deadly_garden | Stand By My Side [RL With Kuronue]

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Stand By My Side [RL With Kuronue]

Yoko stood in front of the clearly deranged bat, paying no attention to the body scant inches from his foot. His arms were crossed and his eight tails waved and twitched in obvious annoyance.

This was not the Kuronue he had woken up next to that morning. No, this bat was unhinged, speaking nonsense -- Buried beneath the roses? Him? Honestly. -- and obviously had suffered a head injury of some sort. This was not something the fox wanted to deal with in the slightest, though it was obvious that it would have to be dealt with swiftly.

Illusion, delusion, hallucination? Yoko was none of these things and would prove it.

His voice was cold, void of emotion that he couldn't spare at the moment. "Kuronue, explain yourself. Now."

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The crown tumbled as Kuronue surged to his feet, just one impossibly fast blur of motion. In their time apart, in this alternate reality, he'd had little left to do but train. He'd made himself stronger, he'd fought everyone he'd believed capable of taking him down and in the end no one had been strong enough. Until there'd only been him, as alone as he'd ever been. No one had every raised themselves to that level, had ever bested him. Those some had come close.

"Stop it," he hissed again, hands grasping and pushing at the vision, "stop it. You don't belong in my head you don't belong here, get out get out!"

Kurama watched Kuronue as he pushed at him, still bloody nails smearing on his clothes. "I belong here as much as you do, Kuronue. I will not leave until you explain yourself to me."

He grasped his shoulders and pushed him back to look into the bat's eyes. "What in Inari's name has gotten into you? I'm here. You're touching me, you're close enough to catch my scent, I'm alive. As are you. So what is going on?"

"I saw you die," his voice cracked in a fury, but it was impotent rage, formless and pointless. Even if this was a hallucination of some kind, or an illusion crafted by a master assassin here to use it against him ... Kuronue couldn't strike out against his partner.

Over a thousand years after the fact and he couldn't ...

His hands shook, fisting in the front of Kurama's robes as he sagged, wings trembling and hunching in tight. "You died. You died and they skinned you and I buried what was left under the roses. And then I killed everything and everyone I could for taking you from me."

Somewhere in Yoko's heart, the one he sometimes liked to pretend wasn't there after that long ago heist, he felt something twitch in... sympathy? Empathy? He shoved it back, not taking the time to examine it too close.

He took Kuronue's wrists in his hands and knelt down to bring himself eye level with the hysterical bat. "Kuro," he whispered, shortening the bat's name unconsciously, "I'm not dead, I swear. I've never lied to you and I certainly will not start now. Don't you remember? You were the one injured. The bamboo and your captivity and rescue?" He hissed in a breath. "I was afraid I got to you too late."

He forced open one of Kuronue's hands and brought it up to rest against a cheek. "I'm still here, Kuronue. I have my skin in its proper place. I'm not under the roses. I swear it to you."

"I remember the bamboo," he agreed in a low wavering tone. Hectic eyes watched Kurama's hands against his own, and bloodstreaked fingers flinched before curling into the kitsune's cheek. "It rained down from the sky and pierced my wings. It pinned you down like a butterfly. You told me to run and I did..."

His eyes widened, lips splitting in a very unstable smile as they frosted over with tears. "I was a fool to listen. I came back for you and you were parts, pieces, they'd taken your pelt and your teeth and claws and left the rest to rot. I remember."

Trusting Kuronue to not move his hand, he released his wrist and lightly touched Kuronue's cheek. His stomach twisted, not from the image of himself as Kuronue described, but from imagining what the bat must have felt, what he'd gone through. Even if it was just all in his head, it had clearly affected him severely.

"Inari, Kuro," he whispered and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist. "That never happened. If it did, would I be here now? Here and whole."

Kuronue's smile cracked and slipped away, even though from the beginning it hadn't' really been a smile at all. More of a grimace, a pained little twist of the mouth. His wings shivered, still pock-marked with the holes, scarred where he'd ripped away to escape. There'd been no Yoko there to patch them, no steady delicate bandit fingers to thread careful stitching and mend the tearing. "I have your tails, I took them back," he curled his fingers and tugged his arm away from the kiss, teeth gritting.

"Seven ... I thought Yomi had taken the remaining but I still need to look, he doesn't have them or they're hidden but see? I have the seven," he reached to touch his belt, and true to his word tangled through that white sarong-wrap he wore were tufts of long white fur. Rust-stained in spots with ancient blood.

"Nine hundred twenty-three years ago to the day..."

It hurt, just a little, when Kuronue pulled away from him. Not enough to make Yoko admit it, of course. His eyes trailed over the bat's wings, inwardly flinching at the damage. Could he even fly now? The idea of the bat forever grounded was not a welcome one in his mind, and started to cast doubt on his belief that this was all in his head. One couldn't just will that kind of damage onto themself.

Still... "Kuronue, I only had six tails then." He didn't look at them, knowing that if he did he would have to believe the other's story. And he didn't want to believe it, didn't want to think that he'd left his bat alone for so long. Didn't want to think that he had caused him to become unhinged because he'd died in such a way. "I only gained my eighth a few years ago." He waved them for emphasis.

"... I remember there being more," he murmured, reaching past Kurama's hip to touch the moving appendages. Soft fur felt warm under his fingers, not like the cold and lifelessly stiff things he'd lifted from treasure rooms over the centuries. The bat had to lean forward into Kurama to reach them. Soft, so soft - he hadn't felt this in so long, and the kitsune smelled strongly of roses up close. Not artificial acrid perfumes like the impostors he'd seen in the past.

None of this made any sense but it didn't fully have to. He nosed into one of the fox's shoulders and breathed in lightly, eyes fluttering closed on a small pained sound.

"You smell just the same." Tattered wings rustled, stretching in a familiar pleased way even though it was an ingrained and reflexive response. He'd always loved Kuramas scent.

Yoko stilled the tail Kuronue reached out for, instead curling it around his hand. One of the other tails went around the other's waist, pulling him forward slightly. The other six hovered in the back, waiting to see if they were needed.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head onto the bat's, making a soft noise as he nosed into the other's hair. It smelled of blood, old and new, and very little of it his own. Thank Inari for small favors, he supposed.

"Of course I do," he said quietly, the tail around his waist tightening slightly. "Because I'm real."

None of this was making much sense, it was all too impossible. Kurama was warm and solid unlike his night terrors; he wasn't jerking awake from dreams and reaching out, to see his hands sliding through empty air, no, this body was real. Roses and stone. He didn't know when he'd started shaking but it was probably a damned embarrassing thing to do, since technically he was king of this entire land.

Not that he wanted it. His reputation was likely damaged beyond repair, as it was. It didn't matter, nothing mattered but this. His crown had slipped free and hit the floor ages back and he hadn't bothered to reach for it. If this was a trick ... it wasn't such a bad way to go really.

The hand against Kurama's tail tightened, before the bat made a soft wounded sound, rubbing a suspiciously damp face harder against the kitsune's shoulder. "I wanna believe that."

If Yoko noticed the tears, he didn't mention them. If nothing else Kuronue deserved them; he must have gone through something worse than hell all these years. He didn't want to think of what he would have done if the situation had been reversed.

Instead he smiled softly and brought a hand up to gently comb through the ink black hair, pausing sometimes to work out a knot on the way. The tails tightened as much as they could without becoming too painful, the other six curling around them. "Then believe it," the fox whispered, his other arm curling around Kuronue's waist. "Because it's true, and I have no intentions of leaving you. Not now, not ever."

Kurama always had such a way with words; he could spin even the most basic of sentences into something floral and beautiful with the right incentive. All this time the bat had fought enemies he'd always believed to be stronger than himself, never expecting to walk away from such an honorable death. And each time he'd been the last man standing, aghast, giddily hysteric at the fates for insisting he live just awhile longer.

Until he was the only one left. Until his power level was so high no one, not even his legendary partner, could match him. Not that he had any intentions of fighting Kurama and matching skill sets. It was all so pointless, this was the only thing he'd wanted, other treasures were useless.

"I want... I want to remember it your way, not this. Yours are better, I want to believe yours and not mine." It wasn't so simple, but if he was desperate enough he could pretend Kurama was still here and easily walk away from that blood-splattered throne room. "I'll go with you."

Yoko smiled, pulling back to look in Kuronue's eyes again. A clawed hand brushed away a rouge tear as he spoke. "Then do," he whispered. "Do believe me, and nothing would make me happier than to have you with me, as we should be."

He stood slowly, one of his hands gently tugging one of the bat's. It was simple enough to Yoko. "Choose the reality that is mine, choose the one makes you happiest. Why cling to sorrow?"

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Stand By My Side [RL With Kuronue]

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I hve no iea why it never emailed me that tag =n=

It's alright, I figured it was either that or you still weren't feeling well. ^^

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Now that I am done being sick (I hope) I return!