I call this 'Hikari' for want of a better name. I
would really appreciate C&C on it, especially as it's
the first chapter in yet *another* multiparter.
(This has got to be one of the more frustrating side
effects of switching stories in order to break
writer's block.)
And a yaoi warning. This is yaoi. And it isn't. If
anyone can explain it better, please tell me; I will
be very grateful to hear somebody else's explanation.
Raye
=====
raye_j@yahoo.com
http://members.xoom.com/Raye01
Everyone is a philosopher.
Some people just get paid.
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Hikari
by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com
++++++++++++++++
I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. I forget who does, but he's a mangaka
who lives in Japan. It's also owned by Shounen Jump, because they
printed the manga, and the producer of the anime version has rights to
it too. None of those people are me. You already knew that, but we
should remember and thank the people who created these things.
********************
My name is Hino Hikari. Names are important, and not just 'cause
I said so. I know. Names say who you are. So if, like me, you
used to be someone else, you've got to know who 'you' are.
If you don't, it'll totally screw up your life. I know. It
happened to me. I remembered my last life, and I didn't let it
go, and now it's all a hopeless tangle. I'm living a lie and
hurting people I love with it every day, and there's no way I can
stop it now. Considering the example I had in front of me in my
last life, you'd be justified in thinking I'm as dense as That
Idiot.
My name used to be Hiei.
Hiei wasn't human. He was a youkai, who lived in the Makai.
He had a hard, painful life, and at the end of it came here, to
Ningenkai, ordered to become one of its guardians as a punishment
for thieving from Reikai. He met and fell in love with one of his
fellow guardians, Kurama.
I'm sitting here looking at his name. Part of me - us - oh
I don't know - can't believe I wrote it so calmly. Because to
love Kurama was one of the first and only wholly good things Hiei
ever did in his life. A childhood fighting tooth and claw simply
to survive and an existence in a world where the inhabitants kill
each other for entertainment doesn't make for a pure and refined
heart.
I am only a child, yet the memories of Kurama's hot, sweet
loving are burnt upon my memories and I'm almost surprised not
to see the marks upon my body.
Hiei loved Kurama with all of his heart, and so I don't
think anybody will truly be surprised to hear that that's the way
he died - standing over the badly wounded Kurama, protecting him
from a youkai that had broken through the Makai-Ningenkai border.
Kurama was unconscious, and the other team members had not yet
arrived, so when Hiei fell, nobody was able to tend him soon
enough to save him.
The one consolation was that he took the S-class youkai with
him.
&&&&&&&&&&
In this rebirth that I don't fully understand - or deserve,
really - I got parents who were not usual. Not like Kurama's
human mother, who's so maternal that she could win over her
youkai son who was notorious for his callousness, or Urameshi's
mother, who is more like an older sister who got dumped with a
responsibility she didn't know how to cope with than a mother,
but more conventionally odd.
My father, a kendo champion, is very fond of swords. Real
ones. Not for Otousan the humble bokken! Tanto, katana, sakaba,
tachi, kodachi - he has antique examples and modern versions of
all of them, and others that I can't name offhand. He even has
a replica of a Zanba-tou! He is one of the people behind the
revival of swordmaking as an artform in recent years. When I
stumbled into the dojo and tried to do a kata with a tanto at the
age of ten months, he was delighted, telling my mother that her
daughter had 'the heart of a samurai'. That is his highest
compliment.
Okaasan nodded and made him promise not to give me an edged
sword until I turned five.
Okaasan herself is a mangaka. She draws comics and is quite
successful at it, with a lot of fans. She is always drawing no
matter where we go or what we do, and if it looks like I've
always been playing beside her, she never notices what I do
between picking up her pencil and putting it down again. This has
proven quite useful for my 'double life'.
I remember quite well the first day I began it. I was in the
park with Okaasan, who was busily sketching away, when I felt
a sudden burst of you-ki. Checking to ensure Okaachan was safely
busy, I pulled out the tanto I had taken to 'borrowing' from
Otouchan's collection and ran towards it. There were bushes and
trees screening the area from general view; whatever it was, it
had happened in the 'wilderness' part of the park.
I burst through the bushes into a ring of blood. Urameshi
was clutching his upper arm and glaring at what looked like a
giant pink slug. That Idiot Kuwabara was lying unconscious, and
Kurama was wielding his Rose Whip wildly.
He looked like Hell. His clothes weren't matching and his
hair was loose and looked as if he'd barely tied it back that
morning. The slug's tentacle had struck him across the face,
leaving a bruise.
I jumped over That Idiot's legs and whapped the pink slug's
face with my empty saya. I never liked them before but they have
their uses, not just to hold a blade. It swung down at me, but
I wasn't there anymore. I'd dashed over to Urameshi, so I could
look at that wound. It was a nasty flesh wound, but not serious.
I didn't need to worry.
Flashing over to the opposite side of the slug-thing - it
was *slow!* - I stabbed it twice in the neck with my tanto.
A quick jump-and-slash to chop the thing's head off and to
avoid it's death-throes, and it was over.
Looking over at Kurama again, I found him staring straight
at me. Those lambent eyes, sweet emeralds in the sunlight,
loving...
"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely.
That brought me back to earth with a sharp /crack/. I'd
remembered these people - but it was all Hiei's memories! Kurama
didn't know three-year-old Hikari!
"Hn!" I sheathed my tanto. "You look like Hell, fox." /Let
him wonder,/ I decided. Do him good, anyway. I flitted away. Or
began to.
"Hiei...?"
I paused and glanced back. His eyes were huge and glowing.
"Fox?"
He just shook his head. He was smiling for some reason. I
shrugged and ran back to Okaasan. With luck, she would not have
noticed I was gone.
She hadn't. I sat beside her, fiddling with the doll she'd
brought for me. I vaguely stripped it, redressed it, stripped it
again.
I had thought, when I remembered being Hiei, that that part
of my existence was over. It looked like it wasn't.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other three leaving
the park quietly. None of them saw me sitting over to the side
with my mother.
I was slightly disappointed.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
I climbed my tree that evening. Otousan was attending a
tournament in Kyoto and Okaasan had been inspired that day by
something she saw in the park, so I was left alone. When I'm
feeling moody, or upset, or just plain I-want-to-be-ALONE, I
climb my tree.
I love my tree. It's a big old cypress pine that stands
straight and tall. It's relatively easy to climb, and the
branches are broad enough to sprawl on comfortably. To make it
even nicer, a climbing rose vine has latched onto the tree and
wrapped itself around the trunk and branches. The vine is a
domestic variety, so it produces blooms for nine months of the
year. Consequently, almost always the air around my tree is
scented by roses, and in spring and summer the tree is
practically covered with flowers. The roses are white. I like
that. I don't think I would handle it well if they were red. Red
roses are, after all, Kurama's flower.
I have my spots, but my favourite is just outside my window.
The branch is not only broad, it is also one of the places where
the vine grows thickest. Lying there when the flowers bloom is
the nearest I ever think I'll come to 'a bed of roses'. Also,
when I'm lying there I can see the stars. Roses and stars - Hiei
loved them. I love them still. You know, if you didn't know
better, you might actually think I had been a nice guy.
Lying back in my roses, I daydreamed - of meeting the guys
again, of being a part of the team once more. How different it
had been, to rely on someone. To be relied on. Why had a
responsibility *lightened* Hiei's heart? I would return, be
welcomed, and go on missions with them again. I'd fight and win
and Kurama would smile at me. I would win his friendship again,
and we would all be a team again...
Wreathed in roses and happy dreams, I slipped into sleep.
********
Beneath the old cypress, the silver fox lifts his muzzle and
sniffs the air. Yes, this is definitely the place - he can smell
the girl-child's scent all too clearly here. Looking up, he sees
her, lying on the tree-branch, face turned to the heavens. As she
so often was, before...
Her hair is black still, and touched with that star-burst
patterned forelock he loves so. Now her hair is longer, tied in
two tails as her last-life's sister's is. Her eyes have changed.
No longer are they ruby stars, but still unique; they are the
rich royal purple of the lost third eye.
But she is him, once more in this world. So long it's
been... Four long years without him, and he thought so often, so
longingly, of joining him, only to be told "No, it will not
work," and his cry of "Why?" ignored.
This afternoon, looking into a pair of purple eyes, he
finally knew why he would not have joined him, and why he could
not be told.
The fox wraps his tail around his haunches, crouching into
rest. As long as she is there, he has no wish to be elsewhere.
The fox closes his eyes into sleep, the first he has had in
far too long.