that girly shampoo, and you could have been a bit less creepy about some of the other things, like stuffing your pants with Kuwabara's socks."
"The shampoo was necessary," Yukina explained. "With Kurama's keen sense of smell, every time I sweated – which was most of the time – I risked him recognising my scent. Or if not recognising me, at least realising that my scent was not Hiei's."
"I never thought about that. I guess you really covered all the bases then, huh?"
"I had to."
"No, I get that. It's cool."
"It is?"
"Well, no, you're still a twisted little bitch who gets her kicks out of dressing up in drag and acting like Hiei, but I get why you did it. I never thought you could fight – though that thing Kurama said about how ice maidens fight defensively instead of offensively totally makes sense to me now, because I see now that's what you were doing the whole time. You stopped arrows and energy attacks with barriers and you turned water to ice and you healed yourself as quickly as you got hurt. That's pretty smart. I thought maybe "fighting defensively" sounded kinda lame and weak, but you made it work. Twelve days ago, if you'd said to me that you'd be saving my life time and time again, I never would have believed you. But you did, Yukina. You cured me of the virus, you sniffed out those wood nymphs, you repaired that hole in my leg, you killed Fabio's stupid tree before it did any serious damage to me or Kuwabara, and you – unlike Kuwabara and Koenma, and Hiei if he had been there – didn't go around telling people about what happened at the second gate in spirit world."
Yukina made to answer him but Yusuke held up a hand to stop her.
"I know you spoke to Keiko about it, but you only did that after you knew she already found out," he added. "I don't think you would have told her if she didn't already know, and that's cool too."
Yukina nodded, though she still felt strangely separated from the conversation: the last thing she had been expecting that day was that anyone would be kind to her and treat her as an equal, least of all Yusuke.
"And you're not rude and selfish like Hiei," Yusuke continued, shrugging his shoulders and watching his feet as he kicked a pebble across the forest path. "And because of that whole paper bag thing you do, you don't cry all the time like normal girls, which is also quite cool. I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe our team needs a little "T" and "A" sometimes, yeah?"
Yukina started to frown, her chest buzzing as an array of emotions began fizzing up inside of her.
"We can't always find Hiei when we need him, but we always know where you are," he said. "So maybe sometimes you could come with us on a mission Yukina."
"You mean that?" Yukina asked, her voice straining against the growing tenseness in her throat.
"Sure, why not?" Yusuke replied.
"You really mean that?"
"Yeah… Hey, are you okay?"
"Oh Yusuke!"
Yusuke grunted as Yukina threw herself at him. She was not really sure how he would react or feel about her grabbing him into a clinging embrace, but she was past caring.
"Hey, it's cool," he said, sounding a little awkward. "For a girl – and especially for a girl from that weird ass ice rock in the sky – you do okay, kid."
He patted her a little roughly on the head and she took a few calming breaths before releasing him and taking a step back.
"You're not gonna cry, are you?" he asked her in a low voice.
She shook her head.
"Damn it!" he muttered.
"What?" she echoed, her almost tearful eyes drying in an instant.
"Well, y'know, Hokushin stopped by last night, and he said Kokou is kinda pissed about us using up her supply of super-powered booze," Yusuke quietly replied. "And she's saying the cost of replacing it all is more money than a guy like me could easily get his hands on…"
Yukina narrowed her eyes at him and he grinned nervously.
"Hey, I wasn't trying to make you cry," he quickly assured her. "But hey, if Kokou or any of Enki's staff comes asking after me, you haven't seen me, right?"
Yukina managed a smile and Yusuke visibly relaxed.
"So that was part one," he said. "And now it's time for part two."
"Part two?" she asked.
"Yeah. This way."
Yusuke nodded his head towards a small side path through the trees and Yukina followed him, having to break into a sprint as he quickened his pace. She tried calling after him and asking him to slow down but he did not respond and so she focused her energy on chasing after him – but unfortunately she was no match for his top speed, and she shortly lost sight of him amongst the trees. She kept going forwards regardless, eventually breaking free of the trees and crossing a short expanse of coarse, spiky grass that gave way to the pale sands of the beach. Yukina slowed to a halt and looked about herself curiously, eventually seeing a flash of movement in the distance that she just had time to make out as Yusuke's retreating form before he disappeared into the trees once more. She sighed and started after him, only to stumble to a halt at the sound of a familiar voice.
"He only meant for you to follow him this far."
Yukina turned to the source of the voice, silently wondering how she had managed to overlook him before that moment – from where she stood she could only see the back of his head, but he was unmistakable regardless.
"Don't you have anything to say to me?"
Yukina gulped and slowly approached the bleached chunk of driftwood Kurama was sitting behind.
"Or do you require the security and ambiguity of an elaborate disguise to converse with me?"
Yukina moved around the end of what had clearly once been the trunk of a large tree, where she could clearly see Kurama sitting, his back resting against the driftwood and his legs resting straight out in front of him. He was holding a seashell in one hand, his head tilted downwards as his eyes studied it. He was dressed in a pair of chinos that she had often seen him wear, and she once more found her eyes lingering on the slight tightness of the material around the tops of his legs, a subtle reminder of the muscular thighs they concealed. She gulped and tried to distract herself from that thought, but did not need to look far for a welcome distraction as she noticed that he was also wearing a deep red poloneck sweater that looked worryingly like one of those they had bought in the underground in their attempts to disguise the ice maidens.
"Sit down," Kurama said, throwing the shell aside and lifting his head.
He turned his head, his eyes moving to Yukina, who tensed slightly as he once more regarded her with the same darkened look he had been giving her ever since his untimely conversation with Botan the morning before. She hated it and it pained her more than she would ever dare admit out loud, but she obeyed his instruction regardless and moved closer to him, sitting down at his side on the sand, copying his position, resting her back against the driftwood and stretching her legs out; but she was sure to keep a respectable distance from him, sitting almost the length of her own arm from his side.
"You've done an incredibly stupid, reckless, irresponsible thing these past eleven days," he said once she was settled at his side. "Are you even aware of the potential danger you put not only yourself, but everyone else around you, in?"
Yukina nodded silently.
"And you didn't foresee any of those dangers or problems prior to what you did?" Kurama continued.
Yukina paused, looking away from him for a moment as she gave his question serious consideration.
"I didn't expect it to be easy," she eventually answered, meeting his eyes again. "But I didn't expect it to be as difficult as it was. And I never intended to maintain the lie, least of all as long as I did. I just wanted to get to Hiei and help him. And I did try to tell you the truth, many times, but…"
"But you didn't," Kurama finished for her.
"I'm sorry Kurama."
"Kurama?"
Yukina paused, unsure how to interpret the odd look Kurama was giving her.
"After spending eleven days travelling across the three worlds with me you think yourself so familiar with me now that you no longer need to call me "Mister" Kurama?" he asked.
Yukina gave a small gasp and blushed, at first feeling embarrassed by his question; but humiliation quickly gave way to pessimism as she truly considered the implications of what he had just said.
"I just got accustomed to greeting everyone in a more informal manner when I was pretending to be Hiei," she explained. "But you're right, it was presumptuous and ill-mannered of me. You all treated me so differently when you thought I was a fighter, I suppose I thought you all had started to see me as…"
"As an equal?"
"As a person."
Kurama nodded.
"Are you aware of the difficulties your little game caused for everyone else around you?" he asked.
Yukina nodded.
"Lord Koenma told me he should have arrested me for what I did," she said.
"Do you know what spirit world prison is like?" Kurama asked. "It's a terrible place. Just ask your brother. You are lucky Koenma has decided to be lenient. But you should know that, after the trouble you have caused for him, he won't be so lenient if you try anything similar any time soon."
Yukina nodded solemnly.
"And Botan told me Lord Koenma was angry because she let me get the book," she continued. "And she told me I may have ruined your friendship with Hiei – which I very much hope isn't true."
Yukina waited for Kurama to correct her, but he remained silent and continued watching her with the same look on his face, and so she continued.
"And Hiei told me I was reckless, and Kuwabara seemed so sad when we spoke and Yusuke… Spoke to me about the assets I brought to the team…"
Yukina touched a finger to her lips, the vague idea that what she had just said was inadvertently a double entendre passing through her mind – and the fact that she even recognised that was, surely, a sign that she had spent too much time around Yusuke, she thought to herself.
"Good," Kurama said. "If Koenma, Botan and Hiei have already expressed some of my concerns, it saves me the bother of going over them again with you now."
Yukina snapped back to attention.
"Sh-should I leave now?" she asked.
"No," Kurama replied. "I said they'd only expressed some of my concerns, not all of them. There's still the little matter of those illustrations and writings you hide under your bed and the things you did and said around me during the last eleven days."
"Oh," Yukina said, her eyes lowering to the sand between them.
"I have spent a good deal of my time, both last night and this morning, rehashing our exchanges in demon world, and I've come to realise quite a lot that I never knew about you before. For example, do you remember what you said you me while you were under the influence of the poitin?"
Yukina turned her head from Kurama, looking out across the sea with wide eyes as panic began to set in.
"I'll take your silence to mean the answer is no," Kurama said after she did not respond within an almost uncomfortable length of time. "You told me about what happened to you when you returned to the ice village. At the time you told the story, I thought you were Hiei, and the events you explained seemed unreasonable: whilst I don't doubt that the women of your village would have done such a thing to Hiei, I do doubt that Hiei would have endured it as long as you did, or with a burning desire to be welcomed back amongst the ice maiden clan. I didn't know you had become so unwelcome, such an outcast in your own home. All those things Tsubara said to you, she knew she was addressing you Yukina, didn't she? Did you tell her or did she have a way of seeing through your disguise?"
"I told her," Yukina quietly replied, feeling strangely numb inside again. "I told them all. They didn't trust us because we were men. They didn't trust me because I was an emiko they had already ousted from their society. I revealed myself to them because I thought I might regain their trust. When I heard Rikka saying to you, back when we first rescued her from the troll and his henchmen, that she thought you were a woman disguised as a man, it made me realise that nothing had changed. They still tell the children the same stories. Most of the adults still believe those stories. I only know better myself because I escaped the confines of the village and met different people from different cultures. But… Telling them who I really was didn't help as much as I thought it might. Even then only some of them trusted me."
"You stood alongside them and fought with them as we fled Dardani, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"I see. But there is one thing I don't quite understand: after what they did to you when you returned to the ice village, why did you still feel any need to protect the ice maidens from what was happening to them?"
"They aren't all bad. And even if they were, I'd still have done it to save Miss Rui, the children and grandma."
Kurama gave Yukina a fleeting, suspicious look.
"She's not really my grandmother," Yukina explained, assuming the look he had given her was a questioning one. "We all call her that anyway. And, for the record, she did actually see through my disguise."
"I thought perhaps the eccentricity was genetic," Kurama muttered.
"What?" Yukina echoed.
"So when you first decided to take such drastic measures to imitate Hiei, your only intention was to get us to escort you to the real Hiei so that you could cure him of the virus?" Kurama asked.
"Yes," she replied, forgetting his earlier remark.
"You had no other motive?"
"No."
"It didn't seem that way. You seemed determined to prove yourself to us."
"That wasn't why I did it – but as Hiei, I was able to tell you that I don't like it that you all think I'm weak and defenceless."
"You said and did a lot of things under your disguise you might never have otherwise said or done."
"I suppose that's true. I suppose I was still scared of the consequences of admitting many of the things that I did."
"You were always aware that we would one day discover that it had been you, and not Hiei, saying and doing those things, weren't you?"
"Yes. I always intended to tell the truth as soon as I was sure that Hiei was safe."
"Then you don't regret anything you revealed about yourself or your feelings?"
"No. Do you?"
Kurama turned to meet Yukina's eyes, his expression stern and unchanging.
"You called me shallow. You said I was unfeeling," she said, forcing herself to keep her eyes on his despite wanting to look away as his face remained unchanged. "Do you regret saying that now that you've been proven wrong?"
"No," Kurama replied.
Yukina felt a deep pain in her chest and that horrible sensation of the threat of tears, which, upon learned instinct, she fought to contain with all her might.
"It was what I thought of your race and of you at the time, I can't regret expressing something I thought was correct at the time that I said it," Kurama continued.
"So… Do you still believe it to be true?" Yukina managed to ask him before she was once more forced to hold her breath to contain her emotions.
"No," he replied. "And it's perhaps only fair to tell you that I thought that of you and your kind, but I never truly believed it. Just as you have been taught to hold back your tears and distrust men, fox demons have their own questionable traditions, and one of them is that we convince ourselves that the ice maidens we hunt don't suffer from what we do to them. I only ever hunted ice maidens once, and if I had stopped to think for even a second that I might be causing them any emotional distress, I never could have felt the urge to do so again."
"Oh. Well, that's, um, nice to know."
"You also expressed a lot of interest in my life as Shuichi, living in this realm. Do you really understand my commitment to this life?"
Yukina shook her head, silently relieved at the slight change in both the topic of discussion and Kurama's tone, as both were helping her relax and forget about her own sorrow.
"My human mother saved my life and nurtured me back to health," Kurama said. "I owe her a great debt of gratitude for that. I can't ever tell her what she has done for me or how grateful I am, and so I have chosen to repay her the only way I know how: I will be the son she wants, because I know that brings her joy. I am committed to live in living world as Shuichi until my mother passes on. That ought to still be thirty or so years from now. Do you understand that, in that time, this body I possess will age like any other human?"
Yukina nodded.
"Do you also understand that, when my mother does pass, I will leave living world and return to demon world?"
Yukina nodded again.
"I will return as Yoko. Do you understand that?"
Yukina paused.
"You say only so many of your clan were willing to trust you again after all you've done, but do you think any of them – even your good friend Rui – would look upon you kindly if you took a fox demon as a lover?"
"I-I don't know," Yukina faintly replied. "I hadn't thought of that."
"I didn't think you had," Kurama said. "It seems that forward planning isn't a strong point in your family. Your mother didn't think ahead when she laid down with Hiei's father, your brother never plans anything and you are showing signs of being equally as thoughtless."
"If I wasn't an ice maiden, o-or if you weren't a fox demon, would that change how you feel?"
Kurama's eyebrows shot up as though she had said something surprisingly, and Yukina became a little embarrassed as she tried to think of anything controversial she may have inadvertently said.
"Our backgrounds aren't the most pressing issue here," he said. "You disguised yourself as my closest friend and ally and then seduced me into kissing you. I had my hands under your clothes, I almost–"
Kurama stopped himself abruptly, one hand clawed in the air between himself and Yukina. Yukina blinked at his fingers curiously, silently wondering what the rest of his sentence might have sounded like to have needed such a gesture to help him express it.
"Hiei and I trust each other," he said, relaxing his hand and lowering it to his side once more. "He is furious that I kissed you, and rightly so. Either way it was a horrible breach of his trust, because either I did it knowing it was you, the sister he's so protective of, or I did it thinking it was him, which is insane."
It was then Yukina's turn to raise her eyebrows in surprise.
"Insane?" she repeated.
"Yes," Kurama confirmed.
"So then you did know it was me?"
"No."
"But you just said…?"
"Yukina, you nearly destroyed my friendship with Hiei. He has lost all trust in me, and I can't explain what happened. I was never attracted to Hiei, but I can't make him understand that."
"If you were never attracted to Hiei, why did you kiss me when you thought I was him?"
"Because, during the time that you were Hiei, I did become attracted to him. It was just… What he became."
"But it was me."
"I know."
"Oh."
Kurama turned from Yukina, his eyebrows drawing together into a frown, his eyes watching the waves ahead of them. Yukina watched his profile intently, waiting for him to say something more, anxious to hear how he would explain what he had just seemed to say but equally terrified that he might say something she would not like.
"Those illustrations you drew and those words you wrote about me," he eventually said. "They were very romantic."
Yukina began blushing furiously, but she kept watching Kurama, partly because she had to see his face as he spoke and partly because she had the courage to look at him while he was looking away from her and could not see her reaction.
"Do you think it's romantic that our first date was in the dreariest part of spirit world – a place neither of us can ever call home or be welcomed – and it involved a meal of fetid wild mushrooms and bitter wild berries, we spoke at cross-purposes and then I kissed you under the illusion that you were someone else?"
"Our first date?" Yukina quietly replied.
"From the stacks of paperwork you'd been concealing in your bedroom, I thought perhaps you might have imagined a more romantic setting for the first time we kissed. Surely you didn't imagine that it would happen after you disguised yourself as Hiei, turned the relationship between the ice maidens and the rest of demon world on its head and then took to spirit world to rescue your friend Rui from a fox demon?"
"No, I couldn't ever have imagined any of those things under any circumstances, and certainly not if I was thinking of you."
"Normal girls go on dinner dates with boys, where the boy tells terrible jokes to try to disguise his nerves, they watch a movie or a show that neither of them enjoy and ultimately they kiss in some vaguely romantic setting. But you're not a normal girl, are you Yukina?"
"You're not a normal boy, Mister Kurama."
"I just want to know how exactly you feel about what happened two nights ago in that cave in spirit world."
Yukina started to smile, and, as though he had sensed the change in her expression, Kurama turned his head to look directly at her again.
"Well, actually, you did tell one terrible joke that night, we did see an interesting show on Justice Road thanks to Yusuke and Kuwabara's antics, and then there were such pretty glow-bugs illuminating the cave when we kissed. So maybe it was like a first date."
Kurama's eyes and lips thinned and Yukina's smile faded.
"And had I never met you before that "first date", my lasting impression of you now would be that you are a reckless liar," he said.
"It wasn't all lies," she quietly replied. "Some of it was true. Most of it was true – I was speaking as myself, I was just using Hiei's voice."
"Because you were too scared to speak as yourself using your own voice?"
"I suppose so, yes."
"Are you sure you only did this to save Hiei?"
"Well, maybe I did also want to prove to everyone else that I'm strong too. Sometimes I think everyone forgets who and what I am. Or maybe they don't forget, maybe they just never really understood in the first place. Either way, it gets so frustrating sometimes."
"So you did this to help Hiei and to prove that you're strong, is that it?"
"Yes. I know it was a silly, dangerous way to prove myself, but I really never expected things to get as complicated or dangerous as they did, and… I thought I'd always be safe with you and Kazuma and Yusuke so close by me."
"No other motivations then?"
Yukina searched Kurama's eyes, but she found no clue in the stern and slightly detached look on his face.
"What are you implying?" she asked when she failed to think of the answer herself.
"What are you inferring?" he responded.
Yukina blinked owlishly and Kurama quietly sighed, turning his head from her to look out to sea again. His eyes were still thinned and there was a general tightness about his face, and although his expression was not particularly terrifying or enraged, he was still managing to convey quite a disconcerting aura. It was upsetting to see – and doubly so when Yukina considered that she was the cause for his grief – but still she could not take her eyes off of him. She had watched him afar for so long, only managing to steal glances at him when he got so close in the past. She had partly hoped that, during her time disguised as Hiei, the novelty of being able to look directly at Kurama whilst standing within ten feet of him would wear off; but apparently it had not.
And neither had her desire to touch him. She had often wondered how he would react if she just did it. Botan would do something that bold, she thought, and Kurama had been quite taken with Botan. Given the tenseness in his expression and body, she reasoned that this was probably not a good time to try her luck with such an endeavour, but the want remained regardless.
Suddenly Kurama's head turned sharply and his eyes were on her again, almost pinning her on the spot with the intensity behind them.
"You wanted to touch me."
His voice was quiet but harsh, his words spoken through clenched teeth but painfully clear.
"H-How did you…?"
Yukina's voice faded before she could finish her question: it was stupid to ask, because Kurama always knew everything.
"You wanted to touch me, but you were too scared to," he continued. "You were scared of my rejecting you, you were scared of my ridiculing you and you were scared of how you might feel if I liked it."
"You read the things I wrote about you," she said.
"Of course I did," he replied. "I was hesitant at first – it seemed like an unjust invasion of your privacy, regardless of what we believed your circumstances to be at that time – but when "Hiei" didn't over-react and I got no definite answer about where you were or what you were doing, I had to know. I was concerned that you were unaware of the historical relationship between my clan and yours. I was worried that you had been spirited away by another fox demon, assuming that he would treat you the way you watched me treat Botan. I could have stopped sooner than I did, but I will admit that curiosity got the better of me."
Yukina lowered her head to watch her hands as she began nervously fidgeting with the material of her dress over her thighs.
"You must think I'm a foolish little child," she said, keeping her head down. "Many of my impressions of you, especially my earlier impressions of you, are quite simplistic."
"I didn't say I wasn't flattered."
Yukina lifted her head, her eyes growing wide as she watched the surf bubbling along the shoreline ahead of her.
"I believe I may have already intimated to you, during moments when I thought you were your brother, the qualities I desire in a partner," Kurama continued. "I can only be content with someone who understands who and what I am – that I am not human, but cannot be fully demon for some time yet, and that I will not change that decision under any circumstances. And I do enjoy the company of a kind and quiet girl who is polite and amiable in general, but also has another side of her, a side that she only shares with me."
Kurama turned to face Yukina and she copied his actions, their eyes meeting – and she was unsure if she was pleased or not to see that his expression had changed to an almost sly smirk.
"A girl who is gentle and reserved in company, but adventurous and daring when she gets out of her clothes and into my bed."
Yukina drew in a breath to answer him, but found herself swallowing air as emotions overtook logic. Kurama turned from her, briefly looking out to sea again before suddenly standing up and walking slowly towards the water. Yukina quickly stood up behind him, skipping the first few steps until she had brought herself to his side.
"This has been very interesting," he muttered. "I suppose there is really just one more thing I need to ask you."
Yukina tried to tell him that he could ask her anything and she would answer honestly – she was desperate to assure him that she did not make a habit of lying and deceiving others, least of all those closest to her – but again her voice failed her.
"There is still the small matter that I am much older, more worldly-wise and far more experienced than you in more things than fighting," Kurama said when she did not answer him. "You've never been with a lover before, am I right?"
She nodded, and although he did not look her way, he seemed to have noticed her gesture on the periphery of his vision.
"Then perhaps you would appreciate someone who moves a little slower than me. I'm not sure you could keep up with me."
Yukina balled her fists at her sides, awkwardness and nerves giving way to anger.
"I can keep up with you!" she snapped.
"Really?" Kurama asked, still looking and sounding far too disinterested for Yukina's liking.
"Absolutely!"
Yukina stopped half a step ahead of Kurama as he suddenly stopped walking, his eyes shifting to peer down at her at his side. She held her strong and determined stance, refusing to be relegated to the role of hapless and helpless yet again that day. Kurama slowly and smoothly turned to face her fully and she copied his actions, keeping her fists tightly clenched at her side, her jaw squared and her eyebrows drawn together.
"I'm not sure that you can," he said, his expression softening.
Despite his words, Yukina felt her resolve weakening slightly when he took on a gentle smile and she felt the warmth of his hands coming to rest on her shoulders.
"I'm not even sure that you understand," he added.
She started to tell him that she did – she was not about to endure another condescending "facts of life" lecture like the one Botan had already tried to inflict upon her earlier that day – but her words turned into a yelp of surprised as Kurama suddenly jabbed the heels of his hands into her shoulders and she found herself falling backwards. Landing in the sand was slightly less jarring than landing on solid ground would have been, but it was still unpleasant – though Yukina did not have long to dwell on the thought as she looked up and saw Kurama drop to his knees before her. She gasped and started to sit up, but he collapsed towards her, colliding with her and pinning her back down to the ground.
In the time it took her to blink and catch her breath, Yukina found herself lying flat on her back, her arms up over her head and held in place there by just one of Kurama's hands, which was enclosed around both of her wrists. As she stared up at him, feeling a little afraid and a little excited, he leaned closer to her, bending his free arm at her side and resting more of his weight on his hips, which were pressed against hers. She drew in a shuddering gasp as the ends of his hair lightly brushed against her face and he sank lower, resting the side of his face on one of her shoulders. She was confused beyond belief – his behaviour was not consistent with anything he had just said to her, but having him close, feeling his breath on her skin, she was past caring about reason.
A small, involuntary noise escaped her throat as he moved his other hand to her neck, his fingers lighting trailing down her skin to the collar of her dress. She gasped again as he shifted his head slightly and the tip of his nose touched against the other side of her neck at the same moment that his fingers curled around the collar of her dress and gave a slight tug, unhooking the top button. His hand moved lower, his fingers spreading over the area of skin he had exposed around the base of her neck, the warmth of his touch spreading through her entire body. She vaguely felt the second button of her dress pop open, but her attention was elsewhere as Kurama's lips made contact with her skin, softly kissing the side of her neck just below her ear. She closed her eyes and sighed, relaxing into him and even allowing herself to smile as he kissed her again on her jaw. She opened her eyes again when she felt his lips on hers, but the contact was brief and ended the instant her eyes were on his. He touched the tip of his nose to hers and rested his chin against hers, leaving their lips close but not quite close enough to kiss. He was looking into her eyes, one hand still holding her hands up over her head, the other still stroking at the skin around the base of her neck.
He whispered something brief, the look in his eyes changing slightly.
"Mwhuh?" Yukina grunted in response, her mind clouded over by desire and failing to correctly process either his words or the shift in his manner.
"I think I have the answers I was looking for," he said, his voice slightly louder and his words infinitely clearer.
"What?"
Yukina took a moment to awaken from her daze of bliss, not immediately registering that Kurama was moving away from her. She sat up, still a little hazy, in time to see him walk back across the sand towards the trees. She called out to him, scrambling to her feet and taking a few hurried strides after him, making little progress as she slipped in the sand; but he had disappeared from sight by the time she reached the grass. She stopped there, one hand clutched to her chest, her knuckles pressed against her pounding heart, and watched the point where he had disappeared. She could still feel the warmth of his touch on her skin and the softness of his lips against hers, a vague tingling sensation still delighting her senses. But the giver of that delight was gone, and she had no idea why he had stopped or why he had left.
Yukina paused. She had no idea why Kurama had stopped, but she had even less clue about why he had started. Since her arrival on the beach his tone and demeanour had been incredibly negative and cold, and she had been sure that he had already decided that he hated her. She supposed then that the sensible thing to have done would have been to have forced him to stop and demand to know his reasoning for taking such action: but she had been so caught up in the moment, so contented and so pleasantly surprised that he was being affectionate with her that the contradictory nature of his actions had not occurred to her whilst he was still with her.
Yukina dropped her hands to her sides, her shoulders slouching forwards and her head drooping down as she realised that maybe the point Kurama – and indeed all the others – had kept trying to impress upon her about how she was naïve was perhaps correct. Maybe that was even why he had just done what he had: to show her how ridiculous she was.
With a sigh of defeat, she began to drag her feet back across the grass towards the forest. The day was wearing on, but she was in no hurry to return to the temple. She was certain that everyone else would still be there, and, for the first time in a long time, she actually welcomed the prospect of spending the rest of her existence alone in the temple with only the wild birds and rabbits for company. She was exhausted after being the focus of everyone's attention that day – which was ironic, she thought with a wry smile, when she considered that, twelve days ago, she had been quietly angered that nobody ever paid her any attention at all.
She tried to think of something pleasant – a trick Rui had taught her as a child if she ever felt like she might cry – but her mind did not remain on any one thing for long, and, although she did not really want to, she found herself reliving the interchange she had just shared with Kurama on the beach. And, of all the things he had said and done, the first one her mind wandered to was his question about how she had imagined their first date to be. She had not answered him, but she had, of course, imagined what a first date with him might be like. She had imagined it many times, and she had also imagined more than just a first date. Though, as she thought about it again then, she realised that her previous ideas about dates were all very similar to her idea of a first date.
She had played the scenario out in her mind many times, and, although the specific events or conversations had changed slightly over time, the general format of her daydream had always been consistent. She imagined that she was alone in the temple late one afternoon, and she heard a car approaching. When she looked out the window she saw that it was Kurama, dressed in a shirt and tie like he did when he was coming home from work. She ran to meet him out on the porch, stopping at the railing as he approached. He smiled at her in that gentle way he always did, but this time he was smiling directly at her, just for her. He stopped in front of her, looking up at her from the ground. She asked him why he had come, the others were not there, after all, and he told her he was there just to see her. He was going out to dinner and he wanted her to come with him.
She ran back inside to get changed – in her fantasy, she had a pretty dress in her wardrobe, the sort of dress Keiko wore on special occasions – and Kurama waited outside for her. She changed into the dress and wore her hair loose – in her fantasy her hair was still long and its original colour, rather than being the butchered, discoloured mess it had become since her recent escapades – and when she stepped out onto the porch again Kurama's smile grew at the sight of her. She moved over to the steps and he met her there, holding out a hand for her. She took his hand – they were touching hands for the first time ever – and, once she had descended the steps, their palms moved together more closely, their fingers intertwining – they were holding hands for the first time ever.
Kurama led her to his car, where he opened the door for her to get in. He took her to a restaurant with a terrace, where they sat at a table for two, illuminated by candle-light, and, as they ate, they retold stories about the old days, laughing at the silly fights Yusuke and Kuwabara had gotten into. When they had finished eating they went for a walk in a park, and, as it was getting dark, Kurama gave Yukina his coat – which was illogical, as she was far more tolerant of the cold than he was, but it was her fantasy, and she wanted it that way. He also gave her a bunch of flowers that were too beautiful to be from living world, and then he took her back home to the temple.
And, after she had climbed the steps up to the porch again, Yukina leaned over the railings and she and Kurama shared their first kiss. It was simple, gentle, warm and sweet.
And the second, third, fourth and fifth date followed a similar pattern, only the excitement of them was in the knowledge that Kurama was her lover and no longer just a surprise first date.
But, she realised then, her thoughts had never strayed beyond holding hands and kissing – and even the kissing had been the simple, brief lip to lip contact like she had often sneakily witnessed Yusuke and Keiko performing when they bid each other goodbye and they thought no-one was watching.
Reality, Yukina thought darkly, was bitterly different to fantasy.
In her fantasy, Kurama had first touched her hand offering to help her down the steps to go on a date with him; but in reality, Kurama had first touched her hand when he had made her stop stirring his tea the day Koenma and Botan gathered everyone at the temple to discuss the demons in spirit world and the virus in demon world.
In her fantasy, she had first held hands with Kurama in that sweet, fingers-interlocked way she liked to imagine, as he had walked her to his car to start their first, flawless date; but in reality, Kurama had first held her hand that way when they had jumped through the manufactured portal joining demon world to spirit world, and, when Kuwabara had bluntly asked why they were holding hands, Yukina had been forced to act like she was not ecstatically happy that Kurama was holding her hand "the way couples do on a date", as Kuwabara had put it. Although, when she thought back on that moment, she realised that it had been Kurama who had grabbed onto her hand as they jumped. But, she thought darkly, she was equally to blame, as she had been the one to knit her fingers through his so that she could hold his hand the way she had always imagined doing.
In her fantasy, she had first kissed Kurama delicately and innocently at the end of a date. In reality, she had first kissed him when he thought she was her brother, and he had made an inappropriate joke about the contact being "accidental". And, unlike her fantasy, where the kiss was that and nothing more, in reality the first kiss almost immediately turned into Kurama clumsily grabbed at her clothing and kissing her in an almost aggressive manner that she had never really thought about.
"Huh, I'm an idiot," Yukina muttered to herself, barely even noticing that she was still inadvertently using the language and word structure she had relied on during her time pretending to be Hiei.
She was too caught up in the conclusion she had drawn to care about how she had said it aloud. The others were right after all, she decided. She was an idiot, who had been brought up on an isolated, floating rock full of idiots, and Kurama had been completely right to reject her on the basis that she did not understand what he wanted or needed from a lover. As much it pained her to admit it, it seemed that perhaps she could not keep up with him.
Tears threatened again and Yukina grabbed at the first coherent distraction her mind offered her to stave off her emotions: she was not the only one who had shown another side of herself during the mission, Kurama had not exactly lived up to her expectations either. She had, prior to spending every waking minute of a span of eleven days in his company, always considered him to be literally perfect, but he had shown his fair share of flaws and confessed to more than a few follies during the mission. And, thinking about the Kurama she now knew, Yukina could no longer even put him into the context of her previous fantasies about him.
But strangely, despite him not living up to her fantasies, despite him being far less than the paradigm of perfection she had imagined him to be, Yukina found that she only liked Kurama all the more. Which she was slightly disappointed to discover, as she had been hoping to find a reason to dislike him and distance herself from him, to save herself the heartache of spending the next several decades pining for him as he returned to treating her the way he always had for the last thirty-seven years – barely acknowledging her existence, and when he did, giving her that blank look he did not give to anyone else. Even Keiko brought a flicker of amiable recognition into Kurama's eyes and smile, but when he had looked at Yukina in the past, she had been left feeling like a stale carrot. He had always been polite enough towards her, but he had never exactly treated her like a living creature, never tried to make conversation or recognise the smiles she greeted him with – which had, frankly, made Botan's earlier claim about them having known each other for thirty-seven years seem true.
Though that, she supposed, all related back to Kurama's belief that she, as an ice maiden, was "shallow and unfeeling". Maybe now that he knew otherwise, maybe now that he had at least admitted to having always, on some subconscious level, known otherwise, he might be different.
Or maybe not.
Yukina had become so caught up in her own thoughts and so unaware of just how slow her pace had been that, by the time she reached the fork in the forest path, the sun was already below the treetops and the sky was darkening.
And in that moment, Yukina realised the short-sightedness of her decision.
She paused at the split in the path long enough to admonish herself that she had yet again done something silly without thinking before starting along the path that led to the temple steps – which were usually visible in the distance from that point, but, due to the poor light levels, were obscured from view. And, although she had started along the path at a quicker pace, she shortly stopped again, slowly looking about herself as a worrying thought occurred to her. She quickly scanned the trees around her and then surveyed the ground around the tree trunks, swallowing hard as her eyes confirmed what her ears had already alerted her to: she was suddenly completely alone.
Yukina turned on the spot, but saw nothing else to disprove the nagging worry that was starting to creep up on her. On her second rotation she noticed a panicked flurry of movement way back the way she had just come as a jumbled flock of birds tore through the sky away from her. Logically she could think of only one thing that would scare every bird and animal out of the forest, but it seemed so unlikely. Rather than take any chances, she continued on her way back home, quickening her pace again – but again she made little progress before she stopped again, this time abruptly, almost falling over in shock as she suddenly became aware of a terrible presence. She did not have to wait long to receive a visual confirmation of what she was feeling, as a disturbance in the air immediately in front of her started kicking up eddies of dead leaves around her ankles. She stumbled back a step as something appeared, seemingly from nowhere, in the air ahead of her, feeling its way around before shooting outwards forcefully.
Yukina yelped and fell back onto her rear-end as the leathery length of a vine stretched out over her, sprouting outwards from the point where her head had been only moments earlier. But the fact that the plant was growing and clawing at the space she had been occupying was the least of her concerns: the plant was growing out of nowhere. One end of it was leafy and spreading, the other end was a thick stem that ended suddenly in the middle of the air. It was clearly a demon plant, and Yukina briefly wondered if it was growing through a portal, as there was a distinct shimmer and haze in the air around the point it was sprouting from. But she did not have long to contemplate her theory as another length of vine shot out of the air a few feet below the first and she was forced to scramble out of its reach. She scurried awkwardly off the path, pressing her back to a tree and trying to control her erratic breathing as she watched more and more vines whip out and spread, until soon she was looking at a tangled green mess in the middle of the forest path. The mound of twisted plant pulsed a few times before sinking slowly into the ground.
As quickly as the plant had appeared and grown in a mound before her eyes it had sunk so far into the ground that all that remained was a clump of about twenty vines, each thicker than Yukina's body. And, although the plant itself looked quite harmless slumped into the ground, what it had done was something truly terrible. Yukina took a few cautious steps forwards, glancing back and forth between the two holes the plant had created. One hole was in the ground and the other was literally in the air ahead of her. The hole in the ground was glowing red and carried the distinctive smell of demon world, and the hole in the air was a jovial yellow and pink glow that could only be attributed to spirit world.
Yukina hardened her resolve and picked her way over to the edge of the two holes, first peering into the one leading into spirit world. She could not see anything beyond a stretch of featureless land, and so she turned her attention to the hole in the ground, lowering herself to all fours and steadying herself on one of the vines to peer down into it. The vines stretched far down below her and they were still growing, apparently reaching for the ground, turning themselves into handy access points between all three realms – the spirit, human and demon worlds.
This was clearly something she needed to tell someone else about, but Yukina paused as she considered how to continue. Her first instinct was that she should tell Kurama, as he was the expert on demon plants; but she was not sure that she wanted to see him or that he would even listen to her. Perhaps she should tell Yusuke, she thought. He was the most experienced of matters affecting all three worlds, and he at least had accepted her as a person. But before her moment of indecision could end, Yukina was robbed of all thoughts of the vine and the damage it had done as she felt a pair of hands on her hips, and the distinct presence of something malevolent radiating from a point behind her.
"How perfect," a voice whispered. "I didn't expect you to be here, least of all so helpfully positioned…"
As the hands slid up her sides Yukina froze in terror: she had not seen him yet, but she did not need to see him to know that it was Fumio.
Next Chapter: It's the final showdown (and this time, I swear it is) between everyone at odds – Hiei and Kurama, Yukina and Fumio, and so much more, all finally dealt with. It's not the last chapter though (someone just shoot me). Chapter 34 – Teleportation Necessity