“If you love something,
Set it free
If it comes back, it is yours forever
If not, then it was never meant to be.”
--???

Kurama smiled drowsily, hugging the small body of his lover to his chest in a possessive gesture. It always gave him a thrill to feel the powerful, seemingly cold creature yield to his touch; to see the face that was usually so heavily guarded soften, relaxing in sleep; to just hold Hiei and know the fire demon would still be there in the morning.

In the sticky heat of the summer evening, the windows of his bedroom stood wide open, trying to catch any cooling breezes that might brush past, and he could hear the low chirring of crickets somewhere outside. He felt perfectly content to lie here, holding his lover in his arms, allowing his own tired body to be embraced by the softness of the bed sheets, which clung to his nude form, plastered by sweat. The rhythmic, even sounds of Hiei’s breathing was soothing to his ears, relaxing him into a state of sated stupor.

Hiei’s soft breaths stirred long, damp red strands of hair, brushing past the silky fall and tickling his ear, making him shiver. Freeing one arm, he ran a gentle finger down the side of the other’s face, tracing the smooth, soft curve of cheek, pressing gently at the indention of the lip. The only response he got for his teasing was a murmured sigh, as Hiei shifted, snuggling closer, the barest hints of a smile gracing his peaceful face.

Kissing the mane of spiky black hair, the half-youko mimicked the other’s earlier movements, snuggling deeper into the hold of the bedclothes, groping outwards with one hand until he found a light sheet and dragging it towards their intertwined bodies, allowing the light, pale blue sheet to drape itself comfortably over them. He pulled Hiei even closer, then closed his eyes, slowly drifting off to sleep himself.

“Damn you ...”

The sound was barely more than a whisper, a dying curse for someone who had breezed in and out of her life so fast, too fast, that there were times she feared she had only dreamed him up, out of her fevered imagination. It was so hard to keep her fantasies and harsh reality apart, even back at the time he had supposedly been with her.

There wasn’t much she could really remember; just the feel of his presence, the way he exuded power and grace and a slight hint of arrogance with every small movement, knowing that few would ever dare challenge him. And the way the lights played off his brightness, blinding her, dazzling her - he had been silver and gold, ethereal and solid at the same time.

It had been so long now, so long since that awful night where the crashing booms of thunder had jolted her awake from an uneasy sleep to see him standing at the doorway, his pale form highlighted in the darkness. He was wavering, hovering somewhere both inside and outside the bedchamber, his face towards her, but his golden eyes distant, far away, seeing things beyond her and her small, cozy little home. She had reached out for him, his name a whisper on her lips, but lightening flashed and she flinched, and when her eyes opened again, he was gone.

“Damn you ...” she whispered again, her voice hoarse from disuse, sounding strange in the hollow emptiness of the dark room. One thin hand twisted itself into a clawed fist, shaking lightly from trapped tension; tears sparkled at the edge of her vision, blurring the lines of the room, already hard to see in the blackness. No use; she couldn’t hate him; he’d been too important, a link to the outside world she had always feared and hated and mistrusted. He had been the one to guide her back to life, away from her private haven and into the confusing jumble of images and sounds and smells that formed the world beyond her doorway.

The same world that had lured him away from her; she was peace, serenity and stability, unmoving, unchanging from the last time - and he was a wild creature, someone who yearned for freedom, for change, the seduction of something new and challenging to pass the time. While he had professed to her that he loved this quiet life, his eyes had told her otherwise - that, in his mind, memories of running wild across countless plains, unencumbered by others, looking out only for himself; that he still longed to escape from her, and find his old life again.

“If I ever leave, you’ll forget me,” he told her once, without looking at her. He had been standing, back to the bed, watching the silvery moon make its lonely trek across the sky, and it took all her wiles to finally coax him back to bed. She had laughed off his solemn words, thinking them only a joke, shaking her head when he repeated them, before silencing him with her mouth.

He was gone now. He had left, and she hadn’t forgotten him. He’d been wrong. The thought made a weak parody of a smile twitch one corner of her mouth, before it faded back into the thin line of unhappiness. That was the problem; she couldn’t forget him, and the memories of what she had once had with him, in the brief time the magnificent creature had been her captive, kept her from going on. If only he hadn’t just left, in the middle of the night, vanishing from her gaze in a slip of ghostly mist; her first action after the shock wore off was to run to the window.

The fields outside were empty, but she swore she could have seen a flash of silver in the moonlight, quickly hidden by the waves of long black grasses.

She heaved a miserable sigh, rolling clumsily off of the musty covers of the bed, ones she hadn’t had the energy or desire to change, and dragged herself to the main chamber, where she had her meals, once with a companion, now in brooding solitary loneliness. Leaning her back against the wall, she slowly slid downwards, to the floor, staring blankly out the window, at the same field where she had last seen the silver fox-form of her erstwhile lover vanish into the mysteries and anonymity of the Makai.

It wasn’t the first time she had cried since he had left, and it would never be the last, but once more, Youko Ayame wept in the broken-down shell of her home, reliving her memories of the past, caught in a downward spiral that she was completely unable to stop.

It was more of the bright sunlight streaming in through open windows, rather than the annoying buzz of his alarm clock, that woke Kurama. In a slow, languid glide from sleep to wakefulness, he stretched luxuriously, noting Hiei’s absence in the large white bed. He smiled; there was a small, scribbled note on the ant-table beside his bed, assuring him that Hiei was only “out for a while.” He sat up, stretching his arms out in delicate, precise movements, tossing his long legs over the side of the bed.

He was finding apartment life, with only him and his lover, very enjoyable; while he still adored Shiori, he found life much easier without having to tiptoe his relationship with Hiei around her. She was still blissfully unaware that her son had a male lover, and Kurama was still wracking his brains for a good way to tell her the truth. She deserved to know everything, from what he really was to his life with Hiei.

But how to tell her? he wondered, falling back onto the bed with a soft thump, reveling in the feeling of the warm sunlight on his bare flesh. He stretched his legs out, wiggling his toes contentedly, wriggling like a cat as he settled deeper into the soft sheets. As much as he was famous for his attention and devotion to work and school, Kurama hoarded his holidays just like any other human - and currently, he was planning to spend the first day of a long, much deserved vacation. It was very likely the most strenuous thing he would do for the whole three weeks was shopping, or maybe a quiet lunch with Shiori or Ryoko - a small, quirky young woman who worked at his office; she was one of the few people who knew that Minamino Shuuichi had a lover, and didn’t care that his lover was male.

Kurama blinked at the ceiling, his eyes half-closed, on the verge of drifting back to a light sleep when his stomach gurgled. The sound opened his eyes wide, and he rolled off the bed, untangling the sheets from his lean body as he snagged his favorite robe from the floor, where it had been hastily discarded the night before. Shrugging it over his slender shoulders, he padded towards the kitchen, soothing the growling noises from his stomach as he opened a cabinet and began boiling water for coffee.

The day’s newspaper lay on the countertop, wrapped in its sheath of ripped plastic, and the sight coaxed a small smile to his lips. How thoughtful, he thought dryly, slipping the paper out and unfolding it, his eyes wandering over the rows of small black print, not really paying attention to anything he read; his mind was busy wandering over other, more pleasant, thoughts. Like just how he was going to greet Hiei when his lover returned from wherever he had gone ... the smile on his face sleeked, becoming distinctly sensual as his mind played a variety of scenarios, each one a little more aggressive than the last.

The kettle whistled, its voice a high-pitched whine that cut into his daydreams. Shaking his head and laughing to himself, Kurama pushed away from his leaning position against the counter, pouring the hot water into a cup and adding the instant coffee. He sipped it and made a face at the bitterness, disliking the aftertaste but feeling a bit more awake than he had five minutes ago. He wandered back to his paper, turning the page, still scanning, until a small, black-and-white picture caught his eye.

It was a thumbnail snapshot of a young woman, around twenty or so, who stared at the camera in a vague sort of way, a haunted look in her dark eyes that shot a chill down Kurama’s spine. There was a long, thin, almost invisible scar running down the pale flesh of her right cheek, the line curling under one eye and tapering downwards, towards her neck until it was hidden by a thick black braid. He studied the picture thoughtfully, noting there was no caption. The face was oddly familiar, somehow, and it jangled his nerves in the most unpleasant way.

He flipped the page again, ignoring the nagging urge to look at the picture again as he skimmed through the business section before finally giving in. He turned back to the page where he had found the picture, but discovered, to his surprise, that the young woman’s face was gone, replaced by an ad for a popular restaurant that had recently opened near his office. Shaken, he closed the paper and stirred his half-finished, cold coffee, musing to himself.

She looked like one of the thousands of faces from his past, a brief acquaintance in one of his many travels across the Makai. If only he could remember her name ... she had been a healer, he knew, and one of considerable ability. A shy, reclusive black youko girl who had discovered his battered, bleeding body on her way home from a nearby village, and took him to her home, caring for him until he was stronger, eventually becoming his lover for a short time.

But her name still escaped him, and that worried him; he traced patterns in the whorls of the countertop’s wood paneling, eyes staring blankly off into space. She had been extremely possessive, once they had consummated the relationship, refusing to allow him to leave her small home, throwing a tantrum when he argued. Every time he actually managed to persuade her to let him walk about freely in the outside world, she would cling to his arm like a parasite, hissing and showing her sharp little teeth at anyone who dared look at them twice.

He could recall being glad when he finally left her, though he felt sorry for the poor child, especially when he heard his name echo over the fields in a despairing cry, reaching him as he crouched, in kitsune form, licking the dirt off his left forepaw and waiting for the day. The next day, he had cautiously left the little hollow he had found, expecting at any moment for a black fox to leap from the cover of the surrounding brush and tackle him. Though he had been powerful enough to defeat her low B-Class powers, she had been his lover for a time; that, more than anything else, gave her an advantage over him.

Youko Kurama had been considered heartless, ruthless, unstoppable by his peers. But the code of honor that he lived by, the set of rules that governed his life, would never allow him to willingly raise his hand against someone who had shared his bed. And that included the girl, though he knew he would fight her if it came to that. Freedom was an intoxicating drug he had never tired of, and his days of almost-captivity with her had nearly driven him insane.

But she had never appeared, and eventually, he had forgotten about her, as new faces came and went out of his life, some immortalized as eternally cherished - or traumatizing - memories, or as easily forgotten as she had been.

Today, that had changed; the youko side of his mind, the one that had a crystal clear, painfully sharp memory, had seen the picture in the paper, and recognized it as the black youko healer he had once known. It had been an eerily close resemblance; if not for the fact that it was a human, not a youko, who stared quietly back at him from the printed sheet, he could have sworn it was her. All the picture had required was the crowning pair of delicate, graceful fox ears that all of his kind had; the face had everything else - the thin bone structure, the solemn, wide dark eyes, and the odd scar that resembled a twisting snake.

Kurama sighed again, dumping the unfinished coffee into the sink and leaving the kitchen, crawling onto the bed, lying spread-eagle against the soothing embrace of the cloth. Wide green eyes stared pensively at the ceiling as his mind whirled from one thought to another; though he had been a very strong A-Class at the time of his first death, clairvoyance had never been his thing. He was more comfortable with the creation and cultivation of his beloved plants, usually relying on them as weapons, rather than channel his chi into any sort of attack.

He wished his lover would return soon; once Hiei was there, he could carry out those lovely ideas his mind had been debating about earlier - and banish those troublesome memories to a dark corner of his mind, where they could not disturb him during the first day of his vacation.