Disclaimer: There are many legitimate reasons as to why I should probably never own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Hello hello! We're back with another chapter! :D I've been pretty inspired to write, but I couldn't seem to concentrate on just one thing. Luckily, after opening about five of my half-started chapters or stories, I opened up the document with pieces of this chapter in it and managed to finish chapter six :D Hooray~ c: Something big happens in this one, and I know some of you are going to be like "Well, it's about time!" xD Also, I think I am using Hiei to channel the hidden pyromaniac in me.

Thank you, as always, to my readers! To everyone who reads, reviews, favorites, and everything else, you are what is moving this story forward. Without your feedback and encouragement, this would probably just sit unfinished on my hard drive. I really appreciate all of you, and I'm going to start responding to signed reviews as I can. I never thought that this story would get to this point, that it was something I'd give up on halfway through. But you guys are keeping it alive :) Thank you again! :D I hope you enjoy this latest chapter, and let me know what you think of it! :) I'll see you guys again in chapter seven~

Dancing by Firelight
chapter six

Kurama had not entered the forest unprepared, though Hiei would have expected this of him and not Yusuke. The fox always thought several steps ahead – and since he and Yusuke had already been in the forest for several days, he must have assumed that he would be too.

Somehow, Hiei wasn't surprised at all at this recent turn of events. Even though their jobs were usually more straightforward than this one, they were never exactly simple either. It didn't surprise him that someone was smuggling toxin-spreading plants into the human world to kill them off. Hell, it might have been him doing it had his circumstances been different. If he hadn't been defeated by Yusuke years ago. If he hadn't been placed on parole and forced to fight side by side with him. If he hadn't started to feel differently, to some extent, about his hatred for humans.

"Did you see the piles of bodies?" He asked Kurama after a long moment of silence.

"Yes, we did," the fox answered, "I'm assuming the flowers hadn't sprouted yet?"

"Not that I had seen," the fire demon responded back, "Though I didn't moved the fresh bodies to look at the older ones."

"It wouldn't have mattered if you had," Touya said, from atop the large fallen tree. "The flowers had already been harvested from the older ones."

"So someone is waiting for them to grow and then removing them?" Hiei asked, a scowl firmly set in his features. If that was the case, all they needed to do was find the one doing so and apprehend or kill them. Either way was fine with the fire demon. Though honestly, he was more in the mood for killing as of right now. He cast a sideward glance toward Yusuke's sleeping form – he could still see the smallest amount of dried blood in the corners of his lips. The sight seemed to fuel the rage he kept hidden inside of himself. Yes, he was definitely in the mood to kill.

The glance had been subtle, but Kurama had noticed it anyway. He said nothing about it though, and instead chose to answer Hiei's question. "It seems so," Kurama answered. "And they're likely moving them to the human world."

All right, so then they would need to find the perpetrator, apprehend or kill them, and then destroy any flowers in the human world. That last part could be left to Kurama – Hiei would gladly take the second though.

"How is Yusuke?" Touya asked suddenly, now that most of their detective conversation and conclusions were finished. The fox turned to look the spirit detective over in response, and looked at the fire and ice demons before saying, "He looks like he's getting better. I think he'll be fine."

"That's good news. Jin will be glad to know that Yusuke is well once we return," Touya remarked.

There was a long and awkward silence before the fox glanced up the thick tree trunk at the ice demon perched upon it. Touya never caught his gaze, but he stood and said, "I'm going to take a look around." He disappeared over the other side of the fallen tree. There was a short moment where neither of them spoke, but Hiei was too impatient to wait for a break in the silence.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The fire demon inquired, his annoyance ever apparent in his tone.

Kurama laughed at his words, humor in his eyes, "As if you've never kept secrets."

He was right about that, but he chose not to admit to it out loud. Or at all. "That's different and you know it," Hiei said, knowing exactly which secret Kurama was referring to. One of the few that he knew about.

"Maybe if you just told Yukina already, I'd be more inclined to tell you my secrets," Kurama laughed again, but they both knew it would not have changed a thing. He was just looking for a way to deflect the topic. With both of their long and violent histories, they each had more secrets than they had time to tell them.

Hiei scoffed at him, his anger apparent in his crimson eyes. It was one of the things Hiei could never quite keep hidden – when he was angry. He was able to hide his past from the people around him, and he was able to hide his true relation to his sister from her. But he was never truly able to hide when he was in a situation that caused him to become angry.

"Are you going to give me an answer? Or are you going to keep trying to play games?" Hiei spit out, crossing his arms in front of him. If Kurama was waiting for the fire demon to get frustrated with him and disappear in a flash of black, as he was sometimes prone to do especially when the topic came to his sister, he would be waiting for a long time.

"I don't know why you're so angry about this," Kurama said honestly, looking him over with emerald eyes, as if trying to read him. The fact that Hiei himself didn't quite know why he was so angry either only frustrated him further. Those eyes seemed, as they were always intent on doing, to pierce right through him. "Unless you're using this as an excuse to vent anger that should be directed elsewhere. You just don't know where, do you?"

"You know what? You're right," Hiei said, standing again, infuriated and about to disappear into the trees as he had resolved not to do only moments before. "It's none of my business." He glanced over at Yusuke's slumbering form involuntarily, and somehow the sight of him seemed to magnify his anger at Kurama. He wouldn't be able to explain why even if he tried.

The fox sighed and leaned backward slightly, putting his weight into the hands he had placed on the forest floor behind him. "I didn't intend on keeping it a secret from you, Hiei," he spoke to Hiei's back. The fire demon halted in his step and silently faced the trees.

"Touya and I have been in a relationship of sorts for around two and a half years," Kurama continued. Hiei stood still, his hands shoved in his pockets. It would have been around the time when everyone was training before the tournament in the Makai then. Hiei silently recalled that the fox had gathered some of their previous opponents as allies in order for all of them to get stronger. It seemed that Kurama and Touya were doing things other than just training during that time. "It was... unexpected. Even now, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I just know that I have strong feelings for him."

It was odd to hear that Kurama couldn't describe something. He was normally so eloquent, but it seemed that even he could be at a loss for words. "And how does your human mother feel about this?" Hiei said curtly. If he remembered correctly, humans were generally opposed to relationships where those involved were of the same gender.

"She doesn't know either," Kurama explained. The fire demon couldn't see him as he turned the white blossom over in his hands. "I was going to sit her down over dinner and explain, but then she fell ill."

Hiei wondered if Kurama had planned on sitting him down and explaining it to him before this whole mess of an investigation happened. Though honestly, once Shiori had contracted her Makai-based disease, it was probably the furthest thing from his mind. For someone who had spent so many years being as demon as demons can be, Kurama was incredibly human.

The anger seemed to dissipate, and oddly enough, curiosity seemed to take over. "...so how did it happen?" He asked, still keeping his back to his friend while glancing over his shoulder. He'd be damned if he was going to let Kurama read everything in his expression.

"Do you want to know every dirty little detail?" Kurama teased, mischief dancing in his eyes. Hiei snorted in response – he would still always be a fox, to some extent. But Kurama continued seriously, a small smile on his lips. "Back in that first battle between the two of us, he spoke of his search for his 'light.' When we were training together, he told me that he had eventually found it somewhere unexpected. In me."

Hiei rolled his eyes. They were just foolish and sentimental words. And now, Kurama had a weakness. Much like he had Yukina that his enemies could use against him, the fox now had an ice demon as his weakness. This was one of many reasons that Hiei would never tell his sister the truth – to protect her. Maybe it was one of the reasons Kurama hadn't mentioned anything either.

As if he could read his mind – Kurama just knew him too well – the fox said, "I know exactly what you're thinking. That this makes me weak." Hiei finally turned around, and he saw resilience and determination in those emerald eyes. "And honestly, I couldn't begin to describe to you how very wrong that assumption is until you've experienced it yourself."

The fire demon scoffed at this statement. "You'll be waiting a long time to explain that one, then."

The fox smiled at him, his eyes filled once more with that mischief Hiei had become so accustomed to seeing. But that gaze went right through him, held by the eyes of someone who knew something that he didn't. "Oh, I don't know about that. I'm not the only one here keeping secrets, am I?"

Before Hiei had time to answer that sudden question, or even think about it at all, Touya landed softly on the ground between them. The air around them was instantly chillier. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, his eyes glancing up to the trees, "but they're back."

The fire demon heard the familiar and increasingly more annoying sound of creaking wood and the hushed laughter of those creatures in the trees once more. And he really wasn't in the mood for them. He instantly unsheathed his sword and instinctually placed himself in a fighting stance in front of the unconscious Yusuke. He didn't have time to think of this involuntary action as the chattering above them increased, and white began drifting down from above them. It looked like snow from afar, but as the objects lightly rode the air to the ground, the demons and the fox could see that they were actually white petals – the sickeningly sweet scented petals of the same flowers that had caused all of their problems.

Hiei caught one of them in the palm of his hand. He glared up at creatures in the trees before the petal in his hand burst into flames. He curled his fingers around it, and every other petal caught fire. They were nothing but ash when they reached the forest floor. He was really getting pissed off. "Come down here so I can kill you!" He shouted up at them, finally able to release some of his anger at what he thought to be the right outlet.

"You are the ones who will perish," the voices whispered and hissed and cackled together, just short of being in unison. "You are the ones who will never leave this forest alive. You will become the soil, and your blood will feed the trees."

Hiei looked over at Kurama. "I'm going to burn this forest to the ground," he stated, his anger fueling the flames as they consumed the falling petals. He felt the familiar itch of the tattoo on his arm, the overwhelming urge to release the power of the black dragon and rain destruction down upon the entire area. There would be no need for further investigation when there was nothing to investigate.

The fox held a hand out in front of his chest. "Wait. You'll burn us along with it."

"You're smart, you'll figure something out," Hiei said, and knew that the assumption was probably true, but he forced himself to swallow some of his anger anyway. The itch beneath his bandaged arm dulled to a light throb. The dragon was calmed. For now.

Kurama looked up at the mass of wooden monsters above them, glancing sideward at Touya for a split second before addressing them. "What are you?" He shouted up at the creatures.

"We are the forest. We are individuals, but we are one. We are life, and we are death," They answered, still dropping the flower petals despite the fact that Hiei didn't allow even one of them to touch the ground intact. Every single petal became a short-lived flame that was dead before it could reach the ground.

"Why do you want us dead?" Kurama asked, though Hiei didn't expect them to give a straight answer. All they ever did was laugh from the safety of the treetops.

"All who trespass will die," they said, and that same hissed and cackling laughter erupted deafeningly around them. The fox continued in his attempts to get a real answer from them, but they either ignored him or couldn't hear him over their own voices.

Touya opened his palm, unveiling a fistful of ice shards, and with a breath sent them flying through one of the creatures. Even as it fell and it's body splintered into a thousands pieces as it hit the ground, the monsters above them did not cease in their laughing, nor did they stop showering them with petals. Touya ran and jumped up, flitting between two trees in an expert climb toward the canopy. Hiei could hear the sound of ice cracking and wood splintering, and soon the white falling down was indeed snow this time. The fire demon, in spite of all of his rage, kept his feet firmly planted where they were, gripping the hilt of his sword far more tightly than he needed to.

As the creatures began to flee, Touya disappeared into the trees after them. Kurama reached into his hair and pulled out a seed, which quickly grew into his familiar thorned whip. The fox glanced between Hiei and Yusuke for a moment before he said, "We're going to try to follow them. Maybe they'll lead us to answers. I trust you'll watch over Yusuke for a bit?"

Before Hiei could answer with what would have likely been a snide remark on how he wasn't on parole anymore and the fox couldn't tell him what to do, Kurama took off into the woods after the ice demon and the mass of retreating monsters. And the fire demon was left standing with his sword in hand, surrounded by the light layer of snow and splinters of wood that had been littered across the forest floor.

He stood there, unmoving, for several minutes. He glanced around the trees, but there was no more sign of those irritating creatures in the canopy above. Hiei replaced his sword back inside of it's sheath before turning around, unable to contain a frustrated sigh. He looked down at Yusuke's resting form with a glare set in his features.

"Guess I'm on babysitting duty," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone or anything else. He saw, in the dwindling light from the fire, that his resting companion had been covered in a layer of snow as well. Hiei groaned – he would never hear the end of it if Kurama came back and Yusuke was covered in snow. He glanced at the fire and it roared back to life, increasing the heat around them almost immediately. The fire demon knelt down and patted the layer of snow from Yusuke's clothing, annoyed that he had to be doing it at all.

Hiei stood straight up and looked around him once more, but the forest was as still and as silent as it had always been. As long as those creatures weren't around, the forest was deathly still. There wasn't even a breeze to rustle the leaves of the trees surrounding them. There were no signs of any kind of life other than Yusuke and himself. The fire demon sighed and sat beside his unconscious companion. The forest was so quiet that he could hear the soft rhythm of Yusuke's breath as he inhaled and exhaled, his chest rising and falling with the periodic expanding and retracting of his lungs. Hiei watched for any sign that he was still suffering, that he was in any kind of pain – the fire demon didn't want to be surprised again – before he brushed the already melting snowflakes from his friend's hair. His hand lingered above the slightly dampened loose strands of black, and his eyes fell upon those lips, dried blood still in the corners.

And it was in that moment, with his fingers running through dark-hued locks of hair and with the shadows from the firelight dancing across Yusuke's sleeping face, that Hiei realized what Kurama had been talking about – what Hiei had really been so frustrated, so perplexed, about. And it explained a lot of things – why Hiei had begun to see humans differently. Why he had become so involved in the affairs of humans. Why he had interfered in Yusuke's battle with Sniper a few years ago. Why he had become enraged out of his mind when he watched Yusuke die by Sensui's hand. Why he had been so quick to go along with Yusuke's insane plan that a tournament be held to determine the ruler of the Makai. Why he had been so eager to go on this very investigation. Why he got so angry seeing Yusuke in his current state. Why he had been changed in every way he possibly could have, in all the ways he never thought he could be.

It was all Yusuke. It had always been Yusuke.