Yuu Yuu Hakusho

Shadows and Lies

by Sionna Klassen and Kristin Huntsman

Disclaimer: Most of the characters in this story are the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shonen Jump Weekly, Studio Pierrot, and Fuji Television. No infringements of their rights are intended, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Chapter 2

Something shared that feels strange Something cold that will not go away... There's a heart as cold as ice In a vault that's made of stone... --Oingo Boingo, "Skin"

Kuwabara passed by a shadowed alcove on his way to the kitchen, not that the empty kitchen would do Kurama any good. But something within the alcove that he hadn't seen before attracted his attention. It looked like...yes, it was definitely a door. How had he missed that? Kuwabara shrugged off the question and walked up to the door, reaching for the doorknob. He turned it and opened the door.

Kurama was half-frozen and still unconscious. His wet hair was

plastered to his face as he lay curled on the floor, shivering. Yusuke hovered helplessly. "What are we going to do?" he asked. "There's _nothing_ in this house that's of any use!" Hiei didn't reply for a moment, trying to think. Then he cursed in frustration. "We can't even make a fire! This is ridiculous!" Suddenly both of them snapped their heads up as they heard a yell, followed by crashing sounds. Yusuke ran for the door. "Kuwabara!" he yelled. "Over here," Kuwabara called, his voice muffled. Yusuke skidded to a halt by the alcove and peered in. He could see a lumpy pile of something in there, but it was too dark to see much. "Kuwabara?" "Hey, Urameshi!" Kuwabara's head suddenly popped out of the pile. He was grinning like a maniac. "I found the storage closet!" "The _what_?" "Look at all this stuff! The closet was packed so full it all fell on me when I opened the door!" Kuwabara dug in the pile. "Blankets, clothes, pots, pans, bowls...you name it, I think it's in here!" Yusuke blinked in surprise for a moment. "Why..." But he stopped himself, realizing that the question wasn't important just then. "Blankets!" He grabbed the first ones that came to hand and ran back to the room where Kurama and Hiei were. Hiei looked up, and eyed the blankets. "Where did you find those?" "Storage closet," Yusuke said, kneeling on the floor and trying to untangle the mass of cloth in his arms. Hiei frowned. "Storage closet? You mean everything in the house was packed into a closet? Why?" "Who cares?" Yusuke retorted, neglecting to mention that the same question had gone through his mind. "It's not important right now." He tossed the blankets over Kurama.

Ice. It was everywhere; a huge bowl-shaped valley of ice whose edges swept up into jagged, serrated peaks like teeth. But instead of being faced by an endless plain of white, Kurama found himself standing in a vast expanse of shiny black. He shivered as the cold wind sliced through him and looked up at what he could see of the gray sky. He was standing in the exact center of the bowl. He looked around, but the valley was entirely empty except for himself. "Yusuke!" he yelled, and his voice echoed endlessly off the walls of the bowl. "Hiei!" Kurama heard a cracking noise, like a staccato burst of gunfire, except that there were no bullets and the sound kept going. Then the noise creaked to a halt. Kurama looked up and saw that the teeth had grown, shutting out more of the sky. The black ice was slowly sealing him in. Kurama ran for the wall, but no matter how much he ran he never made any progress. He was stuck in the center of a valley that went on forever. Finally he was too exhausted to run any more, and he dropped to his knees on the black ice. The heat from his exertion faded within seconds, and the ice burned the exposed skin of his palms. The ice creaked and shifted again, and when Kurama looked up he could barely see slivers of sky. "_Let me out of here_!"

He snapped awake with a start. Cold - he was so cold. Not outside, but inside. There was a lump of ice in his heart that would never melt. "Kurama?" "Yusuke..." He looked down, at the blankets he was wrapped in and the cup of what looked like hot tea in Yusuke's hand. "Where did all this come from?" "Would you believe a storage closet?" Yusuke asked with a lopsided grin. He shrugged. "Kuwabara blundered into it." "Go ahead, insult me!" Kuwabara called from another room, from which emanated noises that sounded suspiciously like cooking. "You should be grateful, Urameshi!" Kurama sniffed. "Food, too?" he asked in surprise. Yusuke shrugged again, but a little uneasily. "Anything we might need. A good thing, too, because Hiei says there's nothing in the forest worth the effort of going in there..." "Where _is_ Hiei?" Kurama asked hastily, to prevent Yusuke from asking anything about his experience in the forest. He didn't want to think about it. Yusuke scowled. "Who knows?"

Hiei stood at the very edge of the meadow, where the grass met the trees. He stared at one tree, frowning. "Damn!" he muttered.

Kurama sat hunched up in the blankets and let the heat from the cup of tea seep into his hands. He drank, but the warmth didn't reach the frozen core of his body. He wondered if he would ever feel warm again. Yusuke had left to check on Kuwabara, who was evidently cooking dinner. Kurama wondered whether the thought should scare him. Never having tried Kuwabara's cooking, he wasn't sure what to expect. He looked up sharply as the door opened. Hiei walked in, as silent as a shadow. He cocked his head, looking - down, for once - at Kurama. "What do you think?" he asked abruptly. "About what?" Kurama asked, confused. "The forest." Hiei gestured in the general direction of the trees. Kurama frowned. "I...don't like it." "Neither do I." Hiei's voice was bitter. "But I don't know why; not yet." Kurama got up and walked to the window. He opened it and looked outside. The sun was setting far away, vanishing into the wall of trees that closed them in the clearing as effectively as any ice wall. Thinking about his dream, he shivered. "Hey!" Kuwabara called from the other room, sounding strangely cheerful. "Dinner's ready!" Kurama and Hiei traded wry glances and left the room, heading for the kitchen.

Moonlight spilled in the open window and splashed into a rectangular pool of silver on the floor. The cool night breeze took the invitation the open window offered and swirled into the room, welcome relief after the heat of the day. The only light that could be seen outside came from the full moon and the stars. All around the house there was nothing but the darkness of solid forest. Inside the room, Yusuke was sitting crosslegged on the floor, staring out at the darkness. He was used to city life. Out here, it was just too...quiet. The silence kept him awake. He glanced to his right as he heard a small sound, but it was only Kurama, shifting in his sleep. There were only three rooms in the house, so he and Kurama had agreed to share. Hiei would normally be sleeping in a tree, but he didn't trust the trees in this forest to be in the same place when he woke up. He'd taken the roof instead, and Yusuke couldn't blame him for not wanting to share a room with Kuwabara; he snored. Kurama twitched again in his sleep and rolled over, facing the wall away from Yusuke. His red hair streamed over the pillow, silvered by the moonlight. He sighed quietly and seemed settled again. Yusuke envied Kurama's ability to sleep in completely unfamiliar surroundings. Of course, Kurama had probably slept in every possible environment over the four hundred years he'd been alive. Yusuke returned his gaze to the window, just in time to catch a glimpse of what looked like a flicker of candlelight. He straightened and looked around, searching for the source of the light. But he saw nothing, no matter how he strained his eyes. Finally, he gave up and relaxed again. Before he even realized how tired he was, he fell asleep on the floor.

Kurama ran through the woods, leaping over fallen trees and ferns and landing lightly on four small paws. Tails streaming behind him, he ran so fast he nearly flew. But it wasn't fast enough. He heard the gunshot behind him, very distant and far away. The next instant the bullet slammed into him, the impact flinging him into a tree. Kurama collapsed on a gnarled root, shattered and bleeding, whimpering in pain. The hunter's footsteps crunched on branches and leaves as he approached, the noise ear-splitting in volume to sensitive fox ears. Kurama shuddered and watched the hunter loom over him. <Escape!> With the last of his strength he flung himself from his ruined body, his spirit arcing up above the trees in a glittering cloud. He plunged downwards again, through the roof of a house in the middle of nowhere, into a room made silver and black by moonlight and shadow. He landed in his own body and sat up with a start. He looked at his hands, wondering, then looked across the room at Yusuke, asleep on the floor. He hadn't known Yusuke had a penchant for sleepwalking. As Kurama watched, Yusuke stirred and awoke. He sat up, facing away from Kurama and rubbing his eyes. Kurama opened his mouth to say something, but the words never left his throat. Yusuke whirled and blasted a blue-white bolt of light from his finger. Caught unprepared, Kurama was hit at point-blank range, flung backwards by the blast. He slammed into the wall and crumpled, gasping for breath. "Yusuke...?!" he gasped, looking up. Yusuke stood over him, blocking the light, his face in shadow. Then he moved, fast as a striking snake. He raised his hand, then plunged it down in a movement almost too fast to see. Kurama gave a cry of pain as a short, thin knife buried itself in his chest. He stared at Yusuke. <He _can't_ move that fast!> Then Yusuke moved out of the way, allowing the light to fall freely. Kurama saw for the first time the dark stain spreading on his shirt. It was darker than blood, and it crawled like a living thing. Kurama tried to summon his Rose Whip, and thorns trailed in delicate traceries along his hand and wrist and stabbed into his skin. Yusuke laughed, looming over him. Kurama struggled to bring his whip under control, and it responded by lashing itself around him, holding him helpless. Yusuke started to glow, at first so dimly that it was as if he was only reflecting the moonlight. Then the light grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding, too painful to look at. The vague figure in the center of the light raised its finger and pointed at Kurama. "_Yusuke_!" Kurama cried. Yusuke laughed as the light burned him

Yusuke woke up suddenly as he heard a howl of rage that didn't sound like anything human. He looked up, and barely dodged out of the way as Kurama's Rose Whip shattered the floor where he had been lying an instant before. "Kurama!" Yusuke yelled as he rolled to his feet. "Are you _crazy_?!" Kurama's eyes were glowing green in the darkness, his face twisted into a snarl. He struck again with the whip, and Yusuke dodged it again. "Kurama!" he hollered, trying to make him see sense. "What are you doing?!" The whip came at him again. This time Yusuke let it wrap around his wrist, grimacing as the thorns pierced his skin. But before Kurama could follow up, Yusuke yanked hard. It shouldn't have worked. Kurama should have held on, causing a tug-of-war. But instead, the whip went flying from his hand. Yusuke almost fell over, startled as the tension of the whip was released. What the hell...? Kurama's _never_ that easy to disarm! What's wrong with him? "I'LL KILL YOU!!!" "_Help_!" Yusuke yelled at the top of his lungs as Kurama created a sword from a leaf and flung himself at Yusuke, determined to tear out his throat.