Your arguments behind those closed doors were intensifying. I really don’t want to listen, but…

"Have you any idea what you’re playing with, child? Fire! That’s what you’re toying with!"

"Isn’t it only appropriate? I’m a fire demon, Satsujin --- "

"Not that fire, you little fool! You know what I’m talking about!"

"I can’t believe you actually go for that love crap, you, Sigma, the bastard who started Porneapolis --- "

"I don’t give a flying fuck if you don’t believe in love." Exasperated sigh. This is trouble for you Hiei; you know the quieter Satsujin gets the worse his temper. Satsujin will burn you alive with a whisper. "I’m sure you still go for honor, do you, warrior?"

"I thought you knew me, Sigma; or are you just getting senile?" Low sarcastic chuckle. Oh Hiei, you are playing with fire. "In case you forgot, Satsujin, I was a mercenary, thief, hired killer, wannabe Kurama assassin --- no, would-be Kurama assassin. I don’t give a flying fuck to honor nor to Mukuro’s reward anymore; this is between me and that youko."

Silence.

"You’re out of it, Satsujin. Why should you worry about me getting involved with a youko? I don’t bring it to work or to training. I do need to get off. I do need to get even…"

Silence. Hiei, you will burn, oh gods.

"Satsujin?"

Silence. Burning…

"S-Satsujin?" you whispered.

Silence. Burning…

You sounded burnt. "Gods… you… you…"

Satsujin was very quiet. "Got it, Hiei?"

"Gods… I got it." I could hear you step back. You never step back!

"About time you did, because if you intend to touch a single hair maliciously again --- "

"I-I’m sorry…" Your burnt voice quickly regained its strength, but it was scarred by whatever you got. "I had to do it." You then dashed out of the room as quickly as you burned under Satsujin’s stare.

Had to glance around surreptitiously. Satsujin was furious the last time you came by. Almost flayed you in front of everybody; almost fed you to his plants. If it weren’t for my sake…

I was glad to have told Satsujin everything. At least we were somewhat kindred souls; I could still forgive him. Understand why you had to rip each other from each other. "Just don’t let me see him again, Maryam," he said.

Had to meet you halfway. You won’t be staying long. Had to savor your presence like the first snowflake on my tongue this winter. Had to get all the love I could squeeze out of you while you’re still here; we could both use whatever we could get from each other.

Had to wrap you in the womb you, we had missed for so long, the loving ocean of amnion we had drifted in so peacefully. Kaasan had died swiftly, her life, her love crushed under the juggernaut of Koorime law.

At least it was said to be swift. The Koorime had killed you slowly, with every condemning utterance that flew out of their mouths like freezing mountain wind: A Forbidden Child… evil in his heart… representative of the destruction of everything around him… bullshit! They had killed me too, with every condescending glance, every hushed conversation, and every insinuation that I may become a whore like her.

So let me become a whore; I was a whore to them from the start anyway, by virtue of parentage. If you were in the mud let me join you. If you were accursed let me share your fate; I only want to be told I am loved, I am worthy, and I am strong. You wrap me in the womb we had missed for so long. "You’re getting stronger. Your ki signature is changing. I could feel the sparks in your soul." You comfort me by asserting your love for me and your hatred for Youko Kurama.

You think about me all the time, you said. Think about me the way I looked when we first met here, stiffly, nervously practicing a forcibly eroticized Macarena in the exercise room, unaware of our ties, as damaged and weakened as you were. Think about the clipped manner I introduced myself the rest day we all had a pat-a-cake bacchanalia and you said your first word to us. Think about my astonishment the day when I watched you freeze a brook, summon your first Kokuryu and scorch your hand. In our limited interactions those days you found me hard and cold like a glacier, you found I was kindred to him, my circumstance kindred to yours. The Porneapolis was the fourth brothel I had been sold to; naturally I had had been discarded by the first three after the novelty wore off. You, in the meantime, had been a failed assassin, a captive, an unwilling whore in Youko Kurama’s hands, discarded after a night of rough games and refusals of a confession.

I think about you all the time, too. Of your limp, battered body when Satsujin first found you in the forest and took him here. Of your weeklong delirium during unconsciousness, shrieking in a broken shadow of your deep voice: Please no no take your filthy hands off me kill me now I don’t want it don’t leave me don’t throw me away Haha-ue! Of your jubilation and pride as you gingerly touched your burnt hand and looked at the cataclysm you had just unleashed. Of your glowing face and the shame at its cause. Of the tremors that further blurred my hazy image of you as my eyes, just opened after sleep and shorn of their blue-tinted contact lenses, reflected you and your own carbuncle irises in a pool of blood. Of your vow to disregard all feeling but your love for me and your hatred for the Youko.

You finger my pendant longingly. You won’t be staying long, but you insist on wrapping your gaze around my hiruseki longer, the gem so much like the one you lost. You wrap my tranquility in your gaze and pack it up in your heart.

I will have to do the same. I will attach your serene loneliness to my mental picture of you, clad in a chain-link tunic and dancing erotically in supplication to the gods. Please no no take your filthy hands off me kill me now I don’t want it don’t leave me don’t throw me away Haha-ue!

In the darkness of my private space, my curtained bunk, my lonely throne as whore princess, I draw more pictures in my mind. You dance erotically, serenely facing the gods, awaiting more of their judgment as battered as you already were. I must join your supplication for mercy; perhaps the gods will relent! Shall they? Will they? We’re two of their favorite puppets; we’re so easy to manipulate. They find our hiruseki pretty. They want us to bare our young lily-white koorime asses. They want to see more of the performance.

Be strong, Hiei, for I will be. I will join you someday, but not now. I have yet to be strong. I have yet to have some thick skin. I have yet to hoard gold. Hold on. You may not hear this now, because you‘re in a kingdom the gods know where, thinking of my astonishment at how far you had come.

Someday I will join you as you dance in triumph is a sparkling cavern of clear ice and bonfires, the lost tear gem around your neck in a gold chain, the floating glacier smoldering in the horizon, our enemies’ rotten bodies at our feet and the mangled Youko on top. We do not only want freedom from want; we want gilded velvet thrones, we want a mother and a father, we want a lot of gold. We want freedom from pain.

Do you hear me Aniki? This is not Maryam here. This is your missing twin, Yukina. Do you hear me calling you? I know you can hear me speak in my silence from worlds away. I can. We will make it Aniki. We will overcome. I will be the first to clap as you dance in triumph over the youko’s mangled body. I will carry that mental picture and wrap my hopes for you around it.

I love you. Goodnight.