Perceptions

by Mayushii

All copyright materials are property of their respective owners.

A/N: I'm glad that most people seemed to enjoy the previous chapter. Thanks to She-Elf4, saiyuri-dahlia, ardentes, Little Sadako, shiorifoxiesmom, and SounnyKitty for the reviews. :D This chapter takes place after the finals but before they leave the island. Grr, this chapter makes me mad… And it's supposed to be a really important one, too. It's probably because I'm not sure if all the symbolism really gets through. Throughout the story I've been using blood as a symbol for love and/or madness, and this chapter you should be seeing some of the motifs of the previous chapters—decay, love-as-battle, spiritual strength which can help carry burdens of the past, and of course drastically mistaken perceptions—coming together a bit.

-A certain piece of dialogue has been taken from the Japanese version instead of the English dub. It adds a bit to the drama of this chapter and becomes sort of plotfully important later.

-The reason there isn't really much of a present-day reflective "intro" to this chapter is that it was originally part of the previous chapter. It does have the conclusion, though.

-Love is a balm for wounds of the soul-

The Tournament had been won. Hiei had found an ingenious way of mastering the Kokuryu-ha—allowing it to possess his body—and even Bui had stood no chance as Hiei channeled the dragon's strength. Kuwabara had used the versatile Tameshi no Ken to crush the elder of the Toguro Brothers, and Yusuke had clinched our team's victory by killing the younger Toguro with a powerful blast of energy. They had been spectacular battles, ones that would be remembered for years to come.

But I had lost.

It was galling, to say the least. Mine had been the first fight, and though I had killed Karasu in the end, I had not done it in time. Even after my plants drained the disgustingly hot blood from his heart, Karasu had been named the victor. I had lost to a dead man. Yusuke and Kuwabara had tried to reassure me that it was okay, that my killing Karasu was the real victory, but I couldn't get over it. If Hiei or Kuwabara or Yusuke had lost any of their fights, the Toguro Team would have won the Tournament. And if I hadn't killed Karasu, he would have been granted his wish.

I wish to place you at my side forever…

Karasu's threat rang in my ears and reverberated through my soul, making me shake and shudder. Hours had passed and I still couldn't get it out of my head. I had come close, so very close to such a horrific end. I had thought that Karasu had wanted only to kill me, but in reality…he had wanted to destroy me. He asked the Tournament Committee to place me at his side forever. After the torture Karasu put me through during the battle, I knew that being bound to him would be a fate worse than death. I should probably be grateful that he made such a threat; without it I might have been willing to accept defeat and let him live until I could get stronger. But when I heard his wish, I knew I couldn't let him live. With no spiritual strength left to resist, I tapped into my life force in order to kill him.

After the finals, I needed to clear my head. I returned to the hotel suite our team had shared and spent nearly an hour in the bath, scrubbing and scraping at my skin until it turned red. Eventually Kuwabara demanded use of the toilet, and as I left the bathroom he made a passing remark about how I took longer than a girl. I tried to smile, unwilling to admit that I didn't feel any cleaner than I had when I first entered the bath. I could smell Karasu's energy in my wounds, a scent like corpses and gunpowder. It made me feel filthy.

I went back to my room, prepared a bowl of herbal water, and found my medical kit. Once everything was ready I took off my bathrobe and left it on a hook by the door. I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to treat my wounds, but my hands were shaking too much. Why were they shaking? Why couldn't I do this? I tried to steady myself only to split a wound on my shoulder. My face twisted with pain as blood poured from the wound. The charred black hole, the blood flowing out of it… It looked like rot.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the door was flung open. I had been so absorbed in my thoughts that I hadn't sensed anyone approaching. Embarrassed by my lack of awareness, I clutched my open wound to stem the flow of blood and angled my body in an attempt to hide my shoulder.

"Hiei," I grumbled with annoyance. "What are you doing, barging in like that?"

I stopped when I noticed how Hiei looked. He stood motionless in the doorway, his hand lingering on the door—no, not simply lingering. It was tensely splayed on the flat surface with fingers rigid and curved until they resembled claws. His face was startled, his eyes wide and his lips parted in surprise. Then those eyes blinked, regaining some of their composure, and slowly trailed down my body. An uncomfortable blush crept up my cheeks. I had never been fully naked with him before, and the way he studied my pale skin and bleeding wounds was unsettling. I curled inward, shoulders hunching and legs drawing up together in an attempt to conceal my many injuries. There was no way I could hide everything. He was seeing so much… I frowned and put on a cold expression, not wanting to show any signs of intimidation as his eyes reached my feet and then quickly flicked back up to my face.

"What are you doing?" I tried to keep my voice strong, but I was breathless with fear and embarrassment and anger at myself for feeling either of the other two. "Why are you here?"

Hiei tipped his head to the side as if to consider me. Then he disappeared in a blur of black, making me gasp sharply when he reappeared in front of me. I prepared to scramble backward, put my foot on the edge of the bed and leaned back on my hands, but he grabbed my wounded arm by the elbow to keep me from escaping. I was acutely aware that I had no spiritual energy left while he had all the strength of the mastered Kokuryu-ha behind him now. I gritted my teeth and glared into his eyes—so strange to have him so close to my own level, but since I was leaning back on the bed and he was standing upright we were nearly eye to eye.

"Yusuke said you're the one who warded my arm and treated my wounds while I was asleep," Hiei stated flatly. I tipped my head down, as close to a nod as I was willing to give at the moment. "Good. Then you shouldn't mind if I return the favor."

I frowned at him, taken aback by this attitude and wondering what had brought about such a change in the supposedly selfish demon. Hiei didn't seem to notice my distrust. He picked up a cotton pad from the medical kit beside me, pressed it against the wound on my shoulder, and held it there with his thumb while he reached into his pocket. Out came a handkerchief, a square of black silk, which he quickly soaked in water before bringing it to my arm.

A small shiver ran down my body and a soft breath left my lips as he stroked the smooth silk along my arm and up to my shoulder. Hiei took no notice of either as he wiped away the streaks of blood, cleaning me. The black cloth absorbed every drop of red, remaining untainted by the color while my skin regained its whiteness. Clean again, though not completely the same; the cloth left glistening droplets of water on my skin. He looked at my arm appraisingly, making sure there was no trace of red left, and lifted the gauze just long enough to dab at the blood underneath. Then he dropped his handkerchief in the bowl of water and reached instead for a bandage.

It was a curious feeling. I had offered him healing so many times, but this was only the second time he had volunteered to do the same for me. Yet here he was tending to my injuries as if he did this sort of thing every day. After a few minutes of this, Hiei sent an odd look up at me.

"You should have said something. It would have saved us all a lot of grief."

I gave Hiei a confused frown. He brushed a careless finger against my shoulder, the place where Karasu had set off his first explosion. Then he looked at me again with that same strange look in his eyes.

"I've never seen rape carried out in quite that way," Hiei said casually.

A sharp choking sound left me. I had tried to laugh off the heavy accusation, but my breath had caught in my throat.

"Rape, Hiei? Don't be absurd. It was a fight, nothing more." Hiei's eyes darkened. Of course he didn't believe me. I didn't even believe me. I looked away, embarrassed and starting to feel very uncomfortable with those grimly determined eyes focused on me. He looked like a soldier planning an attack. I felt like I should be preparing to defend myself, but I had no idea what kind of weapons he was sharpening in his mind. "…It's none of your concern. It was just a fight."

"Oh, I see. Then that plant you used against Karasu—ojigi, was it?—I suppose you chose it by coincidence." I glared defiantly as Hiei's first blow tore me open and made the blood rush to my face. He was right, of course. I had used ojigi, with its resemblance to fanged vulvae, more for its meaning than for its usefulness as a weapon. "And when he kept calling you beautiful and talking about intimacy, of course he didn't mean anything by it." The second strike fell, another I couldn't defend against. Another wound reopened. Damn Karasu, why had he said such things when everyone could hear him? Why couldn't he have been more discreet? "The way he looked at you when you were trapped, at his mercy—the black lust in his eyes as he made you scream—I imagined it." This was the rape Hiei had mentioned. True, it had not been rape in the sense a human would understand, but Karasu had penetrated my defenses without my consent and derived sexual pleasure from it. As far as youkai were concerned, he had violated me.

I wanted to be strong. I wanted to pretend that I wasn't affected, not by what Karasu had done to me or by Hiei's inexplicable desire to reopen the wounds. But I couldn't pretend. I couldn't be strong when Hiei was standing in front of me, staring unflinchingly at my face, able to see everything, every hint of pain and embarrassment. And he wasn't finished yet. He had one more strike, one final attack that he had not yet used. I held my breath and awaited the blow that would finish me.

"When he said his wish for winning the Tournament would be to keep you at his side forever…I suppose that was just a figure of speech." Hiei growled softly. "You still think you can act like it was 'just a fight'? Because I have no time for your fantasies of denial."

I opened my mouth, wanting to defend myself, to deny everything. I couldn't. He had cornered me. The only option left to me now was surrender.

Hiei was still looking at me, watching and waiting for me to admit my defeat. I hated him. I was weak and humiliated, and his intense eyes only made me more aware of it. I hated it so much. This wasn't what I wanted, I didn't want to be put at his mercy. But I couldn't kill him the way I had killed Karasu. I had no choice but to submit.

"I…" I averted my eyes, wanting to die of shame. "I suppose you're right."

He kept staring at me. Why was he still staring? I had given him what he wanted, so why did he continue to stare? Did he just want to engrave the image of my disgrace in his mind so he could remember it?

Then, quite suddenly, he disappeared. I blinked and glanced around warily, wondering where he had gone. A sharp tug on my ankle made me yelp and glance down. Hiei was kneeling on the floor in front of me, bandages back in hand and head bowed so I couldn't see his face.

"You defended yourself well," he said gruffly as he began to dress a wound on my left calf.

"Just like I'm defending myself well now," I couldn't help saying, my voice breaking horribly. I hadn't defended myself at all, I had just let it happen. First Karasu, now him. And Hiei was mocking me for it. To be defeated was one thing, but this ridicule was too much.

Hiei finished wrapping the wound on my calf and reached one hand up to the kit beside me in search of another bandage.

"Stop," I muttered. "Stop it. You've done enough. I will do the rest myself."

"Kurama, if you were going to heal yourself you would have done it already," Hiei said dully, grabbing a new bandage. Instead of starting work on the next wound, he paused and looked up at me with suspicion and resignation in his eyes. "Don't think I don't know why you haven't. You're scared of touching the wounds because you know how much it will hurt, so you've just been covering them up and hoping they'll heal on their own. But you can't leave it to chance or fate or whatever you want to call it—if you do that they'll probably just rot away. You have to uncover the wounds and deal with them sometime. It will hurt at first, but it's better for you in the long run. You know that."

Hiei touched my knee with light fingertips. The next wound he wanted to treat was on my thigh, and I suddenly realized why he had stopped. He couldn't wrap a bandage around the wound unless my legs were apart. His touch, gentle and undemanding, was his way of asking permission to continue. He was offering me some small amount of control—I could close or open myself to him. Either way I would be hurt. I knew I should accept the more immediate pain, open up to him and speed my recovery. Of course I should. This was not about logic, it was about trust. Did I trust him to heal the wounds? Did I trust him enough to be vulnerable with him…with a demon who could use his newfound strength to crush me just as easily as he could lend that strength to me?

Blushing, I looked away from him and parted my legs. He gave me a short nod of approval before turning his full attention to the wound. I sat tense, waiting for something, anything…but he kept his eyes on the wound and his hands never strayed. I looked down at him, working steadily and unfalteringly, and I felt my nervousness slowly fade away. He wasn't going to hurt me. I was safe. Of course I was; why had I ever doubted that? I had always trusted him before, there was no reason to distrust him now.

It is difficult for me to tell just what happened between us that day. One moment Hiei acted so harshly, and the next he was kind. I can say for sure that Hiei wanted to help with my physical wounds, but I am not certain about the rest. Forcing me to relive the trauma of Karasu's obsession… Was that his attempt to keep me sane and prevent me from slipping into denial? Or had he wanted to confirm his own suspicions, see me brought low, and attain dominance over me that he had never really had before then? Selfless and selfish…both seemed plausible given his actions up until that point.

All I know is, whatever his reasons, he had done exactly what I had needed him to do. If not for Hiei I would have kept my experiences with Karasu to myself, and that secret would have destroyed me. Like physical wounds, emotional wounds can heal with time, but it's a slow process and rarely successful. Oftentimes the wounds become infected and slowly eat away at the soul. However, reopening the wounds—revealing them to someone else—while painful at first, provides the chance for the wounds to be properly tended. Hiei caused me pain when he forced me to face what Karasu had done, but in the end, it really was better for me. I just wish I knew why he did what he did.