Categories > Anime/Manga > Yu Yu Hakusho
(Coffee's for Closers)
0 reviewsAfter an event that shakes his entire world, Kurama reflects. Songfic to the Fall Out Boy song of the same title.
0Unrated
(Coffee's for Closers)
He knew that he had to leave. It wasn't just that the human police would be looking for him; it wasn't just that he no longer had a place to live. It was that everything he knew in this world had been touched by her; every place he could have gone she had visited, every person that he could have spoken to she had known, every thought he could have brought to light she would inhabit.
He was always surrounded by her memory there, and he felt it slowly begin to turn him against him; to make him nearly insane with the weight of it.
There were no words for him to vocalize what he felt. Not that anyone asked him; they all understood that he could not talk about it, and they got all their information from other sources. They were all respectful. But they didn't know what he felt—and how could they? They, who had never felt this pain?
He could not tell them what it was like. He could not tell them what he wanted, because he didn't know. He was tempted to continue attending school, to keep up appearances, to pretend that nothing had happened. That it didn't matter.
But that wasn't an option—that was the equivalent of pretending that she didn't matter, and there was no way he could do that, even if he had wanted to. He also wanted to run away from it all; from her memory, from the place where she was buried, and from his friends. They were only constant reminders of everything he'd lost, because they had it all, and he now had nothing.
It was lonesome being stuck in this pit of grief and guilt. No one could commiserate; no one could understand him, and he spoke to everyone less and less because of it. She had always understood him...no, she hadn't. He was fooling himself. She had only begun to understand his emotions when he had let her in.
In the earlier years, when he had found her nothing but a means, nothing but a way to get what he desired, she hadn't known him or understood him at all. It pained him greatly to think of all those years that he had wasted thinking of her as a means and not as an end.
I can't explain a thing
And I want everything
To change and stay the same;
Time doesn't care about anyone or anything.
Come together, come apart
Only get lonely when you read the charts.
For a few days after it happened, he continued his normal routine. He went to school, he did his homework, and he cooked for himself. But everyone, even people he hadn't known, had seen the difference in his face.
The girls at school who had paid him so much attention kept their distance; not because they knew what had happened (they found out eventually, of course) but because of the simple look in his eyes.
Previously he had been charming, warm, kind. Not now. Now, he was a stranger in his old body; a heartless man who had always masqueraded as a caring one.
They saw that something had broken, either in his mind or in his heart, and they let him be. Perhaps it was for the best; he wanted nothing more than to be alone most of the time, except, of course, when he was alone—then he wished for someone (usually her) to comfort him.
Everyone knew, though, not long after, because the word broke out. He wasn't a suspect; he had been at school during the attack—it was a solid alibi. The police knew that it would have been difficult to murder her while he was learning in his calculus class. But the media didn't care about that; all it cared about was the money shot, the picture of grief for the tabloids. Cameramen followed him, reporters tried to interview him, and he shunned them all.
And oh, baby
When they made me
They broke the mold.
Girls used to follow me around
Then I got cold.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them like you just don't care.
There was nothing left for him to go to. There was nothing left to turn to, to run to, or to cry to. What he had ever had, but her? His brilliance? His serenity? His past? Worthless, all of them, when compared with her love.
Most of his memories of her were good, but his most recent ones made those bittersweet. He wouldn't have minded if she had simply gone away, or if he had done so, or if something else had happened...anything other than what really did.
He hated that her memory was tainted; he hated that he couldn't think of her face without seeing it twisted in agony and covered in blood. He hated that she had left him, but he hated that she had left him with such poisonous thoughts more.
He wasn't sure that returning to the Makai would make things any better for himself; he wasn't sure that anything could ever make him better. But he had to try, because this way, things would destroy him. His lack of attentiveness, his stupor, and his misery would all collapse on top of him and crush him.
However...was that really such a bad thing? Perhaps he didn't care to live anymore, not with this gaping hole in his chest. What was there left to live for? He was able to answer that for himself—his friends. At that moment, though, he didn't give a damn about them.
They had each other, and they hardly needed his help now. Things had been at peace. Everyone would flourish, with or without him...
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
That was a lie, however; a lie that he told himself when he felt as though he could live with this guilt and horror not for one more minute. There was one who would utterly fail without him, though the demon had hardly said a few words to him in the past month, probably for good reasons.
No, Hiei wouldn't do well at all without him, and when he remembered that, for some time, he was himself again. He was sane, calculating, caring, and alive. He remembered that Hiei would need him, and that was the end of his suicidal thoughts for a second, a minute, or a day. They would come back not long after, and he'd have to wade through them yet again.
His logic was part of his downfall. Now, even if he lived for Hiei's sake, could he really fool himself into believing that he deserved to live any longer? That it had not been his fault?
Because he knew that it had been. If not for him, she would have lived on happily. Childless, perhaps, but living just the same.
...Only that was a lie, too. Because if it hadn't been for him and Yusuke, she wouldn't have been cured by the Forlorn Hope. Without him stealing it for her and betraying Hiei and sacrificing his life for her, though Yusuke's sacrifice overrode his, she would have died years ago. And yet that made it somehow worse that she had died at all. Especially when he thought of the way she had died...
We will never believe again
Kick drum beating in my chest again, no.
We will never believe again
Preach electric to a microphone stand, no.
He notices the scent of blood immediately. He's not even halfway home, and he can smell hers, and there's a lot. His thoughts become frantic. His body shakes. He takes off running, leaving his school bag on the sidewalk. He dashes home, but it's too late. It's been too late for hours.
He processes the information quickly and unconsciously. He was at school. She was home alone. Now he smells her blood—a lot of it—at their house. What does it mean? That she might be dead is one of his first thoughts, but he pushes it away, his emotions clouding his brilliance. She can't. She just can't.
The front door is bashed in and destroyed. Demons, for sure. Yet he barely notices as he runs into the house. Bookshelves thrown to the ground. Lamps smashed. The table overturned. A struggle, he notes without noticing. A major struggle. Perhaps she was saved by a friend, then, as she couldn't have fought quite that well.
Blood on the floor next to the kitchen's entrance. Maroon, drying, smelling of her. The scent is so strong that it overpowers him. For a moment, he feels woozy and can't continue. But then he does, because he can sense her in the next room, though he can't hear her heart. He ignores it. He ignores the signs, ignores that he should be able to hear her breathing if she is, indeed, breathing.
The blood runs in a trail into the kitchen. Drops of it spattered on the walls. Something chased her through here. The demon smells like sweat and rotten potatoes. He gags before going into the kitchen.
What he sees there ruins him.
I'm the mascot for what you've become
And I love the mayhem more than the love.
"No more..."
He spoke in his sleep with much more frequency after her death, but there was no one around to hear it. Hiei had heard of the news, but had not come to see him, for reasons that Hiei himself couldn't fathom.
Now he dreamed the memory of that day, which he did often, and tried to stir himself away—tried to escape it. But he never really could; when he was awake, it was always on the tip of his tongue, in the front in his mind, and there was nothing he could occupy himself with that would ever make it fade. He relieved it in his waking hours, and again in his sleeping ones.
Over, and over, like a scene from a terrible, tragic movie—too real to be a good one—that was on replay in his mind. Play, rewind, play, pause, rewind, play. Over and over again he saw it, and his thoughts turned to repetition until they were not thoughts, but chants; mental chants that nothing could help him break.
And oh, baby
When they made me
They broke the mold.
Girls used to follow me around
Then I got cold.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them like you just don't care.
Shiori's body (but he doesn't think of it as her body—to him she is still "mother," for the rest of his life) lays sprawled on the kitchen floor. Blood appears to him to be everywhere; on the walls, the floors, the counters, and of course all over her. And it's all hers. She was a balloon full of the stuff, like a ripe fruit, like a soaked sponge...
His mind makes the metaphors unconsciously, as he almost falls to his knees. Almost. What keeps him standing is the blood, which he's stepping in; if he kneels, it will get on his school pants and Shiori will have to have them dry-cleaned, and that costs a lot of money. He doesn't want to cause her pain in any form, even financially.
He isn't thinking straight, and he knows it, but for the time being, he allows himself to give up thinking rationally. His heart is seizing up; his chest hitches and his eyes burn. It's horrific, and he's seen worse before, but never like this. No, not like this.
Please not like this.
He has done worse to others, but not his mother. Please, not her. He would have fallen for her. He would have gone in her place every time.
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
She died like a dog. He later found the truth as easily as one finds the place for the last puzzle piece. A demon broke in. Destroyed the living room. Wounded her. Chased her into the kitchen.
He knew that the scent of blood and fleeing prey always aroused demons. But to think that she, of all people, could die in such a way...it didn't make any sense. It was lunacy. Insanity. Irrationality.
The demon chased her into the kitchen where it trapped her. Where it tore at her clothes with its claws until they fell away like shreds. Where it threw her on the ground and raped her. Where it killed her soon after.
Kurama heard all the details, but he listened to none of it. This was his fault. How could he have led her to such danger? How could he have sat in class, barely paying attention to his professor, while she had been assaulted and killed on the floor?
How could he have been so blind to the dangers? How could he have thought that no one would ever figure out who he really was, especially after the Dark Tournament? How could he have let this happen? How could he have let her die like a dog?
We will never believe again
Kick drum beating in my chest again, no.
We will never believe again
Preach electric to a microphone stand, no.
He sees the clothes in shreds mingled with her blood. He sees her body, naked, pale, contrasting with the dark blood all over and around it. He sees her legs spread, her breast with the claw marks deep as canyons, the rivers of blood now dried up inside them. He sees her face, twisted in horror, and he curses himself.
He curses the day he ever came to her, the day he ever burdened her with his presence. He curses the pain he has caused her. He curses his weaknesses; his arrogance. He curses himself.
It shouldn't have been this way. He should have been killed by the hunter all those years ago. He should have been brought down in the dust of the Makai, far and away from this woman and her complete, unfiltered love.
It should be his blood on the ground, his body found desolate and destroyed, and maybe even naked and abused as well. He deserves it. He clenches his fists hard enough to draw blood, and it falls and mingles with hers.
He screams while being completely unaware of it. The sound is so heartbroken, so miserable and cracked that the only thing living to hear it—a bird just outside the nearby window—flies away, hoping never to hear something so chilling again.
He goes to her, cradling her body in his arms.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them, 'cause I just don't care.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them, 'cause I just don't care.
He never asked Koenma to revive her. In fact, he never spoke to Koenma again. He said words of goodbye to Yusuke, Kuwabara, and his various other friends (there were not many more.) He told Hiei where he would be, and that he should not hesitate to visit. In fact, he asked Hiei to come with him, but the younger demon, who had never seen his partner so defeated, told him that he would see him later.
Kurama left the human world forever after that. Hiei did indeed see him later, but only a few times. Some years after Kuwabara had married Yukina and Yusuke and Keiko had many little half-demons graduating from middle school, Kurama fell out of contact with everyone. They talked about where he might have gone, what he might have been doing, but they didn't go after him.
Hiei was the only one who regularly searched the Makai for his signature scent or energy. It wasn't because Hiei was the only one who cared about him; it was because he was the only one who knew some inkling of what Kurama might have felt after finding his mother dead and gone on the kitchen floor. The others couldn't begin to understand, not even after they lost loved ones of their own.
They missed him through the years, and they couldn't understand his pain, but they had known that they would not see him again.
They had known, because on the day that he had said goodbye, they had seen in his eyes how broken he was. They had known.
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
He knew that he had to leave. It wasn't just that the human police would be looking for him; it wasn't just that he no longer had a place to live. It was that everything he knew in this world had been touched by her; every place he could have gone she had visited, every person that he could have spoken to she had known, every thought he could have brought to light she would inhabit.
He was always surrounded by her memory there, and he felt it slowly begin to turn him against him; to make him nearly insane with the weight of it.
There were no words for him to vocalize what he felt. Not that anyone asked him; they all understood that he could not talk about it, and they got all their information from other sources. They were all respectful. But they didn't know what he felt—and how could they? They, who had never felt this pain?
He could not tell them what it was like. He could not tell them what he wanted, because he didn't know. He was tempted to continue attending school, to keep up appearances, to pretend that nothing had happened. That it didn't matter.
But that wasn't an option—that was the equivalent of pretending that she didn't matter, and there was no way he could do that, even if he had wanted to. He also wanted to run away from it all; from her memory, from the place where she was buried, and from his friends. They were only constant reminders of everything he'd lost, because they had it all, and he now had nothing.
It was lonesome being stuck in this pit of grief and guilt. No one could commiserate; no one could understand him, and he spoke to everyone less and less because of it. She had always understood him...no, she hadn't. He was fooling himself. She had only begun to understand his emotions when he had let her in.
In the earlier years, when he had found her nothing but a means, nothing but a way to get what he desired, she hadn't known him or understood him at all. It pained him greatly to think of all those years that he had wasted thinking of her as a means and not as an end.
I can't explain a thing
And I want everything
To change and stay the same;
Time doesn't care about anyone or anything.
Come together, come apart
Only get lonely when you read the charts.
For a few days after it happened, he continued his normal routine. He went to school, he did his homework, and he cooked for himself. But everyone, even people he hadn't known, had seen the difference in his face.
The girls at school who had paid him so much attention kept their distance; not because they knew what had happened (they found out eventually, of course) but because of the simple look in his eyes.
Previously he had been charming, warm, kind. Not now. Now, he was a stranger in his old body; a heartless man who had always masqueraded as a caring one.
They saw that something had broken, either in his mind or in his heart, and they let him be. Perhaps it was for the best; he wanted nothing more than to be alone most of the time, except, of course, when he was alone—then he wished for someone (usually her) to comfort him.
Everyone knew, though, not long after, because the word broke out. He wasn't a suspect; he had been at school during the attack—it was a solid alibi. The police knew that it would have been difficult to murder her while he was learning in his calculus class. But the media didn't care about that; all it cared about was the money shot, the picture of grief for the tabloids. Cameramen followed him, reporters tried to interview him, and he shunned them all.
And oh, baby
When they made me
They broke the mold.
Girls used to follow me around
Then I got cold.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them like you just don't care.
There was nothing left for him to go to. There was nothing left to turn to, to run to, or to cry to. What he had ever had, but her? His brilliance? His serenity? His past? Worthless, all of them, when compared with her love.
Most of his memories of her were good, but his most recent ones made those bittersweet. He wouldn't have minded if she had simply gone away, or if he had done so, or if something else had happened...anything other than what really did.
He hated that her memory was tainted; he hated that he couldn't think of her face without seeing it twisted in agony and covered in blood. He hated that she had left him, but he hated that she had left him with such poisonous thoughts more.
He wasn't sure that returning to the Makai would make things any better for himself; he wasn't sure that anything could ever make him better. But he had to try, because this way, things would destroy him. His lack of attentiveness, his stupor, and his misery would all collapse on top of him and crush him.
However...was that really such a bad thing? Perhaps he didn't care to live anymore, not with this gaping hole in his chest. What was there left to live for? He was able to answer that for himself—his friends. At that moment, though, he didn't give a damn about them.
They had each other, and they hardly needed his help now. Things had been at peace. Everyone would flourish, with or without him...
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
That was a lie, however; a lie that he told himself when he felt as though he could live with this guilt and horror not for one more minute. There was one who would utterly fail without him, though the demon had hardly said a few words to him in the past month, probably for good reasons.
No, Hiei wouldn't do well at all without him, and when he remembered that, for some time, he was himself again. He was sane, calculating, caring, and alive. He remembered that Hiei would need him, and that was the end of his suicidal thoughts for a second, a minute, or a day. They would come back not long after, and he'd have to wade through them yet again.
His logic was part of his downfall. Now, even if he lived for Hiei's sake, could he really fool himself into believing that he deserved to live any longer? That it had not been his fault?
Because he knew that it had been. If not for him, she would have lived on happily. Childless, perhaps, but living just the same.
...Only that was a lie, too. Because if it hadn't been for him and Yusuke, she wouldn't have been cured by the Forlorn Hope. Without him stealing it for her and betraying Hiei and sacrificing his life for her, though Yusuke's sacrifice overrode his, she would have died years ago. And yet that made it somehow worse that she had died at all. Especially when he thought of the way she had died...
We will never believe again
Kick drum beating in my chest again, no.
We will never believe again
Preach electric to a microphone stand, no.
He notices the scent of blood immediately. He's not even halfway home, and he can smell hers, and there's a lot. His thoughts become frantic. His body shakes. He takes off running, leaving his school bag on the sidewalk. He dashes home, but it's too late. It's been too late for hours.
He processes the information quickly and unconsciously. He was at school. She was home alone. Now he smells her blood—a lot of it—at their house. What does it mean? That she might be dead is one of his first thoughts, but he pushes it away, his emotions clouding his brilliance. She can't. She just can't.
The front door is bashed in and destroyed. Demons, for sure. Yet he barely notices as he runs into the house. Bookshelves thrown to the ground. Lamps smashed. The table overturned. A struggle, he notes without noticing. A major struggle. Perhaps she was saved by a friend, then, as she couldn't have fought quite that well.
Blood on the floor next to the kitchen's entrance. Maroon, drying, smelling of her. The scent is so strong that it overpowers him. For a moment, he feels woozy and can't continue. But then he does, because he can sense her in the next room, though he can't hear her heart. He ignores it. He ignores the signs, ignores that he should be able to hear her breathing if she is, indeed, breathing.
The blood runs in a trail into the kitchen. Drops of it spattered on the walls. Something chased her through here. The demon smells like sweat and rotten potatoes. He gags before going into the kitchen.
What he sees there ruins him.
I'm the mascot for what you've become
And I love the mayhem more than the love.
"No more..."
He spoke in his sleep with much more frequency after her death, but there was no one around to hear it. Hiei had heard of the news, but had not come to see him, for reasons that Hiei himself couldn't fathom.
Now he dreamed the memory of that day, which he did often, and tried to stir himself away—tried to escape it. But he never really could; when he was awake, it was always on the tip of his tongue, in the front in his mind, and there was nothing he could occupy himself with that would ever make it fade. He relieved it in his waking hours, and again in his sleeping ones.
Over, and over, like a scene from a terrible, tragic movie—too real to be a good one—that was on replay in his mind. Play, rewind, play, pause, rewind, play. Over and over again he saw it, and his thoughts turned to repetition until they were not thoughts, but chants; mental chants that nothing could help him break.
And oh, baby
When they made me
They broke the mold.
Girls used to follow me around
Then I got cold.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them like you just don't care.
Shiori's body (but he doesn't think of it as her body—to him she is still "mother," for the rest of his life) lays sprawled on the kitchen floor. Blood appears to him to be everywhere; on the walls, the floors, the counters, and of course all over her. And it's all hers. She was a balloon full of the stuff, like a ripe fruit, like a soaked sponge...
His mind makes the metaphors unconsciously, as he almost falls to his knees. Almost. What keeps him standing is the blood, which he's stepping in; if he kneels, it will get on his school pants and Shiori will have to have them dry-cleaned, and that costs a lot of money. He doesn't want to cause her pain in any form, even financially.
He isn't thinking straight, and he knows it, but for the time being, he allows himself to give up thinking rationally. His heart is seizing up; his chest hitches and his eyes burn. It's horrific, and he's seen worse before, but never like this. No, not like this.
Please not like this.
He has done worse to others, but not his mother. Please, not her. He would have fallen for her. He would have gone in her place every time.
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
She died like a dog. He later found the truth as easily as one finds the place for the last puzzle piece. A demon broke in. Destroyed the living room. Wounded her. Chased her into the kitchen.
He knew that the scent of blood and fleeing prey always aroused demons. But to think that she, of all people, could die in such a way...it didn't make any sense. It was lunacy. Insanity. Irrationality.
The demon chased her into the kitchen where it trapped her. Where it tore at her clothes with its claws until they fell away like shreds. Where it threw her on the ground and raped her. Where it killed her soon after.
Kurama heard all the details, but he listened to none of it. This was his fault. How could he have led her to such danger? How could he have sat in class, barely paying attention to his professor, while she had been assaulted and killed on the floor?
How could he have been so blind to the dangers? How could he have thought that no one would ever figure out who he really was, especially after the Dark Tournament? How could he have let this happen? How could he have let her die like a dog?
We will never believe again
Kick drum beating in my chest again, no.
We will never believe again
Preach electric to a microphone stand, no.
He sees the clothes in shreds mingled with her blood. He sees her body, naked, pale, contrasting with the dark blood all over and around it. He sees her legs spread, her breast with the claw marks deep as canyons, the rivers of blood now dried up inside them. He sees her face, twisted in horror, and he curses himself.
He curses the day he ever came to her, the day he ever burdened her with his presence. He curses the pain he has caused her. He curses his weaknesses; his arrogance. He curses himself.
It shouldn't have been this way. He should have been killed by the hunter all those years ago. He should have been brought down in the dust of the Makai, far and away from this woman and her complete, unfiltered love.
It should be his blood on the ground, his body found desolate and destroyed, and maybe even naked and abused as well. He deserves it. He clenches his fists hard enough to draw blood, and it falls and mingles with hers.
He screams while being completely unaware of it. The sound is so heartbroken, so miserable and cracked that the only thing living to hear it—a bird just outside the nearby window—flies away, hoping never to hear something so chilling again.
He goes to her, cradling her body in his arms.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them, 'cause I just don't care.
Throw your cameras in the air
And wave them, 'cause I just don't care.
He never asked Koenma to revive her. In fact, he never spoke to Koenma again. He said words of goodbye to Yusuke, Kuwabara, and his various other friends (there were not many more.) He told Hiei where he would be, and that he should not hesitate to visit. In fact, he asked Hiei to come with him, but the younger demon, who had never seen his partner so defeated, told him that he would see him later.
Kurama left the human world forever after that. Hiei did indeed see him later, but only a few times. Some years after Kuwabara had married Yukina and Yusuke and Keiko had many little half-demons graduating from middle school, Kurama fell out of contact with everyone. They talked about where he might have gone, what he might have been doing, but they didn't go after him.
Hiei was the only one who regularly searched the Makai for his signature scent or energy. It wasn't because Hiei was the only one who cared about him; it was because he was the only one who knew some inkling of what Kurama might have felt after finding his mother dead and gone on the kitchen floor. The others couldn't begin to understand, not even after they lost loved ones of their own.
They missed him through the years, and they couldn't understand his pain, but they had known that they would not see him again.
They had known, because on the day that he had said goodbye, they had seen in his eyes how broken he was. They had known.
I will never believe in anything again.
I will never believe in anything again.
Change will come
Change will come
I will never believe in anything again.
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