The Waiting Game

Andixa

Yukina knows, and Hiei knows she knows, but no one's saying anything just yet.

Disclaimer: It's their sandbox; I'm just playing in it.
Warning: It isn't a focal point of the story, but I treat H/K as practically cannon, so it will come up.

Happy reading! Please review, even with criticism.

I'm almost positive she knows - my sister, that is. Yukina. She's not an idiot.

When you're searching for your long lost brother, and a mysterious demon shows up out of the blue to save you - the same height, same red eyes as yours, and not typically in the business of rescuing damsels in distress - it's hard not to connect the dots. And, while I may reject everything I've inherited from our mother's people, the resemblance to my ice maiden sister is unmistakable. Why she hasn't said anything - that, I can't explain.

And she is my sister, there is no doubt about that. Proud. Strong. Fiery, not like the brittle ice maidens of our homeland. Not helpless like the idiot humans seem to think... although she has little in the way of attack power, I am not so stupid as to measure strength by power alone. Sweet and innocent, unlike her brother, but not naive. She is everything I could have hoped for, if I was in the habit of hoping.

She is also a puzzle, one that has nagged at me for years. On the surface, just another simpering ice maiden, weak, lacking even the frosty hatred of her kin - my sister in name only. But beneath that she is hard like permafrost, refusing to give in to torture, or grief, or anger - refusing to hate even the bastards who tortured her. Brave and stubborn enough to leave her safe little island to find her brother; delicate enough to cry about dead birds. Familiar and entirely alien.

She confused me that day, the day we first met. I think I confused her as well.

I took to watching her... not that I had anything better to do while trapped in the human world. She spends her time doing menial chores for the old hag, sweeping and sewing and tending the garden. Every day, an hour before high noon, she sprinkles birdseed, and every seven days that human oaf trips up the temple stairs to see her. Kurama visits once or twice a month, and they hole themselves up in the kitchen or living area - probably for gossip, that prissy fox. It's all so sickeningly domestic of her, but at least she's safe.

Then one day, after I'd developed a routine of checking up on her every few days, she caught me... and when I say 'caught', I mean she froze the tree branch out from under my feet, landing me in a pile of leaves, and invited me in for lunch - smiling serenely the whole time. I was too shocked to refuse. We finished off a large fried fish, and chatted - chatted! - about the human world over a box of sweet frozen cream. After that, I became another of her regular visitors.

Like I said, there was not much else to do in the human world.

It took another month before I realized she knew. I had no intention of telling her, of course. But by then I'd gotten used to her company - her observations on the detective and his friends, the way she rolls her eyes when I am particularly rude, the intelligence with which she discusses medicine and cooking - and on rare occasions, her ability to insult someone without their notice. When we are around the detective and his team, her presence gives me the strange sensation of having someone guarding my back - an entirely unfamiliar feeling, outside of battle.

The amount of talking she does would normally have me summoning the darkness flame, except that she is my sister and I seem to have infinite patience when it comes to her. She usually has something interesting to say, anyway. Sometimes she offers a new story about the human world, or a tidbit from her life in the demon world - or comforting silence, especially on cold snowy days. On particularly warm days, she asks me polite questions about my life. When it rains, she sits on the porch and wonders out loud about her brother - what his life was like, where he grew up, what he would think of her.

On one such rainy evening, over a mug of heated chocolate, it occurred to me that she never wonders where her brother is. She asks me once a month, like clockwork, if I've found her brother yet - but on those cold wet days, when I take shelter under the temple eaves and listen to her guess at her brother's character, his favorite food, his joys and sorrows, or what hardships he might have suffered, she never asks 'where could he be?' Why should she, when she knows he's right in front of her?

The next time she asked me if I'd found her brother, the small curve of her lips looked almost smug.

Next chapter will be Yukina!

R&R!