Living in a World Without You [RL with Kuronue]

[deadly_garden]

Kurama sighed, watching Kuronue. This was the second time he'd had to deal with the bat not knowing him in the span of a month. The last one was a virus, but this...

Whoever that girl was, he was going to find her and kill her, but not until after he tortured her for her indiscretions.  No one lived to speak about doing harm to Kurama's if he had

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[cioara_bata]

There was no sense of deja vu or familiarity, no raw instinct that hissed in the back of the mind 'no, it's fine, trust 'im' or 'run, run like your wings are on fire, never look back.' There was only the feeling in his gut that had hit him like a sledgehammer around the same time that weird light had. She'd knocked him down and ripped away his entire self, and Kuronue knew it, he could feel that empty yawning chasm of all the things he should know. There was no waffling over whether or not his memory was gone - he knew it was. And he knew the inherent risks that came from it.

Without bonds to build up levels of trust and friendship, he was left with only the creature he'd been long before Kurama and he had ever met. The street sense he'd taught himself, to trust no one, for any reason. A kind hand could open-palm slap the shit out of a body just as easy as a cruel one.

He flinched back and stared at Kurama's outstretched fingers. They were clawed, just like his. The guy was tall, really damn tall from Kuronue's crouched perspective. He looked white all over, and smelled like a fox. It bemused him that he knew what the fuck a fox was, but didn't know his own name. It hurt to move, but he shook his head anyway, and made no move to take the hand. "... d'nno you," he muttered again, frustrated, "got no reason to trust you. You could be with her, I ain't goin' anywhere with any of you."

Injured animals hid alone. So would Kuronue.

[deadly_garden]

Kurama clenched his hand shut and lowered it. It hurt, by Inari it hurt to see him like this. He knelt down, away enough from the bat to not threaten his space and sighed.

"I know you don't, Kuro-ai. And I can't blame you for being untrusting. After what that woman did... I wouldn't trust me either." He smiled, though it was a sad smile. "I won't take you from here. I only want to know you're safe. You would be if I'd been here to start with." He shook his head, knowing now wasn't the time to blame himself for what happened; it was over and done with and all they could do now was recover and then seek revenge.

"My name is Yoko. We're partners, you see. I trust you beyond all others. And I want to help you. But if you don't want me to... I won't. I'll just sit here with you."

[cioara_bata]

"... you trust me," he echoed back with a defensive glimmer that was all too reminescent of a shorter, spiky-haired partner of Kurama's. Strange to have that mentality coming from Kuronue, ordinarily a fountain of lazy gutterbat warmth and laughter. There was none of it here, just a blankness, a banked hostility. Distrust, unease, fear. He watched Yoko's every move as though anticipating a finishing blow of some kind, and kept glancing past him towards the sky.

That woman claimed she'd come back and then he'd perish. He didn't want to perish, she'd already taken everything inside of him, he didn't want to lose the outer shell too.

"Why?"

He made no move to kick away or bolt free of the alley when Yoko settled close-by. He just watched, hyper-aware of him, and -

reeking of blood. He was injured, somewhere. Likely a good reason why he was holding so still, why he wasn't running. Tricky bat.

[deadly_garden]

He shrugged, keeping his hands where the other could see them. "Simply because I do, Kuronue. For as long as I've known you, I've trusted you. It just felt like I should, so I have."

He could smell the blood; it filled the area with the faint copper scent. It was all Kurama could do to keep still, not frantically search for the source. Sudden movements would only serve to frighten him, possibly make the injury worse than it was.

"She won't come back for a while," he said absently. "If at all. If she really could kill you, she would have done so by now. She would have killed everyone else she's stolen memories from. There's little sense in wounding your prey and coming back for it so much later. Too high a chance of the victim recovering or relocating to a safe area."

[cioara_bata]

".. you speak like y'know about wounding and killin' prey," Kuronue grumbled with another of those wary looks. His wings rustled when he finally conceded, just enough to fold down from his ungainly crouch and slide the rest of the way down. His knees pulled up instead, arms braced loose across the top and chin resting on the natural shelf. It cramped his wings up behind him, but like hell he was moving away from that wall again for a good long while.

A thread of blood was beading and winding its way down the arc of the closest wing to Kurama, tracing into the grooves of leathery skin... She'd managed to knock him flat on his face with whatever it was she'd done. Apparently her 'shove' had left damage.

"She could be just toyin' with me. She can kill me later. If I don't know everythin' I used to, 's easy to use it against me," he piped up finally, fingers tightening into helpless fists. "She can kill me right easy when she has a mind to finish it."

[deadly_garden]

He shrugged again. "I prefer my prey to be a little on the shinier side, if you know what I... I guess you might not. But it is still good to have that kind of knowledge should it be needed." He wrapped his arms around his knees, casting a glance around the area, still on alert even with his doubts. There was just no sense in her behavior.

He shook his head. "She won't as long as I'm here. I won't let her. She'd have to kill me first, and I don't plan on dying any time soon you see. So you'll be safe, I swear."

Glancing at the crimson trickle, he asked "Do you mind if I tend to your injuries? I'll understand if you don't, of course."

[cioara_bata]

Kuronue twinged and balled in a little tighter, mulling it over. "... have to turn my back t'you for that," he finally mumbled. Still, if this person wanted to cause him harm the sheer power radiating off the guy suggested - he probably could whether his back was turned or not. Comforting a thought as that was.

He rustled uneasily, then finally scooted an inch or so away from the wall, shuffling around with one last glance over a bruised shoulder. He had to spread his wings to show Yoko the extent of damage - and it wasn't pretty. While it could have been much worse, he still had a big bloody, ugly-bruise spot between his wings where he'd been hit. The sensitive base of one wing was injured as well, which made it harder to spread and move than the other.

Not to mention the usual rigmarole of scrapes and bruises from face-planting on a concrete street, but to someone like Kuronue, that was nothing.

[deadly_garden]

He hissed. It was hard not to, after all. It wasn't anywhere near the scope his injuries had been when he'd been rescued, but... he could have easily damaged his wings beyond repair. He still might have, it was hard to tell since he'd forgotten how to use them.

He reached a hand out slowly, lightly touching the injuries to determine how bad they were, trying not to cause more pain than he had to. "They're better than I was afraid they'd be," he said softly. "It will sting when I treat them, however. I apologize."

With that he pulled out a seed, the same one he'd used to treat Kaito back in April and again back in June after they'd rescued the bat, and set it to grow into the full plant. Pulling off a flower bud, he set to work, squeezing the antiseptic nectar onto the worst of the injuries.

[cioara_bata]

With memories to back up the experience and remind him it was worth it, Kuronue wouldn't have started so violently and shied away from the touch. Without them, he did just that, his wings trying to pull together and cover up the damage with a pained hiss. His neck craned back as he tried, perhaps foolishly, to try and get a look at what Kurama was up to.

"O-ow ... what're you doin'?!"

[deadly_garden]

He pulled back, having expected the reaction. It didn't help that the antiseptic was quite strong, as Kaito could attest to personally.

"I apologize. I'm only cleaning it before I bandage it. That way it doesn't get worse. I'd be easier, but... it's very strong."

[cioara_bata]

Kuronue squinted and fell still again, obedient but anxious. It went against the grain to shift his wings apart again, and they quivered with the tense reflex to pull together and cover up the sore spot the fox kept touching. Trying to get his mind off things, he chewed into his lower lip and glared at some blank spot on the ground in front of him instead. There was a stain that looked a little like a cloud. It took him a long moment to realize the stain was his own blood. Disturbing.

"... 't hurts."

[deadly_garden]

Kurama was pointedly ignoring that stain, having seen and smelled enough of Kuronue's blood to last him the rest of his hopefully immortal life. His other hand absently stroked the uninjured wing in a soothing motion, hoping that it would be a decent distraction from the pain.

"I know it does, Kuro-ai. It'll stop soon though, promise." Once he finished with that one, he lightly did the same to the other wounds before pausing long enough to pull out bandaging. "I'm going to bandage you now, all right?" With that he set to work, gently wrapping the injured wing first.

[cioara_bata]

"Why d'you keep callin me that?" he asked sullenly after the first of the gauze was taped down, tightening and coating the wilted and uncomfortable looking wing. The injury was at the very top, causing the weight of his wing to pull painfully at the sore split. The gauze and bandaging would help brace the thankfully mostly-superficial cuts and damage, and the bat was growing restless throughout the process.

He didn't like having his back and most sensitive areas exposed to someone. Just because his own remaining honor code left him leery to ever attack from behind, it hardly meant the rest of the world would cater to the same noble character trait.

Still, no painful digging in of claws ever came, no sharp bites or ripping, red hurt. Just more gauze.

[deadly_garden]

He sighed softly. "You used to call me 'Rama-ai in return," he thought dimly. Shaking his head, he said instead "Because that is what I call you." And that was true, because that is what he had called him for centuries, once he had stopped using Kuronue's full name. It always felt too formal to his tongue.

He finished with the wing and began work on the spot in between the wings. "You should keep these clean while they heal, which shouldn't take much longer than a week or two. If the bandaging gets dirty I'll have to redo it."

[cioara_bata]

Kuronue finally lost patience and squirmed free with a mutter, his left wing-tip dragging the ground as he staggered up to his feet. ".. .'m fine," he complained, swatting away hands that approached with first-aid tape and more bandaging. The stench of antiseptic made his nose wrinkle and ears flatten back in distress, distaste.

He didn't remember ever smelling anything that acrid or bad before. How it could be helpful, he didn't know, but he'd humored this long enough.

"What's it even mean?"

[deadly_garden]

If that's how he wanted to play it, fine. Let him get infected. He packed up everything and let the plant shrink back into a seed.

He placed it and the first aid kit back into his hair and looked awkwardly to the side, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"It means 'Kuro-love'."