Of Lonely Roads and Midnight
Hello, all! New fic post!
Title: Of Lonely Roads and Midnight
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Rating: T
Pairing: Hiei/Kurama unrequited
Summary: Short introspective fic from Kurama's point of view. Hiei's been gone a long time, and Kurama is through waiting. "And so tonight is the last night. For walking, for remembering, for all of this."
Thanks to Mika_Starlight for being an amazing beta!
Comments are food, people. Feed the starving ficcer.
Midnight? No... Later. But only a little, and I don't mind. Time has no meaning. Not here. Not in this place.
What am I saying? If there is a place it is merely a state of the mind, a condition that I have created for myself. After all, here can be any place, any hour.
Any memory.
And tonight, 'here' is a moonlit road, dark and winding. The pavement glistening dully beneath my feet like fresh tears in dead eyes while I walk.
The hour is late, or later. Whichever. Too late, anyway, to change things. Too late to be doing this. And, of course, the memory is every memory.
The memory is you.
What would you say, I wonder, if you knew? What harsh words would shoot like barbs from the tip of your tongue if you knew that I walk these roads nearly every night, searching?
But for what?
Perhaps I seek ghosts of you. Echoes of your presence, brought to life as I walk down these well-known, beloved paths and feel the cold at my side, reminding me of the warmth, your warmth, that once belonged there. Or perhaps I seek possibilities. Could-have-beens that are conjured by my loneliness while I traverse new paths and draw off old memories, wondering what it might be like to have you walk beside me once more.
Or perhaps I simply wish to feel this. Simply wish to experience the hollow aching in my chest and the awful burning in my soul.
Oh, I can nearly see your face were I to voice these thoughts to you. You would scowl, and snap in the way that, secretly, always pleased me. You would demand to know what stupidity drives a fox to desire pain. It almost makes me smile. You and I are not so different in this, Beloved.
The wind sighs and brings with it the scent of rain, breaking my reverie. There are clouds darkening the moon, the stars, leaving little to light my way. Still, I press on. I am a glutton for punishment this night, it would seem. But the air is humming around me, almost alive with a tense kind of sorrow. When I listen closely, I can hear more than the rustle of leaves and the stirring of grass. I can hear voices, thousands of tiny little cries, all of them bemoaning their loneliness. My heart is in each one.
After all, every cry is for me.
One voice in particular draws my attention, stunning in its grief. I search a moment, reaching out with my energy to locate that singular sound; a willow, standing lonely in a barren field just to the right of the road. Its vine-like leaves snake quietly in the breeze, and my eye catches on minuscule, pearlescent beads of moisture; dew drops, like individual tears, sparkling along the leaves in the nearly nonexistent starlight.
For just a moment, I pause to kneel and bury my hands in the grass. I extend my energy again and connect directly to the willow itself.
It is crying. For me, and itself, and the fact that it cannot comfort me.
I send it strength and gratitude through our link, and, as best as I am able, let it know that it has done just fine, before rising and continuing my walk once more.
It cried, after all. And I haven't had tears of my own for a long while.
My feet have found the highway now, and the soft crush of grass is replaced by the hard crunch of the road's shoulder. Despite the late hour a steady stream of traffic is flying by. The wind of their passage rips at the hem of my clothes and tears at the ends of my hair.
For one so affiliated with nature, I find it shockingly easy to lose myself in this; in the combined scents of exhaust and metal and rubber, in the rhythmic roar of the cars as they rush past, ebbing and flowing like a man-made tide, threatening to drown me in its intensity. I let it all wash over me and breathe a sigh of weary familiarity.
I almost expected to end up here tonight.
After all, you hated this place. Hated the rush and the stink and the utter humanity of it all. You couldn't understand my love for such a barren thing, but you always came. Every time I asked you. Every time I didn't. I can still remember every moment of weakness that led me here, looking to be swept away, only to find you waiting. You always knew and you always came looking. You were something solid to ground me in a world that constantly shifts.
But no more. You shifted, too, and nothing is solid now.
Should I have been surprised? When the world looks at me they see mutability. Transience. A mercurial compulsion to change. In you they see constancy. Stone. Something immovable. It was these perceptions which damned us in the end. For what is my inconstancy but the culmination of a thousand years worth of wanting and learning and being? What is your intransigence but a hundred years worth of anger and fear and resentment? If your nature is that of a stone, then surely mine is that of that willow, able to breathe and bend and flex where you can only break. And when the stone has cracked and worn away, as stones are wont to do, what then?
They say that you are the constant one.
Tell me, how can that be true when I'm the one still here?
Still walking. Still waiting. Still hoping against hope that I might find you, walking these same roads, looking for me.
But it's late. Too late. The marks of time have wrought their ruins across this tired human body. And even if you were to come, even if you were to stand before me and apologize for your absence, I'm not certain that it would matter. Even the strongest memories are only worth so much, and I've been alone far too long.
And so tonight is the last night. For walking, for remembering, for all of this.
There will be no more waiting.
The sky above me is dense with the blackness of predawn. The cars on the highway are still a pulsing hum at my side. And even though this is the last time, the ache deep within me will always call for these things. For the chill and the regret and everything that speaks of you.
Some part of me will always be yours, I'm afraid. Lonely and aching and unclaimed, but yours all the same.
The pavement is glistening despite the darkness. The rain I scented earlier has started and tendrils of fog are rising, twining lovingly around my ankles in a comforting caress.
It is time to end this.
After all, I've said everything that there is to say.
“Goodbye, Hiei.”
And now there's nothing left to do but walk back the way I came.
Title: Of Lonely Roads and Midnight
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Rating: T
Pairing: Hiei/Kurama unrequited
Summary: Short introspective fic from Kurama's point of view. Hiei's been gone a long time, and Kurama is through waiting. "And so tonight is the last night. For walking, for remembering, for all of this."
Thanks to Mika_Starlight for being an amazing beta!
Comments are food, people. Feed the starving ficcer.
Midnight? No... Later. But only a little, and I don't mind. Time has no meaning. Not here. Not in this place.
What am I saying? If there is a place it is merely a state of the mind, a condition that I have created for myself. After all, here can be any place, any hour.
Any memory.
And tonight, 'here' is a moonlit road, dark and winding. The pavement glistening dully beneath my feet like fresh tears in dead eyes while I walk.
The hour is late, or later. Whichever. Too late, anyway, to change things. Too late to be doing this. And, of course, the memory is every memory.
The memory is you.
What would you say, I wonder, if you knew? What harsh words would shoot like barbs from the tip of your tongue if you knew that I walk these roads nearly every night, searching?
But for what?
Perhaps I seek ghosts of you. Echoes of your presence, brought to life as I walk down these well-known, beloved paths and feel the cold at my side, reminding me of the warmth, your warmth, that once belonged there. Or perhaps I seek possibilities. Could-have-beens that are conjured by my loneliness while I traverse new paths and draw off old memories, wondering what it might be like to have you walk beside me once more.
Or perhaps I simply wish to feel this. Simply wish to experience the hollow aching in my chest and the awful burning in my soul.
Oh, I can nearly see your face were I to voice these thoughts to you. You would scowl, and snap in the way that, secretly, always pleased me. You would demand to know what stupidity drives a fox to desire pain. It almost makes me smile. You and I are not so different in this, Beloved.
The wind sighs and brings with it the scent of rain, breaking my reverie. There are clouds darkening the moon, the stars, leaving little to light my way. Still, I press on. I am a glutton for punishment this night, it would seem. But the air is humming around me, almost alive with a tense kind of sorrow. When I listen closely, I can hear more than the rustle of leaves and the stirring of grass. I can hear voices, thousands of tiny little cries, all of them bemoaning their loneliness. My heart is in each one.
After all, every cry is for me.
One voice in particular draws my attention, stunning in its grief. I search a moment, reaching out with my energy to locate that singular sound; a willow, standing lonely in a barren field just to the right of the road. Its vine-like leaves snake quietly in the breeze, and my eye catches on minuscule, pearlescent beads of moisture; dew drops, like individual tears, sparkling along the leaves in the nearly nonexistent starlight.
For just a moment, I pause to kneel and bury my hands in the grass. I extend my energy again and connect directly to the willow itself.
It is crying. For me, and itself, and the fact that it cannot comfort me.
I send it strength and gratitude through our link, and, as best as I am able, let it know that it has done just fine, before rising and continuing my walk once more.
It cried, after all. And I haven't had tears of my own for a long while.
My feet have found the highway now, and the soft crush of grass is replaced by the hard crunch of the road's shoulder. Despite the late hour a steady stream of traffic is flying by. The wind of their passage rips at the hem of my clothes and tears at the ends of my hair.
For one so affiliated with nature, I find it shockingly easy to lose myself in this; in the combined scents of exhaust and metal and rubber, in the rhythmic roar of the cars as they rush past, ebbing and flowing like a man-made tide, threatening to drown me in its intensity. I let it all wash over me and breathe a sigh of weary familiarity.
I almost expected to end up here tonight.
After all, you hated this place. Hated the rush and the stink and the utter humanity of it all. You couldn't understand my love for such a barren thing, but you always came. Every time I asked you. Every time I didn't. I can still remember every moment of weakness that led me here, looking to be swept away, only to find you waiting. You always knew and you always came looking. You were something solid to ground me in a world that constantly shifts.
But no more. You shifted, too, and nothing is solid now.
Should I have been surprised? When the world looks at me they see mutability. Transience. A mercurial compulsion to change. In you they see constancy. Stone. Something immovable. It was these perceptions which damned us in the end. For what is my inconstancy but the culmination of a thousand years worth of wanting and learning and being? What is your intransigence but a hundred years worth of anger and fear and resentment? If your nature is that of a stone, then surely mine is that of that willow, able to breathe and bend and flex where you can only break. And when the stone has cracked and worn away, as stones are wont to do, what then?
They say that you are the constant one.
Tell me, how can that be true when I'm the one still here?
Still walking. Still waiting. Still hoping against hope that I might find you, walking these same roads, looking for me.
But it's late. Too late. The marks of time have wrought their ruins across this tired human body. And even if you were to come, even if you were to stand before me and apologize for your absence, I'm not certain that it would matter. Even the strongest memories are only worth so much, and I've been alone far too long.
And so tonight is the last night. For walking, for remembering, for all of this.
There will be no more waiting.
The sky above me is dense with the blackness of predawn. The cars on the highway are still a pulsing hum at my side. And even though this is the last time, the ache deep within me will always call for these things. For the chill and the regret and everything that speaks of you.
Some part of me will always be yours, I'm afraid. Lonely and aching and unclaimed, but yours all the same.
The pavement is glistening despite the darkness. The rain I scented earlier has started and tendrils of fog are rising, twining lovingly around my ankles in a comforting caress.
It is time to end this.
After all, I've said everything that there is to say.
“Goodbye, Hiei.”
And now there's nothing left to do but walk back the way I came.