Chapter Six: Redemption

Kurama woke up to the smell of antiseptic. He had always heated that smell. It was a grim reminder to him of what he had become. Human. There was also that connection he made to antiseptics and his own mother when she had been dying in a hospital before. Back then; it was like the smell would never come off his clothes and his own mother. Now it was everywhere, filling his nostrils like it was teasing him.

His eyes shot awake as his hears registered low beeping sounds. Who was in the hospital? His vision adjusted as he looked at his mother's worried face. She had more wrinkles now more than ever, like they had appeared in however long a time he had been out of consciousness. She looked relatively relieved to see him. The first thing he had heard was her sigh of relief.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said, like he had just forgotten to wake up on a school day. "The doctors were starting to get worried that you had fallen into a coma. Are you hungry, darling? I still have some rice cakes here, I think…"

That was his mother's way of taking care of him. Honestly, Kurama would have been content to live the rest of his life sitting at the dining table with his mother and her comforting meals. But he wasn't hungry at the moment, so he just smiled and politely shook his head. His entire body felt like it was burning as pain shot up and down his limbs. He ignored it.

"What happened?" He asked his mother, although he knew that she wasn't going to give him the answer that he was actually looking for.

"You got into a car accident, sweetie," she said, brushing the bright red bangs out of his eyes as she always did when he was younger. "Yusuke called me from the hospital. He said the guys didn't see you crossing the road, which is odd, considering your hair."

She ruffled his hair then, making him smile, which made his chest hurt a bit. "The doctors say you almost died, and you lost a lot of blood, but thankfully, you're okay."

"Yusuke was here?" Kurama asked as his mother beeped for the nurse, as if sensing her son was in pain.

"Yes, he was here. You were hardly ever alone. When I had to go to work, Yusuke would drop by with your friend, Hana. She was here practically every night! I finally got her to have some rest when you woke up!"

Kurama registered that in his head as the nurse arrived to give him his dosage of painkillers. He imaged Hana in his head, her brows furrowed with worry, her bright eyes staring at him as she barely slept. The thought lulled him back into a dreamless, painless sleep.

He was out of the hospital a few days later. Kuwabara had been fine, just a broken rib, but he'd recovered quite quickly under Yukina's care. Koenma had only been too happy to inform them that the entire facility had been destroyed with no trace of the drugs. Once the rumors spread that the drugs could actually kill you in one hit, the market dissipated pretty quickly. Shin had been selfish enough not to share his secret recipe, and so the drug was now non-existent, which gave Kurama and odd sense of relief. His doctor had encouraged him to take walks 'to feel human again,' and he was doing just that as he walked to the park across the street from his house.

Amidst the cherry trees, he spotted a woman sitting alone on the benches, sipping her cup of coffee.

Kurama smiled to himself and stood in front of her. He observed her for a moment. She was in street clothes, particularly a pale, blue green skirt that billowed to the floor with a skin-tight black shirt. She was wearing thick, platform heels so her feet actually touched the ground. Round sunglasses covered her eyes from the sun.

Kurama closed his eyes for a moment and he could remember exactly what she looked like only about a month ago, posing as the greatest geisha that every graced Mayaku. He could still see it in her, the way she sat, the way her fingers grasped the paper cup like it was a delicate piece of china.

"You and I are going to have to stop running away," He sighed, sitting next to her without asking. Hana didn't seem surprised that he was there. She only sighed like she had been holding on to it for a thousand years. She put down her coffee cup. "We can't run forever."

"We can't," she agreed and placed her hand over Kurama's. He lightly kissed the top of her hand and leaned back against the bench, feeling more content than he had ever been.

-End-