Addendum

   World Domination Conquest Status:: Nope, still not owning anything.
   Serious Type Disclaimer: all recognizable characters, plots, concepts and assorted chocolates belong to their respective owners, among which user "aedictus/aelio" does not rank. [See above for further details].
   General warning: was asked whether I'd put this up there. Hadn't thought of it quite this much, but then again, ended up doing it. Fair warning goes, though, that things gets distinctly gory and/or bloody and/or messy [to blazes with partial syns] by the second study. The rating is worth its keep, so please take the matter into consideration.
   Present Study Author's Note: this is more of a Kurama character study than anything else, or at least the Kurama I think Hiei would see. Written to the unholy purpose of serving as a support for both Anima Mundi and my art projects. Admittedly, if you tilt your head and squint a bit, the Hiei/Kurama hints might become apparent. Go ahead, try it.
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   What we seek in nothingness, perfection… is wanton, weak and undefined. A thrill to mask agony, and then sublime, the rich taste of blood-stained velvet.
   Kurama never sleeps. That is a truth and a lie shared between us, lost among the guilt-laced glances thrown idly to the mortals’ withering perception.
   I lie still.
   I lie silent.
   I do not sleep.
   He discards the illusory veils of his created persona with every blink and every waver, with every tremble of that head, and then the faint glint of green-green eyes that never close, not really. Kurama is a wisp of a human, tall and thin and invariably pale. So much of the colour that has eroded in his other form is now harbouring a thin despair: it touches, it clings, it suffocates. Red and green and red again; he’s always bleeding.
    “Sleep for me,” I asked of him once, and then two days ago, he gave his word.
    “Black is nothingness,” he said evenly, with not a parting look to the cloth of my cape. I invite that which he avoids, that which he needs. Of the two, I’m the more honest in my betrayals, in my wantings, in the spoken-unspoken words and in rich silences. He would never celebrate a victory without securing the spoils, and he only trusts death. Since he’s met Yusuke, not even that.
   An inborn insecurity appreciates only a certainty it cannot escape, cannot contest. Kurama trusts the inevitable, and would greet it appropriately. Kurama does not pity Karasu his failure, he envies it with the modest consideration of the man who would not forget himself and chance his fortune. He lets the Gods forgive him, but does not forgive himself.
    “You’ve slept for six hours,” he informed me warily, once my war had been waged and won in that same day, and the dragon’s hunger had been rightfully satiated. In that moment, I suppose, he hated me. He would never relieve himself of power, because power is his true beacon. He will desire it with everything that he is, will be devoured and devour in turn, just for the slightest contact with the forbidden. That which he cannot possess… will dominate him. They say there is no such perfect equivalence between sadism and masochism – but he does so try. That which will rule him, will despoil him. He does not trust his own tainting, and so he would rather witness it.
   Study now. Battle now. Die now.
   No time for sleep.
   When I seek him out next, he’s taken to a new habit, more the youko’s than his own, and frowned upon by the human mother, so blissfully engaged in her perfect life that she doesn’t even acknowledge it in her spawn. He drinks only with a measure, and never to the points of negligence, but he’s grown a liking for wine. Forgetfulness soothes him, lulls his senses.
   In a perfect world, Shiori is his wrenching nightmare. In either versions of his make-believe reality, he hates her and her kin as much as he would subject himself to them. He would never bear the separation, however.
    “I don’t want to wake up,” he murmurs softly, whenever they ask, and they do. Yusuke, first, questioning his loyalties. Kuwabara, then, with an idle curiosity. I only once inquired on why he would still stay with them, and he was too caught up in the labyrinth of his contradicting moralities so to truly answer.
In his human form, Kurama has never closed his eyes. A reflex, a physical impossibility, more proof of his mastery of even the smallest pretence.
   Kurama trusts nothing and no one.
   Kurama, driven to a strategic retreat, unravelling the tale of his conflicting existences, will bare his eyes as the Reikai torturer will take his toll before Koenma consents we’re both perfectly untrustworthy and should be assigned to Yusuke.
   Kurama, even when beaten to a pulp and with the flesh tearing from bone, will settle for a forced and still conscious hibernation.
   Kurama, wine glass only barely touched by more red, will never satisfy that woman and place his head in her lap and take her implicit offer for solace and sanctuary.
   It’s with the wine glass that I’ve come to negotiate his words. Even now, it holds his truest wisdom.
   We have a promise, he and I – and with Yusuke, together, one day we’ll all three of us rule the whole of Makai, and rave and rape and plunder. I tell him so, again and again and again.
    “And then?” Always, the same question. Red hair and green eyes, and the lightest of smiles over the rim of a half-filled glass. Amused, unguarded. He haunts his home now, no longer content with his little corridors and his smaller still quarters; crushing, conquering, yearning. The youko has had a taste of its freedom, a taste it has denied itself for so many years, and in the name of a rose.
    “She cut her hand in one of these,” he admitted at one ill boding point during out time-tried liaison, and then fingered the rose with the silent finesse of one both fascinated and disgusted by his own vulgarity. “I licked the tip of her finger.”

   He hates the touch and the smell and the taste of human blood, and human flesh – though no more than he hates humanity itself – and so the rose whip is his weapon of choice. If I kissed them now, those lips would part, unwillingly summoned. Bless you, causality. But I don’t, because I still want to burn his hair. He considers my offer, takes every word in, understands the game. “What then?”
   What face will you show to your god, oh heathen?
   The face of my truth.
    “A dreamless sleep.”
   He tilts the glass. “A dreamless sleep,” he echoes, vaguely, and I take it from his hands.
   Human wine, comes the realization with the first sip, is ever so bitter to the tongue. Perhaps this is why his lies are so sweet.
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   Proud Disinherited Son of Author’s Note: The psychological undertone is, as always, where you find it. If you feel the need to flame, by all means - but try to make it original.