A/N: W-whut? I went nearly two months without updating this? Here, have a chapter. Hopefully I'll write the next one faster.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Shuichi dreamed.

He still had no way to know if the dreams were his own, or if Kurama influenced them, but one thing was certain: the subject matter, which up until now had been rather haphazard and jumbled, took on a definite theme after Hiei left.

That first night, Shuichi dreamed that Hiei was in jail and Shuichi rescued him. Over and over he dreamed of a dozen different scenarios, all of which couldn’t be true and all of which couldn’t be false. He dreamed he turned into a fox and stole a key from someone’s desk; he and Hiei took turns sitting in the cell and being free; he played chess with Koenma while Hiei watched; he helped Hiei hide the bodies of the guards he’d killed.

The following morning, he had a difficult time explaining the broken windowsill to his mother and stepfather. He thought wistfully of the plant everyone called “dream pollen” while he told the only story he could think of: that he and Hiei had been roughhousing and it had gotten out of hand. He promised to pay for the repair and Hatanaka went off to work annoyed but accepting--after all, far stranger things than this had happened where his stepson was concerned.

Shiori, however, kept a watchful eye on Shuichi as he moped around the house all day. He desperately wanted company, but he was unwilling to go anywhere. Even though he knew that Hiei was not coming back, he couldn’t bring himself to be away from the window.

About an hour before dinner, Shiori carefully asked Shuichi, with no judgment in her tone, if the damage to the window had really been an accident. Caught off guard, Shuichi almost asked if he and Hiei had fought a lot before, but remembered in time that Shiori didn’t know there was a “before.” He wound up not answering, just silently walking out of the room. Shiori didn’t call him back.

The second night, he dreamed he was in his room, wrapping bandages around Hiei’s arm and criticizing him for having a rotten temper and worse timing. Hiei fell asleep while Shuichi was still scolding, and Shuichi finished doctoring him and tucked him into bed with a feeling of great affection that was at odds with his words.

Then a host of nightmare-type creatures invaded the room but Shuichi fought them all off, feeling confident in his strength and fond in his determination not to let the monsters wake Hiei. Then the dream changed, and it was suddenly Shuichi lying disoriented in a blood-soaked bed while Hiei loomed over him, his presence somehow filling the whole room. Hiei applied salve and bandages roughly and told Shuichi in the same breath that he was a bastard and he would be fine. Shuichi tried to explain that the monsters were about to come back but Hiei didn’t listen, just kept telling him to sleep.

The second day was worse than the first. Shuichi felt the need to avoid his mother’s questioning, so he gave up on the idea of staying near his window and went for a long walk around the city, going nowhere. Telling himself that things would be okay. Hiei was angry with him, but he would come back. He’d always come back before, at least, when he was angry with Kurama. And he’d said himself that Shuichi was the only piece of Kurama that was left in this world. Hiei wouldn’t be able to stay away from that.

At least, Shuichi hoped that was true.

When he stopped walking he found himself in the park, standing by the tree that Hiei had favored to doze in. Shuichi went home, got into a fight with his stepbrother over nothing, and locked himself in his room.

He dreamed of that awful Dark Tournament. He was standing outside the ring, watching Hiei fight over and over again. He kept thinking that the next fight would be the last, kept thinking wistfully of a little hotel room that was just theirs--but there was always one more competitor. So Hiei fought and Shuichi stood rooted in place, unable to move or speak, unable to do anything but watch.

The next day, Shiori informed him she had made an appointment with his therapist for that afternoon. Shuichi had always hated going to see that woman; now that he had some memories back and knew what had caused the “sudden behavioral change” that Shiori had sent him there for in the first place, he hated it even more. But he masked his resentment and, using skills he knew were more Kurama’s than his, crafted a half-truth concerning the reentrance of old friends into his life, mulled over some existential woes and then faked an appropriate revelation. He left with the therapist’s warm assurance that he had “made real progress” and “should be just fine.” It was sad how easy it was to do.

That night, he chased Hiei through his dreams. Play tag, Hiei said in the dream, and Shuichi agreed. But then Hiei leapt away and Shuichi remembered, a moment too late, that he could never catch Hiei. He was too fast. But Shuichi ran after him anyway, hearing echoes of Hiei’s voice taunting him, telling him he was almost there. But he never got close enough to see him.

The next day Shuichi broke down and called Yusuke. He was still a little wary of Yusuke because of the first impression he’d made, but he also knew if Hiei was in contact with anyone it would be him. Yusuke said he hadn’t seen Hiei in a long time, that he didn’t have a clue where he was, and that he wanted to know why Shuichi was asking. Shuichi told him they’d fought without telling him what it had been about. Yusuke laughed, then blithely reassured Shuichi that Hiei would show up when he was good and ready and Shuichi shouldn’t waste his time worrying about “that punk.”

Shuichi hung up and called Kuwabara. When he received almost exactly the same answer, he went down to the train station and rode the train to the end of the line, then hiked up to the temple to try his luck with Genkai and Yukina. Yukina was the only one, out of all of them, who showed the slightest hint of concern about Hiei’s absence, and she let herself be reassured easily by Genkai.

Shuichi rode back home feeling resentful and frustrated. He kept trying to impress on everyone how bad a fight it had been, but without telling them what it was about, how could they understand? How could they know how badly he needed to just know Hiei was okay somewhere and have a change to apologize and explain? They all thought he was blowing something out of proportion. They all thought they knew Hiei better than he did.

Well, I have more memories of Hiei than all of you put together. I know things nobody else except Kurama does. And one of the things Shuichi was starting to realize he knew was that Hiei was not coming back. Not for a long time, at least.

The fourth night of dreams was unconfused and memory-like, of himself and Hiei lying on the floor of his room, listless, the weight of things they couldn‘t say pressing down on them. Shuichi knew that it was just after Yukina had been rescued, and that Hiei needed to talk about it but couldn’t. So he started talking randomly about flowers and botany, showing Hiei various plants until Hiei grew bored and cantankerous enough to poke at one of them. The rest of the dream was Shuichi untangling them both from the resulting explosion of vines. He and Hiei were laughing.

The next day there was an enormous, hours-long fight in the Hatanaka household which involved everyone fighting about nothing. Shuichi knew his own miserable tension was the cause of it. He fled the house and walked aimlessly through the streets, not coming home until all the lights in the house were off. It was much later than usual before the light in his mother and stepfather’s room was extinguished.

Shuichi tried not to sleep. He didn’t want to know what the next dream would be. He sat cross-legged on his bed, weary and miserable, and stared at the broken window. But try as he might, he was human and exhausted; he drifted in and out of sleep, often half-aware. He saw Hiei in the window at times. He didn’t say anything, just watched him, knowing that if he spoke Hiei wouldn’t respond. Shuichi didn’t remember falling into deeper sleep, but when he woke there were tears he didn’t remember crying on his face.

He took the train to the temple again, and repeated the same conversation with Genkai and Yukina. The more they tried to reassure him, the more upset he became. Nobody understood. And there was no way to make them understand.

Shuichi spent late afternoon and evening standing quietly in the forest surrounding Genkai’s temple, looking at the place where he knew he could step over an invisible boundary and into the demon world. Yukina watched him most of the time he was there, but she didn’t say anything. Shuichi had no way of knowing what she would have done if he’d tried to cross. Maybe stopped him. Maybe come with him. Kurama had been almost certain Yukina knew who Hiei was--maybe she’d want to help. But Kurama had also thought of Yukina as someone who needed protection.

Shuichi had no skill at evaluating someone’s demon strength. He knew Yukina was weaker than Kurama and Hiei and Yusuke, because he remembered. He also knew all three of those people were considered very powerful demons. So it didn’t tell him how strong or weak Yukina might be in comparison to an average demon; if she might be capable of protecting him, if she went with him. Or just how much protection he would need. Shuichi didn’t know how dangerous it would be to step over that border. He knew there was at least some danger, because everyone said so. But Kurama’s memories held no fear of it; and Kurama’s memories were a very strong part of Shuichi these days. He knew that he was not Kurama, knew there was reason to fear, but he didn’t feel frightened. Couldn’t conceptualize the danger.

Shuichi didn’t realize how late it had become until the light faded. It was too late to catch a train home. He walked back up to the temple and slept on the porch in the mellow air, not bothering to inform Genkai he was there or use her phone to call his mother. He felt locked into a stupor, unable to make more than the most basic of efforts.

Then, the sixth night of dreams.

The dream that night was crystal clear, and it came from a time past when Kurama had shared Shuichi’s body. In it, Kurama had been Yoko and he and Hiei had wandered demon world, laughing at Kurama’s moments of disorientation from the recent split, not yet aware that anything was wrong. Kurama tried, in his fox form, to catch a fish and fell into the river instead. Hiei laughed so hard he hyperventilated. Kurama, back in Yoko form, helped Hiei to regain control of his breathing and then, when he was still weak from laughter, picked him up and tossed him in the river. Hiei crawled out, dried himself with a puff of fire, and started laughing again; Kurama was forced to laugh too. They ate fish cooked over an open fire that night--Kurama having had many more successful tries at fishing--and then lay on their stomachs and talked, frequently interrupting each other, talking about nothing and everything with the sense that they would never run out of things to say, but there was no hurry to get it all said. The end of Kurama’s memory was of falling asleep with a full belly with Hiei lying next to him, staring at the stars with a grin on his face.

Shuichi woke curled into the fetal position, shivering from cold. Dawn was only the faintest suggestion on the horizon. Shuichi stood and stiffly went down the temple steps.

His feet moved without his conscious direction. Shuichi walked in a kind of daze, dwelling on the memory so fresh in his mind--the feeling of being deeply and perfectly happy and in love. When he found himself by the border again he stopped. He tried to search his mind for any true knowledge about what lay on the other side, but all that came was Kurama’s emotional reaction--a lack of fear.

Shuichi stepped over the border.