I hope you enjoy this story, as it's one I've been wanting to tell for a while. Disclaimer: I do not own any characters/concepts from Yu Yu Hakusho, only my own original characters. Thank you for reading!

-When Darkness Fades to Light-

White. Cold and white.

It's all I can feel. It's all I can see.

No, there is red too. It stains the white.

Pain.

It hurts.

Where am I? How did I get here? How long have I been wandering in this white?

There are pinpricks of yellow in the white.

Lights? Get to the lights. The lights mean warmth, safety.

Must getaway, but what was I running from?

Where was I running from?

Who- or what was I running from?

Must find the warmth.

White. Nothing but the white, and the cold. And red...

Hiei's eyes were closed, but he wasn't sleeping. He wasn't even sure why he had decided to join the others in Yusuke's room before dinner. They were nothing but irritating. The wind blew the snow against the sealed windows and the sliding glass doors, almost sounding like rain.

Yusuke and Kuwabara were arguing about something in the stupid card game they were playing. Yusuke's girlfriend, Keiko, was trying to play referee. Yusuke's very drunk mother, the one who suggested this halfwit game, was egging them on. The irritatingly cheerful spirit guide Botan was being unusually quiet. Occasionally her phone would vibrate with a text from assumedly Koenma. He could have read her mind if he wanted to be nosy, but he didn't feel like lowering his mental guard and listening to not only the blather of people's voices but also their minds.

Yukina was sitting quietly as she often did, occasionally gently laughing at the antics of the two dolts. Kuwabara's spirit heated with every giggle, and it was really starting to piss Hiei off. Yukina was out of the moron's league, and the sooner he realized that the less likely Hiei would have to kill him.

Well, he might still kill him anyway, but if he left Yukina alone, Hiei would at least make it quick.

Trying to tune out the idiotic bickering and distract himself from his rising annoyance, he focused instead on eavesdropping on Kurama and Kuwabara's sister in the kitchenette of Yusuke's room.

The human woman was much more tolerable than her obnoxious sibling. Yes, much more quiet and reserved. Shizuru was her name, maybe? Hiei had never spoken to the woman, and frankly, he didn't care to. Kurama, however, judging by the tone of his voice and the way that his aura reacted around her, did.

Hiei had to hide a smirk. So Kurama was interested in someone? And a human woman at that? How adorable…

He didn't sense the playing card flicked by Kuwabara that landed on his face, he was so focused on listening to Kurama's ridiculously subtle attempts at flirting. He felt the others in the room freeze in terror.

He opened one glaring eye at the two idiots, both with terrified expressions. They backed away, a stupid look on their faces. Yusuke nervously positioned himself closer to Keiko and his mother.

To Hiei's ever-increasing annoyance, Kuwabara had done the same with Yukina.

As if he would EVER hurt her… No, he would never allow any harm to come to her if he could help it. But she might get caught in the crossfire when he burned Kuwabara to a crisp… Better to remove himself from the situation before his anger exploded and he really did kill the fool.

He stood up, card falling from his face, and Kuwabara and Yusuke yelped.

Kurama and Shizuru, having noticed the quiet, had walked out of the kitchenette to investigate.

"Hiei?" Kurama asked gently, "Did something happen?"

Hiei just scoffed in reply. He grabbed his cloak from the chair it was draped over and swung it around himself. He opened the door and quietly slipped outside into the cold. The "open garden" concept within this lodge was quite beautiful, but inconvenient in that it required being outside to go from room to room. However, the cold didn't bother Hiei. He was a fire demon, after all, and the blood of the ice maidens also ran through him.

He could hear someone yelling at Yusuke and Kuwabara for their idiotic antics as he started to walk to his room, but he couldn't tell who. Likely it was Botan. Now that his punishment from the Spirit world was officially lifted, the only thing tying him to this ragtag team was an echo of sentiment. If they continued to annoy him like this, that attachment would diminish ever more quickly.

Hiei suspected that was one of several reasons that Koenma had suddenly offered this winter getaway after immediately after the Dark Tournament. The lodge housed a well-known hot spring that had restorative powers for both the body and spirit. It was in a quiet corner of the complex Spirit World, unpolluted by humans. Koenma had explicitly declared it a vacation for the Spirit Detective, his friends, and his family. Hiei doubted that was all there was to it.

He had reached his room, as he had decided to walk at a normal pace, but he didn't quite feel like going inside. He was… restless. Now that the threat of death no longer hung over them, he found the world mundane and a little boring.

There was a village not far from the resort. Maybe he would wander around until dinner.

A little while later, and the wind had picked up even more. Most of the shops were closed. Not like he was going to purchase anything, but it might have alleviated his boredom. Plus, fire demon or not, it would have nice to get out of the biting wind.

Wanting to get his blood flowing a bit, he sped to the other side of the village, far beyond the outskirts, closer to the mountains that ringed it. It was nearly time for dinner. Hiei was surprisingly curious about what might be served. Human food was much tastier than food in the Demon World and much more enjoyable than the sustenance he had been forced to consume as a child. He was still a little annoyed though and decided that instead of directly returning to the inn he would take a large arc and come up on the lodge from the other direction.

After a few minutes of walking at a normal pace, he heard excited murmuring from behind a snowbank up ahead. The energy signals were unfamiliar, undeniably demonic, and ridiculously weak. Hiei doubted they even had the energy to sense him coming in this barren landscape. He was set to ignore them, but if they picked a fight, he wouldn't have said no to working out some stress.

Then his Jagan twitched as he sensed it. An even fainter energy source, this one appearing to be human, and was so dim it had to be on the verge of death. It wasn't Yusuke or Kuwabara- He had spent so much time with them he could recognize the feel of their energy.

He sighed. If one of the human women of his companions were to die, there would be trouble, and undoubtedly, he would somehow be dragged into it by Kurama. Not to mention, Kurama might be particularly upset if a CERTAIN human woman died while Hiei stood by. Though he rolled his eyes, to avoid more trouble later he decided to investigate.

He already knew that it couldn't be Keiko, who had no spirit energy to speak of. Atsuko had a small amount, but as Hiei smelled no alcohol, he doubted she was the victim. Botan's energy signature was unique as a spirit guide, and Yukina's energy would be demonic in nature. Shizuru, however, had powerful but undeveloped human spirit energy. He hastened his step as he realized Shizuru was the most likely candidate.

He rounded the snowbank in less than an instant to see two minor demons crouched close to the ground. There was a tiny huddle at their feet, covered in a layer of snow.

The two demons whirled around, drawing themselves up to their formidable height, teeth bared.

"Hey! Back off small-fry, this is our dinner!"

Hiei scoffed. Of course, these weaklings would be of the barbaric sort.

Hiei had had no choice as a small child but to consume the flesh and energy of humans, but he had made sure to feed himself other sustenance as soon as he could walk and gather food for himself. He held no sympathy for humans, but he found eating them to be rather disgusting. Not only did they taste awful, but they were sentient and spiritual beings, and their spiritual imprint would linger after consumption. Some demons got off on feeling the human's terror as they were eaten, and their souls full of spirit energy were digested. Hiei did not.

Though he didn't care for them as a species, there was a particular spirit detective and a large doofus who had at least earned his respect.

Ignoring the arrogant display of aggression from the demons, Hiei tried to look around them and see if it was indeed Shizuru or Atsuko in the snow. He lowered his guard and focused on the huddle, but there was silence. They weren't dead yet, so most likely, they were unconscious. It was annoying, but Hiei could only read an unconscious mind while in his Jaganshi form.

"Hey, asshole, don't ignore me!" The talkative demon threw a large-fisted punch at him. Hiei smirked. It looks like he would be working off that stress after all.

In an instant, he was gone, and the demons reeled back.

"Where- Where did he go?!"

He cleared his throat from behind them.

They two demons leaped away from Hiei, surprised.

"You're… You're fast!"

Dimwits.

"Would you like to try again?" Hiei asked, smirking. It was amusing to toy with these two, but he was getting a little hungry. Better to wrap this up. Plus, the energy in the little mound of snow behind him was getting weaker by the second.

"Bastard!" Predictably, the two now attacked him as one. He drew his sword and pulsed his fire through the blade before returning it to the scabbard. It was over. The two demons had frozen, their fists just an inch from his face. Their faces were full of disbelief as they burst into flames and simultaneously fell to pieces.

His fire burned them until there was nothing left, and he enjoyed the heat of the flames. The snow behind him shifted as the heat reached whoever was buried. He turned his attention to the small mound. Much too small for either Atsuko or Shizuru, he now saw.

Oh well, no skin off his nose if a strange human died out here, though he was curious how a live human even entered the spirit world without the help of a spirit guide. Besides, they were all but dead anyway, whoever they were.

He turned to leave the human to their fate when he felt a gentle tug on his boot. So there was some fight left in the half-dead human after all. He looked down, and was about to shake the frostbitten hand off his shoe, but hesitated when he saw the dark purple bruises around their wrists. Whoever they were, they had been captive until recently.

Then, he locked eyes with the human. Strange eyes, glowing silver, met his crimson and pierced his soul.

A jolt of intangible electricity flowed through his body from where their hand rested on his boot.

He felt as though he was gazing into the eyes of a mighty beast. Heat was flowing through his body.

It was hot... Too hot…

White flames licked at his skin, ran through his blood. He was the one who was now going to be destroyed by the fire.

The closest sensation to this he had ever felt was when his black dragon had been turned against him in the dark tournament- but even that paled in comparison. He couldn't help but cry out from the intensity. It was painful, but not in a way he had known. It was also a different kind of pain than when he got the Jagan eye. There was something else there too, something his jumbled mind could not grasp.

Just as suddenly as the sensation started, it stopped. Hiei took a moment to draw the icy air into his scorched lungs. He slowly looked down, surprised that his body was not a charred mess. The human was facedown in the snow again, seeming to have fallen back unconscious. Blood stained the snow around them burgundy. Now that the top layer of snow from their head had dropped away, he could see the blood caking their temple through their long silver hair.

Something about this human was special.