Hiei will probably be OOC throughout the entire story just FYI and I promise there will be more Botan towards the end of this whole thing.
Chapter TW: pregnancy loss
His child was gone before he arrived. A death without birth.
A part of him left when he came back. Something small and significant. He cared. He cared, if only because his family had spent months preparing to love an extension of himself and had it torn from them. He couldn't figure out why they would love any part of him.
He thought he was coming back to be told to leave. To be free of these chains. To have what he considered the natural course of his life unfold, as usual. He came back to looks filled with something he knew wasn't pity and made entirely of grief. Something he thought Kurama could easily endure. Something that made Yusuke fall silent. Something that left Botan looking at him with eyes that couldn't hold back her ocean of grief.
He wasn't sure if he cared.
Better off. He thought until it was a mantra that rang across the inside of his skull.
The world was spared more of him.
He didn't think of how it drilled a hole in her very essence. Or that a wonderful, ever sublime part of her was lost forever. That it took from everyone an extension of her.
She took him back with a shadow of that smile meant only for him. He thought he'd never see it again.
His sister made him something sticky and fluffy. Cream on top with those berries he's become far too fond of and pathetically let it be known. She didn't mention any of it. Didn't give him any looks like the others. Didn't say what her part was. Instead, she told him she started working for the fool's sister a couple days a week. Under the table... somehow. Whatever that meant. She cleans human hands and paints their nails. Her hands should be the ones pampered. She and Botan still tell fortunes at festivals and sometimes sell their small paintings of clouds and lace flowers and sewn patchworks when they can. She says it's getting harder to have stands at public gatherings. The humans want more papers and plastic cards. More identifiers. More numbers. More regulations. More of everything that reflects the spirit realm.
She doesn't mention the babe he searches for against her will. She knows he's looking.
She keeps her mind locked and quiet.
He said his first words in over a year and choked half way through his thanks.
She said she missed him and left the kitchen.
It had been over a year since he left. The loss had happened just a handful of moons after he left. Something fucked inside of him wondered why any of them still cared about something bloody that didn't resemble a baby in any capacity.
Yusuke only gave him two months of peace before walking up and pinning him against the wall. Honesty, no one knew how he held out that long.
Yelled something about how he couldn't forgive himself or about how much they mourned for the mess of blood because it left Botan so unlike herself, they thought she would leave too. The shadow just stared.
He avoided Kurama at all costs. Knowing whatever he had to say would be as cruel and cutting as when he himself stabbed the fox. The fox looked at him with disappointment. Maya had been robbed of any chance of motherhood. The fox had no desire for fatherhood, but stopped putting logic and himself first some time ago. His friend, the fox, let the jealousy and sadness for his found family leek from his strong and never breaking barriers.
Kuwabara wouldn't look at him fully.
Every week, Yusuke's girl brought Botan food he suspected they both knew he'd enjoy as well. They ate outside, or at least when blue was visible up above. Keiko never brought the infant.
It didn't take long, but Botan let him touch her again.
Besides the detective's outburst, everyone stopped mentioning the babe after the first days of his return. He was left with little to do until next winter except wait for something to break or have Genkai figure out he hovered around certain places within the temple grounds because he didn't know how to ask for permission. He wanted to fix her home. The home she let his family stay at. His hands knew the skills. A bit outdated for human matters, but her old home was within his grasp.
Botan's little corner of the temple had a box behind a chest he had spied open. He didn't ask if he could. There were sewn clothes too small for any being he had ever interacted with inside, an unfinished blanket and pieces of his old scarf quilted in with some fabric he picked out with Yukina sometime before he left. They had dyed the fabrics with indigo a few summers ago and now they laid here, probably to not be moved anytime soon. It was blue and reminded him of the safe color he had stolen from her. She had stuck needlework creatures that looked half finished into the bottom. One had eyes made out of jewels he thought he had crushed. Some must have slipped into hiding.
He didn't have toys as a child. Did other demons?
He isn't letting the sound of small feet, learning to be silent, come any closer.
He shuts the box.
The temple feels empty.
Her and his sister ate less meat now. He couldn't go back to hunting like he did for the temple's residents. Genkai once gave him strange looks whenever she spotted him sorting the guts and cleaning out bone marrow with his teeth. Thanked him for saving her money on groceries. Even the respectable humans had currency on their mind.
Now he just waited. Trained. Fucked. Ate his sister's sweets. Figured out what year it was. Ignored the television. Listened to Botan cry when she thought he wasn't around.
Waited.
Wondered if he could fix this.
Wondered if, for the briefest of moments, was he a father?
The intrusive thought hits harder than any physical blow and brings bile to his throat and empties his hands of blood. His arms feel hollow.
He wished so hard that someone would tell him to leave. He deserves what has happened in the past to happen once more. Knowing full well it would throw him into an insanity that would make the bandits shunning a slap on the wrist.
Nobody came to say get lost. Nobody ignored or shunned him as the last group had. Nobody said he fucked up. Nobody asked if he was okay.
He looks for Botan.
