The Consequences of Power

Be sure and check out the Aurthor's Note on the bottom!
Last night I posted the FINAL CHAPTER of this story. This morning I woke up and said… Jesus fucking Christ, that ending sucks. So… as you all know… given the opportunity to POSSIBLY stack more DRAMA into my story, the story just grew. This is no longer the last chapter. You guys hate me now, huh? Yeah, I’m impinging upon your patience for another chapter. Hehehe.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


“Where do we go from here?”

Hiei looked at Kurama silently as he dressed, admiring the redhead’s body. He had slept in his clothes himself, passing out from the exhaustion the ki drain had caused. Kurama had looked troubled from the moment he woke, causing Hiei to withdrawal silently into himself, uncertain of what to say until Kurama finally decided to speak.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Hiei asked quietly, swinging his feet off of the bed and standing. Kurama pulled his shirt on before facing him, frowning in thought.

“I’m just… I’m just not sure I’m attracted to guys,” he said finally, picking his words slowly. Hiei felt something in his chest go cold and found he could no longer look Kurama in the eye. Kurama moved to put a hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off.

“Then what about love?” he asked in a monotone, looking at the wall. Kurama walked towards the door, shaking his head.

“I never said I loved you. You said you loved me. Thank you for saving my life. It really was a cunning way for you to shift back early,” Kurama said coldly as he left the room. Hiei stared at the door as it shut, a strange sort of numbness settling deep within him.

Kurama was right. He’d told the redhead he loved him… loudly, repeatedly, in front of everyone. Kurama had never returned the sentiment, really. Did Kurama have any reason to return the sentiment? What was their relationship, when one looked at it, really? Kurama had been forced to take care of a weakling because Koenma had most likely ordered him to. He’d chased off Kurama’s girlfriend, he’d interrupted Kurama’s daily journey to his classes, he’d kept him from getting a job, and he’d killed Kurama’s first offspr--…

Hiei blinked several times at the tears that sprang to his eyes at the thought of the child he’d killed without a second thought. It had been Kurama’s child. It had… he’d never considered before that moment the concept of producing children. Certainly not himself, of course; but he’d never considered the idea of a female producing his offspring either. The moment he’d found out had been one that left him no time to consider the possibilities. All he’d known was that Kurama was in danger, grave danger, and he had to help. Now that he thought of it… it would have been nice. If it had looked like Kurama or Shuiichi it would have been a beautiful child. If it had had any of their powers it would have been incredibly powerful. Kurama didn’t know about it. He certainly hadn’t told him. Everyone else would assume Hiei would tell him. It’d be better, he decided, to just forget about it. If he told Kurama he’d probably assume he was using it as a means to get Kurama’s affection. It could work…

Hiei growled irritably. Would these girlish thoughts stay in his head forever? He had to forget about that. He had to focus on being himself again. He was no weakling any longer. He was Hiei! He controlled the Dragon! He flexed his arm while staring at the wall in thought. Hiei would never be sao beo be so desperate as to stoop to tricking someone into giving him affection. They’d fucked—so what? Kurama was known to fuck every piece of female flesh he got his hands on. There would be no lingering attachment. He’d just forget… he’d just help Kurama forget. What was the point now? What was the fucking point?

He sat back on the bed and pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs. Had he had that baby, Kurama would have walked away still. Kurama didn’t care. What was the point if Kurama didn’t care? He lay his head on his knees and sobbed, wondering if it was just the girlish thoughts again. His heart hurt. Tear gems hit the bed, rolling off to hit the wooden floor noisily.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Kurama stood, stretching as he rubbed his sore back. He folded the last of Hiei’s clothes and set them in a box at his feet. He sealed it and placed it with the rest of Hiei’s small assortment of belongings that he’d collected in his month at the apartment. He looked around the small room before flopping onto his bed to stare at the ceiling. This room was small. It was dirty. His stuff barely fit into it. He couldn’t complain, of course. He wasn’t paying for it, not yet. Evil had told him he didn’t have to rush to find a job; it would just be appreciated if he didn’t take more than a few months. Evil was a good guy. Most of the time. He was currently sick of Evil. Day and night, night and day, he and Botan were shacked up in his room, screaming and moaning like there was no tomorrow. Botan had to be way behind on her soul collection duty. Luckily there were several other grim reapers to help with the load.

He’d flunked his classes. He hadn’t even given it a moment’s thought while Hiei was living with him. He’d just been so busy taking care of her….him? He’d not known a thing about living among humans. He’d always been in some kind of trouble that required attention. He couldn’t have left him…her…him? He sighed with exasperation and rolled over to face the wall. He didn’t have a clue as to what to do about his thoughts. He couldn’t sort it out. Hiei was a guy. Hiei had always been a guy. But Hiei had recently been so female. Like suddenly all of his cravings were justified. Everything had been so great up until that one night. But even then… Hiei had admitted to an attachment. Hiei had saved his life with his attachment. And then he had…

Why?

Why?!

Why had he acted like that? He’d woken and decided that, rather than decide what his feelings for Hiei were as a man, he’d walk away. He’d decided he’d just forget about it. But it was plaguing him. He got up and walked out of his room, into the living room, and found Evil there, going through his Playboy issues. He looked up at Kurama.

“So?” he asked. Kurama blinked and looked at him.

“So?” he replied in the same tone. Evil raised an eyebrow.

”Where’s Hiei? I have this wicked new flavor mix of Puckers he has to try!” Evil stood up and opened the issue he was holding to the part where the centerfold talked about things she liked, and next to a picture of her tits was a picture of the twisted shot glass Evil was so proud of.

“I don’t expect Hiei will be coming back,” Kurama said, trying to keep his voice as light and offhanded as possible. Evil shook his head.

“Are you still mad at him? Dude, think about it, you could adopt,” he said, as if that made all of the sense in worlworld.

“Well yeah, I could adopt, sure, that’s the answer to one of my questions, but why adopt when I could be producing normal offspring with a girl?” Kurama snapped as Evil hit on one of the questions that had been bothering him about his sexuality. The widening of Evil’s eyes was unexpected. It was like they were talking about something totally different. Evil cleared his throat and waved his magazine about.

“I was just looking for this issue… Botan’s in the back, you know. Your mother called, her number’s on the caller ID. I didn’t answer,” he disappeared into the back.

Kurama frowned as he went to get the phone. Why did he get the feeling he and Evil had just miss communicated on a major level? He dialed his mother’s number and waited.

“Hello?”

“Hey, mom, it’s Shuiichi,” he looked around on the table for a bottle of liquor that wasn’t nasty. Evil had some odd tastes.

“Shuiichi, my son! So you’ve moved?”

“Yes, mom, how did you find this number?” He grabbed a bottle of crown that hadn’t been touched yet with a triumphant grin and started to open it.

“Never question a mother’s intuition! So you and Hiei decided to move someplace new? Bigger, I hope?”

“No, mom, smaller. Hiei’s gone,” he shook his head as he got the top off. She wasn’t going to let him off the hook for that.

“But what about the baby?”

Kurama raised an eyebrow, looking at the phone as though it would produce an answer without him having to ask.

“Baby?”

“Oh that poor wonderful little girl! You dumped her and she decided to spare you the grief by not telling you! Oh that would be just like her. What a horrible, rotten, evil little son I have!”

Kurama couldn’t seem to stop blinking as his brain tried to register what was going on. Pregnant? Hiei? There was no way. Was his mother crying? There was no way she was serious. Was his mother calling him names? His mother never called him names!

“Mom! Wait! Mom! What are you talking about?” He grabbed a crown glass, his hands starting to tremble.

“—blind, ungrateful, oversexed, flunked out of school, idiotic, sh—“

“MOM!” he bellowed into the phone, halting her tirade finally.

“You’re going to fix this, young man, and you are going to fix this right now. There is no way any son of MINE will ever be accused of not taking care of his responsibilities! You hear me, Shuiichi? RIGHT NOW!”—and she hung up the phone. He started to try and pour some crown into the glass, but his hands were shaking too much and he finally threw it against the kitchen wall, slightly upset that it bounced rather than shattered. Evil had poked his head out of his room at all the noise, and his eyes had gone quite wide. Kurama’s whole body was trembling as he tried to silently deal with his thoughts. He took a swig out of the bottle and leaned against the wall.

“You knew,” he said to Evil without looking at him, staring at the wall. And he’d treated Hiei like an ass. He’d walked out and told Hiei he’d saved his life because he was being selfish and really he’d sacrificed…

“You knew! You all knew! No one was going to tell me? Do you know what I said? Do you know what I did?! I didn’t know… I didn’t know…” his body was wracked by a powerful sob as he slid down the wall, landing on his ass, tears running down his face. He started to chug from the bottle as fast as he could around the burn until Evil came running over and snatched it from him, setting it aside. Botan was suddenly kneeling next to him, her hand on his back comfortingly.

Hiei had just sacrificed so much for him and he’d treated him like an ass. He’d treated him like he was nothing more than a fuck. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. He’d felt the attachment… he really had. He’d gone seeking his own death because he didn’t know how to deal with the rejection. He’d let himself give in and give up because he’d thought Hiei didn’t love him, and when Hiei returned the sentiment he’d walked away because he was confused. He’d hurt Hiei after all Hiei had… he hadn’t known…

“What have I done? What did I do? I didn’t know… nobody told me… Hiei..."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Note: I know, it didn't take the course everyone thought. ^_^ The course it was trying to take at the end of the last chapter resulted in this majorly too happy ending where everything just aligned perfectly. I decided to change the route. It's hard for someone to just switch their sexual preferences when they'd never really given it too much thought before. heh. And Kurama didn't let himself see what he felt, or what was really going on between them, until later.

Anywho, my reason for adding the aurthor's note is that I have a question:
Should the ending be happy or sad? Poll time!