Getting To Know You

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Chapter 11:
Innocence
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Kurama woke the next morning to the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. He had no idea where he was, but it was soft and warm. This was someplace he never thought he would be again. It terrified him to think about how close to death he was. The memories haunted him of the torture he had endured within the three-day time span he spent in his brother’s torture chamber. That bastard had tortured him relentlessly over the days, and all the hatred built between them over their days of youth, only grew the more he thought about it.

He was surprised to be here after all that had happened to him. He had expected to wake at the Rekai gates, Koenma waiting to greet him there. As he lay there, he thought about the moments that lead up to now. He could only remember bits and pieces since his last encounter with Nashua, but it was enough to piece the events together.

~*~Flashback~*~

There was pain. It wasn’t an unaccustomed sensation. Pain had seemed to plague him constantly this past week or so, in one form or another. But now there was also heat, a burning hotness that made his skin feel as if it would split open at any moment, stretched as tight as it was over his bones. Kurama moaned softly, thrashing about in the bed as he tried to tug away the heavy comforter, wanting to feel cool air on his enflamed flesh.

“We’re almost done, couldn’t you have stayed out for another two minutes?”

That voice…. There was something familiar about that voice. He tried to marshal his scattered wits, to figure it out. Forcing his eyelids open, he immediately closed them as light stung his sensitive eyes, hissing as he did so.

Things blurred together, but he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Were they back in the Ningenkai? He moaned as he felt a sharp, stinging sensation in the right side of his body, the agony wringing the sound of pain from him as the world threatened to fade away once more.

“Sorry.”

Again the voice roused something in his mind, and Kurama tore himself from his helper’s grip and from the bed, flailing about wildly until he backed up against the wall. For a moment he saw a short foreigner staring at him, red eyes disapproving and then Yukina came into view, standing with her hands on her hips like always when the girl was about to rip into one of her friends for something.

“Kurama, I’m trying to help you here. Stop behaving so silly and calm down. I need to look at your wounds. You have lost a lot of blood.” Kurama moaned again, a soft whisper of sound as he started to slide down the wall. Gentle hands gripped his arms once again, sending another wave of agony through him, as he was lead back to the bed. The youko took this time to search the room. It was empty of anything besides a huge bed draped with white sheets and a small table with a rectangular box perched on top of it.

Refusing to pass out, Kurama sought to distract himself while Yukina cleaned his wounds. He counted himself lucky when it was a physical agony that gripped his body instead of the devouring ache that usually filled his heart and mind. He was a monster, a murderer, and he could never escape that fact. Although injuries would often distract him from the emptiness inside his chest, for a while at least, so Kurama never complained about them unless they prevented him from taking part in a mission. It was so much easier to tell himself that the pain was because of his wounds and not the fact that his soul was dead and his heart a shriveled, useless thing. He deserved all the agony he felt….

~*~ End Flashback~*~


Moving slowly, he left the bed and made his way to the window. He stepped with caution, his body, though healed, and still ached, as it never had before. Looking out into the dense Makai forest, he knew what world this was now, but still not yet his immediate location. The blood red sun was rising in the stark sky, as it was only an hour or so after dawn here. He figured it was somewhere close to the western border, because there was a bite to the air; the Iceland’s bordered here.

The last people he remembered seeing were Yukina and.... Yes, he had seen Hiei. His friend had been the one to rescue him from that horrid place; his brother’s hell. He also wondered about his family. Where were they? Had they made it out safely as well? Hiei would not have just left them there to die; he knew how important they were to him. But why hadn’t he seen them yet? They were probably afraid. Just as afraid as he was to see them.

Kurama frowned at his condition. Apparently Yukina had cleaned him up, but it wasn’t enough for him. He still felt so dirty, inside and out. All he wanted to do was find some water and bath until his skin fell off.

“Shuichi, are you awake?” A soft feminine voice met his ears, but it was not Yukina this time. It was the loving, worried voice of his mother at the door. She peeked in around the doorframe and spotted him by the window. “Shuichi, come away from the window, you’ll catch a cold. You should be in bed, recovering.”

Kurama couldn’t help but smile. His mother would always love him, no matter what he had done in his past. She loved him as any loving mother would love her son, and no different. In her eyes, he was still the innocent baby she had brought into the world seventeen years ago.

“I’m fine now, mother, really.” He didn’t want to worry her; she most likely had enough on her mind as it was. He didn’t want her to fuss either, but his mother always would. That made him feel truly special. His mother cared enough to shelter him from his fears, even if she was afraid herself.

“Shuichi, you must rest.” She moved to his side and gently coerced him back into bed and pulled the covers back up over him to keep out the chill of the morning air. She smiled tenderly down at him and brushed back a few stray bangs from his forehead. The slight fever from yesterday had passed and he was back to his normal temperature again.

“Mother...” Shiori stopped in her own musings to listen in on her son’s hushed voice. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I never meant to hurt you, and drag such an innocent person into my past. I thought I could protect you... But I failed. I’m sorry, mother.”

“Oh no, Shuichi. I’m the one that is sorry. You had to endure so much pain. I can’t imagine what you were feeling through all that.” Shiori’s brown eyes misted over as she watched tears gather in her son’s eyes.

“I was scared, and ashamed. I felt so alone. I’ve never felt so alone. I did not acquire Yoko’s great tolerance for pain, and it angered me that I was so much weaker than my own true self. It hurt to look back on the shadows of my past and realize that I had brought this on myself, that I had been the one who caused him such pain. I was afraid that I would never see Hiei again. My best friend, I had thought, deserted me when I needed him the most.”

“Shuichi... I never knew any creature existed that could cause such anguish to another. Why are you’re kind so cruel? How could your own brother do something like that?”

“You are so innocent and pure, mother. You will never know what it means to be a demon, and for that, I am grateful. To be a demon, you must live and die by the laws of blood. We thrive from the pain of others, and we are selfish creatures who cannot trust and cannot be trusted.”

“But, you’re not like other demons, Shuichi. There are plenty of people who trust you. And there must be someone, after all this time, that you trust.”

“I trust Yoko. And I trust Hiei.”