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“Why are you trying so hard?” Hiei asks Yukina, as she funnels more of her cooling healing energy into him. Whatever this stupid poison is, he’s been bedridden over a week now with an insistent and unending fever. “You would be better off, if I was gone.”
Hiei winces as her energy abruptly shifts into ice before it cuts off. She shakes the icicles from her hands, a short, sharp movement. Shaking her head as well, Yukina brushes the ice away from where it crept over his skin before sitting back.
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” she says in a low voice. He can’t see her eyes.
“I’m not anything to you!” he tries to explain.
Her mouth tightens, and she smooths her hands across the blue fabric of her lap. Yukina looks up at him and her red eyes-- he has not seen her like this. Her gaze has gone hard, as cold as her ice. It’s a shock when between them, she’s always been the one with warmer eyes.
“Aren’t you,” she says, still quiet, not exactly a question.
His thoughts fumble. How is--? She couldn’t possibly know.
“Do you really think,” she starts, still looking at him coldly, “that I would not know my brother?” He shifts. He wants to look away from her eyes but she moves with him to hold his gaze. “Do you think I give priceless family heirlooms to anyone?” she asks, her gaze dropping for a moment to the hiruseki stone he still wears.
He thinks I could argue out of this if my head weren’t fuzzed with fever still. Instead he says, “What?”
“For a while, I wasn’t positive,” Yukina admits. “But then, well. At some point, I realized: I am building a new family for myself, with your friends, in the world you found first. Even disregarding our shared mother, Hiei, would you not be my brother now by association? Is your team not your family?”
She reaches out again, takes his hand, and he is too slow to draw away.
There has to be a way to make Yukina see. He scowls, and draws his anger up like armor, hisses, “Do you not remember what I am?” as he snatches his hand back. The anger takes effort, and he is so tired. He breathes out hard, says, “I am a murderer and a thief. My….association with you is that of an acquaintance. Do not assume--” he’s going to say “familiarity”, but she’s grabbed for his hand again, and is holding him harder this time. She drags his sluggish limb back from his chest to the side of the bed closest to her again.
“A thief?” she says. “A murderer? I would not assume you would mistake my kindness for naivete, brother. I am also a demon, and I know as well as you what it can take to survive. I was lucky, to get to the human world--I remain lucky, even after I was held captive. You are not what you were forced into, Hiei, and when I told you to stop-- when I told you not to kill Tarukane, you didn’t. I was ready to claim you as my brother even then-- before I was more sure of any biological relation. You listened, Hiei, at a time very few people heard me at all.”
“No,” he says, and can’t place the words in order to explain how wrong she is, but repeats “No,” again, and then, finally, “I am--killing is all I am good for.”
She holds his hand between both of hers, and asks him, “Who told you that? If that were true, Hiei, if you were only good for killing, do you really think these friends would welcome you? Genkai, who spent years slaying murderous demons? Yusuke, whose own sense of justice would not allow him association with anyone he deems unworthy? Kazuma, who’s much the same? What of Kurama?” At this, Hiei tries to pull his now-trembling hands away again, but Yukina holds fast.
She continues softly, mercilessly, “If you were nothing but the brute you claim to be, you think Kurama would trust you to know where his mother is? You think he’d continue to seek you out as he does?”
“Murderers can be useful,” Hiei hisses at her mulishly. He knows he’s being prickly, and can see in his head Kurama’s smirk when he acts like this, but she is wrong.
Yukina hums non-committedly, then pauses. “Hiei---brother,” she says after a long moment spent only stroking his hand. She looks up at him and her eyes are not warm now, but hot. Is she….angry?
After a few intense moments of staring almost helplessly back into her fierce gaze, she asks him “You don’t believe in my choices?”
“What--yes?” he answers, thrown off by the calm question.
“Do you think I can make worthwhile decisions for myself?”
He spends a longer time in silence than perhaps he should. “You would allow others to hurt you before trying to move against them,” he says.
“But in whom I decide to spend time with? I left the Ice Apparitions, brother.”
But you didn’t destroy them, as you once told me they deserve, he thinks and doesn’t say. Instead he opts for, “You did. You did, and-- you’ve made--” he feels like he may combust from embarrassment. No one has ever said such a thing to him, but she deserves to know-- “you’ve made good choices.” he immediately reconsiders, “Except Kuwa--”
She tugs on his hand and cuts him off, saying, “If you mean Kazuma you may find it better not to finish,” and gives Hiei a sharp smile. “If you finish I’ll be forced to list every reason there is that I know you do like him,” she explains, leaning closer to him to catch his eyes yet again.
He frowns at her, but doesn’t argue. He does not need to hear The List again. It’s not as though this is the first time one of his friends has done this to him.
“If you think I can decide on my own who’s worth my attention, Hiei, then why not you? If you are so useless at everything but murder, mustn’t I be a better judge of character anyway?” she asks her pointed questions sweet and fast. “If I am the only one in this room who can be trusted, and I chose to trust you-- have I been tricked, or are you being, to use what Shizuru may say, ‘an idiot’?”
Yukina smiles at him again. She should know he’s sick enough that making a coherent argument is beyond him.
“Hn,” is all he says, frowning harder.
“I say you’re worth this,” she says, slowly channeling her healing into his hand again, “I say you’re more than our mother’s people thought you were, and you are worth all I can give you and more.” Yukina he continues with quiet certainty. “You may not believe me, yet, that you are worthy,” her voice drops to almost a whisper. “But believe that not just me, but all of our friends have made a choice to keep you.”
He wants so badly to be kept. He wants---he’s wanted family. He’s wanted this. His eyes burn, and he hurriedly closes them. She’s wrong. She must be.
He’s not sure how they could all be this wrong, to believe he’s worth keeping. His teammates-- his sister. His--- friends.
Maybe it’s alright to lean on them just a while longer.