Changing Death

This is a genfic (of the romance-is-never-a-plot-focus sort) with some late-story Yuusuke/Keiko, along with vague-to-moderate subtext for Yuusuke/Kurama, Kuwabara/Yukina, and Hiei/Kurama, and some Botan/Koenma if you squint. It's a divergence, and the timeline is set seven months following the Dark Tournament, replacing Chapter Black; liberties have been taken with a lot of canon elements past the Tournament's end. Most chapters are long, and the songs assigned to each are mostly just for flavor or irony.

I'm very, very slow to update―sometimes a year or more between chapters, as terrible as I know that is―but it's one of my major goals to finish this fic, and I couldn't stop trying if you held me at gunpoint. Ergo, long time no update != abandoned. InkMistress of Gaia Online has been my primary beta (as well as, long ago, my wonderfully impertinent sister, Youko Koryuu). As of April 2012, current beta is The Countess of Monte Cristo, who cannot be thanked enough for volunteering.

Warnings: There's a fair bit of swearing and offensive language, some excessive blood and violence, and character death. There are references to/mentions of suicide, attempted suicide, and self-mutilation in several places, but nothing is graphic or in-depth.

1: Presence and Absence

(Fire Sign - David Berkeley)

-The Present: August, 1993-

She looked out her window and realized that it was becoming light outside; she'd been up all night again without really intending to. Her homework was still not quite finished, and she really couldn't recall where the hours had all gone; now, knowing it was close to time, she closed her books, stowed them in her bag, and got up to prepare. Today it would be hot again, and she would need to leave early so that she would pass some of her wait outside in the cooler morning.

Standing outside―it had become her favorite hobby.

Yuusuke's apartment was in a relatively well-to-do district, and was a pleasantly short distance from her parents' ramen shop, but the walk had begun to seem long and foreboding, yet she took it every day and every night when her studies permitted and stood outside, sometimes waiting for the door to open and Yuusuke to step out to walk to school (which was unsettlingly frequent these days), and other times for the light to go out in the single curtained window at the end of the day. She had not been inside for more than two weeks, though she had used to come in all the time since the Tournament in order to visit with his mother and make sure the place was clean; it had been a welcome induction into a private portion of his life, where he openly (but fondly) fought with Atsuko and shamelessly prevailed upon his female friend―based on her supposed innate expertise in all things domestic―to tidy up for the two of them. Now she would just stand on the street with her school bag in her hands and say nothing―nothing, when he joined her or when she left.

It was all right. She always knew where he was now.

This morning would be no different from any other in the past three weeks. He would exit his apartment, walk silently with her to school, and go to most of his classes without much complaint, though he kept up all his appearances once he was there and even talked trash with the other toughs. Leaving for the roof an hour or so before the day was out fulfilled the defiant class-skipping expected of him, and he waited for her there. The teacher, inured long ago to his abrupt withdrawals from class, never commented when he stood up and walked out every day; in fact, he seemed almost fond of the delinquent now that he had begun to arrive for classes on a regular basis. Principal Takenaka certainly was, and while Yuusuke would snub him and mouth off as he always had before, it had no real heart in it. His academic performance was the best it had ever been―not that he ever bothered with his homework, but just being in class, he learned enough to raise his test scores. It made her happy; he would never be book-smart, but she had always known he could hold his own.

After school, Yuusuke let her walk to his house with him, just as silent as in the mornings, and she had begun to look forward to their arrival at the building and the change in him that came with it. She was not ever invited inside anymore, but he always seemed reluctant to enter as well, and would begin to talk and even joke with her like normal for as long as she had time to linger. She would preach, he would shrug, she would scold, he would insult, and they would walk through the familiar push-pull of words with perfect choreography. When she left, she knew (from the glances she could not help but take over her shoulder) that he never watched her go, only stood looking out into the city until she was no longer able to see him.

She also knew that he usually went to visit Kuwabara after that, and was aware that the walk to his house was, in some bizarre path of logic, for her benefit and not his. Strangely, that made her feel better about his long silences and often-forced cheer. It meant he still cared.

And he did. He was still the same Yuusuke―just subdued, and more brooding than she'd ever known him to be. With this came things for which she had half-hoped for a long time: he spent time with her much more often, made an effort at school, and didn't get into fights much anymore. The silences weren't even that bad, really; they had come to be almost comfortable, as she had accepted over the last few weeks that he did not need to talk about anything during their walks, and forcing it on him would only strain him further. What he gave her after was enough.

Why she came to this street after nightfall to watch his lights go out, she was never sure, but she always did now. Often while she waited, and shadows glossed through the dim glow as he moved about inside, she reflected on what one person's absence had brought about.

When the two of them spoke, they never, ever talked about Kurama.

For herself, she was not sure how to feel about it. She had not really known Kurama very well. He was a charming, polite memory in her mind, tempered with an overlay of his acts of violence at the Tournament; the most vivid impression of him was actually a reflection of desperation in Yuusuke's eyes, as Kurama had nearly been killed several times over. She had always watched Yuusuke's eyes, and many of his friends had their own identities there. Of Kurama's personality, she recalled little, and had not spoken to him directly more than perhaps once or twice. In her mental image he was enigmatic and dangerous, and she had never been totally comfortable with him. Yuusuke, on the other hand―

She was not the sort to be jealous of anyone, but she had almost been tempted. Yuusuke plainly didn't know any other girls who were not off-limits in various ways, so she knew she was special―but the closeness he displayed when in the company of his demon-fighting team could still exclude her, and of all of them, Kurama had always made his eyes change the most.

Kuwabara was obviously Yuusuke's best friend―there was no disputing it. They hung out together almost constantly, bickered like a married couple, and were the quintessential tough guy pals. There was no mystery to them at all. Hiei―well, Hiei was nobody's friend. She found him a rather nasty little man, and he in turn ignored her as though she were transparent whenever she was present. With Yuusuke, he was straightforward and fair, and that was the most that could be said for him. Kurama had always been somewhere in the middle of them: never as close as Kuwabara, never as distant as Hiei, and his own brand of friend that was strange to her in many ways. He, at least, had been quite cordial, even warm, towards her and everyone else. She felt that otherwise she would have found him as unpleasant to be around as Hiei, no matter what else he was like.

Some of that had to do with Yuusuke. The way Yuusuke had used to talk about him sometimes―with an unlikely blend of trust and suspicion, camaraderie and worry―made her feel very… displaced. And even now that Kurama was gone, and Yuusuke's eyes had been the same faded brown ever since, Yuusuke still had never talked about her that way. Sometimes, though not often, she was nearly tempted to worry him on purpose, to see if perhaps he finally would. But she knew she would never have the heart.

She could see, as perhaps no one else could, just how hard it was for him to remain almost normal. She didn't know if she really understood why. Even when he had died, she had kept her own footing with very little struggle, though the pain had been the worst she could imagine feeling. How Yuusuke could be losing his own―and he was, slowly―was confusing. Her own inability to blame him was all that kept it from being hurtful. She had seen him fight, and seen how deeply he felt for his friends, and knew he would never fall apart if he had a choice―they needed him too much. That, at least, made sense. It was why he walked with her; he knew she needed him, too.

So she spent her time waiting for him to catch himself or fall, ready for either, and guiltily enjoyed the changes in him that brought him to her more often than before, that kept him from trouble and let her gently usher him into a normal life. She thought that maybe, if he stayed together, he would stop fighting altogether, and never return to the dangerous life he had shown her only once. The Tournament would be over for him, finally.

And, if he fell apart, maybe he would finally need her, too.

It seemed odd to her that she was still waiting for disaster. All the ways he had changed were good, were things she had always wanted to see in him. So why, she asked the rising sun as she walked, did she feel like she was losing him?

Each thought marked a footstep, each footstep a breath, for the morning had begun, and she was on her way to his house again.

-I've set the fic in 1993, and therefore the beginning of the series in 1992, because that's the best guess I have for when things are actually supposed to be set (I used to have elaborate reasons fabricated that let me set it during the late 80's instead, but they turned out not to be very good reasons). I'm working with anime canon, from which I get the cues for this information. The months chosen are the result of an elaborate timeline setup that follows the mentioned timeskips in the series up through the Dark Tournament, as well as the timing of summer vacation for Japanese middle schools. If I'm outright, flat-out wrong about anything, I extend a general and expansive apology, and would like to be told so I can fix it.