Are you as excited about the disclaimer as I am? You should be. Yu Yu Hakusho and all related characters, settings, and plotlines do not belong to me.

Yukina

Chapter 1: On the Inside

I love my sister. She playing in the snow right now—her favourite activity. I love to watch her laughing. They're all laughing, except for me. They're all playing in the snow outside the temple in the woods, except for me.

I don't like to play in the snow. I don't like to play. Not as much as my sister does, anyway. I actually don't like much of anything at all, according to the others, and I apparently love nothing at all. But they're all wrong. I love nothing at all, except for her. Things like fun and happiness sometimes have to be sacrificed for something more important. Not everyone can understand that, can understand how hard it is to ignore the pangs I feel in my chest every time I have to force myself to remain aloof, and stand to the side again, just like every time, and just like I know I have to.

Snow irks me, though. I can have no patience for its tendency to get in my eyes when it could be crucial to see something.

My sister turns and smiles at me from a burrow of white powder. She has just made a snow angel, and the annoying powdery stuff is scattered all over her kimono. Her face is a constant display of beautiful, naive innocence, perfect and sweet. Simple moments when she is shivering slightly with a red nose and cheeks and a pile of snow plopped on top of her head make her happy.

And in a moment, she can make me change my mind. Just for her, snow does make me happy.

I want to smile back at her, but I don't. Just as I can never do. Smiling is not my way, it makes no difference for whom I would smile. Instead I tilt my head slightly to the side, acknowledging her friendly gesture.

But on the inside, I am always smiling back.

I continue to watch her for some hours, though it seems as if only minutes have passed. But there is no denying the darkening sky, and everyone who has been playing in the snow is now wearing clothes that are almost entirely soaked through.

And now that the sun has fully set everyone goes inside. But not her. My sister wants to stay outside just a little longer.

She looks up at the sky, and little snow flurries fall onto her upturned face. My eyes follow her as she smiles sadly, wistfully. I like her happy smiles better.

The little girl in the snow finally turns around to see the one who I alone, and never she, can know to be her only living kin. She gives me another heart-breaking smile.

And I smile back, on the inside.

I start, as suddenly I become aware that there is something behind my sister. A man...a giant, hulking man towering behind my petite little sister.

No...this creature is far too big and too ugly to be something as easily dealt with as a man.

And then, before even I can react, the thing grabs my sister, wrapping one hideous arm about her waist and clapping its other hand over her mouth. I want to retch as it lifts her off the ground and my heart plummets to my stomach. My sister's dark red eyes widen in panic, helpless and confused. And though I cannot see her mouth, I know it no longer wears the smile I cannot return.

The beast speaks before fleeing faster than I have ever seen anyone, save myself, go. My eyes widen to mirror my sister's.

"Heh heh heh," it cackles. The thing's voice is low and raspy. "An eye for an eye, and a sister for a sister."

It jumps backwards into the foliage, taking my sister with it.

It suddenly registers that they are gone. The thing is gone, and my sister is gone. And I have never wanted to kill anything so badly in my entire life. I snarl and sprint after the creature.

I am lost the second I enter the forest. Only now do I realize what should have been clear to me from the moment that creature was somehow able to sneak up on us and snatch my sister away from me. This thing is untrackable. It cannot have been born. Only such a thing, such a doll, could have been created, making it very nearly impossible to find.

I am left with no choice but to resign myself to the use of my other, duller senses to hunt down this demon. And now, when I need time on my side more than I ever have, I feel as crippled and scared as my sister must.

I know I have made many enemies in the past, and it has always been blindingly obvious that many of these enemies are vengeance-seeking. The power, resources, and drive to effectively track down and abduct the one person most precious to me, though, I would not have ever attributed to any one being. The only ones I have ever trusted with this dangerous secret I had truly believed would not betray me...

I was a fool.

It is quickly becoming too dark to see clearly. I have never been more grateful that I was not born a human with their muted senses.

Suddenly, a familiar and powerful stench assaults my nose. The horrible reek of blood, accompanied by the sickening feeling of rising terror, nearly knocks me over.

And on the inside, I am very afraid.

I run.

My feet move, and that is all I know. I am not conscious of how long or how fast. All that I can focus on is the realization that I'm not running fast enough, and that when I finally break out from the cover of the dark forest it has been too, too long since I first caught the scent of the life-sustaining fluid.

I smell sea water along with the ever-present stench of blood and wince, already knowing what I will find when I peer ahead.

The thing is standing a few yards in front of me, standing atop a rocky ledge. It is holding a bundle in one hand, outstretched before it.

The bundle moves, and the thing drops it.

I squint to see it, but my intuition has identified my sister before my eyes can.

She is bleeding. There is blood everywhere. There is a bloodied rock lying at the monster's feet, and only the blind would not be able to make the connection between it and the profusely bleeding wound on the left side of my sister's head.

Her clothes are slashed down one side and blood stains the blue fabric. One arm has been snapped completely backward, and a bit of white bone peeks out at the front of the elbow. I gag as the ripped-open flap of my sister's kimono shifts in the wind and I catch sight of a deep gash vicously torn across her chest and down to her stomach. She is lying in a fast-spreading pool of red, and a rivulet trickles down to my sister's foot, which has been mutilated beyond repair. My eyes ghost over the blood-flecked aquamarine hair, torn loose from its crystal tie, the pieces of which lie shattered a few feet away, as they travel inevitably back, as if pulled magnetically, to my sister's face.

I see red.

What is by far the worst of the carnage is a long slash that travels from my frightened sister's right temple across her eye down to her chin. Her bottom lip wobbles and my heart beats faster than I thought possible as my eyes lock with hers, wide and scared...the right one bleeding...ruptured.

She blinks and winces. A river of blood streams from her eye and her head, soaking her hair. The pretty blue-green tresses are now crusted over with dried blood, turning its natural sea green coloration to a strange brown, red, and blue collage.

Her right cheek is covered in blood. It is running into her mouth and down her chin onto her clothes. She coughs and a bit of blood comes up, barely distinguishable from the rest of the flood gushing from her small form.

She looks dazed and confused, and I judge that she was probably concussed by the blow to her head.

I am frozen. My mind is screaming for my feet to rush forward and rescue my maimed sibling, but my legs refuse to lift. I can only gaze in sheer horror at the girl who I can hardly force myself to accept as my sister. This girl cannot be the pretty young innocent who was laughing in the snow only minutes...hours...ago. It isn't. It can't be.

I am frozen, my mind is screaming, I am still not moving, because my eyes are trained on hers. I cannot tear them away from the large, wide, once-perfect eyes straining, though unfocused, to hold my gaze.

But her eyes still match.

I cannot believe how remarkably identical to blood red the colouring of my sister's remaining, intact iris is. I have only ever thought of my sister's eyes as ruby red, rose red, never ever blood red. I never connected any part of my sister to anything spelling such calamity. I never had reason to.

But now when one eye is red, and the other is red, I cannot make myself blind to the fact that both my sister's eyes were always the colour of blood.

The colour of mine.

And before I can convince my legs to move, the thing grabs my sister's hair and lifts her into the air. She does not cry out, but the black and blue bruises around her neck suggest that her windpipe is crushed, that she can't cry out.

I look, dazed, beyond the creature to see the source of the salty smell and rage courses hot through my veins.

The ocean.

It gleams at me, twinkling in the moonlight that comes down in isolated shafts from between the clouds. I lift my head, blinking slowly, as if waking from a dream to watch the thing shaking my sister, lying limp in it's huge fingers. It is smiling.

"An eye for an eye..."

It flings the bundle—my tiny, scared sister—out into the open air.

And in a single moment my every thought empties from my mind to be centered on one conscious realization:

It dropped her.

It dropped my sister.

"And a sister..."

I see her for a split moment. Scared and crying and bleeding and dying and hoping.

And I know what desperate hope she clings to...

She is hoping...hoping that I can save her.

The blood pounding in my head freezes in raw terror.

My sister...

Without a second thought, I tear across the ground and take a flying leap, clearing the cliff edge and not stopping to think for a single second.

Only seeing my sister's smiling face...

On the inside.

"For a sister..."

I hurtle through the air towards the water glinting at me and my sister falling ever faster away...and I open my mouth in a silent gasp as I see her crash to the sharp, jagged rocks below.

I am forced to watch, unable to tear my eyes away, as she slams onto two rocky surfaces, one after the other, before falling with a splash into the water. The disrupted surface turns red with her blood.

I look down and see a rocky outcropping. In less than a second, I know I can land on it and from there dive into the rapidly spreading crimson puddle...from the heart of which I can rescue my broken sister.

But never did it cross my mind that my sister's mutilated body would float to the top of the sea of blood...captivating my attention in the moment I would most need it.

My world abruptly comes to a screeching halt as I smash headfirst into the ledge I was supposed to land on.