Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8471350.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      幽☆遊☆白書_|_YuYu_Hakusho:_Ghost_Files
  Relationship:
      Karasu/Kurama_|_Minamino_Shuuichi, Kurama_|_Minamino_Shuuichi/Yomi
  Character:
      Kurama_|_Minamino_Shuuichi, Yomi_(YuYu_Hakusho), Karasu_(YuYu_Hakusho),
      Toguro-otouto_|_Younger_Toguro
  Additional Tags:
      Child_Abuse, Sexual_Slavery, Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence,
      Alternate_Universe_-_Science_Fiction, Homophobia
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-11-04 Words: 6449
****** Future Tense ******
by Sekah
Summary
     CREATED FOR THE YYH BIG BANG.
     When two points of time come into contact, and two enemies are thrown
     together, a certain fox begrudges a divine reminder of those he loved
     and lost.
Notes
     Look at the beautiful artwork for this story HERE! http://
     annajiejie.tumblr.com/post/152738359960/and-heres-my-second-yyhbb-
     artwork-this-one-is
     Thanks so much to the artist, annajiejie!!
     I'm so glad to have written this story. It's been so long since I
     wrote a fic, after all. It was nostalgic. Thank you so much for the
     experience YYH Big Bang.
Karasu twisted in a somersault to dodge a spring-loaded net, but he was too
hungry to pull it off right. The edge caught him and he landed wrong, right on
the steel bear trap he’d been trying to avoid. He was clubbed down. Bones and
skin broke indiscriminately. Karasu swallowed his scream, about to blow off his
leg, a lizard caught by a bird.
 
His muscles seized, pain prickling outward from a numbness in his back. He fell
into an ungraceful heap, blood oozing from the exposed flesh of his leg. The
slavers circled and kicked him, muttering.
 
“Fine boy,” one said.

 “How old is he? Eleven, twelve?”
 
“Has a nice kick,” a man grumbled, nursing a bruised jaw.
 
“Toguro will want to see him. I’ve never seen someone with that power, other’n
Lord Toguro’s pet bird.”
 
“Don’t they kinda look alike? Could they be—?”
 
“You think our Princess kept it up long enough to impregnate a woman?” scoffed
another.

Karasu twitched from his tazing, mouth frothing. He seized in the leaf-litter
of the forest floor.
An uneasy mutter went around the circle.
 
===============================================================================
 
Your past has a way of coming back to haunt you, and Kurama knew that quite
well.
 
He reached up for a moment to adjust his collar. Yomi had offered to remove it,
but Kurama wouldn’t. Not until he was truly and legally free.

 That discussion had been frustrating for his former subordinate. Yomi yelled.
Kurama coolly offered to arrange him a meeting with a masseuse.
 
Today, Yomi had given Kurama an order: find and hire a suitable assistant.
 
Kurama had every intention to be petty, and buy him another slave.
 
It was about sending a message. It was about highlighting how he felt about
Yomi’s actions to Yomi. Even if it meant being on the buyer’s side of the
auction, the line drawn in the sand would be worth it.
 
The tinny voice of the pilot rang from the intercom. “Now arriving at the
Point, sir.”

 Kurama smiled. The pilot had enough sense not to call their destination by its
proper name in front of property. He could appreciate the diplomacy.
 
Slave Point was a ruined hunk of metal that orbited the Earth, a second moon,
man made. Run by Sakyo and staffed by Toguro’s men, it was no haven for him. He
would be buying privately, mainly because memories of the stages made him
retch.
 
The multitudes of people were easy to see through the glass walls of the dock,
despite the flickering advertisements covering the windows washing the milieu
in color.
 
Kurama was ferried into the bustling port in a ship the color of stolen onyx
necklaces when he and Yomi were first setting out. Statecraft demanded a top-
of-the-line cruiser like this. Kurama remembered the lamborghinis of the year
2000.
 
But that was more than five hundred years ago.
 
He thought of Yomi finding out where he was going and gritting his teeth.
 
New Year was marked tomorrow, Kurama knew. He smiled, the out-of-date proverb
out with the old, in with the new  ringing in his ears like old-timey music.
 
===============================================================================
 
Karasu’s wrists were locked in manacles powered by an energy that felt and
smelled like lightning.
 
He kept feeling a parody of his own energy licking at the edges of his
peripheral sensing. It felt older, mature, twisted, but still him. He'd hidden
from it. Karasu had enough experience with predatory ki like that to last ten
lifetimes. He masked himself with effort. He could feel his empty stomach
eating itself, but the lack of power to heal some of the bruising was worse.
 
He snapped to attention when the door slid open with a mechanical whir. The
first to enter was an indecent slaver whose gut fell over the hem of his pants.
The man who came in behind him was a wet dream of Karasu’s. His mouth popped
open, watching the redhead wide-eyed. He looked only a few years older than
himself. Others turned to examine him, everyone transfixed by the sight of the
young man, whose frosty voice made Karasu tilt his head to hear the melody
better. “When I said someone who’d grow into the role, I did not mean a child,
sir—”
 
The handsome stranger stopped, dead in his tracks. His eyes, scanning the room,
were stuck on Karasu like the boy was a carnivorous plant and his attention a
frog caught mid-jump. Karasu had the faintest inkling this man was not easily
surprised. Karasu’s open-mouthed gawp closed. He glared back.
 
Karasu had been in similar situations before. He’d seen men who his young heart
had soared for before. Each had harmed him no less cruelly than the doughy
slaver. In fact, the more fit and in shape the abuser was, the longer the pain
lasted. You can’t run when they can catch you.
 
“Is he to your liking, Mr. Kurama?” asked the slaver, building into a sales
pitch. Kurama couldn’t seem to retain the man’s words, never looking away from
the child.
 
Karasu ducked his head to drag his sweaty upper lip along his shoulder. He
twined his fingers in the edges of his shoulder-length hair, fastidious as a
cat. He hid in his fringe of black bangs and tried to ignore the man's
scrutiny. He was aware of his ragged clothes and the scent of his sweat. The
sun had risen on his face in the form of a shiny black eye, unhealed, like the
marks of the bear trap. Karasu told himself he had no interest in even
beautiful masters.
 
The owner of Karasu’s energy raced down a corridor, drawn by the clear green of
the redhead's aura. Something massive flared. Karasu could hear an argument
starting nearby, the words indistinct, still too far away.
 
The man was quick on his feet, admirably smooth as he pulled himself together.
“Is this some kind of trick?” the handsome stranger asked. He stood arrayed
with his feet squared, waiting for his opponent.
 
Karasu glanced behind him, then squinted at the slaver. Who was there to fight
here? Karasu could kill that bastard even chained like this.
 
The young man turned and stared in the direction of the two energies, the two
voices whose words neither could make out.
 
He turned back to Karasu with his brows drawn down in a severe line. “What’s
your name?”
 
Karasu’s violet eyes flicked up, burning into Kurama’s with curiosity and an
infinite misery, like a bird that grooms out its own feathers. His eyes slid
down. His chin tucked, the black bangs falling into his face once more.
"Beast," he muttered, his accent archaic dockside Rengar, half-swallowed.
“Name’s Beast.”
 
He put his chin to his knees and hugged his legs, waiting for the mockery, the
blow. He hated his name. Mother had dropped it like a load on his head. He
wished he had the courage to assert his nickname, but Karasu was a secret he
kept locked in his chest.
 
He hated mother too. He just hated, so much and with so much passion. He was
nearing early adolescence but he looked weary as an old man—a lifetime of scant
rations and never enough of anything could do that to you. He was all bravado,
a budding tough guy, though in many ways he still smelled of the child he was
leaving behind. He was undoubtedly pretty; his skin looked soft where the bones
didn't nob. The slavers had noticed the attitude that would have to be broken
for him to sell well.
 
“Beast?” Kurama asked. He looked him over with eyes green as new forest. “You
don’t seem like a beast to me, young man. Do you remember where you were before
you were here?”
 
“I was crossing a portal to the human world with father—we were gonna visit
Hangzhou. The portal was odd. Bright. I smelled rice cooking,” he added
helpfully. “In the portal.”
 
Kurama’s face got a look like he’d sucked a whole half of a lemon. He examined
the boy, glanced to the side, and let out a fox’s chuff. “I—” He looked down,
tapping his foot. “I think—” he resumed, “—I think I would like to take you
with me. Would you like that?”
 
Beast opened to the kindness like a flower, failing to perceive the test. He
didn't trust the man, but to be, for once, considered unworthy of his name—he
looked exactly like a starving, neglected bud given a skilled gardener's sudden
needed attention.
 
"I'll come!" he shouted, and pulled upright, showing himself a tall and lanky
boy for his age, even with the years of malnutrition, despite being half-grown
and shorter than Kurama. "I'll come."
 
He held up his manacled wrists solemnly, showing the chains that bound him to a
ring on the floor.
 
"Karasu," he said, nearly choking on the hope the name represented to him. A
blush hit his pale skin like a sunrise. "I hate Beast. I like being called
Karasu." Some of the syllables in the words were being dropped. It was still
gutter drawl, marking him as a brothel brat, which he also hated. He didn't
know any other way to speak.
 
The man’s face narrowed into a sour, scrutinizing look. Still, he said, “I am
Kurama.” He turned his attention to the slaver. “Would fifty thousand cover
it?” The fat seller immediately clasped his hands, exclaiming that  it would,
yes sir .
 
Beast couldn't breathe, scared this would be a dream. Fifty thousand. This man
gave fifty thousand for Beast. It was an impossible number. He didn’t know
anyone had fifty thousand of anything. The redhead in his strict black outfit
pressed his thumb to something the slaver brandished.
 
“Your transaction is complete,” the slaver gleefully called after the suited
man with his long red hair, who was already retreating.
 
Karasu was disappointed: he’d wanted to see 50,000 of something exchanged.
 
The manacles released. Karasu ran to catch up with his benefactor. As he did
his wings burst from behind his back, in pure joy. They lifted his tatty shirt
up and became tangled in the cloth, so he pulled his shirt off, for once not
minding the scars, and ran ahead of the demon, babbling, talkative already, and
not yet learned how to curb it.
 
"Sir, you won't regret this, you won't," he called, soaking up positive
attention like a sponge, becoming full and dripping. The mania that would one
day be an important facet of his personality was forming already, though he was
not yet truly diseased of the mind.
 
Running backwards, he didn't even notice the figure behind him until he felt
his own energy flair behind him. He whipped around. Kurama squared off again,
his hand going up to his hair, as if to check it.
 
The sneer on the man's face when he first glanced at Beast fell away
completely. For the second time that day, he was stared at, eyes bugging above
an intricate iron mask. There was a muffled pop as the new man’s mouth fell
open.
 
"What in the hell—" he sputtered, looking as anyone would if they turned a
corner and met the ghost of their past self. "What trick is this, Kurama? This
can't be—" His eyes narrowed at the boy. "You think I’ll be persuaded by some
cheap copy?” He was scoffing, but the tall man’s bravado made Beast think of
the glittering salt they sold at the market, with rocks mixed into the nuggets
to pad the weight.
 
“Funny,” Kurama said, though he didn’t sound amused. “I thought the same
thing.”
 
The masked man ignored him. “What do you think of sweets?” he asked, his voice
muffled by the iron mask.
 
"I hate them," Beast, renamed Karasu, said warily, stepping rapidly back from
the volatile man's rage.
 
Violet eyes flew wider. "Do you...how do you feel about people chewing?"
 
Beast squinted at the man, still sidling away. "I hate it, it's the worst. It
reminds me of—." The last word was smothered by the adult’s insistent hand.
Both man and boy flinched.
 
"I—" the man began, but fell off, letting the child go and leaning into the
wall with a thump.
 
Before the adult could respond, a massive shadow reached out and began dragging
the man back by his shoulder. "Come on, Karasu."
 
Beast recognized him as Toguro, who had processed him.
 
"You knew," Karasu accused.
 
Toguro shrugged. The adult mirror of the boy hissed out, "Wait."
 
He looked at himself, down at his bare feet. Toguro, sensing his intention
wasn't lust or mischief, let him go. Karasu's voice creaked.
 
"Boy, when you meet Linaeas, don't follow him. It doesn't matter that he's
beautiful, and he was lying about loving you. You know pimp behavior, you
should have pegged him the second you saw him. When you visit the shadow
temples, don't try their drugs. They induce paranoia and you have enough of
that without them. Kill Lysandre. Don't—" His eyes strayed to Kurama for a
moment. "—practice stalking with the Youko Kurama. On the coast of the Abescene
peninsula, in the fir trees with the bandits' camp nearby, don't let father go
left to avoid. Turn back, it's a ruse, the bandits are waiting for you. Don't
go left."
 
"And take this," he said, and reached to grab the boy's shying hand. He put a
small baggie of powder in it from his back pocket. "Jinjeng powder, for the
nightmares.” He turned and walked away, his last words, "Works like a charm."
 
Toguro shrugged again, before following Karasu. "I think you just unmade
yourself," Toguro told him.
 
"Shut up," Karasu snapped back.
 
Beast stared after him, stunned. He looked down at the powder in his hand. "I
don't look the way I thought I would," he said. Kurama was the only person left
in the hall, so he addressed his words to him. "I thought I would look happier
than that," he muttered. "And stronger, and less of a ... flunky." the last
word was said with a sad inflection, the boy curling a hand around his other
self's present, his face making Kurama think of a fledgeling falling from a
safe nest.
 
Kurama cocked his head, trying to puzzle the boy out. Beast couldn’t guess what
he was thinking.
 
Kurama raised his hand, and tilted up Karasu’s chin. There was a full foot or
more between their heights—Karasu had several growth spurts left.
 
Whatever he found in his face, he said, “We all have choices, Karasu.” He
seemed to be making one of his own. “You have a choice.” It sounded to Karasu
like he was saying  lucky you.  “Who you turn into is your business, your
lifelong work. You don’t have to recreate him. But if you do—” He sighed.
“—it’ll be on no one’s head but yours.” He dropped his chin like it burned him
and walked back down the hall they’d stood in, footsteps dulled by the velvet
carpet.
 
Karasu stared back at where he'd last seen his older self, thinking of choice.
He had choices yet to make. Maybe he could stave off his own disaster. Kurama’s
words seemed in equal parts hope and recrimination: stirred a hope that he
could be better, and sadness that he may not be anyway. At last, his feet began
to move, taking him in the opposite direction, after Kurama’s retreating form.
He was pensive and quiet as they walked downwards, past checkpoints and guards
who scanned Karasu’s neck ring as he passed. He was only jerked from his
thoughts and the baggie of white powder he was rubbing like a worry stone when
they reached the bustling dock, and Yomi's ship hove into view.
 
The King’s Landing was a state-of-the-art gilded cruiser, silver and black with
tapered thrusters and working guns. Karasu began pacing around it, trying to
figure out how it floated, before finally entering an opening doorway after
Kurama.
 
Kurama’s errand complete, the ship quickly pulled out, leaving the space
station the way they’d come in. When the thrusters kicked to life in loud whirs
and the ship took off, Karasu exclaimed multiple times and stayed glued to the
window, his face pressed to the reinforced glass, forgetting his manners for a
time. He saw the planet before him without recognizing it, the light pollution
of the continents reflected in his eyes. Finally, he came back to Kurama's
presence enough to stop gawping at the stars and black space dropping out on
every side, the lonely lights of other ships buzzing into and out of the hive
of Slave Point.
 
Instead, he turned back to Kurama, remembering he was a slave, and had been
bought. He bowed deeply when he turned. The boy’s face blanked. He still held
his shirt, and when Kurama was turned away, he stripped the rest quickly, too
nervous to make it a show. He knelt beside Kurama, a slave’s place, which he
had been beaten many times to learn to take as an underage hooker, and began
folding his clothes like a good whore knows to do. No mess, no fuss, instead he
knelt and asked Kurama—Kurama who he’d seen was an enemy of his adult form,
Kurama who he was beginning to fear had bought him for revenge—with a quaver in
his voice, audibly breaking with pubescence and fear, “What would you like of
me, Master?”
 
Kurama turned, saw he was naked, and nearly slapped him, but softened when the
boy twitched with his jolting hand. “Put those back on,” he said. The sight of
his enemy humiliating himself was unwanted and unsettling to Kurama. “I’ll
arrange for a pair of Makaian silk when we return. And don’t call me Master.
Our relationship is not that.”
 
Karasu perked up, looking at Kurama with slit eyes. Makaian silk? His father
dressed him in silks when he'd pleased him, long robes with sashes, miniatures
of his own garb.
 
Karasu was overwhelmed, wondering how well Kurama knew his older self, that he
knew of his fondness. It made him shy, bashful. Made him forget entirely about
the protocol when someone thought they had power over him, which was to test
boundaries until they appeared, hemming him in: find out what was allowed, and
what was not, what was encouraged, and what was frowned upon, and what would
earn the beating.
 
He dressed. As he did, he wondered what relationship Kurama had with him. He
wondered why Kurama had looked at him with such disdain and hate.  Are we
really enemies?  he wondered.  And if so—why buy me?
 
That dilemma lasted the rest of the silent trip.
 
True to his word, when they disembarked in Gandara Kurama ordered a servant to
find a suit of makaian silk that could be tailored down to a boy’s size. The
man dutifully left to search for clothes, saying nothing of the difficulty of
getting one’s hand on silk clothes clothes in a boy’s size on such short
notice. Kurama turned away, but was stopped by Karasu’s voice. "Wait, sir," he
said, scuffing his feet. He scowled. "Can I have a bath?"
 
The first time he'd had a hot bath he'd hated it, but his father insisted he
stay clean, and now he had rather a fondness for them. He didn't want to feel
silks like he fingered in the market as a child when the tailor wasn't looking
on his skin when he was still as dirty as this. They hadn't allowed him to
soak, but had scrubbed him with cold water and rough sponges.
 
It would take more than that to feel clean. And Kurama had the means: Kurama
could do it.
 
Kurama had the look of a man who wanted to dispense with a burden, but he
agreed.
 
He told the boy to follow him, and Karasu did, still scowling. They were
walking down a seemingly neverending hallway. Karasu kept opening his mouth to
talk, garrulous at heart, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. He
danced on the edge of Kurama’s stormy presence, staying out of reach of a grab
or a hit. His eyes touched Kurama’s moving body.
 
“How’d we meet?” Karasu said at last. He pinched his lips tight. The cold look
Kurama gave him made him quail. He decided to retreat out of the range of a
kick, as well as a strike.
 
“Brash,” Kurama scolded.
 
Karasu fiddled.

 After a tense moment, Kurama sighed. “I met you for the first time eight
hundred years ago, child.”
 
“I live to get this old?” Karasu crowed.
 
Kurama stopped and turned. Karasu, who had drifted in range of a kick, took two
big steps back. Kurama drew in breath and let it out. “You do, at the expense
of a great deal of things that were dearly important to me.”
 
The stood like that, examining each other.
 
“I’m sorry,” Karasu tried.
 
“No you’re not.” Kurama watched his face. “Don’t lie to me, boy. It’s not
wise.” He smiled, a snake’s mouth curling as it consumed a bird’s egg. “You are
him, after all. You have the same tells when you’re lying.” Under Karasu’s wary
gaze, he continued. “When I met you, you were in late adolescence. Cocksure.
Headstrong. Brazen. You still had your wings.” A self-satisfied smirk crossed
his lips. “Well. I took care of those for you.” Chills swept down Karasu’s
spine, the parts of his back his wings came out of itching. “We met again,”
said Kurama. “You killed them. Or Toguro did. You killed Yusuke. You killed
Hiei. You killed Kuwabara.” He seemed to be searching for a familiarity with
those names, for any hint of recognition. “You killed Keiko, and Shizuru, and
then you killed Botan and Koenma. You killed my mother. You left Yukina and I
alive, of course, in a manner. If you can call that living. Do you remember
what you said to me, Beast?”
 
He turned and began to stalk up to the boy, compromising his well-kept space.
Karasu backed up, but the hallway wasn’t wide enough for it. He ended up with
his side plastered to the wall, staring at Kurama with his small violet eyes
almost round. Something about this man, who seemed only a few years older than
Karasu, was shaking him down to his bones. Something about Kurama said to
Karasu that if he did kill him, Karasu wouldn’t be the first child he’d
executed in his life.
 
“Stop,” Karasu whispered.
 
“Stop? Has anyone said that to you yet?” Karasu’s mind flashed to children of
the brothel he’d terrorized, whose hair he’d pulled, whose flesh he’d clawed,
whose toys he’d broken. He remembered the boy whose grandfather had owned his
mother’s cathouse. He’d scarred him. He’d been scarred in return, and confined.
The straw tick. The chains. The sign.  His eyes widened with guilt and fear. “I
see that look. That’s no innocent child’s look. Have you raped already, this
young?”
 
Karasu swiped his purple nails at Kurama, trying to ward him off. Kurama
grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward. He leaned over him and inhaled.
 
“Why’re you smelling me,” shrieked Karasu. He tried to claw at Kurama’s
restraining hand, but quicker than thought, his second wrist was grabbed.
 
Karasu was scared to strike out. His heels scrabbled as he tried to pull
himself from Kurama’s grasp. Kurama let him pull.
 
“You’re terrified. I can smell it. Good. Well?” he asked him.
 
“Well  what?”  he cried.
 
“Have you raped already?” Kurama asked.
 
“No!”
 
“Look at me. Say it and look at me.”

 “Please—”
 
“If you don’t say it, or I’m not satisfied, I’ll have no choice but to castrate
you.”
 
Beast curled up around his middle. “Don’t geld me!” he shrieked. “I ain’t an
animal, I ain’t an ox!”
 
“A dog can be castrated as a puppy. They say it reduces aggression. Make no
mistake, Karasu. Look at me and tell me. If you haven’t, and you’re not lying,
I’ll let you go.” Karasu had never imagined hearing his real name said with
such hatred and disdain. Beast, sure. But not Karasu. Not the name he kept in
his secret heart. He burst into tears.
 
But he’d been a whore. He knew how to work through tears.
 
Besides. He hadn’t. He hadn’t raped, anyway. He’d clawed them and pulled their
hair. He’d broken their toys. At this early age he’d already killed.
 
But he’d never raped.
 
“I never did, I never raped  anyone, ” he sobbed out. “Let me go, please, God.”
 
He pulled so hard that when Kurama released his wrists, he collapsed on the
ground. He wept while sprawled, his face snarled with hurt. It was strange to
realize Kurama was panting too, pressing a hand to his chest to ease his
rushing breath.
 
“Chilling,” a smooth voice said from behind the two. Kurama’s breathing slowed.
He stood up straight. “It’s good to know you haven’t changed too much. Who
exactly is this child?” The man prowled close, eyes closed, but his nose
twitching. The scars were a delicate latticework above his cheeks.  He’s blind,
Karasu realized, scrubbing his cheeks and having a harder time calming.
“Kurama—” To hear a normal language come out of the statue of his face was odd.
 
“Yomi,” Kurama interrupted. He smiled. “This is Karasu. Your new assistant.”
 
Yomi’s frown deepened. “Kurama—”
 
“—A slave, for you to bully.”
 
“—Kurama, you know I have no use for a child slave—”
 
“Why not? He’s unbroken, and perfect for you. You’ve always preferred a little
fight.”
 
“Kurama, I asked for a secretary, not a bed slave—”
 
“Oh? You’d take one as young as this to bed?”
 
“Can he even read?”
 
“You’ll love his name. It’s Bea—OOF.”
 
Showing previously unheard of speed, Beast kicked out Kurama’s legs. Kurama,
now on the ground, sat up and watched Karasu jump up and then back, clinging to
the ceiling and the wall’s crown mouldings, like a spider about to drop,
hissing down at them both. A flicker in the air showed Kurama that a bomb was
coming nearby, but Yomi reached out and closed his hands on the empty air.
There was a harmless combustion and a small bang.
 
“I hate you. I’ll kill you!” the boy was screaming. His voice wasn’t drawing
guards yet. He was still crying, and his hand slipped on the carving, dragging
splintered rents in the white-painted wood. Chips rained down. He rubbed his
squinched-up face on his shoulder, smearing dirt and grease in both directions,
more rubbing onto his face, and some rubbing from his face into his shirt.
 
He was still shaking.
 
Yomi hesitated. “He seems so young,” he said.
 
“Is a baby adder any less a snake?” Kurama asked, in stark opposition to what
he’d told Karasu earlier. Karasu began to cry so hard his foot slipped, and he
let it dangle. The hope for his future he’d been feeling was precious and small
and its absence in his chest was a physical ache, like something had been torn
from inside him, and was bleeding.
 
“Which of your mothers do you think you’re echoing when you say that?”
 
The silence after that statement only made Karasu’s hiccups more profound.
 
“What do you know of my mother?” asked Kurama. His voice was so cold Karasu
stopped crying aloud, stilling completely, a crow before an eagle.
 
“Only what Yukina’s told me, mixed with what I know of you before your death.”
There was something unsure in Yomi’s voice. Though Karasu could tell nothing
Kurama did would wound Yomi, he seemed to be picking his words carefully. “I
know your birth mother very well, of course. Your human mother—from what Yukina
has told me—I do not know that she would approve of the idea that a boy who’s
done terrible things couldn’t change.”
 
“We’ll never know,” Kurama husked. He stared up at Karasu, his expression
unreadable. “He killed her.”
 
“From the way you’ve been interacting, I don’t get the sense that this is him,
exactly.”
 
“Creating Shura has made you soft.”

“Having Shura in my life has taught me more than I can say.”
 
“Then perhaps you should strive for some humility.”
 
Yomi stared at him, his lips drawing back from his teeth. “Some what?”
 
“No, I—” He held up his hand to restrain Yomi’s tirade. “—I see your point. I
understand.” The air seemed thick with electricity. Something in Kurama’s
expression had changed. At last, he said, “Come down from there.” He pitched
his voice to carry to Karasu. “You’re in no more danger from me.”
 
“Fuck you.” Karasu chewed on the words. He swung like a monkey and ripped out
part of the crowning to throw it at Kurama, pure ornery prepubescent ire.
Kurama knocked it aside.
 
“I meant it.”
 
“I did too!” called Karasu. “You’re fucking crazy. You’re worse than Ma! Nobody
ever heard my name without laughing, without saying it was appropriate.
Sometimes the Johns complimented my mother on foreseeing who I’d be when I got
older. Father calls me Karasu, but when he’s cut the poppy brick it’s  Beast,
let me touch you,  and you said I didn’t look like one and then you were gonna
maim me like a bull-calf! For something I ain’t even  done!”  Karasu was hopped
up on the injustice of it.
 
He swung further down the wall and tugged out another hunk of crowning. He
hurled the projectile at Kurama’s head. Kurama knocked it aside with
infuriating ease. “I hate you!” Karasu cried.
 
“Karasu,” Kurama asked, “do you want something to eat?” Karasu’s grip slipped.
“Let’s talk about this over some food. Would you like a bath?”
 
“No! I don’t, I’m staying up here!”
 
Kurama walked away, leaving Yomi standing in the hall.
 
Yomi frowned after him. He retreated after a moment.
 
Karasu hung up there for a while, and had time to think. To think about lies,
and how Kurama had lied to him. To think about what might be done to him. To
think about how his other self had to have had an inkling things would be
violent if he left Karasu in a hated enemy’s hands, and he’d still turned and
walked away.
 
To think about being alone behind enemy lines.
 
His muscles seized from remaining up there for half an hour. He was still
bruised up and tired and so hungry.
 
Oh, he was so  hungry .
 
Footsteps echoed back down the hallway. He tensed.
 
Kurama appeared, but Karasu was less concerned with that than with the smell
coming from the multi-layered lacquered trays balanced in his hands, black with
curlicues of vines embossed into them.
 
“They were intending to break you so they could sell you,” Kurama told Karasu.
“Before the slave breakers come for them, they never feed them. You’re hungry,
yes?”
 
Karasu cringed, but he said nothing. The look on his face spoke for him. He’d
been hungry before. He wouldn’t trust an enemy to feed him food that wasn’t
spiked.
 
“Come down. I’ll eat anything you point out to me. That way you’ll know I
haven’t poisoned any of it.”
 
Kurama started unstacking the trays without looking at Karasu. For a moment, it
almost didn’t work.
 
Karasu let go and dropped down. He inched closer over the red antique carpets.
Kurama watched him when he was close enough that Kurama was in danger of Karasu
attacking him out of cowardice. He still unpacked the food with deft hands.
 
Karasu swallowed. Wordlessly, he pointed at a meatbun. Kurama took a hearty
bite out of one side. Karasu pointed to the other side of it, licking his lips.
Kurama took a smaller bite out of the white dough and the fried meat inside.
Karasu swallowed, watching Kurama’s throat work so it was definitely inside
him. He snatched the rest out of Kurama’s fingers.
 
He ate almost without breathing, shoveling the sweet pastry into his mouth. A
few tears leaked out of his eyes. He sucked the grease from his fingers. “It’s
so good,” he groaned, “it’s so good.”
 
He pointed out some soup, and Kurama half-drained it, to prove that there was
nothing in there but mushroom broth, nothing diluted.
 
Karasu practically inhaled the second half.
 
They went through the whole tray like that, with frequent times when Kurama
cautioned Karasu to pause, breathe, and eat slowly. Other than that, they
didn’t speak.
 
When Karasu was full, he curled into a corner and began to cry.
 
“I haven’t poisoned you,” Kurama said. “The food was too rich.”
 
“I know,” Karasu gasped, tears itching his violet eyes. “I know how this
feels.”
 
“You went hungry often?” asked Kurama.
 
Karasu responded, “Yes.”
 
“Tell me about the scars,” Kurama said. Karasu’s whole face changed. “You have
them now. You had them then, too. They never faded. But it always looked like
you grew around them.”
 
“Yes,” said Beast. His lips pulled down in a scowl. “Mother’s pimp did it. When
I scarred his grandson. The little snot went right to him and I was pulled from
my mother’s house. Ma watched. His mother was stroking him and fussing like he
were a goddamn kitten. Mine just watched. But for me, it only—”
 
“It hurt?”
 
Karasu looked at him whale-eyed, the whites showing around his iris. “Yes,” he
said. “Father took me from there, a few weeks ago.”
 
“I see,” said Kurama. He seemed as reluctant to give sympathy as Karasu was to
receive it. “When you can walk, I’ll show you where you can bathe.”
 
After that, the two demons talked. There were long silences, and hesitations.
Their discussion ranged over broad topics, big topics, some of them so large
they expanded past a child’s understanding. Whenever he realized that the boy
was becoming confused, Kurama pulled back and made the discussion more
concrete.
 
Hours later, after Karasu had gotten hungry again and picked at the food once
more, a tailor came by and delivered several sets of boy’s clothes made of
Makaian silk. The tentative truce continued into the bathing room. Kurama stood
outside. They talked through the door.
 
When Karasu came out stifling a yawn that showed all the way to the back of his
throat, Kurama took him to a guest room. Karasu exclaimed so thoughtlessly that
Kurama pulled back the corner of the covers and helped him into bed.
 
Karasu eyed Kurama, half expecting a rape. He found himself watching the man’s
back as he swept out of the room. The covers were soft and smelled like sweet
flowers. Karasu burrowed into them.
 
Karasu, who’d been an insomniac all his life, pulled the smooth baggie of
jinjeng powder from his pants pocket. Unsure how it worked, he snorted it like
a drug. His muscles relaxed immediately.
 
He’d never had a more restful night’s sleep.
 
The form of Karasu’s days changed. He entered classes with private tutors. At
night, Yomi, Kurama, and sometimes Shura slowly incorporated him into their
lives. He was no longer viewed or treated as a cuckoo in another bird’s nest.
 
Weeks passed, then months. Time turned to years.
 
He started to learn boundaries. In his now pleasant sleeps, a person appeared
and told him their name was Inari. They told Karasu he was blessed. They told
him that his mission was to teach the Youko Kurama something that was always
lost by the morning, but felt like understanding. Karasu was confused by that:
he was coming to realize that Kurama understood better than anyone else he was
ever known. Kurama was a learned man, a wise man. Karasu scoffed in the
mornings, knowing he had nothing to teach Kurama.
 
The dreams always smelled like cooked rice.
 
===============================================================================


Kurama weaved through the tables of the outdoor café with purpose. He knew this
man’s routine, through long force of habit.
 
“Hello, lovely,” Karasu purred, delighted to see Kurama so suddenly. He watched
the slim-waisted redhead slid into the seat across from him. “To what do I owe
the pleasure?”
 
Kurama smiled. “I’m here for a Linaeas.”
 
There was a stiff moment on the part of the man, who paused with the teacup
halfway to his unmasked mouth.
 
“Oh?” he asked, over his rising pulse, the scarlet seeping into his eyes. “I’m
afraid he’s dead. Would you like me to take a number?”

“Oh no,  Popinjay .” He examined Karasu’s stiffened posture. “I wonder what it
must have been like, to be so unwanted. To be valued so little. To think you’re
finally free, and then to be made the peon of a man like Toguro, and be unable
to break out of your own power. It must have been maddening.”  
 
“Listen here, you little bitch—”
 
“Your other self is thriving,” he told him. “He becomes less like you every
day. I’m not here to gloat,” he mused. He pulled down his shirt and showed the
imprint where the slave collar used to be, now gone. “I’m here to talk. Man to
man, equal to equal, about everything you took from me. About everything you
ruined inside of me.” He sighed. “I’m here to tell you that finally, I have no
more hatred. Only pity, Karasu. I pity you.”
 
The thunderous expression on Karasu’s face shuttered, a look of pure venom
crossing it.
 
He hated to arouse pity. He always had.
 
“I should have killed the little brat,” he snarled.
 
“You should kill yourself. That’s true. In fact, I’m going to give you the
chance. Toguro is coming here now. Sakyo knows you’ve been double-dealing. He’s
been informed that the armies of Gandara ask for the death of one man to quench
their blood lust. I believe his exact response was, ‘good riddance.’”
 
“Toguro won’t kill me,” Karasu demurred.
 
“Won’t I?” asked the big man. He stood behind Karasu now, an immovable
mountain.
 
“Time’s up,” said Kurama. “Goodnight, Popinjay.”
 
He reached out and caressed the crow’s arm as Karasu tried to stand hastily but
was lowered back into his seat by the force of Toguro’s paw on his shoulder.
 
Kurama didn’t stay to watch his death. He viewed the corpse later, when it was
delivered to Gandara.
 
The very next day, the young boy Karasu disappeared into a portal.
 
For hundreds of years, Kurama had held onto his hatred, his bitterness, his
loss.
 
It was strange that the one who helped him ease that was the very boy who grew
into the man who hurt him.
 
Five hundred years after the death of Yusuke Urameshi, the worlds were changed.
They would be unrecognizable to the human boy. In many ways, they were
unrecognizable to Kurama.

He remembered Beast, and held onto his hope for change. He held onto his hope
that a boy could make his life better, nobler—than Kurama’s had been.
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