Yuu Yuu Hakusho
Shadows and Lies
by Sionna Klassen and Kristin Huntsman
Disclaimer: Most of the characters in this story are the property of Yoshihiro
Togashi, Shonen Jump Weekly, Studio Pierrot, and Fuji Television. No
infringements of their rights are intended, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Chapter 2
Something shared that feels strange
Something cold that will not go away...
There's a heart as cold as ice
In a vault that's made of stone...
--Oingo Boingo, "Skin"
Kuwabara passed by a shadowed alcove on his way to the kitchen, not
that the empty kitchen would do Kurama any good. But something within the
alcove that he hadn't seen before attracted his attention. It looked
like...yes, it was definitely a door. How had he missed that?
Kuwabara shrugged off the question and walked up to the door, reaching
for the doorknob. He turned it and opened the door.
Kurama was half-frozen and still unconscious. His wet hair was
plastered to his face as he lay curled on the floor, shivering. Yusuke hovered
helplessly. "What are we going to do?" he asked. "There's _nothing_ in this
house that's of any use!"
Hiei didn't reply for a moment, trying to think. Then he cursed in
frustration. "We can't even make a fire! This is ridiculous!"
Suddenly both of them snapped their heads up as they heard a yell,
followed by crashing sounds. Yusuke ran for the door. "Kuwabara!" he yelled.
"Over here," Kuwabara called, his voice muffled. Yusuke skidded to a
halt by the alcove and peered in. He could see a lumpy pile of something in
there, but it was too dark to see much. "Kuwabara?"
"Hey, Urameshi!" Kuwabara's head suddenly popped out of the pile. He
was grinning like a maniac. "I found the storage closet!"
"The _what_?"
"Look at all this stuff! The closet was packed so full it all fell on
me when I opened the door!" Kuwabara dug in the pile. "Blankets, clothes, pots,
pans, bowls...you name it, I think it's in here!"
Yusuke blinked in surprise for a moment. "Why..." But he stopped
himself, realizing that the question wasn't important just then. "Blankets!" He
grabbed the first ones that came to hand and ran back to the room where Kurama
and Hiei were.
Hiei looked up, and eyed the blankets. "Where did you find those?"
"Storage closet," Yusuke said, kneeling on the floor and trying to
untangle the mass of cloth in his arms.
Hiei frowned. "Storage closet? You mean everything in the house was
packed into a closet? Why?"
"Who cares?" Yusuke retorted, neglecting to mention that the same
question had gone through his mind. "It's not important right now." He tossed
the blankets over Kurama.
Ice.
It was everywhere; a huge bowl-shaped valley of ice whose edges swept
up into jagged, serrated peaks like teeth. But instead of being faced by an
endless plain of white, Kurama found himself standing in a vast expanse of
shiny black.
He shivered as the cold wind sliced through him and looked up at what
he could see of the gray sky. He was standing in the exact center of the bowl.
He looked around, but the valley was entirely empty except for himself.
"Yusuke!" he yelled, and his voice echoed endlessly off the walls of the bowl.
"Hiei!"
Kurama heard a cracking noise, like a staccato burst of gunfire,
except that there were no bullets and the sound kept going. Then the noise
creaked to a halt. Kurama looked up and saw that the teeth had grown, shutting
out more of the sky. The black ice was slowly sealing him in.
Kurama ran for the wall, but no matter how much he ran he never made
any progress. He was stuck in the center of a valley that went on forever.
Finally he was too exhausted to run any more, and he dropped to his knees on
the black ice. The heat from his exertion faded within seconds, and the ice
burned the exposed skin of his palms.
The ice creaked and shifted again, and when Kurama looked up he could
barely see slivers of sky.
"_Let me out of here_!"
He snapped awake with a start.
Cold - he was so cold. Not outside, but inside. There was a lump of
ice in his heart that would never melt.
"Kurama?"
"Yusuke..." He looked down, at the blankets he was wrapped in and the
cup of what looked like hot tea in Yusuke's hand. "Where did all this come
from?"
"Would you believe a storage closet?" Yusuke asked with a lopsided
grin. He shrugged. "Kuwabara blundered into it."
"Go ahead, insult me!" Kuwabara called from another room, from which
emanated noises that sounded suspiciously like cooking. "You should be
grateful, Urameshi!"
Kurama sniffed. "Food, too?" he asked in surprise.
Yusuke shrugged again, but a little uneasily. "Anything we might need.
A good thing, too, because Hiei says there's nothing in the forest worth the
effort of going in there..."
"Where _is_ Hiei?" Kurama asked hastily, to prevent Yusuke from asking
anything about his experience in the forest. He didn't want to think about it.
Yusuke scowled. "Who knows?"
Hiei stood at the very edge of the meadow, where the grass met the
trees. He stared at one tree, frowning. "Damn!" he muttered.
Kurama sat hunched up in the blankets and let the heat from the cup of
tea seep into his hands. He drank, but the warmth didn't reach the frozen core
of his body. He wondered if he would ever feel warm again.
Yusuke had left to check on Kuwabara, who was evidently cooking
dinner. Kurama wondered whether the thought should scare him. Never having
tried Kuwabara's cooking, he wasn't sure what to expect.
He looked up sharply as the door opened. Hiei walked in, as silent as
a shadow. He cocked his head, looking - down, for once - at Kurama. "What do
you think?" he asked abruptly.
"About what?" Kurama asked, confused.
"The forest." Hiei gestured in the general direction of the trees.
Kurama frowned. "I...don't like it."
"Neither do I." Hiei's voice was bitter. "But I don't know why; not
yet."
Kurama got up and walked to the window. He opened it and looked
outside. The sun was setting far away, vanishing into the wall of trees that
closed them in the clearing as effectively as any ice wall. Thinking about his
dream, he shivered.
"Hey!" Kuwabara called from the other room, sounding strangely
cheerful. "Dinner's ready!"
Kurama and Hiei traded wry glances and left the room, heading for the
kitchen.
Moonlight spilled in the open window and splashed into a rectangular
pool of silver on the floor. The cool night breeze took the invitation the open
window offered and swirled into the room, welcome relief after the heat of the
day. The only light that could be seen outside came from the full moon and the
stars. All around the house there was nothing but the darkness of solid forest.
Inside the room, Yusuke was sitting crosslegged on the floor, staring
out at the darkness. He was used to city life. Out here, it was just
too...quiet. The silence kept him awake. He glanced to his right as he heard a
small sound, but it was only Kurama, shifting in his sleep. There were only
three rooms in the house, so he and Kurama had agreed to share. Hiei would
normally be sleeping in a tree, but he didn't trust the trees in this forest to
be in the same place when he woke up. He'd taken the roof instead, and Yusuke
couldn't blame him for not wanting to share a room with Kuwabara; he snored.
Kurama twitched again in his sleep and rolled over, facing the wall
away from Yusuke. His red hair streamed over the pillow, silvered by the
moonlight. He sighed quietly and seemed settled again. Yusuke envied Kurama's
ability to sleep in completely unfamiliar surroundings. Of course, Kurama had
probably slept in every possible environment over the four hundred years he'd
been
alive.
Yusuke returned his gaze to the window, just in time to catch a
glimpse of what looked like a flicker of candlelight. He straightened and
looked around, searching for the source of the light. But he saw nothing, no
matter how he strained his eyes. Finally, he gave up and relaxed again. Before
he even realized how tired he was, he fell asleep on the floor.
Kurama ran through the woods, leaping over fallen trees and ferns and
landing lightly on four small paws. Tails streaming behind him, he ran so fast
he nearly flew. But it wasn't fast enough.
He heard the gunshot behind him, very distant and far away. The next
instant the bullet slammed into him, the impact flinging him into a tree.
Kurama collapsed on a gnarled root, shattered and bleeding, whimpering in pain.
The hunter's footsteps crunched on branches and leaves as he approached, the
noise ear-splitting in volume to sensitive fox ears. Kurama shuddered and
watched the hunter loom over him.
<Escape!>
With the last of his strength he flung himself from his ruined body,
his spirit arcing up above the trees in a glittering cloud. He plunged
downwards again, through the roof of a house in the middle of nowhere, into a
room made silver and black by moonlight and shadow. He landed in his own body
and sat up with a start.
He looked at his hands, wondering, then looked across the room at
Yusuke, asleep on the floor. He hadn't known Yusuke had a penchant for
sleepwalking.
As Kurama watched, Yusuke stirred and awoke. He sat up, facing away
from Kurama and rubbing his eyes. Kurama opened his mouth to say something, but
the words never left his throat.
Yusuke whirled and blasted a blue-white bolt of light from his finger.
Caught unprepared, Kurama was hit at point-blank range, flung backwards by the
blast. He slammed into the wall and crumpled, gasping for breath. "Yusuke...?!"
he gasped, looking up. Yusuke stood over him, blocking the light, his face in
shadow.
Then he moved, fast as a striking snake. He raised his hand, then
plunged it down in a movement almost too fast to see. Kurama gave a cry of pain
as a short, thin knife buried itself in his chest. He stared at Yusuke.
<He _can't_ move that fast!>
Then Yusuke moved out of the way, allowing the light to fall freely.
Kurama saw for the first time the dark stain spreading on his shirt. It was
darker than blood, and it crawled like a living thing. Kurama tried to summon
his Rose Whip, and thorns trailed in delicate traceries along his hand and
wrist and stabbed into his skin.
Yusuke laughed, looming over him. Kurama struggled to bring his whip
under control, and it responded by lashing itself around him, holding him
helpless. Yusuke started to glow, at first so dimly that it was as if he was
only reflecting the moonlight. Then the light grew brighter and brighter until
it was blinding, too painful to look at. The vague figure in the center of the
light raised its finger and pointed at Kurama.
"_Yusuke_!" Kurama cried.
Yusuke laughed as the light burned him
Yusuke woke up suddenly as he heard a howl of rage that didn't sound
like anything human. He looked up, and barely dodged out of the way as Kurama's
Rose Whip shattered the floor where he had been lying an instant before.
"Kurama!" Yusuke yelled as he rolled to his feet. "Are you _crazy_?!"
Kurama's eyes were glowing green in the darkness, his face twisted
into a snarl. He struck again with the whip, and Yusuke dodged it again.
"Kurama!" he hollered, trying to make him see sense. "What are you doing?!"
The whip came at him again. This time Yusuke let it wrap around his
wrist, grimacing as the thorns pierced his skin. But before Kurama could follow
up, Yusuke yanked hard.
It shouldn't have worked. Kurama should have held on, causing a
tug-of-war. But instead, the whip went flying from his hand. Yusuke almost fell
over, startled as the tension of the whip was released.
What the hell...? Kurama's _never_ that easy to disarm! What's wrong
with him?
"I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
"_Help_!" Yusuke yelled at the top of his lungs as Kurama created a
sword from a leaf and flung himself at Yusuke, determined to tear out his
throat.