'Towers': Chapter 01

Towers
Chapter 01:
"Of Leaving"


She didn't disgust me before I got her a birthday present. Afterward she became weak, and I hated her.

It's not my fault. I thought giving her the man she hated on a silver platter would help her become the fighter she is supposed to be—I didn't think it would turn her into a spineless shell of her former self, content to sit in darkness wasting her days on endless torture.

Not torture of her father, though, trapped in an undying plant for her amusement. I mean torture of herself. Her spirit dies a little with every cut and scrape of that fat man's flesh.

How was I to know what my gift would do to her?

How was I supposed to stay?




I went to Human World because Demon World could offer me little more than fallen tyrants and broken promises. There was no place for me at Mukuro's side, because all that lingered in her sight was her father and the horrors she could show him.

You can't blame me for leaving her.

Kurama tried, of course. He likes to give credit where credit is due, or so he claims, but I don't deserve that credit at all. I showed up on his doorstep because I had nowhere else to go, and when I told him what had happened (or, when he finished pulling the truth from my short answers and jerked nods) he sighed, leaned back in his chair, and told me to shut the window behind me.

"Why?" I asked. "I'll only leave again."

"But not right away," he said. Green eyes flickered at the night. "And it's storming."

Rain blew in the open window, scoring the back of my neck below my scarf. I liked the feeling of the wind in my hair. It was clean. There wasn't much else in my world that could claim as such.

"All right, or don't close it." Kurama sighed. "Ruin my carpet. Again."

Such human concerns… Slowly, I turned and closed the window. When I looked back, Kurama was smirking. He had aged a little, I noticed, with leaner cheeks under brighter eyes. Still young, even by human standards, but how long had it been since I'd seen him last? Three years? Five? He hadn't entered the second Demon World Tournament…

"Thank you, Hiei," he said. "Now tell me again why you left Mukuro?"

"She left me, you imbecile," I growled. "She left everyone."

"All because of the plant I gave you?" he said. "The one you trapped her father in?"

"She sits and tortures him," I said. "She just sits. She never fights, ever." My lips curled. "It's pathetic."

"Then perhaps the plant was not the appropriate gift to give her?"

Kurama didn't know her like I did; he didn't know how the memory of her father plagued her; he didn't see. "I wanted to free her from him!" I snapped. "I thought—"

"But you only trapped her," came his calm reply. "Perhaps you didn't know her as well as you thought you did?"

I didn't answer, choosing instead to turn and open the window.

"Where will you go, Hiei?" Kurama asked when I put my foot on the roof outside. Rain stained my face; I didn't blink. "We all have lives here. You can stay with me for the time being, but there isn't a true place for you. I've given up being a demon."

"You're a fool," I said, not turning around.

His voice came soft. "Perhaps," he said, "but we all have lives. Yusuke, Kuwabara, myself…" He spoke the truth; I hated it. "Can you say the same?"

I did not shut the window behind me when I left.




The Jagan found Yukina with little effort. She too had aged, taller and leaner and prettier than I'd left her, but her eyes… those hadn't changed at all. I could see kindness in her when she handed the oaf a plate of food and smiled a smile I was sure I'd never find aimed in my direction.

Kuwabara hadn't changed. This surprised me. He still fumbled around my sister, still spoke with clumsiness and honesty, still exaggerated his movements and motions just like any annoying human would. Braying laughter, an open face: that was Kuwabara as I'd known him, and that was Kuwabara forever, apparently.

If years hadn't managed to change him, what would?

He and Yukina lived in the same house—Yukina is learning about Human World through the Kuwabara family, Kurama had told me during the first Demon World Tournament. Was that still true? I supposed so, considering the glimpses of Kuwabara's father and older sister I caught through the curtains in their home's front room. I stood up to my ankles in mud in a bed of flowers, just watching them talk because they looked like they belonged and watching was all I could do to feel the same, until a creaking door made me shrink behind a shrub.

"Hiei?" said the scratchy female voice.

It and the silhouette in the open front door belonged to Shizuru. I hadn't noticed her disappear from the scene inside. I moved so she could see me, heedless of the pouring rain, and I said nothing.

"You should say hello like a normal person sometime," she said, flipping her hair back. She attempted a small smile. "Baby bro would like to see you, despite what you probably think."

I turned from her, prepared to walk off into the storm.

"Yukina would, too," she called over thunder and water.

I left her there, alone.




Yusuke didn't notice me until I let him. I stood watching him wrestle a tarp over an oversized cart painted with characters I couldn't read and the tarp kept getting blown away by the wind, and when it blew away from him across the pavement I stepped on it. He wheeled, ready to run after it before he realized the thing had been caught already, and when he saw that I was the one to catch it he froze, staring. A smile broke his face wide open.

"Hiei, man!" he said, darting forward. Before I could jerk away he had thrown his arm around my neck, one hand ruffling up my hair just because he could. "It's great to see you, you little bastard! Hey, did you get taller?"

I wrenched away. He didn't stop laughing, pleased to see me. I said: "Detective."

"Not anymore!" he said, voice raised to combat the storm. "I stopped working for Spirit World before the last tournament. Remember? At the second one, I told you—"

I hadn't remembered until then. "You married Keiko," I said slowly. "Koenma didn't need you anymore."

"Yeah! Aw, man, that was like, a year and a half ago! Time sure does fly." He hadn't aged at all, I didn't think, especially when his eyes lit up with mischief like they did just then. "Say, you still with Mukuro?" he asked slyly. "She wasn't in the last tournament, come to think of it."

"No," I said. I didn't say: She was too busy playing with my birthday present to go; she was too busy torturing her father to care.

"Too bad neither of us won." Yusuke sighed with regret. "I bet being king would beat making ramen every day, especially in this weather."

Thunder boomed, rain smacking Yusuke's normally slick hair onto his forehead.

"You gonna be in the next one?" Yusuke asked. "It's in, like, another year and a half. I'll be in it!"

I didn't answer him.

"And hey, what brings you to Human World, anyway?" Yusuke said. He shooed me off the tarp and knelt to gather it in his arms, shaking the water clear even though the rain made it a wasted effort.

I had disappeared by the time he realized I wasn't there to answer.




Genkai was dead. I found her grave and cleared the dead leaves from the stone.

Then I left.

My footprints were my only offering to the dead that night.




I didn't want to see the ferrygirl.




Fuck Koenma.




I thought about going back to Kurama that night, but I didn't and wandered into a…

I think humans call them 'parks'.

Whatever. I don't really care.




The storm broke with the dawn. A rain-glutted lake on the edge of a wood, a clearing on the edge of the lake, a tree in the middle of the clearing—that's what the dawn showed me when I jumped into the tree, settled down on a branch, and closed my eyes.

I slept that day, all day. I could feel the sunlight on my face even as I mired my mind in dark.