Accidents and Aftermath, Chapter 8: Waiting
Title: Accidents and Aftermath
Author: Dreaming of Everything dreams_of_all
Series: Yu Yu Hakusho
Characters/Pairings: Hiei/Botan
Rating/Warnings: T for over-all mood, nothing terribly bad in specifics.
Summary: When Hiei is poisoned, causing temporary insanity, he severely wounds Botan, who's now comatose, hovering on the brink of death. This fic is a series of onesided conversations between the two as Hiei deals with his emotions, and then the aftermath.
It was a Sunday. No school. Keiko was grateful for that, at least.
She had gathered in the park with a few friends, some of the students Botan had begun to know; Yusuke had arrived sometime later. They were all silent, remembering, praying or half-praying, solemn.
They had all been told that she had been in a car accident and might not pull through, of course, because 'she was killed by a demon' couldn’t be said.
And it hurt to say that, to think that. Because of the ‘killed,’ because of the word itself and because of the past tense, and maybe because it wasn’t telling the whole story: 'they had both been poisoned because she was a ferry girl who sometimes had a solid body and he was a demon with an implanted third eye and the poison drove him crazy and now the poison has been flushed from his body he sits watch over her because he blames it all on himself and that hurts him, now, because he’s changed from when he kidnapped me and tried to turn me into a demon lacking any free will of my own, all to fight Yusuke who was keeping him from taking over the human world but his years of community service fighting alongside an old teammate and the human he tried to kill have changed him and I don’t know how much, but enough that Botan’s death would kill him, now, or damage him so that he reverts to-I don’t know what, whether he would retreat inside himself or lose all the humanity that rubbed off on him or turn all that sorrow into himself or become defensive, build up even-more impenetrable walls because it hurts too much to care and he thinks it was his fault-'
And it all hinged on today.
oOo
Life moved on and held its breath simultaneously.
Koenma woodenly moved through his work, because there was nothing else for him to do, and it needed doing. He couldn’t put it off forever. There was nothing else to do, anyways, even though it felt dishonorable, insulting to Botan’s memory, to do it now, today, when there was so little time left.
He was a god, for all the good it did him, and he couldn’t change this little thing. He had given Yusuke a second chance, lobbied to get Kurama a lighter sentence, had his hand involved in Hiei’s sentence-it could have been much worse; the death penalty hadn’t been unfeasible-and seen that Botan had been assigned as Yusuke’s assistant. That may have been her death warrant. The most innocent of them all, the one who deserved her potential sentence least, and the one he had no power over.
Nothing to do but wait.
oOo
It was funny, thought the person who ran the small store Botan usually did her shopping at. I haven’t seen her for a while now. How long has it been? Ten days, a week? I wonder how she’s doing...
oOo
The other ferry girls were either frantic or frozen, manic or utterly, painfully still.
They were already dead, so there was no need to worry about one of their ranks dying. At least, there hadn’t been. They hadn’t thought, hadn’t known, that the spirit itself could be compromised that way, that it could “die” again, passing into oblivion, nothingness, instead of being processed into the spirit world, allocated to the spot their lives had destined them to go.
And so all of them were panicked but showing it in different ways.
Everyone had liked Botan, too. They were a close-knit group after the centuries they had spent, and the things they faced in their duties forced them closer together, giving them an understanding ear and a shoulder to lean on, no matter what.
Botan had been (is) one of the cheeriest of them, though, refusing to give up or falter, striding through the deaths they dealt with, the suicides, the murders, the gory accidents, the people who died with nobody there to care for them-they saw a lot, and she had strode through it all with compassion, kindness and a smile, giving what she could give. She had been ecstatic to be assigned as Yusuke’s assistant, and everyone had teased her about having a crush on him until she had blushed.
Nobody had expected her to die doing it. Nobody had known she could die at all.
They faced death every day, but somehow this was worse, and knowing how little time they had was worse still; a day, and they would know, but not until then. A day until the healing powers that kept them all safe, made them such a force to be reckoned with, would slowly kill her, draining her body until it could no longer recover from it, as the poison still slowly ate away at her.
oOo
Kuwabara believed in things that were right, and things going right, and fighting until you win, which would have to be enough and had been, in the past.
And now it wasn’t. Wasn’t enough.
They didn’t know if she’d die or not. Trying might not work this time.
oOo
As a doctor, she hoped all her patients lived. As a person, she hoped a little bit more in this case.
She had been a woman on the far end of middle-aged when she had died, leaving five grown children: two sons and three daughters. She had raised them right, balancing between indulgence and excess severity, supporting them and caring for them and finally letting them go. She had seen it as a good sign that her children had been able to let her go and move on, once she had died.
In the Spirit World she had become one of the official doctors, a position she didn’t see much need for, but she liked the work regardless. They took care of the not-dead people of Reikai, and she liked the nurses working underneath her. She was the person people came to when they needed to talk, or sit and be quiet, or cry, or laugh for no reason. She mothered them all, now, because everyone needs a mother every now and then, and the ferry girls especially did things no one should have to do.
Everyone needed a mother now and then, for example. That demon that wouldn’t leave Botan’s room, for example, looking more and more lost and young every time she entered and desperate, frantic, to start with.
She didn’t think he’d appreciate it, though, no matter how much he needed it, when he was having such trouble just dealing with coming to terms with the fact that he liked the girl he had nearly killed. The fact that he had nearly killed her at all. She heard the gossip, knew at least a bit about his past, but she knew all about moving beyond bad pasts. She was in the medical profession, after all.
Every time she entered the room she had to resist the urge to wrap him in his arms and whisper, fiercely, that it was going to be okay, even if that might end up being a lie. It needed doing anyway, and she wondered what sort of mother he had had. Clearly, not a very good one. Or father, for that matter.
She hoped, for everyone’s sake, that Botan would wake up and things would go smoothly afterwards, for the sake of them all, but especially the demon who watched over her, reminding her slightly and inexplicably and her moodiest son during his teenage years, when his propensity to angst was nearly overwhelming.
oOo
The person who lived above them-Botan, Boton, something like that?-had been quiet recently. He missed it, slightly-it had been nice, hearing her prance around and trip over furniture and drop pots and laugh too loudly. He was old now, and his wife around the same age; they had never had children, and he regretted that now, a little, and she had made it a little bit more bearable. It was a reminder that the world could be younger than they were, brighter, and as full of promise as it had been when he had been that age.
He hoped she hadn’t moved. Maybe she was just on vacation-that was reasonable. He hoped that everything was okay.
oOo
A day. He had lived centuries. He would survive this.
Hiei tried to ask himself if it really matter in the end, but he knew the answer.
Yes. It would matter.
oOo
Everything was quiet.
She had always been aware of the pain, but she only focused on it now, instead of letting it fade into the background, more pointless distractions, like the buzz of words around her. If she concentrated, she would end up docked, no longer allowed to drift in oblivion; it was so nice, to be wrapped in the embrace of abyssal nothingness like this.
The interference was growing, though, the syrupy darkness that surrounded her, filled her, thinning and slowly fading away. The white noise that had filled her ears was turning into recognizable sound: the murmur of her lungs and heart, the shift of the bed beneath her as it slowly settled, the sounds of footsteps in the hallway beyond her, a half-heard conversation as they walked by.
She could feel the pain, now she had lost the cottony-feeling distraction that had clouded her. It was nagging, unignorable.
And her lungs, she could feel them beating again, although she knew they must have always been; now she could sense the rise and fall, the push and press of oxygen and muscle.
There was somebody next to her. She was no longer alone, complete in herself and within herself. She wondered who it was-
Eyes fluttered open, purple-pink-blue eyes stained with pain and distraction and exhaustion, slowly focusing as they fixed onto red ones staring intently into her face, documenting each slight movement she made, more in the past half hour than the rest of her convalescence put together. His eyes were dark with worry and fear and an impossible hope. Hiei didn’t know what to do, but didn’t think he could force himself to leave, so it was immaterial either way.
She would not die. She had woken up.
Botan blinked at him, a curious urgency prodding at her mind, eyes blanking slightly as events slid through her mind, what had happened just before, why she was here-
A sudden awareness snapped into place, horror filling eyes gone glassy, and she tried to fling herself back, shift herself away with hands that shook with just the effort it took to raise them, scream forming in her throat and nearly dying in her panic, unselfconscious horror filling every line of her body with dread, fear.
Hiei fled.
oOo
What he deserved. It was only what he deserved.
oOo
Author: Dreaming of Everything dreams_of_all
Series: Yu Yu Hakusho
Characters/Pairings: Hiei/Botan
Rating/Warnings: T for over-all mood, nothing terribly bad in specifics.
Summary: When Hiei is poisoned, causing temporary insanity, he severely wounds Botan, who's now comatose, hovering on the brink of death. This fic is a series of onesided conversations between the two as Hiei deals with his emotions, and then the aftermath.
It was a Sunday. No school. Keiko was grateful for that, at least.
She had gathered in the park with a few friends, some of the students Botan had begun to know; Yusuke had arrived sometime later. They were all silent, remembering, praying or half-praying, solemn.
They had all been told that she had been in a car accident and might not pull through, of course, because 'she was killed by a demon' couldn’t be said.
And it hurt to say that, to think that. Because of the ‘killed,’ because of the word itself and because of the past tense, and maybe because it wasn’t telling the whole story: 'they had both been poisoned because she was a ferry girl who sometimes had a solid body and he was a demon with an implanted third eye and the poison drove him crazy and now the poison has been flushed from his body he sits watch over her because he blames it all on himself and that hurts him, now, because he’s changed from when he kidnapped me and tried to turn me into a demon lacking any free will of my own, all to fight Yusuke who was keeping him from taking over the human world but his years of community service fighting alongside an old teammate and the human he tried to kill have changed him and I don’t know how much, but enough that Botan’s death would kill him, now, or damage him so that he reverts to-I don’t know what, whether he would retreat inside himself or lose all the humanity that rubbed off on him or turn all that sorrow into himself or become defensive, build up even-more impenetrable walls because it hurts too much to care and he thinks it was his fault-'
And it all hinged on today.
oOo
Life moved on and held its breath simultaneously.
Koenma woodenly moved through his work, because there was nothing else for him to do, and it needed doing. He couldn’t put it off forever. There was nothing else to do, anyways, even though it felt dishonorable, insulting to Botan’s memory, to do it now, today, when there was so little time left.
He was a god, for all the good it did him, and he couldn’t change this little thing. He had given Yusuke a second chance, lobbied to get Kurama a lighter sentence, had his hand involved in Hiei’s sentence-it could have been much worse; the death penalty hadn’t been unfeasible-and seen that Botan had been assigned as Yusuke’s assistant. That may have been her death warrant. The most innocent of them all, the one who deserved her potential sentence least, and the one he had no power over.
Nothing to do but wait.
oOo
It was funny, thought the person who ran the small store Botan usually did her shopping at. I haven’t seen her for a while now. How long has it been? Ten days, a week? I wonder how she’s doing...
oOo
The other ferry girls were either frantic or frozen, manic or utterly, painfully still.
They were already dead, so there was no need to worry about one of their ranks dying. At least, there hadn’t been. They hadn’t thought, hadn’t known, that the spirit itself could be compromised that way, that it could “die” again, passing into oblivion, nothingness, instead of being processed into the spirit world, allocated to the spot their lives had destined them to go.
And so all of them were panicked but showing it in different ways.
Everyone had liked Botan, too. They were a close-knit group after the centuries they had spent, and the things they faced in their duties forced them closer together, giving them an understanding ear and a shoulder to lean on, no matter what.
Botan had been (is) one of the cheeriest of them, though, refusing to give up or falter, striding through the deaths they dealt with, the suicides, the murders, the gory accidents, the people who died with nobody there to care for them-they saw a lot, and she had strode through it all with compassion, kindness and a smile, giving what she could give. She had been ecstatic to be assigned as Yusuke’s assistant, and everyone had teased her about having a crush on him until she had blushed.
Nobody had expected her to die doing it. Nobody had known she could die at all.
They faced death every day, but somehow this was worse, and knowing how little time they had was worse still; a day, and they would know, but not until then. A day until the healing powers that kept them all safe, made them such a force to be reckoned with, would slowly kill her, draining her body until it could no longer recover from it, as the poison still slowly ate away at her.
oOo
Kuwabara believed in things that were right, and things going right, and fighting until you win, which would have to be enough and had been, in the past.
And now it wasn’t. Wasn’t enough.
They didn’t know if she’d die or not. Trying might not work this time.
oOo
As a doctor, she hoped all her patients lived. As a person, she hoped a little bit more in this case.
She had been a woman on the far end of middle-aged when she had died, leaving five grown children: two sons and three daughters. She had raised them right, balancing between indulgence and excess severity, supporting them and caring for them and finally letting them go. She had seen it as a good sign that her children had been able to let her go and move on, once she had died.
In the Spirit World she had become one of the official doctors, a position she didn’t see much need for, but she liked the work regardless. They took care of the not-dead people of Reikai, and she liked the nurses working underneath her. She was the person people came to when they needed to talk, or sit and be quiet, or cry, or laugh for no reason. She mothered them all, now, because everyone needs a mother every now and then, and the ferry girls especially did things no one should have to do.
Everyone needed a mother now and then, for example. That demon that wouldn’t leave Botan’s room, for example, looking more and more lost and young every time she entered and desperate, frantic, to start with.
She didn’t think he’d appreciate it, though, no matter how much he needed it, when he was having such trouble just dealing with coming to terms with the fact that he liked the girl he had nearly killed. The fact that he had nearly killed her at all. She heard the gossip, knew at least a bit about his past, but she knew all about moving beyond bad pasts. She was in the medical profession, after all.
Every time she entered the room she had to resist the urge to wrap him in his arms and whisper, fiercely, that it was going to be okay, even if that might end up being a lie. It needed doing anyway, and she wondered what sort of mother he had had. Clearly, not a very good one. Or father, for that matter.
She hoped, for everyone’s sake, that Botan would wake up and things would go smoothly afterwards, for the sake of them all, but especially the demon who watched over her, reminding her slightly and inexplicably and her moodiest son during his teenage years, when his propensity to angst was nearly overwhelming.
oOo
The person who lived above them-Botan, Boton, something like that?-had been quiet recently. He missed it, slightly-it had been nice, hearing her prance around and trip over furniture and drop pots and laugh too loudly. He was old now, and his wife around the same age; they had never had children, and he regretted that now, a little, and she had made it a little bit more bearable. It was a reminder that the world could be younger than they were, brighter, and as full of promise as it had been when he had been that age.
He hoped she hadn’t moved. Maybe she was just on vacation-that was reasonable. He hoped that everything was okay.
oOo
A day. He had lived centuries. He would survive this.
Hiei tried to ask himself if it really matter in the end, but he knew the answer.
Yes. It would matter.
oOo
Everything was quiet.
She had always been aware of the pain, but she only focused on it now, instead of letting it fade into the background, more pointless distractions, like the buzz of words around her. If she concentrated, she would end up docked, no longer allowed to drift in oblivion; it was so nice, to be wrapped in the embrace of abyssal nothingness like this.
The interference was growing, though, the syrupy darkness that surrounded her, filled her, thinning and slowly fading away. The white noise that had filled her ears was turning into recognizable sound: the murmur of her lungs and heart, the shift of the bed beneath her as it slowly settled, the sounds of footsteps in the hallway beyond her, a half-heard conversation as they walked by.
She could feel the pain, now she had lost the cottony-feeling distraction that had clouded her. It was nagging, unignorable.
And her lungs, she could feel them beating again, although she knew they must have always been; now she could sense the rise and fall, the push and press of oxygen and muscle.
There was somebody next to her. She was no longer alone, complete in herself and within herself. She wondered who it was-
Eyes fluttered open, purple-pink-blue eyes stained with pain and distraction and exhaustion, slowly focusing as they fixed onto red ones staring intently into her face, documenting each slight movement she made, more in the past half hour than the rest of her convalescence put together. His eyes were dark with worry and fear and an impossible hope. Hiei didn’t know what to do, but didn’t think he could force himself to leave, so it was immaterial either way.
She would not die. She had woken up.
Botan blinked at him, a curious urgency prodding at her mind, eyes blanking slightly as events slid through her mind, what had happened just before, why she was here-
A sudden awareness snapped into place, horror filling eyes gone glassy, and she tried to fling herself back, shift herself away with hands that shook with just the effort it took to raise them, scream forming in her throat and nearly dying in her panic, unselfconscious horror filling every line of her body with dread, fear.
Hiei fled.
oOo
What he deserved. It was only what he deserved.
oOo