Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure that nobody would believe me to be the owner of YYH even if I did say it.
Pen Name: sarahh86
A/N: I will warn you ahead of time, there will be some sensuality. Nothing too explosive though. This is a T-rated fanfic after all.
Small Chapter Insight: Lightness turned to dark and for a minute neither of them spoke. Of course they wouldn't speak. Speech was the thing that could possibly ruin this whole thing and for what they felt, words weren't needed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Relli finally opened her eyes all she saw was darkness and she struggled to adjust her eyes. For a couple of seconds she wondered if she was blind but then she saw random spots of light in the corner of her eyes.
It was just nighttime and she was lying in a comfortable bed with a small, sleeping body next to hers.
She sat up groggily and turned to face her little girl sleeping peacefully, inched carefully towards her.
Despite herself Relli bit her lip back to keep herself from getting sentimental. It had seemed like a long time since she'd seen Runo and she planted a soft kiss on top of her baby's head.
She swung her legs off the bed and was surprised to find out that they no longer hurt from Tekkan's-
Memories came back flying in a rush and she remembered the few seconds she had lasted after his death, she had been looking at somebody, somebody...
Her eyes rose from the floor as she instantly remembered the face. It had been no dream. He was real. And not only real...he was alive.
Realeza slowly got up and walked slowly toward the door and began to descend the stairs vaguely sure of who it was that was in her house.
He was standing in front of the TV but it was off. It was more as if he were using the TV simply for another purpose, to distract himself, while he thought about things he'd never said before, things he'd never done...things he'd never confessed.
He swerved his head the second he heard her soft footsteps and he couldn't look away. It had been true torment what he had undergone and he wasn't about to come back only to repeat the same things.
"You are alive."
He smiled softly. From what his friends had told him she had been inconsolable and now the only thing she could say to him was that he was alive? She truly was one of a kind.
"I never died in the first place." he replied in a smooth tone as he beckoned her to come seat beside him.
She did so, even though her steps were uncertain. Part of her was worried that it might just be a ghost in disguise or another delusion of her mind.
There was a moment of silence as both of them just stared faintly at each other.
"I don't understand Suichi..."
He sighed and he glanced deeply at her. "I suppose Youko told you about the potion I took the night before I died didn't he?"
Relli thought hard and a slightly memory of that night returned.
A silver-haired man with amber eyes stepped into the cave. He was dressed in white and his fox ears stood out against his humanly appearance. His demon aura was complete. There was no trace of human scent on him.
Her eyes widened and before she could speak the demon raised his hand and his cold eyes narrowed. "Let me talk first." He looked at her and made sure that she was quiet before he went on. "Before Kurama died he took a potion that we heard about. It's a rare potion that can only be made under the full moon with fruits of the Exti plants that can only be found in Demon World. He drank it that same night and today, just before he killed himself, I was released from his body and found another in which to keep my soul in."
"What body is that?" Hiei asked, nearing the fox.
"A fox that was running near the waterfall served as quite the host and I changed into my demon form, Youko Kurama."
"Yeah," she said speaking slowly. "I remember."
"Well I told him not to tell you the whole truth. See the potion was going to kill me anyway. Just before the fight with the Siluvian brothers I was feeling intense spasms of pain."
"But how are you alive? If you said the potion was going to kill you how come you're alive? Don't tell me Koenma revived you-"
"No, Koenma didn't revive me. But the potion itself revives the person after a couple of days and keeps the body in a dormant sleep, so to speak. All organs shut down and the heart stops beating for just a couple of days and then the body can function again. See the potion itself was for separating souls and I used it to separate my soul from Youko's."
Relli paused digesting this piece of information. "Why didn't you tell me?" Then all at once she glared at him with pure fury in her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me you insensitive bastard? Do you know how much I suffered for your so-called death? Didn't you even care to mention to me 'By the way Relli I took a potion that's going to make me die in a couple of hours.'? I was destroyed, you selfish jackass!"
Kurama was almost speechless. Almost, but the way her emotion clearly traveled beyond her words was endearing and she knew her anger wouldn't last. "If it's any console it was hell getting myself out of my grave."
She wanted to hit him. So she closed in on him and punched him in the chest enough to make him wince slightly but then she embraced him as her anger finally crashed to the floor in favor of happiness and relief.
"So Youko isn't a part of you anymore?" she asked, mumbling slightly over his shirt.
"No." he responded, nervously leaning forward to embrace her as well. He remembered what had happened the last time they had gotten this close...and on this couch of all places!
He ran a hand gently through her wavy lavender hair trying to distract himself. "After all that's happened, after all we've been through and shared...you'll never trust me, will you?"
Relli froze and she slowly separated herself from him. She wrung her hands nervously through her hair as she debated on how, or rather what to answer him.
Memories invaded her mind and the second her mind was clear again she knew what to say to him.
"Hey Kurama we brought those nudie flicks we promised and whoa…" Kuwabara paused in mid-sentence to gape at Relli while she bit her lip. Yusuke was behind him and didn't notice Relli was he kept going. "They're just plain porn so you don't have to…whoa!"
Kurama bent to eye level with Relli and held her hands. "Just trust me for once Relli! You know how I am. I would never insult somebody for something that they couldn't help."
"How about if Relli becomes the mother?" Relli turned to him with her eyes wide. "You want m-me to be Runo's mom?"
He looked at Relli's blushing face and couldn't help himself. He slowly leaned forward and pressed his lips to Relli's for the first time.
Relli gently held out Runo to him. "Here," she said. Relli hesitated debating on whether to say her next words. "Here's our-our daughter."
"That's good," she responded. "Now there's only one more thing for you to do." Relli frowned. "And what would that be?" Genkai's voice rose an octave at her naiveness. "For you to get your head out of the clouds and realize that you mean to Kurama than his own life."
He covered her tenderly with a kiss that sent her stomach clenching in absolute fear, exactly like the first time. The feelings he provoked in her scared her completely. She'd never felt anything so powerful, so strong, for one person.
"Good point," he agreed and slowly took her hand in his. "We're acknowledging that we feel something more than lust and desire for each other and we both want to keep it a secret for now. That's the way we should keep it for now but in the future we need to talk about everything that we hide."
"Just let me talk alright? One man, that hot guy sleeping right there," she jerked her head towards Kurama. "Makes you feel different. I can tell because I've known you for a long time and I'll be damned if you don't get your fairy tale ending. You're like a sister to me and Kurama seems like a pretty darn good guy. Why can't you just go for it and tell him how you feel?"
It was about time the secrets got drowned and the truth finally burst out. It was enough of all the lies, the torments, the what-ifs, it was done with completely.
Relli glanced up at Kurama and she surprisingly didn't waver in her decision. "I trust you enough to tell you the truth...right now."
He was utterly speechless and for a moment he only stared at her. Relli was opening up to him? She was going past her fears to finally speak the truth?
Slowly he managed to nod in acceptance still in shock.
She closed her eyes feeling her heart began to accelerate as she thought of how to begin.
"My mother was a human and she studied a lot while she was in school. She was a perfect woman or that's what other people thought at least. My father on the other hand...was-was a demon."
"A demon?"
Relli glanced up at him and nodded. "Yeah, I'm a half-demon."
She went on before he could ask another question. Realeza wanted to get this over done with quickly.
"After they met and fell in love they eventually married and my dad decided to completely forget about his Demon Nature. A couple of years later I was born and as soon as I was old enough to begin school they began going on trips and enjoying their life. On one of the trips that I couldn't go on, the Siluvian brothers killed them but of course I didn't realize Tekkan had sent them until recently."
"After that," she went on softly. "I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle. That was when I was thirteen. At first the relationship was bad, but it was somewhat bearable. I wasn't that interesting to any of my cousins or my uncle himself so my aunt used me as a slave essentially. I would endure as best as I could with her beatings and her insults about me being a burden."
She couldn't go on but in reality she didn't have to. Kurama remembered this part of her past, she'd once told him.
"Then your uncle began molesting you," he murmured gently. "And he raped you."
She froze at the word he'd pronounced and glanced up at him quizzically. "No he didn't."
It was Kurama's turn to be perplexed. "But you said that when your aunt wasn't home he would-"
"He would molest me but my cousins wanted their share too and so they tore me away from him only to try and do that to me but it never-never got to the point of...raping me. I was lucky."
Something clicked in Kurama's brain right then but he dismissed it carelessly and shook his head. "Never mind my assumptions then. I should let you speak, please go on."
"Then something happened which made me completely. The Siluvian brothers reappeared in my life and kidnapped me. They were planning on taking me to Demon World to Tekkan but they had to pass through Demon World in those circumstances. They stopped at a resting area and then they also tried to...do that...to me," Relli paused for a moment gathering strength. "I didn't know they were filming me and they would've both had their way with me if it hadn't been for Genkai and Botan intervening-"
"Botan? Master Genkai? So they already knew you when you came to live with me?" Kurama exclaimed.
Realeza nodded in affirmative. "They were the ones that saved me. Botan had gotten reports about something shady happening during that time and since none of you were available the only person who could come to investigate was Genkai."
"And yet...neither of them know all of your past do they?"
"Just parts and pieces." Relli admitted a soft expression adorning her face.
Kurama didn't utter a word as he clasped both of Relli's hands in his own. She glanced up at him in curiosity until he nodded for her to go on.
"The Siluvian brothers managed to tell me about Tekkan and what his relation was to me. They said I was his-his niece."
Kurama had to literally bite back his tongue to keep from exclaiming aloud.
Realeza noticed this and nodded, already guessing what his question was. "He was my father's brother and yes, I've been on the run from him for years."
Kurama calmed down significantly and pleaded at her to continue.
"As soon as Botan placed me back in Human World I was crazed. I couldn't believe what I had been through. You must understand that to me traveling in other dimensions and meeting demons, and then discovering my own heritage confused me to no end. Yes, I was definitely crazed. As soon as I was at my aunt's home I told her everything I had been through in the two human days I had been gone."
"What was her response?" Kurama asked, his hands tightening significantly around hers.
"In a nutshell, she thought I was crazy. For a long time she had been trying to figure out a way to get me off of her hands and this was the perfect excuse. She searched around and finally placed me in an asylum. It was alright I suppose, but the doctors would inject me whenever I got hysterical. With time I learned to keep my mouth shut and just go with the flow."
"I became acquainted with another girl who was staying there. She was far into her own world and she could barely conceive reality or what was happening at the moment. She would get into terrible bouts of hysteria and have to get injected and sedated to the point of being calm again. At first I would try to keep her out of trouble at first, merely for pity, but when she began to say that the demons from Demon World were after her because of her power, I was her ultimate protector."
Relli took a deep breath and kept going. "That girl would whisper to me that she had been on the run for years and that she needed to be free. All she wanted was to be free. She kept mentioning a man who was into drugs and illegal things. She said that her husband was part of the bad men that were after her. I didn't understand most of the things she said but I made sure to calm her down whenever she got too upset. After I became her protector, things got worse. The doctors frequently sedated us and one doctor got to the point of beating her and tying me up."
"By that point we were sick of it all and confessed my past to her in hopes that she might somehow know and understand that I was very similar to her. To my shock she understood me and she was perfectly calm as she confessed me her past. She was sick, that might have been true, but she wasn't completely crazed."
"Her name," Relli began in a slow voice. "Her name was Sunia."
Kurama's eyes widened. He'd known that she had been in an asylum and he'd known that about Sunia as well but he had no idea of just how much either of them had been through in there.
"After that," she continued. "a fire broke out and some of the patients managed to escape. I managed to escape but a couple of days later when I saw a tore up newspaper in the trash and saw Sunia's name and picture listing her as one of the people missing I knew that she had escaped as well. I never saw her again, until the party."
"And that's it," she said clasping his hands tightly. "After escaping from the asylum I managed to earn enough money to get myself somewhat educated and managed to finish school. That night you saved me-the first time we met, I had been working extra hours. I had no idea of how to summon the power the Siluvian brothers had said I had so I just tried to ignore it. I had no idea that-that I was going to meet you." She paused and then released one of her hands to put it on his cheeks. "You changed my life." she whispered gently, her heart fluttering. "I'm very grateful to you, because you've made me trust again. You've made me whole...Kurama."
Her words were so sweet and so simple. There was nothing difficult about them except that, to her, they were the ultimate proof of trust.
Without thinking twice he crushed her to him, clinging her to him in a soft embrace that made both of their hearts jump.
"Thank you," he mumbled into her ear, his voice thick with emotion. "Thank you for trusting me. But there's one more thing I want to hear from your sweet mouth."
He leaned her back enough so that their noses were almost touching and then whispered to her. "Do you love me?"
Realeza blushed and she bit her lip and thought about denying it, but thinking it further she realized it would be utterly worthless. Even if she denied who was to say that he would actually believe her? She wouldn't believe it herself.
"Y-yes." she stammered against him.
There was a strong moment of silence before he pressed his lips to hers roughly and then suddenly drew back.
"So do I." he murmured gently before he claimed her lips again.
From there everything happened very quickly. She sunk into his body and gripped his arms tightly as her heart soared to the heavens. He loved her, he loved her!
Intense moments passed and then Relli felt her back hit the soft couch and she whispered his name as she felt his hands very, very gently begin to move up her waist.
His mind meanwhile was a turmoil. What was he doing? If he forced her into something she wasn't ready for that would only fix the situation so that she would eventually hate him. He didn't want that!
Kurama tore himself apart from Relli and tried hard not to stare at her, her tousled lavender hair and her swollen pink lips taunting him.
He slowly sat her up again and kissed her forehead with incredible tenderness. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean for it to go that far."
Realeza's voice was gone so she only nodded and she smiled up at the man who cared more about her than about himself.
"It's late." he murmured quietly to her. "Get some rest, Relli. The last couple of days have been hard for you."
She nodded and daringly pressed her mouth to his one final time and then finally ascended the stairs. Once in the comfort of her room, she carefully moved Runo's tiny sleeping form into her own crib and smiled down at her. undressed and put on a soft lilac nightgown and wrapped herself in the sheets.
However, she couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned and she could not stop thinking about Kurama and where their relationship was going. She loved him and he'd said that he loved her...from here, what would happen?
Even if their feelings were stronger than themselves their relationship was going to be tough. Humans and demons couldn't interbreed, not even half-demons.
And then there was the issue about their jobs. Kurama had said that he had signed the contract and that it was binding for twenty years, of which only three had been completed since he'd signed it three years after becoming Spirit Detective..
Seventeen years...Relli buried her face in her pillow and trembled. It was insane to think that they could possibly make it, completely unscathed, in that amount of time. There was no way on Earth that they could be able to raise Runo safely or continue to leave her in the arms of her adopted grandmother if they kept being Spirit Detectives.
And last of all, she'd heard from Botan that foxes had to choose their mates carefully, because they would be together for life after mating-
Mating.
She blushed as her mind wavered for an instant and she sat up, trying to clear her head.
After a long moment, she swung her legs off the bed and walked barefoot into the hallway, pleased to see that Kurama's bedroom was still illuminated.
She timidly knocked on the door and Kurama immediately opened it, his eyes widening as he was momentarily caught off-guard by her tousled appearance and the little nightgown that covered most of her skin.
He wasn't the only one caught off-guard for Relli was frozen for a couple of instants as she realized that he was shirtless and his lean muscles were bare for her eyes to see.
It took everything in her power for her to hold in a blush.
"Relli..."
"I'm sorry if I interrupted you Kurama, but I needed to talk to you for a minute." she said, wringing her hands in front of her in nervousness.
"Of course." he agreed, stepping aside so that she could walk into his well-lit room.
There were a couple of open books open on his desk and several sheets of paper on top of them. Instantly she regretted interrupting him. His work was important and her petty doubts weren't.
She turned around so quickly that she crashed into Kurama's chest and he gripped her arms to steady her.
For a moment neither spoke.
Finally, Kurama broke the suddenly awkward silence. "What did you need to say to me Relli?"
She struggled to compose herself and looked up at him her voice slightly wavering. "About us."
Kurama raised his eyebrows. "What about us?"
Her voice trembled. "Will it even work? There's so many things preventing us from being happy together even though we love each other; the issue about me being a human, us being Spirit Detectives, and...and about you choosing the right woman to be your mate-
At this Kurama silenced her with a tender brush of his hand over her cheek. He couldn't believe what she'd just said. Did she truly think he would regret choosing her as his mate for the rest of his life?
"Relli," he began in a low voice. "Do you think I would regret choosing you as my mate?"
She didn't speak for some time and he was about to ask again when she whispered, "Yes."
"Why? Why do you think that?"
"Because...because I'm not the kind of person you deserve. You deserve so much more..." she said, trailing off as the intensity of his gaze forced her to discontinue.
Instead of speaking the fox did something that stunned Realeza. He slowly traced one of his fingers over her full lips, over her cheeks, he traced every curve of her face until she was glancing at him with a completely bewildered expression on her face.
"You are what I deserve," he muttered as he cupped her face in his hands, "in fact you're more than that. You're perfect...to me you're absolutely perfect."
"And," he continued, a slow mischievous smile playing over his lips, "it would be an honor to have you as my mate."
Red marked her face as Relli couldn't keep her embarrassment down and to spare her from being flustered his lips trapped her own.
It was sweet. It was very, very sweet and Relli found herself hanging on to him for dear life as his strong arms wrapped themselves around her slender waist.
Slowly, the innocent kiss turned into something more...passionate and his insistence was almost fierce and he kissed her over and over and over again.
Reality finally returned to him and he broke apart with much effort. He expected her to be scared or at least resisting but she was neither. In fact the glaze in her eyes mirrored his own.
Kurama's breathing was sharp as his hands stayed glued to her waist. "I-"
Relli shook her head at him as the reality of what they both felt sunk into her heart. "It's okay," she whispered. "I don't want you to stop."
He swallowed. "Relli, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. I won't force you into this if you're not ready."
"That's just it," she murmured huskily, unintentionally making his rational side start to disappear. "I-I want this..."
He was about to give in to her wishes when a thought came flying back at him. He'd thought of it earlier this evening but dismissed it because he'd deemed it too good to be true. Now however, after hearing the complete truth of her past he needed to see if his suspicion was right.
"Relli," he spoke, brushing her lavender hair behind her ear, "Relli are you...are you a virgin?"
She didn't speak for a long moment, but the instant taint of red that colored her cheeks and the downward gaze she kept said it all.
So when she murmured an affirmative his heart leaped.
His hands trembled as he separated himself from her frame and softly said to her, "Are you sure? I may not be much of a demon anymore but I might not be able to be gentle..."
Her eyes were shining as she slowly whispered the word 'yes'.
Kurama moved to shut the door and he leaned in to turn off the small lamp that brightly illuminated the small, cozy room.
Lightness turned to dark and for a minute neither of them spoke. Of course they wouldn't speak. Speech was the thing that could possibly ruin this whole thing and for what they felt, words weren't needed.
The only light remaining in the room was the crescent moon's shadow and as they wrapped themselves in each other's arms it was the only witness to their love...
Well...in the corny & cheesy department I win I guess...
So after this chapter there are only about two or three more. I may disappoint with this story being so short but as I've said before, this was the way it was intended to be from the start.
I am extremely proud of myself for finishing this story after about a week and a half after Chapter 11 was uploaded.
My birthday is today, so give me an awesome birthday present by leaving a review!
Hope you enjoyed!