Fic: Dragon's Blood, YYH/ASOIAF, PG13
Nov. 17th, 2010 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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lady_flamewing mentioned Yu Yu Hakusho and A Song of Ice and Fire in the same post and this is where my brain went. Bad brain. Bad.
Title:Dragon's Blood
Fandom: YYH/aSoIaF
Characters: ... everyone? Sort of?
Pairings: n/a mild Kurama/Hiei if you squint and can read my mind
Warnings: Blood and death, mostly off screen. Implied rape, off screen (Lyanna).
Summary: It's been a long, long, time but it looks like Koenma might be getting the band back together. You know. Or not. Set seven thousand years after the end of YYH and taking RIDICULOUS liberties with the canon of ASoIaF.
Notes: Yeah, there isn't ever going to be MORE of this. One hopes. Also, while I support the theory that Lyanna was more than happy to be Rhaegar's mistress, I went with the whole "abducted and imprisoned" thing that her ex-fiance believed. It's been almost four or five years since I read the SoIaF, so if I made any ridiculous errors, please let me know.
It was Kurama who had first put the idea in the poor girl's head.
He'd been in the palace, inside her quarters. In Shuichi's body, a pretty young boy with big green eyes, a sweet voice and long red hair, the only attention he had attracted was the occasional leer and wandering hand, and those were easily dealt with or ignored. He'd plaited his hair and donned one of the simple cotton gowns that servant women wore, and he'd passed easily as one of literally dozens of new servants brought into the fort, albeit a flat-chested one. Getting to the Prince's "mistress" hadn't been difficult, either. He'd simply had to get one of the regular girls drunk enough to fail in her duties, and then step in like a good friend. He had no idea what had happened to the girl he'd replaced, though doubtful it was anything good. The Dragon's household was no place for those who failed.
The girl was sixteen if she was a day, and pretty enough that Kurama could see why a hot-headed prince would risk so much to have her. Dark hair and eyes, an uncommon paleness, no doubt caused at least in part by the stress of her situation. She was kind to the girls who bathed and dressed her and kept her company, cordial to the eunuchs who guarded her door and tasted her food. But what amused Kurama was the polite disdain with which she addressed the knights and courtiers who brought her trinkets and messages from the prince. In a room filled with silks and velvets and rich tapestries, adorned with gold statues and vases and fresh flowers, platters of fruit and ancient, elegant furniture, waited on each hour of the day, she was trapped worse than any traitor in the cells, but she did not show them fear or beg them for mercy. She despised them and let them know.
She amused him, but it was not concern for her that drove him to do what he did.
She'd probably suspected she was with child before she knew for certain; Kurama supposed she'd hoped that the earliest symptoms were merely signs of stress or illness. But when she was certain she did not waste time. She did not let herself sleep for three days, and it had been an act of will, Kurama knew, for he had seen her begin to drift off over embroidery or a book several times, only to force herself back to wakefulness. On the third day, using her exhaustion as an excuse, she had pitched a fit the likes of which any small child would be envious. She'd hurled food at the eunuchs, shouted insults at the girls. She'd driven them out of her chamber and when one lingered, trying to calm her, the girl had hurled book after book until the girl fled in tears and covered in bruises.
Kurama had remained. He'd learned to slip through shadows when this girl's ancestors had not yet been born, and slipping out of sight behind the voluminous velvet drapes while she busied herself with her tantrum had been easy enough. He'd waited and watched, knowing she wouldn't have much time before someone with more authority than a eunuch came to make sure she was behaving herself. Whatever she had planned, she had to act fast.
He had expected her to bite her tongue in half or perhaps poison herself with some drug she had managed to hide away. He had not expected her to try to stab herself with her breakfast fork.
Stupid girl. As if that would have worked. She'd have had to bury the entire damn fork in her chest to get to her heart and still might have missed. Even that was assuming she had the stomach to drive it all the way in. If she'd any brains at all she'd have waited till the child was older and her belly rounder, then simply cut her stomach open.
Or just jumped out the window and been done with it, which is what Kurama would have done, had he no other choice.
Regardless, he was not there to help her kill herself and the bastard child she carried. Rather the opposite. He'd slipped out from behind the drapes and called her name, and she'd spun to stare at him in shock.
She hadn't really wanted to die. If she had, she would never have listened to him. But he'd told her of her brother's approach, how the Stag's army was harrying the Dragon's to pieces. Too many of the King's men were dead or sworn to the Stag or gone turncoat. "Your brother will come," Kurama had told her, "and he will free you. You don't have to die. Only be strong a little while longer."
She had listened, and waited and somehow come to love the child within her, singing it songs and stroking her belly.
Months later, Kurama watched from the ledge outside her window as Lyanna Stark gave birth to the prince's bastard son, the bed where she'd been held prisoner stained red with blood and birthing fluids. Her brother had clutched the babe against his chest, wrapped in one of Lyanna's silk robes, and promised to raise him. Promised to keep him safe.
Promised never, ever, to let anyone know who the boy truly was.
Just as well, Kurama thought. Since neither of them had any idea what that babe was meant to be.
****
Koenma had put Kurama up to it, just as Kurama had whispered hope to the poor doomed Lyanna.
It had been a long time since he had kept Koenma's company, and longer since Koenma had kept the youko's council. Koenma had apparently scoured most of the Earth looking for him, and when he had finally narrowed it down to the Sunset Kingdoms, he had sent a dozen ferrygirls to sweep across its length and width, crying out his name.
It was brash and careless and sloppy. It was something Kurama would have expected of Yuusuke.
The girl who had finally found him was tiny and frail-looking, dressed in a flowered blue kimono with a bright yellow obi, a style of dress Kurama had not seen in many ages. He'd only approached her to shut her up, because the last thing any thief wants is to have his name shouted across the mountains and plains.
"Lord Koenma wants you," she had told him, but that was after she'd shrieked and stumbled, startled by his sudden appearance. Silver hair and cloth, and pale white skin hid him well in the snow-draped plains of the North. "He wants you to come."
He'd been mostly inclined to say no. Koenma was a god still, but an old god, from a faith that most had forgotten, and none in this land ever kept. But he knew it never hurt to keep gods on your side, and it often hurt to anger them.
Besides, they'd been friends about eight thousand years ago.
"Why should I come at the little princeling's beck and call?" Kurama had asked, lazy scorn covering every word.
"You don't scare me, Kurama" the ferry girl had said. "I once saw you laugh."
That was a tactic no one had ever tried on him before, and it was enough to make him pause. He looked harder and remembered her, a pale, half-starved girl with pink hair who had stood in the center of a demon world prison cell, bare toes clenching the dirt, her eyes lit up with relief to see them. He couldn't recall her name, though it likely had something to do with flowers or plants; at some point most of the ferrygirls had been named after growing things.
"You'll see me laugh in amusement if you don't give me better reason than that," Kurama said. "Koenma wants me? Well I have no need of him."
The ferrygirl looked a little less certain of herself now. Showed she had more common sense than her lord, Kurama supposed. "Lord Koenma said to tell you that he had news you'd want to hear." She had hesitated as a pack of direwolves began to howl in the distance. "He said it was news you'd waited eight thousand years for."
Kurama hadn't waited eight thousand years for anything, let alone news from Koenma. But he'd suspected what the god was hinting at. Perhaps he'd hoped a little, in the parts of him that remembered being human and had too much loved the experience. What other reason could there be for deciding to go before Koenma?
Eight thousand years ago Kurama had dwelt in the Eastern Isles, though they'd had other names then. Nihon, Kurama remembered. Land of the Rising Sun. The Empire. Japan. The language had died, and the culture had faded and the rule of the people had changed again and again with the passing of ages. Once the islands had been a stark mix of lush green mountains, grey steel and desolate white concrete. He wondered what they looked like now. The concrete would have been broken up by plant growth millennia ago, and whatever steel remained would be naught by twisted ruins of an ancient and unimaginable age. It was almost sad, though Kurama had little love for steel or cold concrete. But he had liked the home he had there, and the family he had somehow made for himself.
He'd sent the ferrygirl off with her name chasing round in his head. Azami was a word as much as a name, and some forgotten part of his mind translated it for him. Thistle. An inappropriate name for a pink-haired girl.
Standing along in the snow with the wind howling around him, Kurama had thought about what happened eight thousand years ago, then gone to deal with a few things that needed seeing to.
Hiei found him a few days later, far more easily than Koenma had – but then Kurama had never made it hard for Hiei to find him. The fire demon had scowled into the wind, his youki scorching the earth and melting any flake of snow that dared come within ten feet of him. He did it to annoy Kurama, but the youko found it endearing. "You're an idiot," Hiei told him, which Kurama didn't find quite so endearing. "Koenma's never been honest with us."
So there had been ferrygirls out shouting Hiei's name as well. Kurama was a little surprised to learn this.
"Curiosity kills foxes as easily as cats," Hiei warned. "There's nothing good that toddler could have to say."
Koenma had not been a toddler for some time, but pointing that out would do little good. "He has never been the bearer of good news, has he?"
"Grief and aggravation," Hiei said, glaring a wind-driven flurry of snow out of existence. "Don't trust him. He'll cause trouble if he starts meddling."
Things could hardly get worse, though Kurama admitted it had been many years since he ventured south. The humans had built their Wall and the Castle Black with its towers and guards to hold back the demons that still dwelled on this continent, killing any that dared venture too close. The Rift had spilled thousands of demons into this world, and the Mending had left most of them behind. Kurama did not fear the humans with their swords and spears, but neither did he have any interest in walking among them again. In the wake of the unholy wars, he had chosen to stay here, in the frozen mountains that had been forsaken by all but a few nomadic tribes of humans, and the demons trapped there by the Mending. Hiei had thought he was an idiot then, too.
"I would hear what he has to say," Kurama admitted. "It has been a very long time since Koenma has sought me out." Since the Mending and the end of the old world. Eight thousand years.
Since Yuusuke died.
"I'll come with you," Hiei said, "but you're still an idiot."
****
The halls of the Spirit World were much the same as they had once been, and Kurama supposed that not being believed in had done Koenma little harm. Oni rushed back and forth about their business, ferrygirls dashed in and out on missions, the occasional lost or forgotten spirit stood in vague confusion. Kurama had not sent word he was coming, he had no idea what Azami had reported to her lord, but when he stood in the door of Koenma's office the prince of the afterlife had simply kicked out his servants and said, "Close the door."
Hiei had stalked into the room behind him, and Kurama had shut the door behind a fleeing Oni. "You called?" Kurama asked in a honey-suckle voice that made Hiei snort and Koenma roll his eyes.
"I have something for you." Koenma was older than the last time they'd seen him. No longer did he wear the form of an adolescent. His features had matured, his voice had deepened. He looked like a human in the prime of his life, and Kurama wondered idly if he would age any more. Enma Daioh, the king of the afterlife, had never looked any older than his son did now.
Kurama wondered how Enma Daioh had taken to not being believed in.
"Presents?" Kurama asked, raising a skeptical brow and Koenma had scowled at him. "Stop hedging, Koenma. I've come at your request, but I do not like to waste time." It was a bluff, of course, he didn't think he could bring himself to leave without hearing what Koenma had to say, but that didn't mean he had to be patient about it.
The prince of the afterlife had leaned back in his chair, suddenly looking weary and sad. The desk before him was piled with papers and scrolls, and even through the closed door they could hear shouts and sounds of scurrying servants. The chaos of the human world ever meant hassle for the keepers of the dead. "I've found them."
Eight thousand years was a long time even to demons, and Kurama stood staring at the godling in some confusion before realization struck. "Yuusuke?" he breathed. "And… who? Kuwabara?"
It was nearly impossible. Yuusuke, king of half the demon world, had died in the Mending, when he'd turned against his father's blood and risked everything to back the humans who had been his mother's people. He'd succeeded; his strength and power had helped the human armies hold back the tide of the invasion long enough for the Rift to be sealed and closed. But he'd lost, at the end, pulled into Hell with the other demon lords. He had died in the fall, and his soul lost to the Spirit World, or so Koenma had said.
Kuwabara was more likely, perhaps. He'd died twice before; once in battle as Kuwabara, once in another lifetime trying to hold back the hordes that streamed through the Rift as it was forged. A third time, two decades after the second, had been in the Mending, when he'd used all his strength and life to help seal the Rift. His soul, too, had never reached the Spirit World, and eventually Kurama had accepted them both as lost.
"Dead," Hiei said, shrugging his shoulders. "Consumed by hellfire and the maw of the Rift. They're both dead."
"Lost," Koenma corrected. "And found again, but out of my reach."
"No soul is out of your reach," Kurama objected. He narrowed his eyes and regarded the godling. "Save those devoured, or consumed."
"They are neither for now," Koenma said. He glared at them both from beneath hooded eyes. "Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Tell us," Kurama said, laying a stilling hand on Hiei's arm. "I am curious."
The prince of the afterlife shrugged. "I don't know where they were, or what has happened to them since. It's possible they've lived and died since then, but… I would have known. It's possible their souls were trapped in Limbo, but I sent Oni to scour every record of every soul sent into the Void. All I can think is that they've been trapped somewhere, bound to some being or object until recently." He made a face at Hiei. "Stop glaring at me, already, I didn't have a lot to work with."
"But they are returned?" Kurama ventured. "You said returned, but out of reach."
"Kuwabara is about to be reborn," Koenma said. "The bastard son of a prince whose family is sending me more dead than I know what to do with. The mother is some noble girl he stole from her father, and the book shows that she'll kill herself as soon as she finds out she's pregnant."
A pity, but Kurama didn't see the problem. "So the child dies with her and you send a ferrygirl to collect Kuwabara's soul."
Hiei tipped his head to the side and glanced between them. "Who's to say the soul can be collected?"
"Eight millennia," Koenma said tightly. "We have no idea where they've been in that time. He could have lived and died eight hundred times or more. It's possible that if the girl kills herself, we'll lose him again."
"What do you want us for?" Hiei asked. "I'm no ferrygirl."
"He wants us to stop her," Kurama realized. "Don't you, Koenma? You want us to stop the girl from killing herself."
"Keep her alive long enough to have him," Koenma said. "Keep him alive if you can, long enough for me to get a grasp on him again. When he dies a natural death, hopefully I can guarantee him a place in Heaven."
"And Yuusuke?"
Koenma grimaced. "Yuusuke is another problem entirely."
That was certainly nothing new. Yuusuke had been a problem of one sort or another as long as Kurama had known him. "Is he reborn as well?"
Koenma rubbed a hand over tired eyes. "Soon, relatively speaking, if he hasn't been already. I can sense him, and he's become part of something very big."
Hiei stirred. "A demon of some kind?"
"Fate," Koenma said sourly. "He'll be worse than this mad King Aerys."
"That bodes ill," Kurama observed.
"We have some time yet, I think." Koenma gestured, and a map of the Sunset Kingdoms unfolded itself upon the wall behind him. "For now, go to the mountains of Dorne. The girl's name is Lyanna Stark. She's going to die in childbirth if she doesn't kill herself, but if she makes it that far, the child should live. Just keep her alive long enough."
****
Hiei had vanished almost immediately, stating that he had no patience for human girls or their screaming infants. Kurama suspected at the time that there was more to it than that, that Hiei was tending to other matters, and he wondered if it had anything to do with Yuusuke. But he'd pushed the curiosity aside and gone on to Dorne, where he'd found Lyanna, talked her out of killing herself, and stayed to watch her die.
He'd followed the brother for a time, long enough to make sure the babe would be safe.
The father, Prince Rhaegar, had been killed by Lyanna's betrothed, which was fair enough, Kurama supposed, though at the end the human had been as inhuman in his fury as any demon Kurama had known. Eddard Stark had not told his brother-in-law-to-be that the child was Lyanna's; instead he had eventually taken the child home, claiming him as a bastard son and refusing to meet the shocked eyes of his young wife as she sat nursing their trueborn son.
One night, Kurama had slid through the window of the nursery and spared a curious glance for Stark's son – a healthy child who would take after his mother – before leaning over the edge of the crib that housed Rhaegar's bastard. "If you remember, I'll come back," Kurama promised, and he'd been amused and heartened by the way the child's blue eyes had focused squarely on him.
****
Hiei did not turn up again for some time, but that was hardly unusual. Kurama returned to the North beyond the Wall, where the Others still lingered and the exiled ice maidens flaunted their power. Hiei hated it there, but to Kurama the cold was much the same as the heat; his breath did not fog in the winter's chill, and he did not sweat under the summer sun. He was comfortable there, and at some point he'd come to find snow beautiful.
When Hiei did return, some fourteen years or so had passed and Kurama had ventured South of the Wall a handful of times to check up on the boy. Jon Snow, Eddard Stark had named him. A bastard's name, but the child was well-treated, and loved by his half-brothers and sisters, so Kurama felt no need to intervene.
"Back so soon?" Kurama asked, and Hiei snarled irritably and stamped his feet. "Why do you make me freeze my skin off every time I want to talk to you?" the fire demon demanded.
"I like the view from here," Kurama said. "I can see beyond the Wall from the top of the mountains."
"You could walk beyond the Wall," Hiei said, hunching his shoulders against the wind. "The stupid humans have forgotten what demons look like. They'd probably wave hello to you and offer you something to drink."
It wasn't that bad, though the humans had grown careless and unwary in the centuries since the Others had last tried to take the Wall. "If you hate it so much, why do you keep coming?"
Hiei snorted. "Because you're too damned stubborn to return to the Demon World."
"I enjoy our pleasant little talks," Kurama said, the wind sending his hair in his face just in time to hide a grin that surely would have spiked Hiei's temper. "Where have you been?"
The fire demon crossed the small distance between them, snow melting beneath his feet, until Kurama could feel the warmth of his presence against his skin. "Koenma sent me after dragon eggs."
"Dragons?" Kurama was surprised. There had been dragons once – fierce and monstrous, each of them. Demonic beasts that had come through the Rift and rampaged across the human world. Some humans had managed to tame a few, he remembered vaguely, but the last of the dragons had been killed more than a century ago.
"The human who had them thought they were fossils." Hiei rubbed his right arm absently. "But there was still fire in them. If someone with enough spiritual energy got a hold of them, they could live."
"Yuusuke?" Kurama asked.
Hiei nodded. "Apparently. Koenma thinks he's with some barbarian tribe on the other side of the ocean."
"Interesting that Fate," Kurama could not help the mocking edge his voice took on that word. He'd never held much faith in fate or destiny, "would hold him back for so long, only to drop him on the other side of the world."
"Just because they died together once doesn't mean they were a matched set." Hiei drew his cloak around his shoulders – a deep black fur that he had not worn the last time Kurama saw him.
"Maybe," Kurama said, staring out over the white, toward the holdfast in the distance where Kuwabara's soul was growing up. "I think you're wrong, though." He heard the howl of a direwolf in the distance, and felt the lingering presence of the Others pressing ever closer to the Wall.
"I think Yuusuke will come to us, in time," Kurama said.
But he did not think it would be a pleasant reunion.
lady_flamewing mentioned Yu Yu Hakusho and A Song of Ice and Fire in the same post and this is where my brain went. Bad brain. Bad.Title:Dragon's Blood
Fandom: YYH/aSoIaF
Characters: ... everyone? Sort of?
Pairings: n/a mild Kurama/Hiei if you squint and can read my mind
Warnings: Blood and death, mostly off screen. Implied rape, off screen (Lyanna).
Summary: It's been a long, long, time but it looks like Koenma might be getting the band back together. You know. Or not. Set seven thousand years after the end of YYH and taking RIDICULOUS liberties with the canon of ASoIaF.
Notes: Yeah, there isn't ever going to be MORE of this. One hopes. Also, while I support the theory that Lyanna was more than happy to be Rhaegar's mistress, I went with the whole "abducted and imprisoned" thing that her ex-fiance believed. It's been almost four or five years since I read the SoIaF, so if I made any ridiculous errors, please let me know.
It was Kurama who had first put the idea in the poor girl's head.
He'd been in the palace, inside her quarters. In Shuichi's body, a pretty young boy with big green eyes, a sweet voice and long red hair, the only attention he had attracted was the occasional leer and wandering hand, and those were easily dealt with or ignored. He'd plaited his hair and donned one of the simple cotton gowns that servant women wore, and he'd passed easily as one of literally dozens of new servants brought into the fort, albeit a flat-chested one. Getting to the Prince's "mistress" hadn't been difficult, either. He'd simply had to get one of the regular girls drunk enough to fail in her duties, and then step in like a good friend. He had no idea what had happened to the girl he'd replaced, though doubtful it was anything good. The Dragon's household was no place for those who failed.
The girl was sixteen if she was a day, and pretty enough that Kurama could see why a hot-headed prince would risk so much to have her. Dark hair and eyes, an uncommon paleness, no doubt caused at least in part by the stress of her situation. She was kind to the girls who bathed and dressed her and kept her company, cordial to the eunuchs who guarded her door and tasted her food. But what amused Kurama was the polite disdain with which she addressed the knights and courtiers who brought her trinkets and messages from the prince. In a room filled with silks and velvets and rich tapestries, adorned with gold statues and vases and fresh flowers, platters of fruit and ancient, elegant furniture, waited on each hour of the day, she was trapped worse than any traitor in the cells, but she did not show them fear or beg them for mercy. She despised them and let them know.
She amused him, but it was not concern for her that drove him to do what he did.
She'd probably suspected she was with child before she knew for certain; Kurama supposed she'd hoped that the earliest symptoms were merely signs of stress or illness. But when she was certain she did not waste time. She did not let herself sleep for three days, and it had been an act of will, Kurama knew, for he had seen her begin to drift off over embroidery or a book several times, only to force herself back to wakefulness. On the third day, using her exhaustion as an excuse, she had pitched a fit the likes of which any small child would be envious. She'd hurled food at the eunuchs, shouted insults at the girls. She'd driven them out of her chamber and when one lingered, trying to calm her, the girl had hurled book after book until the girl fled in tears and covered in bruises.
Kurama had remained. He'd learned to slip through shadows when this girl's ancestors had not yet been born, and slipping out of sight behind the voluminous velvet drapes while she busied herself with her tantrum had been easy enough. He'd waited and watched, knowing she wouldn't have much time before someone with more authority than a eunuch came to make sure she was behaving herself. Whatever she had planned, she had to act fast.
He had expected her to bite her tongue in half or perhaps poison herself with some drug she had managed to hide away. He had not expected her to try to stab herself with her breakfast fork.
Stupid girl. As if that would have worked. She'd have had to bury the entire damn fork in her chest to get to her heart and still might have missed. Even that was assuming she had the stomach to drive it all the way in. If she'd any brains at all she'd have waited till the child was older and her belly rounder, then simply cut her stomach open.
Or just jumped out the window and been done with it, which is what Kurama would have done, had he no other choice.
Regardless, he was not there to help her kill herself and the bastard child she carried. Rather the opposite. He'd slipped out from behind the drapes and called her name, and she'd spun to stare at him in shock.
She hadn't really wanted to die. If she had, she would never have listened to him. But he'd told her of her brother's approach, how the Stag's army was harrying the Dragon's to pieces. Too many of the King's men were dead or sworn to the Stag or gone turncoat. "Your brother will come," Kurama had told her, "and he will free you. You don't have to die. Only be strong a little while longer."
She had listened, and waited and somehow come to love the child within her, singing it songs and stroking her belly.
Months later, Kurama watched from the ledge outside her window as Lyanna Stark gave birth to the prince's bastard son, the bed where she'd been held prisoner stained red with blood and birthing fluids. Her brother had clutched the babe against his chest, wrapped in one of Lyanna's silk robes, and promised to raise him. Promised to keep him safe.
Promised never, ever, to let anyone know who the boy truly was.
Just as well, Kurama thought. Since neither of them had any idea what that babe was meant to be.
****
Koenma had put Kurama up to it, just as Kurama had whispered hope to the poor doomed Lyanna.
It had been a long time since he had kept Koenma's company, and longer since Koenma had kept the youko's council. Koenma had apparently scoured most of the Earth looking for him, and when he had finally narrowed it down to the Sunset Kingdoms, he had sent a dozen ferrygirls to sweep across its length and width, crying out his name.
It was brash and careless and sloppy. It was something Kurama would have expected of Yuusuke.
The girl who had finally found him was tiny and frail-looking, dressed in a flowered blue kimono with a bright yellow obi, a style of dress Kurama had not seen in many ages. He'd only approached her to shut her up, because the last thing any thief wants is to have his name shouted across the mountains and plains.
"Lord Koenma wants you," she had told him, but that was after she'd shrieked and stumbled, startled by his sudden appearance. Silver hair and cloth, and pale white skin hid him well in the snow-draped plains of the North. "He wants you to come."
He'd been mostly inclined to say no. Koenma was a god still, but an old god, from a faith that most had forgotten, and none in this land ever kept. But he knew it never hurt to keep gods on your side, and it often hurt to anger them.
Besides, they'd been friends about eight thousand years ago.
"Why should I come at the little princeling's beck and call?" Kurama had asked, lazy scorn covering every word.
"You don't scare me, Kurama" the ferry girl had said. "I once saw you laugh."
That was a tactic no one had ever tried on him before, and it was enough to make him pause. He looked harder and remembered her, a pale, half-starved girl with pink hair who had stood in the center of a demon world prison cell, bare toes clenching the dirt, her eyes lit up with relief to see them. He couldn't recall her name, though it likely had something to do with flowers or plants; at some point most of the ferrygirls had been named after growing things.
"You'll see me laugh in amusement if you don't give me better reason than that," Kurama said. "Koenma wants me? Well I have no need of him."
The ferrygirl looked a little less certain of herself now. Showed she had more common sense than her lord, Kurama supposed. "Lord Koenma said to tell you that he had news you'd want to hear." She had hesitated as a pack of direwolves began to howl in the distance. "He said it was news you'd waited eight thousand years for."
Kurama hadn't waited eight thousand years for anything, let alone news from Koenma. But he'd suspected what the god was hinting at. Perhaps he'd hoped a little, in the parts of him that remembered being human and had too much loved the experience. What other reason could there be for deciding to go before Koenma?
Eight thousand years ago Kurama had dwelt in the Eastern Isles, though they'd had other names then. Nihon, Kurama remembered. Land of the Rising Sun. The Empire. Japan. The language had died, and the culture had faded and the rule of the people had changed again and again with the passing of ages. Once the islands had been a stark mix of lush green mountains, grey steel and desolate white concrete. He wondered what they looked like now. The concrete would have been broken up by plant growth millennia ago, and whatever steel remained would be naught by twisted ruins of an ancient and unimaginable age. It was almost sad, though Kurama had little love for steel or cold concrete. But he had liked the home he had there, and the family he had somehow made for himself.
He'd sent the ferrygirl off with her name chasing round in his head. Azami was a word as much as a name, and some forgotten part of his mind translated it for him. Thistle. An inappropriate name for a pink-haired girl.
Standing along in the snow with the wind howling around him, Kurama had thought about what happened eight thousand years ago, then gone to deal with a few things that needed seeing to.
Hiei found him a few days later, far more easily than Koenma had – but then Kurama had never made it hard for Hiei to find him. The fire demon had scowled into the wind, his youki scorching the earth and melting any flake of snow that dared come within ten feet of him. He did it to annoy Kurama, but the youko found it endearing. "You're an idiot," Hiei told him, which Kurama didn't find quite so endearing. "Koenma's never been honest with us."
So there had been ferrygirls out shouting Hiei's name as well. Kurama was a little surprised to learn this.
"Curiosity kills foxes as easily as cats," Hiei warned. "There's nothing good that toddler could have to say."
Koenma had not been a toddler for some time, but pointing that out would do little good. "He has never been the bearer of good news, has he?"
"Grief and aggravation," Hiei said, glaring a wind-driven flurry of snow out of existence. "Don't trust him. He'll cause trouble if he starts meddling."
Things could hardly get worse, though Kurama admitted it had been many years since he ventured south. The humans had built their Wall and the Castle Black with its towers and guards to hold back the demons that still dwelled on this continent, killing any that dared venture too close. The Rift had spilled thousands of demons into this world, and the Mending had left most of them behind. Kurama did not fear the humans with their swords and spears, but neither did he have any interest in walking among them again. In the wake of the unholy wars, he had chosen to stay here, in the frozen mountains that had been forsaken by all but a few nomadic tribes of humans, and the demons trapped there by the Mending. Hiei had thought he was an idiot then, too.
"I would hear what he has to say," Kurama admitted. "It has been a very long time since Koenma has sought me out." Since the Mending and the end of the old world. Eight thousand years.
Since Yuusuke died.
"I'll come with you," Hiei said, "but you're still an idiot."
****
The halls of the Spirit World were much the same as they had once been, and Kurama supposed that not being believed in had done Koenma little harm. Oni rushed back and forth about their business, ferrygirls dashed in and out on missions, the occasional lost or forgotten spirit stood in vague confusion. Kurama had not sent word he was coming, he had no idea what Azami had reported to her lord, but when he stood in the door of Koenma's office the prince of the afterlife had simply kicked out his servants and said, "Close the door."
Hiei had stalked into the room behind him, and Kurama had shut the door behind a fleeing Oni. "You called?" Kurama asked in a honey-suckle voice that made Hiei snort and Koenma roll his eyes.
"I have something for you." Koenma was older than the last time they'd seen him. No longer did he wear the form of an adolescent. His features had matured, his voice had deepened. He looked like a human in the prime of his life, and Kurama wondered idly if he would age any more. Enma Daioh, the king of the afterlife, had never looked any older than his son did now.
Kurama wondered how Enma Daioh had taken to not being believed in.
"Presents?" Kurama asked, raising a skeptical brow and Koenma had scowled at him. "Stop hedging, Koenma. I've come at your request, but I do not like to waste time." It was a bluff, of course, he didn't think he could bring himself to leave without hearing what Koenma had to say, but that didn't mean he had to be patient about it.
The prince of the afterlife had leaned back in his chair, suddenly looking weary and sad. The desk before him was piled with papers and scrolls, and even through the closed door they could hear shouts and sounds of scurrying servants. The chaos of the human world ever meant hassle for the keepers of the dead. "I've found them."
Eight thousand years was a long time even to demons, and Kurama stood staring at the godling in some confusion before realization struck. "Yuusuke?" he breathed. "And… who? Kuwabara?"
It was nearly impossible. Yuusuke, king of half the demon world, had died in the Mending, when he'd turned against his father's blood and risked everything to back the humans who had been his mother's people. He'd succeeded; his strength and power had helped the human armies hold back the tide of the invasion long enough for the Rift to be sealed and closed. But he'd lost, at the end, pulled into Hell with the other demon lords. He had died in the fall, and his soul lost to the Spirit World, or so Koenma had said.
Kuwabara was more likely, perhaps. He'd died twice before; once in battle as Kuwabara, once in another lifetime trying to hold back the hordes that streamed through the Rift as it was forged. A third time, two decades after the second, had been in the Mending, when he'd used all his strength and life to help seal the Rift. His soul, too, had never reached the Spirit World, and eventually Kurama had accepted them both as lost.
"Dead," Hiei said, shrugging his shoulders. "Consumed by hellfire and the maw of the Rift. They're both dead."
"Lost," Koenma corrected. "And found again, but out of my reach."
"No soul is out of your reach," Kurama objected. He narrowed his eyes and regarded the godling. "Save those devoured, or consumed."
"They are neither for now," Koenma said. He glared at them both from beneath hooded eyes. "Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Tell us," Kurama said, laying a stilling hand on Hiei's arm. "I am curious."
The prince of the afterlife shrugged. "I don't know where they were, or what has happened to them since. It's possible they've lived and died since then, but… I would have known. It's possible their souls were trapped in Limbo, but I sent Oni to scour every record of every soul sent into the Void. All I can think is that they've been trapped somewhere, bound to some being or object until recently." He made a face at Hiei. "Stop glaring at me, already, I didn't have a lot to work with."
"But they are returned?" Kurama ventured. "You said returned, but out of reach."
"Kuwabara is about to be reborn," Koenma said. "The bastard son of a prince whose family is sending me more dead than I know what to do with. The mother is some noble girl he stole from her father, and the book shows that she'll kill herself as soon as she finds out she's pregnant."
A pity, but Kurama didn't see the problem. "So the child dies with her and you send a ferrygirl to collect Kuwabara's soul."
Hiei tipped his head to the side and glanced between them. "Who's to say the soul can be collected?"
"Eight millennia," Koenma said tightly. "We have no idea where they've been in that time. He could have lived and died eight hundred times or more. It's possible that if the girl kills herself, we'll lose him again."
"What do you want us for?" Hiei asked. "I'm no ferrygirl."
"He wants us to stop her," Kurama realized. "Don't you, Koenma? You want us to stop the girl from killing herself."
"Keep her alive long enough to have him," Koenma said. "Keep him alive if you can, long enough for me to get a grasp on him again. When he dies a natural death, hopefully I can guarantee him a place in Heaven."
"And Yuusuke?"
Koenma grimaced. "Yuusuke is another problem entirely."
That was certainly nothing new. Yuusuke had been a problem of one sort or another as long as Kurama had known him. "Is he reborn as well?"
Koenma rubbed a hand over tired eyes. "Soon, relatively speaking, if he hasn't been already. I can sense him, and he's become part of something very big."
Hiei stirred. "A demon of some kind?"
"Fate," Koenma said sourly. "He'll be worse than this mad King Aerys."
"That bodes ill," Kurama observed.
"We have some time yet, I think." Koenma gestured, and a map of the Sunset Kingdoms unfolded itself upon the wall behind him. "For now, go to the mountains of Dorne. The girl's name is Lyanna Stark. She's going to die in childbirth if she doesn't kill herself, but if she makes it that far, the child should live. Just keep her alive long enough."
****
Hiei had vanished almost immediately, stating that he had no patience for human girls or their screaming infants. Kurama suspected at the time that there was more to it than that, that Hiei was tending to other matters, and he wondered if it had anything to do with Yuusuke. But he'd pushed the curiosity aside and gone on to Dorne, where he'd found Lyanna, talked her out of killing herself, and stayed to watch her die.
He'd followed the brother for a time, long enough to make sure the babe would be safe.
The father, Prince Rhaegar, had been killed by Lyanna's betrothed, which was fair enough, Kurama supposed, though at the end the human had been as inhuman in his fury as any demon Kurama had known. Eddard Stark had not told his brother-in-law-to-be that the child was Lyanna's; instead he had eventually taken the child home, claiming him as a bastard son and refusing to meet the shocked eyes of his young wife as she sat nursing their trueborn son.
One night, Kurama had slid through the window of the nursery and spared a curious glance for Stark's son – a healthy child who would take after his mother – before leaning over the edge of the crib that housed Rhaegar's bastard. "If you remember, I'll come back," Kurama promised, and he'd been amused and heartened by the way the child's blue eyes had focused squarely on him.
****
Hiei did not turn up again for some time, but that was hardly unusual. Kurama returned to the North beyond the Wall, where the Others still lingered and the exiled ice maidens flaunted their power. Hiei hated it there, but to Kurama the cold was much the same as the heat; his breath did not fog in the winter's chill, and he did not sweat under the summer sun. He was comfortable there, and at some point he'd come to find snow beautiful.
When Hiei did return, some fourteen years or so had passed and Kurama had ventured South of the Wall a handful of times to check up on the boy. Jon Snow, Eddard Stark had named him. A bastard's name, but the child was well-treated, and loved by his half-brothers and sisters, so Kurama felt no need to intervene.
"Back so soon?" Kurama asked, and Hiei snarled irritably and stamped his feet. "Why do you make me freeze my skin off every time I want to talk to you?" the fire demon demanded.
"I like the view from here," Kurama said. "I can see beyond the Wall from the top of the mountains."
"You could walk beyond the Wall," Hiei said, hunching his shoulders against the wind. "The stupid humans have forgotten what demons look like. They'd probably wave hello to you and offer you something to drink."
It wasn't that bad, though the humans had grown careless and unwary in the centuries since the Others had last tried to take the Wall. "If you hate it so much, why do you keep coming?"
Hiei snorted. "Because you're too damned stubborn to return to the Demon World."
"I enjoy our pleasant little talks," Kurama said, the wind sending his hair in his face just in time to hide a grin that surely would have spiked Hiei's temper. "Where have you been?"
The fire demon crossed the small distance between them, snow melting beneath his feet, until Kurama could feel the warmth of his presence against his skin. "Koenma sent me after dragon eggs."
"Dragons?" Kurama was surprised. There had been dragons once – fierce and monstrous, each of them. Demonic beasts that had come through the Rift and rampaged across the human world. Some humans had managed to tame a few, he remembered vaguely, but the last of the dragons had been killed more than a century ago.
"The human who had them thought they were fossils." Hiei rubbed his right arm absently. "But there was still fire in them. If someone with enough spiritual energy got a hold of them, they could live."
"Yuusuke?" Kurama asked.
Hiei nodded. "Apparently. Koenma thinks he's with some barbarian tribe on the other side of the ocean."
"Interesting that Fate," Kurama could not help the mocking edge his voice took on that word. He'd never held much faith in fate or destiny, "would hold him back for so long, only to drop him on the other side of the world."
"Just because they died together once doesn't mean they were a matched set." Hiei drew his cloak around his shoulders – a deep black fur that he had not worn the last time Kurama saw him.
"Maybe," Kurama said, staring out over the white, toward the holdfast in the distance where Kuwabara's soul was growing up. "I think you're wrong, though." He heard the howl of a direwolf in the distance, and felt the lingering presence of the Others pressing ever closer to the Wall.
"I think Yuusuke will come to us, in time," Kurama said.
But he did not think it would be a pleasant reunion.
