shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2010-03-31 23:30:00 |
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Current mood: | numb |
Old Grudges (YYH/Immortal Regis, Serin/Kurama)
Title: Old Grudges
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho/Immortal Regis
Pairing/characters: Serin/Kurama
Rating: pg13
Warnings: violence
Prompt/challenge you're answering: The heat between Youko Kurama and Serin was becoming impossible to resist.
A/N: sequel to this.
She hadn't recognized him at first.
He looked different now -- a slight, dark haired boy with an unruffled expression, instead of an acutely, dangerously beautiful creature with a silver pelt of long hair and the ruthless, distant consideration of a born predator. And, of course, she'd last seen him framed in the rich green of her sister's garden, now lost to her.
But when she'd first been introduced, she hadn't recognized him. They'd been too far to properly sense him, and it was hardly polite to scan someone you planned on working with; you might as well prop up a sign on your forehead shouting I don't trust you! And she -- well, she didn't distrust them. Yet. Serin was a stranger in a strange land here, and she intended to abide by its rules.
They took her to an apartment to learn. It reminded her briefly of Jae Hyuk's, smelling of warmth and love and sickness, the pervasive hint of blood and rasping air. This one was harmless, almost sterile. She stepped over the doorway and almost stumbled at the push of power -- furious with herself, she controlled the movement, but the damage was done, and it hadn't gone unnoticed; the dark haired boy stepped forward, his hand brushing her arm. "Are you all right?" He asked, perfectly courteous.
This close she could feel him.
She stared at him from a breath away, her arm suddenly stiff under his fingers. It rushed on her, the scent of her garden, the stickiness of the acidic sap against her heels, the whisper of the vines as he turned her last haven against her. His expression shifted minutely -- recognizing her, reacting to her sudden flare of hatred, merely preparing to draw back -- and she snarled, "you."
And lunged for his throat.
"Someone," Urameshi Yusuke drawled from the doorway, "really needs to explain what's going on here."
She recognized his face from the hall outside of Koenma's chambers, and his scent from the walls. He must live here, then. Her eyes flicked to the scattered furniture, vines coiling heavily out of the walls. The living room had been turned into an impromptu battleground, and showed it.
"We've had a small problem," Kurama explained politely. He looked as relaxed as ever, one hand still in his pocket, the other holding a handful of seeds. Dark flame coiled around one of Serin's gloved fists, and the other held her long blade -- but vines wrapped around her legs, coiling up to dig into her thighs, and the point of her blade was aimed at the floor, her magic slowly bleeding back into her body rather than the air.
She could have cut or burned the vines away when they'd gotten close enough, but sense had returned in a dizzying rush. She was attempting to murder the teammate of the demon she was supposed to be working with. Her behavior was not fit for the heiress of the demon clan, and was stupidly reckless to boot. What had she been thinking?
Astarote!
Your sister is dead. She could hear her father's voice thunder between her ears, hard and unforgiving. And your behavior is shameful.
She vanished her blade with an effort, though it left her feeling naked, vulnerable and as though every movement could be an attack. Adrenaline shocked through her with each heartbeat still, but she drew a deep breath. Evidently some information had been exchanged in the brief glance they'd shared, because both Kurama and Urameshi turned to look at her. Urameshi's eyes were narrowed, asssessing, and his body slouched lazily -- but with a line of tension beneath that.
"This was not my intention," she whispered through almost numb lips. "I apologize. I -- " For a moment training failed her, diplomacy and formality molten in her grasp. What did you say to cover over I just attemtped to murder your friend? The incandescent hatred was missing and in its place was a hollow, aching pain and a snarl of complicated emotions. Resentment was there, chalky and bitter on her tongue.
Urameshi raised an eyebrow at his friend.
"We have met," Kurama answered the unspoken question.
"Geez, you made friends everywhere didn't you?" Urameshi eyed the green twining up to the hem of her skirt. "Seriously, though, she said sorry. You might lay off the bondage fetish."
Kurama smiled faintly and curled his fingers over the seed; the vines retreating, sliding down her legs. Her stockings snagged, but this was probably a record for the least-stressful situation in which she'd damaged them.
"Right," Urameshi said, grin uncomfortably sharp. "So. How about a briefing?"
She left his lodgings late at night, with a tentative plan, solid reestablished control over herself, and cold calculations running in her mind. She wasn't thinking about Kurama; she was in fact not thinking about him so determinedly when he melted out of the shadows her blade was half-summoned out of startlement. Stupid, she chastised herself viciously. Internal focus had left her unprepared. If he'd been hostile, he might have been able to wound her before she could parry.
He paused when he saw the weapon and Serin coloured, grateful for the shadows as she banished it again hastily. She stood almost rigidly straight, shoulders stiff, and met his eyes as the quiet hung between them like a shroud.
"Do you remember me?" The words tore free of her lips before she could rein them in.
"I do," he said mildly. "I didn't recall it to be an offense worthy of murder."
Serin began walking again, collected, her heels clicking briskly on the concrete. She passed him, her shoulders tightening briefly as the space between them prickled, but he fell into step beside her. "You were trespassing."
"If that's the story you prefer." For a demon thief, he was distinctly -- outwardly, anyway -- mild-mannered, but the tone still stung. He was also too perceptive.
Serin pulled up short and turned to face him. "It wasn't yours," she said violently.
"I'm sorry?"
"It wasn't yours," she repeated, fiercely, even though the words barely made sense to herself. "You had no right to be there."
It wasn't ownership that made it tresspassing. It was my heart, and my sister's memory, the traces of her scent on the trees and the grass. It wasn't yours to claim and turn against me. She didn't know how much of her thoughts made it into her expression, or how much of them were truly coherent, but Kurama regarded her steadily for a long moment.
"If I apologized, would it mean anything to you?"
Serin stared at him, frozen and unmoving. His eyes were dark and close, and she could see a thousand thought she could barely guess at running between them between each flicker of his eyelashes. His voice was warm and low, not pitying or intrusive but a simple, bare-bones question. Would it mean anything to you? But the problem was that the injury had not been his, not truly; it had been her own, her mind turning against her own heart with the brutal realization that nothing was safe anymore. And so the reparations were not his to make.
"No," she said, cool and short, and took to the air.
And then there was battle.
Serin was good at fighting. She was a consummate killer, a user of terrible magics, and through dint of practice, determination and ferocity, really fucking good at ripping things apart. What she didn't advertise was that -- fiercely, uncompromisingly -- she liked it. She lived on triumph in battle some days.
She crossed a room strewn with vines, kicked down a splintered door. Kurama stared at her from across the room, but though this look was probably an echo of a demon's strength, he had been at best indifferent to her presence in the garden, barely interested though not interested in letting her stay. This dark, cold threat was new, and she stepped over the threshold, her eyes flicking to the vines that sighed and moved at her feet like satisfied snakes, and then up again. There was blood beading in his eyelashes.
"Do you know where it went?" She asked without preamble.
He flicked blood free of his fingers, humanity slipped back into his expression. "I believe Yusuke drew it off to the South End," he said. She nodded curtly; he followed her down the demolished hall, easily keeping pace with her long strides. She wiped absently at her cheek, blood smearing, and sniffed her fingers. She gave a brief, gusty sigh at the stink of their blood and turned to brace a leg against the window sill and leap out into the courtyard.
"Kurama -- " She began, and turned. He was too close behind her, clearly not having expected her to turn back. For a split second she froze, her eyes widening, the threat of human contact startling her. Then she found her voice, a little raw but that could have been from the rumble of incantations. "If you can pin at least two of its limbs," she said, and lightly touched one of the vines with her bare fingers. "I can kill it, I think."
He smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. "I'm sure I can manage that."
Serin launched herself into space, and found herself amidst a whole crowd of foot soldiers.
The last demon died under the heel of her boot, bracing her foot against his skull as she tugged her blade free. Her hair was plastered to her throat with blood, and she slung it out of her eyes, wiping at her cheek again and probably only making the problem worse. She could see vines knotting at key points, and she wasn't going to have a better chance than this. She kicked her kill over onto its stomach and vaulted off of its back -- the hilt of her blade sang in her hand, blood drunk, and she leapt off a low curve of scales and came down with all of her weight driving the point of her sword into the master demon's lambently bulbous eye.
It shrieked, agony and rage mingling, but the power exploding out of it was lost, not offensive, and she sucked in an agonized gasp of air as the uncontrolled magic slammed into her stomach, tossing her off of its head like a rag doll. This will hurt, and she braced herself, banishing the sword to try and prepare herself for --
Her shoulder nearly came out of the socket, and only didn't because the vine that snagged her arm didn't jerk her to a stop but curved with her, tugged by her weight before returning to an upright position. Serin hung, suspended far above the ground and watching as steaming chunks of meat collapsed from the spell-scribed skeleton. She cursed briefly and viciously in appreciation of the other magician's trade, because she was covered in blood, bruised and sore and hanging in midair, and she was not in a good mood.
It probably wouldn't be polite to cut off a chunk of vine, and drop, considering it had just saved her life.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, the vine dipped, lowering her gradually to the ground. Her heels found solid earth again and she settled, letting her arm slip out of the sleek green coils. She turned to survey the wrecked courtyard with mild admiration, noting the impromptu demolition Yusuke favoured. Not that she'd been terribly neat herself...
Then she turned and saw Kurama walking across the courtyard, adroitly avoiding scattered rubble and flesh, as well as the dessicated bone. He looked mildly irritated if anything, but there was a new stripe of blood on his cheek, and when his eyes met hers they had a dark and dangerous glow to them.
Heat flooded her throat, galvanized her limbs and shocked into her belly. She didn't know whether it was arousal or violence or both; she wasn't angry anymore, this was something entirely different -- and for a second it was almost as overwhelming as the flare of emotion that had caused her to attack him in the apartment.
Her hand twitched, aching for her blade. This was not familiar ground, even if the warmth of blood on her cheeks and the flush of battleground triumph was. This was -- new.
That smile curled over his features again, and she returned the smile before she thought about it, her own dark and arrogant and dangerous. Come and get it, it invited. I might be more trouble than you want to handle.
She waited to see if he'd take the step.