Ticking Timebomb

Chapter 69: A Defining Moment

. . .

I could feel the heat through the shields—the black burning abyss sucking up the little remaining space of the room. The gods were protecting me, even as I attempted to protect myself. The barrier crackled with pink and gold and white energy, pushing back even as the black flames swallowed up the air, leaving everything heavy and thick and so hot it felt unbearably cold.

The screams never stopped.

I gripped the box in my pocket in a hard hold, handed over to me for safe keeping...for just in case. For reasons I didn't want to think about but was given no other choice.

The image of Hiei eating the heart would forever be ingrained in my mind—the way the blood dripped from his chin to the floor, the way his throat worked to swallow it. Even the way he'd sucked the blood from his fingers afterward, savoring the final bite like it was full course fucking meal at a fancy restaurant.

I wanted to be disgusted.

I should be, I thought. I should feel revolted, but something about it was...kind of...mesmerizing. He did it for me. He did it out of his willingness to protect me at any cost.

I couldn't be disgusted with that.

If only it wasn't a mistake. A huge fucking failure.

Shortly after Hiei swallowed the remainder of the heart, we sat in bated silence, waiting. When nothing happened I thought we'd hit a stroke of luck.

I was wrong. What else was new.

He curled in on himself, knees to chest and head in his hands. When I approached him he snapped at me to stay away and I did...I stood back and listened against my better judgment because Hiei wasn't an idiot and I was here for support, not interference.

I should never have let him eat it.

The groans turned to flat out painful moaning, making my heart ache and my gut wrench unpleasantly for him while I ignored the gods' rumblings in my head about how he would surely die. Any moment now he would drop dead and that would be the end of everything. All our wasted efforts, my sister's sacrifice, Hiei's...they would be for nothing.

The flames that sprung up around him weren't surprising. At first, they were just little patches, lighting the floor to a red glow until they sprang up and blared as bright as the sun. Red and orange and sometimes blue, but not what they were now.

They converged on him, circling him, blocking him off. I thought maybe he was doing it on purpose so I would keep my distance. Except I would be willing to walk through a flame of any kind to reach him...and surely he must know that by now. So when the flames grew hotter, more violent and he started to scream...I knew I was wrong. It wasn't on purpose...and it was hurting him.

The first time I jolted from my seat in the corner I was gifted with a fierce burn to my forearm. It healed almost instantly thanks to the gods and I was foolish enough to jump towards him again only for a lick of black flame to come towards my face. I jumped back in just enough time to avoid it setting my hair on fire, but not fast enough to keep my eyelashes fully intact.

I took a deep breath...then another. Okay, Kasumi, now wasn't the time for panic. We didn't know what would happen after he ate the heart, how it would absorb or if it even would at all. I needed to stay positive.

Hiei wasn't going to die here.

I wouldn't let him.

I'd drag the bastard back from hell myself if I had to.

For all my bravado...I still found myself backed into a corner in the end. Here and now, I would be no help to him. The gods offered me many options...but all of them led to the same conclusion—kill him and put him out of his misery.

I couldn't do that.

Hiei remained suspended in midair, his body engulfed by vicious black flames like a malevolent cocoon...and I could still hear his screams. Tortured. Painful.

Tears sprang up in my eyes and were soon dried from the heat, never being given a chance to fall.

I didn't know what to do. I feared if I tried to open the door the flames would only spew out and engulf Genkai's entire estate. The magic in the room would be lost and I wouldn't be able to contain it. The power coming off him alone...it was a deafening sort of feeling. It brought forth a horrible sense of pure fear. I knew darkness dwelled inside him, one he battled within his mind daily...but I never thought it would turn into something like this.

What am I supposed to do?

I didn't realize I was screaming it until my throat was hoarse and I was standing, my barriers crackling with my fear fueled rage. I wanted to help, more than anything, I wanted to be the one that saved him for once.

Stepping towards him was like walking into a firestorm. His energy spat and howled and crackled at me, electrified along with the heat of the flames and I knew my barriers wouldn't hold.

A fitting end for us, I thought, to burn each other to ashes.

"Don't do it, girl."

"You'll die."

"You'll kill us."

"Don't go near him. Stay away!"

"The flames will melt the skin from your flesh. You'll feel every moment of it until nothing is left."

"Stop, do not go to him! Stop!"

Their words did not frighten me. I wouldn't let them deter me.

I felt one of them wrestle for control of my body and then it became a matter of fighting not only myself but them as well.

They gave me the control back. I wasn't going to let them have it again.

Something in me snapped further—maybe it was my sanity, my mind finally breaking under all the strain.

I didn't care.

I wouldn't let him die. Not for me. Not for anyone.

He, more than anyone else, deserved to live on and have a better life than the cards he was dealt. Our connection showed me things...too many things. All of them made me righteously angry.

He wasn't going to die like this.

I felt more than heard myself screaming as I reached towards that suspended ball of fire, felt my hands sink into it as the gods howled at me to back away.

They sunk in and were gripped, pulled. Soon my arms were engulfed and I could feel the fire, feel it eating me alive, eviscerating the flesh of my arms and hands, and I was sure if I was able to free them I would have pulled back nothing but bones.

I reached in further until my shoulders too were swallowed up. The flames started to drip, fall apart and pool on the floor like molten lava, so dark it was like a miasma. It spilled across my chest and neck, down to my feet and burned the entire way. My barriers shattered, leaving me to deal with the brunt of the heat and I lost the will to scream...my voice so broken it wasn't even possible.

It still didn't compare to the pain of accepting the second god.

So I pushed forward, hoping beyond hope I would feel something inside those flames.

A hand gripped mine. Strong and sure.

The rest of the flames fell away.

Hiei came with them, falling in a heap among the molten bits still scattered across the floor, his hand clutching mine in a grip so strong it hurt.

A cool light spread over me. Cold...just like Yukina's power.

The burnt flesh of my arms and neck and chest and legs began to reverse...first to a dark angry red...then to an irritated pink...and finally to my natural paleness. As if it never was.

Healing energy.

Molten pieces of fire still clung to his skin and hair...his clothing was gone, burnt to ash I assumed...and all I could do was stare. I think I even forgot how to breathe for so long I almost passed out.

He tugged me down and I stumbled, falling to my knees.

The clinking sound of falling stones had my breath hitching again.

Spilling across the floor were tiny gems, all in disarray and various sizes, unrefined, unlike Yukina's pristine golden hued ones.

Hiruiseki...was what they were called.

Hiei's were a beautiful shade of deep blue. Blue like the hottest of flames. And in their centers burned the light of an orange fire.

Hiei openly sobbed. Screaming still, but the sound now was like a man who had been taken to the edge, thrown off and broken, and then glued back together in such a way that it hurt.

Shattered. Just like I was.

Shattered and mashed back together so quickly it put him in unimaginable pain.

I brushed the bits of lava from his hair, watching as they glooped to the ground and remained, embers still smoldering inside them.

His tears scattered across the floor and I wanted so badly to collect them just as he did for Yukina, but he wouldn't let my hand go and I wasn't going to leave his side for something so trivial. I gathered him in my arms, hissed when his skin instantly burned and held on for dear life.

It took a long time for his screaming to stop.

When it did...ice spread out in a circle around us, freezing what remained of the fiery orb and cooling the both of us.

My breath turned to steam and I shivered.

Ice.

Since when?

He ate the heart of a dragon...and he came out a completely different element?

What...the fuck?

Surely my brain short-circuited or it was a trick or maybe I was dead and this was all just some long-running dream.

Hiei was blazing fire and heat and smoldering ash...he wasn't ice or frozen winters or bitingly cold winds.

Was this something hidden inside him and it took something drastic to draw it out...or was it new, a strange turn of events from eating the heart? I couldn't be sure. I didn't even know if he could tell me if I asked.

Hiei rose, my hand still clutched in his and I staggered up with him on unsteady legs.

He rubbed at his eyes with his other hand, stubbornly brushing away the last of his tears before they could fall and turn to stones like the rest. When he finally opened them I took a good long look...

They were still that gorgeous shade of garnet red, shining like gems even in the darkness of the room. But his pupils...

"Hiei..."

They were like slits and it reminded me horribly of a snake for a long moment. Caius. Those were eyes just like Caius' except...unique in such a way that even when I stared into them I still only saw Hiei. For that I was thankful.

Caius spent more time torturing me than befriending me...and in the end, he betrayed me anyway.

I was a fool. In so many fucking ways.

Hiei was the only thing I'd ever done right.

I brushed my free hand down his chest...noticed a soft, shifting glow beneath his breast where I assumed his core would be...it was red, like the color of the heart he'd eaten, and beat as if it were too. I placed my hand there...felt the heat and watched stunned as it shifted to a cool blue and then back again.

Hot and cold.

Much like his temperament.

He backed me into the wall, eyes hungry and his skin already flushed and hot and heavy. My clothing already in tatters was stripped away with hands hurried and shaking. He brought my fingers to his mouth and sucked, coating them in his saliva and pushing my hand back to my core so I could do the bare minimum for lubrication.

He barely had the restraint to wait through that.

As soon as I was finished he took me with ravenous hunger, something akin to a wild animal and not a man.

The gods made themselves scarce, their comments giving me little comfort. Their amazement at the turn of events even they could not have predicted.

For both of us to survive was a miracle.

For him to come out of the state he was in and immediately want to fuck told me something else was horribly off but now wasn't the time to ask. I didn't stop or refute him...and he didn't hurt me. Not in a way I would call bad, at any rate.

His arm snaked under me, lifting, forcing my legs around his waist. He pinned me to the wall, pounding into me with a speed I knew he was doing his best to restrain. His free hand touched me...everywhere his fingers could reach, the feeling of it lingered, like trails of hot fire, but it didn't burn.

His palm mark on my forearm was gone. What once could not be healed was just pure skin again thanks to his energy. And as his fingers skipped across my flesh I knew he was searching for more...

He dropped me, pulling out so he could turn me around and take me from behind, slipping back in like he belonged...and oh he did. He belonged nowhere else but with me and inside me and if he ever left I felt like I would finally crumble and break and die. And I knew that was unhealthy and scary and it left a bad taste in my mouth, but this fear-fueled desire was only growing stronger by the minute and I couldn't hate it even if I wanted to.

His fingers trailed down my back and I sucked in a painful breath when I felt the scar from the slice of his blade suddenly flare and heat...and then it cooled to pure ice and I gasped again.

I knew if I had access to a mirror I would see that it was gone.

His palm flattened in the center of my back, his fingers splayed and then his lips joined them, kissing my shoulder blades and every inch of my spine he could reach.

The sex lasted a long time. A lot longer than any time previous.

He was insatiable with his hunger. Taking me over and over until I was a sweaty, moaning mess on the floor.

In this time not once did he speak. He traced and healed every scar...every blemish from my past. It was like I was fresh and new...a body only he had touched. That was what he wanted.

The rising of our energies was nothing new...the added colors notwithstanding. It was brighter, more blinding, an explosive force compared to previous times but still held that comforting familiarity. When things settled, the lights merely faded colors, I was finally able to just breathe.

Hiei laid across me, his breaths heavy and damp against the skin of my neck. Every once in awhile his lips would brush against me, tasting my skin and breathing in my scent. I wondered if he was just as worried as I was that this wasn't real—that we were really dead and this was all just some wild dream.

I groped at his back, hands slick with his sweat, and tried to roll him off me.

The stones he'd cried previously were digging into my back and his weight was starting to crush me and...well, I was covered in all kinds of sticky things besides just sweat. I wanted to get out of this room and have a good long chat with Hiei before we got sucked into some other bullshit.

I didn't have to ask, because he staggered up on his own, returning to my tattered clothes and digging around in the pockets of my pants.

He produced the ring box, thankfully still intact, and returned to kneel in front of me.

The first words out of his mouth since this entire ordeal began were: "I love you."

And as he placed the ring, tempered black to his deep red, over my finger—I hoped it wouldn't be the last time I ever heard those words.

But the more rational part of me knew that wasn't possible.

. . .

Later on, I sat in Hiei's long unused bed in Genkai's temple and stared out the window. The moon was full and bright, it cast a cool, silvery glow across the grass and gardens that stretched out back for what seemed an infinity.

After escaping the room, we hold ourselves up here. Hiei erected a barrier around the room so no one would enter and he just...slept.

Like death.

I found myself checking on him every few seconds and if it wasn't for the Jagan watching me like a hawk I might have actually believed the fucker had gone on and died.

Inside my mind, however, raged a war. A rumble of other minds forced into one that spoke of the future and the past and the possibilities. They were endless, on and on in circles. Nothing I did would shut them up. They were excited about Hiei's acceptance of the heart, no matter how pessimistic they'd been to begin with. They gloated and talked high and mighty like they knew all along everything would work out fine.

Nothing was really fine though, was it?

Hiei laid sleeping. A power inside him dormant and waiting.

I knew from experience anything to do with the gods wreaked havoc on the body. He showed no outward signs of distress—no wounds, no pain, no grimacing. His body was as hale and whole as it always had been.

But along with his eyes, so changed the Jagan. It stared at me now the color of violet so deep it was such a noticeable change it irked me. It was really only a couple of shades darker, lacking its usual bright purple glow. I didn't know why it bothered me as much as it did. Even the pupil was the same unlike Hiei's actual set of eyes.

It was something I'd grown to ignore when it came to the fire demon—the third eye. It was part of him and whether I liked it or not, it would remain.

"Stop looking at me," I said to it as if it could actually hear me.

It did no such thing, as expected, and I gave it the finger.

What the fuck was wrong with me? I was sitting there talking to a goddamn eyeball for cripes sake.

I turned away, back to staring out the window and trying to ignore the blistering headache brought on from the gods. They were conspiring about how they would train me to use my new "gifts" and how many corners they could cut while doing it to shave off some time.

I dismissed all their ideas, all their plans. Fuck the training.

There was only one thing on my mind.

I held my hand up to the cold light streaming through the open window. On my finger was the black band. It didn't shine like metal but was matte black and indestructible. Perfect.

The hand that snaked around my waist didn't startle me. When it slipped beneath the sheets and wriggled its way between my legs I groaned, a little annoyed, a little turned on...mostly annoyed.

"You didn't get enough earlier?"

"Never enough," he murmured, sitting up to drag his teeth down the back of my neck.

He knew just were to touch and how much pressure to apply to make my knees tremble. I was slick and shaking before he was even halfway through.

He played with the curls between my legs, spreading the wetness, before slipping two fingers inside me.

"I want my smell on you."

"I'm sure I stink like sex as it is. What more could you possibly do?"

I couldn't help the moan when a third finger slipped in beside the others and began to pump in and out...in and out. So agonizingly slow.

My head flopped back against his shoulder, so my back was pressed to his chest. His free arm wrapped around my stomach and held me closer as if he were trying to melt into me. And by the heat coming off him, I wouldn't be too surprised if it were true.

"We need to talk," I said, biting off a groan when his pace quickened.

"No," he growled. "No talk. Only this."

Serious now, I rounded on him, ripping his hand off me and turning to stare him, my gaze sharp and unyielding. "No, you will talk. Now."

His glare could have melted stone.

"What is going on with you?"

He dragged a hand down his face and I felt the growl rumble through his chest. Sweat was already beading there, little droplets running down flushed skin.

Overheating.

Feverish.

Many doctors would call this rejection of an organ but I knew that wasn't possible. He'd eaten it, not had it sewed into him.

So how?

"Talk to me, goddamn it!" I tried to shake him but he remained stalwart and unmovable. "Aren't we at a point where you can trust me?! Where you can have an actual fucking conversation with me?!"

For a solid few seconds, he looked stricken, like I slapped him for no good reason. Then he sighed, took one long lingering look at my nakedness, and turned away with a sneer.

"Talking about feelings is for lovesick fools and naive children."

"That isn't even what I'm asking. You just went through...something...back there. And you think you can just, what? Fuck it away?"

"Is wanting you a bad thing now?"

"I didn't say that."

He wouldn't look at me. This alone pissed me off more than anything.

Using my new found strength, I gripped his chin and forced him to. It made every time he'd done it to me flash across my mind and how angry it'd made me each time and I didn't give a shit. He would talk. He would talk and he would listen and we would figure all of this goddamn mess out or we weren't ever gonna leave this goddamn room.

"Talk to me," I stressed, "please."

He ripped my hand from his face and pushed me into the mattress, pinning me down so I couldn't move, and bared his fangs above me.

Once this might have frightened me.

Now it only made me bare my teeth back.

"I am not the same man I was before," he said, his voice cold and empty. "When I took the gods' energy from you...I saw...things. So many, many things..."

I could take a whack at guessing and probably be right. I was sure it was many of the same things I'd seen—the past, the future, the disjointed images from other timelines Hitomi fucked up in the end. The world ending over and over. Our children fighting and dying or never even being born.

The threads.

Oh, the threads.

So many severed and frayed.

Lives lost. Relationships ruined.

All those threads connected to our hearts were also connected to someone else who was yet to be born. Only two of them belonged to Hiei and I. Always entwined, across every timeline, in every past and future.

The Jagan still glowed. I never even felt it.

"I saw a timeline where we had six sons and a single daughter. Six strong, intelligent, warrior sons...and a beautiful daughter with the power to give life. She was special. A gift unlike any demon or human before her...that was the line I cut and gave away. I killed her. In every future. She will never exist."

With those words more and more spilled out and I felt the cold hard drop of more tears, solid stones of blue fire and molten embers. They fell across the sheets and rolled to the floor, forgotten beneath the bed. And soon I found myself crying with him. For a life that never was and never will be.

"But she was born to that wasteland. That last city protected in a ring of eternal fire and I want to think it is a blessing that I killed her," he wept. "But I remember her face. I will never forget her face...she was an anomaly. Born without a twin."

Every future with Hiei was a tragic one.

He spoke of other timelines, other children. But he kept circling back to her over and over. To her and me and watching me die again and again and again. Seeing himself die, sometimes by his own hand and others by mine or even Yusuke's after he'd gone mad.

Then there were the timelines where the others didn't survive and there was only him.

He told me of one where he watched me give birth to twins. Always twins. And then I would bleed and die and he couldn't save me. And he was left with two infants to raise in a wasteland and not a day went by where he didn't worry he would kill them just by holding them.

"But...in all those timelines there is one thing missing," he said.

Hiei held up his hands and I watched the soft glow of white gold power appear there. "This."

The power of healing.

An ability long lost to him.

"You...weren't able to do that before."

He shook his head, his hair was disheveled and longer than I remembered ever seeing it.

"These are my...mother's powers. Powers only given to the purest of the Koorime."

I laughed at that, thinking of Yukina and while she was pure in some standards, she was not the purest of the pure. "Your sister would beg to differ, I think."

He stared at me, confused. A fondness at the sight grew in me. Oh, the things he needed to learn. And in order to do that...he needed to live.

I touched the center of his chest, watched the odd glow there and was mesmerized by it. The power lingering there...it sent a chill down my spine for all the right reasons.

"I think I can finally beat the detective with this," he said.

"Was that a joke?"

His lips were titled into a little grin and I felt my face stretch into a smile. "Marry me," I repeated for what felt like the hundredth time.

He gripped my hand against his chest and leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. "Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow, I will marry you."

I wanted to protest—it was too soon, too sudden. He shut me up with a kiss that made my toes curl and my stomach pool with heat.

The sound of a gunshot rend the air and without a thought, I was gathering up the sheet and running. Hiei, much faster than I was, took the time to pull on pants before he joined me. I wrapped the sheet into a makeshift toga and ran as fast as my feet could carry me.

The noise came from the front of the house and what we found there shattered our little moment of peace like a fragile piece of crystal.

Keiko stood with my gun, the pistol smoking from just being used. Her legs were shaking, as were her hands where she held the gun and I could see tears already starting to stream down her face. I don't know when she'd gotten here or what crossed her mind in the first place for this scene to unfold.

On the ground before her was the body of Hideki.

A fake. The fake I'd brought here.

A fake who tried to escape and ultimately was shot by one of my best friends.

"Christ, Keiko. Never thought you had the balls."

She looked over at me, back down at the gun and then Hideki, but never lowered the weapon. Yusuke was behind her at a safe distance, probably thinking after years of his bullying and general annoyance, that she would surely turn the gun on him.

I was the one that chose to approach, watching as Hideki's projection melted into the ground and left behind a black, sludge-like stain in the grass.

I settled my hand against hers, slowly and gently removing the gun from her vice-like grip, and flicking on the safety. I slipped it into the folds of the toga, a familiar weight. "It's okay. You did the right thing."

"I shot him." Her eyes were wide, unseeing. Shock, I realized.

"He wasn't real. You did it to protect the people you love."

I spoke to her in calm, unassuming tones, reaching out for her with hands so gentle she barely felt when they touched her, but when they did she fell into me, wiping her face against my sheet dress and breathing heavy. "I shot someone," she repeated.

"You didn't shoot someone," Kurama said from somewhere behind us. "It was merely an astral projection. You have no need to feel any guilt."

Keiko took a while to step away, but when she did she sniffled and turned to eye Kurama like he was an idiot. "I don't feel guilty," she said. "For the first time in a long time I felt useful...and I feel...that is wrong, somehow."

I heard Hiei mumble something about being interrupted for something so foolish and turned to give him a harsh stare to shut him up.

"You did the right thing, Keiko."

I tried to believe that. For her sake more than anyone else, but knew with the death of another of his clones he would only bring back what info he'd managed to gather. At least when the clone was alive I could hold him hostage and maybe use it to find the original. No such luck now.

And considering he'd been escaping...how much did he hear or see before he got to the front door? Who was supposed to be watching him in the first place...

I turned just in time to see Hiei's unimpressed look sent Yusuke's way, in which Yusuke just shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck as his face turned beet red. "My bad...?"

Hiei whipped around with a growl that sounded like a swear and I followed after, hurrying to grab him by the waist of his pants. "Whoa, slow down. You know this means we aren't any closer to finding him, right?"

"I knew we wouldn't find the bastard until the day came for the door to open," he said. But I didn't miss the longing there—the longing for it to be different.

"There's still the other vessels."

Hiei and I walked back towards his room (our room?) and he halted in his tracks. "That is a false hope as well."

He was glaring at his feet, angry and hurt and annoyed and I wondered when I'd gotten so good at reading his emotions.

"Why?"

"He will gather them. Every single one. If he hasn't killed them all already."

"He won't do that."

He rounded on me, eyes blazing. "And how do you know?! Do you think you know him so well?"

The sneer in his tone should have made me angry, but it didn't. The hidden jealousy in his voice aside, I just rolled my eyes.

"He needs a fail-safe, Hiei. He'll keep at least one."

He blinked, the anger abruptly fading. In its place formed some other emotion I couldn't name, not really. "In case you die," he said.

"Yes. The thought's crossed my mind...more than once...to take my own life. Although, I've been doing a bang-up job getting myself into near-death situations, so I should count my lucky stars I'm still here," I said, waving it off like some flippant thing. "I wouldn't want some other unfortunate soul to be wrapped up in this mess."

I stopped talking, trailing off when I noticed Hiei's eyes were staring straight through me. He brought a hand to his chin, contemplative, turning on his heels to continue towards the bedroom. He didn't say anything more until we were shut inside, away from prying eyes and ears.

"He'll keep one," he said. "It becomes a matter of simple deduction. Which other titan is powerful enough to open the door?"

He rounded on me then, staring at me pointedly as if I should know the answer. "Listen, I only know of the two annoy cling-ons trapped in here." I rapped my knuckles against my temple.

His eyebrows raised towards his hairline and when I still didn't get the hint he sighed. "So, ask them."

I wanted to slap myself for being so stupid. It was a force of habit for me to ignore them now and block out most of the words and images they fed me. If I didn't, if my mental fortitude wasn't as strong as it was, I knew I would have gone mad within the first month of housing Chronos.

It took a second but the answer wasn't a favorable one.

"They don't know," I finally said, after several minutes of inane banter and insults between me and the gods.

Both of them ranted about their siblings and family members, theorizing who would last the longest or who would be most willing to betray them. Then came the question if they were even awakened within their vessels and if not what to do about it if they weren't.

"How has Hideki tracked them all this time, is the real question. He slowly killed off my family to force this timeline to speed up so he could complete the ritual within this century. But how did he know about us in the first place?"

Hiei walked to his bed and sunk down into the mattress, cradling his head in his hands. It was always an endless slew of questions. None of them ever seemed to have answers.

"He must have some general knowledge of the bloodlines the Titans would have been implanted in. Then it just came down to pinpointing the vessel which would be easy enough if their powers were awakened. Many of them were driven mad because of it."

I stared at the palms of my hands, once stained a hideous primordial black from the taint of the gods. Would there be something similar to the other vessels? Some noticeable trait?

"They can't all be in Japan," I said.

"As I said, another fool's errand."

With no answers and a million more questions, I sunk down beside him in the bed, pressing my shoulder to his, pleased when he didn't refute the contact. I rested my head against his shoulder and breathed in his unique scent and the smell of sex and sweat and metal.

"What was her name?" I murmured, eyes drooping.

Sleep would be nice. When was the last time I slept without dreams? I couldn't remember.

And Hiei, somehow knowing exactly what I was talking about and who, replied: "Yuna."

"Her name was Yuna..."

. . .

A/N: It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to post this chapter as it is or not. I've played around with the Hiei Hiruiseki trope before but never like this. They've both been through a lot and because of it, they are growing, changing. They're no longer fighting each other and are instead facing the problem before them together as a united front. It was an emotional chapter, to say the least, and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.

Thanks for reading. I love you guys.