Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho and all related characters and locations are the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shonen Jump, Funimation and probably a few other people, none of whom are me.
Author's Notes: This was inspired by the "abandonment" challenge at the SGA Flashfic community on LJ. Obviously this is not an SGA fic, but I liked the theme and it gave me ideas. This is set post-series, but contains few if any spoilers. Originally posted to Reikaiwriters.
Dedicated to Ryo, who spent her entire trip to Chicago sick as a dog. Sorry it doesn't have more Hiei, babe.
Waiting
He wasn't the only prisoner in there, which surprised him a little.
Cautiously picking his way across the room, his bare feet silent against the damp stone – and the next time Urameshi hauled him out of bed to go save the world, he was going to have to remember to grab his boots on the way out – he eyed the other prisoners warily. None tried to approach him, which was just as well, because he really didn't feel like fighting the entire prison.
So he stepped past and around hunched figures, ignored the occasional hiss or growl from one of the more territorial prisoners, and aimed for the far wall. If nothing else, he'd have solid stone at his back and a clear view of the door. There was an empty place along the wall, near the corner and beneath a narrow, barred window – which was, Kuwabara mused thoughtfully, just exactly too far away to be of any use until his arm stopped being broken – and it was as good a place as any to settle in and wait for his chance.
He planted his feet on the ground and rested his arms across his knees, trying not to move the right one too much as he did so. The break was messy, he could see the bump a few inches below his elbow where the bone was pointing in entirely the wrong direction and trying to break through the skin, but it wouldn't kill him yet. He curled the fist thoughtfully, noting that aside from hurting a bit, everything was reacting the way it should. His reiki was too far diminished for the bone to heal at the usual rate, but in a few days that would start correcting itself. If he were still here then, he'd have to set the bone to make sure it healed straight. He wasn't really looking forward to that. He'd never set his own broken bone before; somehow the idea was easier to handle when it was Kurama or Genkai jerking the bones back into place. Or maybe it was knowing that Yukina would be there with her soothing, cold hands to ease the last of the pain.
Healing powers rocked. Everyone should know someone with healing powers. Kuwabara thought there should probably be a law or something – especially for demons hunters and other high-risk professions. Like firemen and cops and rugby players. And if all the healers were as pretty as Yukina, well, that'd be icing.
He ignored his arm and tipped his head back against the wall, fighting back a yawn. No sleep tonight – he'd seen enough bad prison movies to know that much, and anyway his cellmates were demons, which he sorta made a habit of slaying occasionally, so he'd be paranoid even if his sixth sense hadn't shut down the instant he was thrown in this place – and possibly not for another day or two, depending on how tonight went. That would slow down the recovery of his reiki seriously, but it was better than waking up to something eating his liver, or sucking out his eyeballs.
Oh, ew. Why did he think these things?
He had just settled in to wait until something happened, when movement caught his eye.
In the corner a little girl uncurled herself from a tight little ball and blinked at him, her eyes too old for her face, and he realized she was a ferrygirl. Well, he thought, watching her eyes light up hopefully as she saw him, no wonder Koenma had his shorts in such a wad over this guy. Her lips parted and he blinked at her, trying to make his eyes convey his point – he had a feeling he looked like he was constipated, but she seemed to get the message and closed her mouth. She did cautiously glance around, though, and crawl nervously across the few feet separating them until she was sitting on her knees, facing him. The idea of having his back to the rest of his cellmates made his nerves twitch, and he wondered how she could do it. Maybe she'd been here long enough to feel confident, or maybe she had the survival skills of a lemming. Kuwabara loved Botan dearly, but if she was any indication of the average ferrygirl's level of survival skills, then it was probably the latter.
"Did," she licked her lips and looked uncertain, "did he send you?"
Even that was too much. Kuwabara glanced around the room, checking out as many of the other prisoners as he could see in the dim interior, but none seemed to hear or care if they did. "Sort of," he said. "We weren't really expecting a search and rescue."
She didn't seem upset though. Kuwabara figured the ferrygirls are all well aware of Koenma's feelings on "need to know" information. Largely that he was the only one who needed to know, and the rest of them could just go do what he said and like it.
"Is anyone else coming?"
He settled on, "Maybe." Because it wasn't really a lie.
She seemed to be okay with that.
He didn't sleep that night, but she did, curled up against his side and breathing quietly but deeply, her breath warm and steady through the thin material of his t-shirt.
No one bothered them, which freaked him out a little. Demons bothered him. It was just one of the fundamental certainties of life. Even the ones who weren't trying to kill him tended to grate on his nerves, with the possible exception of Kurama, who just scared him a little sometimes. Azami told him when she woke that no one had bothered her either, which was only a little suspicious. Demons liked the taste of ferry girl. A lot. But the weaker ones weren't generally willing to risk pissing Koenma off quite that much.
He didn't know if they'd be any more likely to mess with an ex-not-really-a-tantei-actually but he supposed he'd find out. He could be here for a few days yet, after all.
It was no brighter or darker than it was when he arrived, but time-telling in the makai really was a matter of luck. If there was a sun, he'd never seen it, and that eliminated sunset, sunrise, high noon and all sorts of fun times of day right there. It also meant that he only had his own impressions to go on to determine how long he'd been there, and Kuwabara owned a really spiffy watch for a reason. A watch which, like his shoes, was back in his room in the human world. He figured it had been at least a full day since he'd gotten separated from Urameshi, for what that was worth. Assuming Urameshi got away (which he probably had) and assuming he wasn't hurt too badly (which he almost certainly wasn't), and even assuming he'd followed Kuwabara's trail (which he probably hadn't, because Urameshi's tracking skills sucked) that meant he'd have to get inside without being noticed (because Koenma wanted stealth, damnit, so why did he even send them when they represented exactly 0 of the stealth-capable tantei?) which would never, in a million, billion years, happen. At all.
Kuwabara was pretty comfortable with the idea of rescuing himself, thank you, although he was a little fuzzy on the details.
He'd fought with a broken arm before, and depleted reiki wasn't the end of the world. The combination of the two might cause some problems, but the biggest hurdle would be getting out of the makai. Azami, in all her pink-haired glory, presented a solution to that problem. If he could keep them both alive long enough for her to get her strength back, she could take them to the reikai.
Demons, on the whole, didn't worry him much anymore. The really powerful ones mostly couldn't be bothered by him – excepting the ones who hated Koenma and/or Urameshi, but they weren't exactly wandering around in packs or anything – the weaker ones weren't a threat, and everyone in between knew that there was a mostly-enforced prohibition against eating humans who hadn't started it. Azami would slow him down a little, but if they could stay ahead of Zalenka's forces, they should be all right.
He flexed the fingers of his right hand, feeling the pain as his muscles flexed around the bone. Not as bad as it had been yesterday. He'd have to suck it up and set it soon, or else break it and reset it once he got back to the human world. Both options sucked equally.
Azami watched him quietly, waiting. She'd been staring at him since she woke a few hours earlier. It was starting to make him uncomfortable. There was nothing anticipatory or demanding, nothing to indicate she was waiting for a signal or a plan. He was the only safe thing in the entire room, so he was what she looked at. Whenever he touched her he was overwhelmed by her relief. It made him feel weird, so he tried to avoid touching her.
On the second day he wandered the cell, peering into dark corners and looking at windows and doors. It wasn't just one big room, he found, but several large rooms, connected by narrow halls, or cornered up together. He counted nearly three-dozen prisoners in all, more than he'd expected. One was a dark-eyed child-like demon with tangled hair who shuddered at the sight of him and keened quietly until he went away.
On the third day the ground shook and chips of stone and dirt rained down on them from the ceiling and walls. Azami shook against his side but didn't fight him when he pulled her to her feet.
Maybe it was an earthquake – he was willing to bet the makai had those, big, earth-shaking, city-destroying quakes that left mile-wide crevasses and lava pits or something equally impressive behind. It seemed like the sort of thing the makai should have, anyway. Maybe it was Zalenka, pissed off at some underling. Maybe it was some local demon lord, trying to take Zalenka down. Without his sixth sense it was almost impossible for him to know for certain.
But intuition could be almost as good, sometimes.
Azami wrapped her fingers around the wrist of his uninjured arm, and he pushed her behind him, against the wall.
"Kuwabara-san!" Azami's voice was high and shaky but exultant
On the far side of the room from them, the cell door shook as something slammed into it with a violent thud, then it was blasted off its hinges, flattening half the demons who were trying so hard to get through. The others stepped back warily.
The destruction of the door was like a dam breaking, and Kuwabara could suddenly sense things again, including the two raging ki signatures currently wreaking havoc in the stronghold above, and the one, brighter and stronger than the others, right outside the door.
Well, so much for rescuing himself.
Urameshi sauntered in, baring his teeth at the lingering demons and offering Kuwabara a thumbs-up.
"Well hell," he said, letting some of his surprise slip into his voice just because he knew it'd piss Urameshi off, "you decided to show up after all."
Then his head was slammed against the rock wall and Urameshi's hands were bunched in the front of his shirt – or did it happen the other way around? – and pulling him down. And Kuwabara had a second to think that Urameshi kisses really, really well for such an inexperienced dickwad, and that well, everyone's gotta have some kind of talent, I guess, before he was slammed back into the wall again. He was still processing the fact that he finally understood why Keiko kept the jerk around when Urameshi shook him a little and glared.
"Did you think we'd just give up or something?" Urameshi demanded, and Kuwabara'd be damned if he didn't sound upset.
"No," he said honestly, his gaze flickering to the door as Kurama and Hiei joined them. "I just figured your attention span was so short you'd probably forget what you were looking for after a few days."
Kurama thought that was funny, hiding a smirk behind his hand, while Hiei didn't even bother. Urameshi rolled his eyes at them both, but let go of Kuwabara's shirt. "Well, that's fair," he agreed grudgingly. "But give me some credit – that's why I went back for Kurama."
"Zalenka?" he asked, because damned if he'd go through all this and not get the evil bad guy, but Kurama smiled and Yuusuke jerked his head at Hiei, so problem solved. Kind of annoying that Hiei was the one to kill the guy who'd taken Kuwabara down – he wouldn't have minded Urameshi, because that was sort of what Urameshi did, and it if had been Kurama Kuwabara could console himself with the knowledge that Kurama was evil and ancient, but Hiei was just a short obnoxious jerk.
Life sucked that way, sometimes.
"So, Urameshi," he said conversationally, throwing his arm over the other boy's shoulders. "Tongue? I didn't know you cared."
Urameshi turned all kinds of purple. "Bite me."
Kurama beamed at them both, looking like somebody's proud uncle as he escorted Azami out of the room. "He was quite concerned."
"I was not!"
"I think he panicked," Kurama confided.
"You shut up, Kurama."
"He was babbling like an idiot by the time I got there," Hiei added.
"It's not too late for me to leave you all here. You know that right? I could totally do it."
"Yes," Kurama said patiently, "but then who would you shove against a wall and ravage?"
"I didn't ravage anyone! There was no ravaging! Jeez, a guy tries to show some concern-"
"With tongue, Urameshi. Concern with tongue."
Urameshi leered up at him and shoved his hand in his pockets. "Aww, you know you liked it."
There was no safe answer to that, because Kuwabara just knew that if he denied it, Urameshi'd just kiss him again to prove his point. Which Kuwabara wasn't exactly opposed to, but if he was going to provoke Urameshi into something obscene, it wasn't going to be here. So he just rolled his eyes and followed Kurama and the others.
"Kuwabara."
He paused in the door and looked back at Urameshi, standing in the middle of the cell, his hands buried in his pockets, surrounded by dazed and shell-shocked prisoners. "You did know we were coming, right? I mean, I totally didn't have your back in the fight, I know that and it took us a while to find you, yeah-"
"Of course I knew." This was as close to a heart-to-heart as they get, and it was happening in a cell full of demons, but that's how Kuwabara's life worked, so the weirdness rolled right past him. "I knew you were coming. Now let's go."
The weirdness was part and parcel of the team, after all.
Comments and critiques are always welcomed.