Disclaimer: YuYu Hakusho belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi

For Katia-chan, who demanded the plot bunny be written. And whom I made cry for days over it.

Morning Comes

"But something keeps you faithful
When all else in you turns and runs.
Love turns 40. The morning comes."
-Love Turns 40, Vienna Teng

He hated the smell of antiseptic, and liked the sting of it even less.

Botan reminded him a bit of Keiko then. Despite her harsh words about how he was acting like a baby over a few scrapes, her hands were careful and she blew gently on the raw skin. Like Atsuko, before she had despaired of cleaning her son up from every street brawl and turned to the consolation of her bottles.

Yusuke waited until she was done with the alcohol and had firmly capped the container before he offered, "I ran into Kurama on the way here."

"What!" Botan's reaction was predictable, and she scrambled to pick up the fallen bottle of antiseptic. "What happened?"

"It was really odd," he reflected. "He didn't attack. And it's not like I could have started anything, not in this condition and in a crowded street."

She put her hands on her hips and leaned into his face to examine him more closely, lips curling into a frown. "And he just walked innocently right by? Well, you don't seem to be cursed or anything. But I still find it hard to believe."

Yusuke wrinkled his nose and shuffled back on the bed to regain his distance. Kurama had seemed perfectly honest in his request. "He only asked for a favor."

"A favor?" Botan raised an eyebrow. "He's a criminal. It's got to be a trick."

"He asked me to give him three days. He says he'll return the Mirror after that."

"Well of course he will!" she burst out agitatedly. "The full moon is in three days. That's when his treasure is most potent. Whoever looks in that mirror will see his or her deepest desire revealed, and the mirror will grant it if something is offered in return. Getting the Mirror back after he makes his wish could be utterly pointless—we can't take that risk."

She could tell by the way Yusuke was fiddling with the rumpled bed sheets that he had been considering Kurama's offer. "Why did he come to me, though? I'm in no shape to stop him."

"Yusuke… he's not just any upstart criminal. We've had intelligence that he's actually Youko Kurama, a master thief and an expert liar. You can't trust him. I don't know why he's trying to win you over rather than kill you outright, but I know it's a trap. You've never seen him like we have…"

Botan began repacking the first aid kit, giving him a few minutes to think it over. She shut the box with a soft snick and set it on the nightstand.

"He and his friends… they weren't getting along. He wanted out of the deal."

"I can't explain that," she responded quietly. "But he's been tricking and stealing for over a thousand years. Just be careful, okay?"

Yusuke nodded to the night, his expression reflecting somberly in the dark glass of the window.

He had heard of looks that could kill. He had received many of them, violent and hateful, unreasonable and untamed bloodlust. But Yusuke had never met a street thug or punk with a glare that could freeze someone where they stood.

Kurama's face had only ever been emotionless—or perhaps, full of an emotion so quiet and hard to pinpoint that it felt unreadable. It did not exactly change now. His eyes narrowed slightly, his jaw set, but other than that his facial muscles moved little.

Those green eyes, however, were so cold that Yusuke nearly lost his bravado. What made eyes like that?

Still he pasted on a cocky grin. "Look, just hand over the Mirror of Darkness, and I won't have to mess up your face."

Yusuke had been unhappily contemplating the prospect of another needle-in-the-haystack chase come morning, until he had recognized Kurama's outfit as one of the high schools' uniforms. Meiou was not much known for staking out territory, but on occasion some of the students would persuade him to fund arcade expeditions with their pocket money.

He thought it pretty unlikely that a thief on the run would enroll in a local school in trying to avoid attention, but someone might have seen Kurama and realized he was a false student, or he and Hiei might be hiding out in the Meiou area.

He had been very surprised when the group of students obligingly fetched Minamino-kun—Kurama—to talk with him.

And that was how Yusuke found himself in the woods opposite a pair of icy eyes.

Kurama's voice was soft, not aggressive, but deadly hostile. Botan might have had a point the other night. "I'm sorry. That I cannot do."

Yusuke readied a fist and lunged, but the redhead did not duck, did not even flinch when inches from his face Yusuke's arm was cruelly wrenched back. He flew off balance and sprawled against a tree, looking quickly for the source of Kurama's sudden back-up—had Hiei arrived?

The vine around his forearm tightened and began to bind his other wrist. More curled around his body, pressing him to the trunk, and the tree's roots rose out of the ground to ensnare his feet.

He had not even touched him.

In his anger he almost missed the demon's flat words, an echo of the first day. "I'll keep it, thanks. I need it for something."

Yusuke struggled wildly through the evening until he tired himself out in vain. When he came to, it was dark and the leaves pressed against his face where the vines had let him fall when they finally slackened.

Kurama was nowhere to be found.

True to fashion, Kurama had disappeared like a fox gone to earth. Yusuke and Botan had searched every possible lead, but he had vanished.

Now, the night of the deadline, Yusuke sulked morosely out his window at the full moon. How many more minutes now before Kurama would make his life-shattering wish? Why hadn't Yusuke just gone to the arcade to waste his last peaceful hours instead of sitting alone in his room?

And most pressing, what would Kurama wish for? His heart's desire?

Stupid. He shoved his hands into his pockets. The arcade sounded pretty good about now. Or a round with Kuwabara, or anything except not knowing and having to dwell on that foreboding feeling.

Botan found him a wandering the street not far from his house when she flew down to tell him that the Mirror had just unleashed a great amount of energy—Kurama had been located.

The hospital roof was empty, save for the flapping of bed sheets on the laundry lines. The moon sailed full and bright overhead, blinding across the flat surface of the mirror cradled in his hands. He angled it to show his reflection instead.

All he could see was the echo. Already the face of a ghost, pale and lined in resignation. Shadows where the light did not reach. Soft breaths rasping, frosting. She had been already dead. And now, fittingly, so was he.

He had left Hatanaka Kazuya in the plastic waiting chairs outside the emergency room. He had excused himself for the restroom, but had come up to the roof instead.

No point in hesitating. Why shy away from a heart's desire?

"Mirror of Darkness, awaken in the moonlight. Let your face show my desire, that I may invoke your power."

This woman's health and happiness… is that what you ask me to grant?

"If that would make any amends for my sins, and for deceiving her these past fifteen years…"

The night wind blew briskly against his face, as did Botan's ponytail when the ends of the strands whipped against his cheek with her speed.

Nakayama Hospital. Why on earth would Kurama be there?

Botan alighted on the roof where it was less conspicuous, out of the hassle of the front desk, and the moonlight shone brightest. She ran forward thought the sea of sheets with Yusuke close behind. So close that he ran into her when she stopped abruptly.

Moonlight glinted off the surface of the Mirror, cradled limply in Kurama's hand.

"Maybe he's keeping his promise to give it back. Taking a victory nap," Yusuke murmured. But he was not teasing when he rolled the body over, unresisting and slightly too cool, too pale and stark white in the light.

Botan had pressed her hand to her mouth. "Is that the price… a life in return for a wish?"

He checked for a pulse, his hands and voice rough. "What the hell kind of world domination would you want so badly that you'd die and never enjoy it?"

She had picked the Mirror of Darkness up, oddly bright eyes transfixed on it.

"He didn't…" her voice broke. She shook her head, disbelieving and as white as Kurama, and offered the mirror to him. "He didn't have an ulterior motive."

Looking at the woman's face reflected there, Yusuke had the sudden, sick feeling it might have all been prevented.

It was nearly dawn when, during his frantic search to tell Shuuichi the good news, Kazuya checked the roof.

He did not have to say anything when he came into the room. Did not have to say that the doctors could not understand why Shuuichi's heart had suddenly stopped. That no one would ever understand why his heart simply stopped at the same time she miraculously recovered.

He did not have to say a word. Shiori broke into sobs before he could even think about voicing anything.

Morning came.

…
Owari
…

-Windswift