"Mn." The agreement is easy, but the fox knows as well as Hiei does that the fire demon has always been partial to their carnivorous plants from the Demon World. Of course he would, considering his own tastes for bloodshed and the like. He hadn't exactly stopped by to feed them, the memory of their time there still too fresh even when he'd been at the compound. Too often he'd spent his time where the children had been otherwise distracted or asleep in some space that had once been 'theirs.' A garden, the room that had, in the end, been Kurama's but was more often than not across the years shared between them.
Eventually, bathing in his own lack of deserving had grown old, even for Hiei. Of course, he should have expected that in the end, it would be him alone, again. The self-fulfilling prophecy of never having deserved that type of affection in the first place, and removing himself before he could possibly take another hit, had been all too easy to achieve. A better way to assuage his own yet again building anxiety of waiting for another shoe to fall, of Yusuke or Yukina deciding that he was indeed everything that Kurama had fought not to make him, and then to actively prove it.
At the very least the walk to their old spot is not interrupted by Hiei further dumping information onto Kurama's lap, probably much to the fox's relief. Instead, he simply reaches up to greet a plant as it come down to him, gently patting it on its large, budding head like a proud father.
"I would have been surprised, if you hadn't still been here."
no subject
"Mn." The agreement is easy, but the fox knows as well as Hiei does that the fire demon has always been partial to their carnivorous plants from the Demon World. Of course he would, considering his own tastes for bloodshed and the like. He hadn't exactly stopped by to feed them, the memory of their time there still too fresh even when he'd been at the compound. Too often he'd spent his time where the children had been otherwise distracted or asleep in some space that had once been 'theirs.' A garden, the room that had, in the end, been Kurama's but was more often than not across the years shared between them.
Eventually, bathing in his own lack of deserving had grown old, even for Hiei. Of course, he should have expected that in the end, it would be him alone, again. The self-fulfilling prophecy of never having deserved that type of affection in the first place, and removing himself before he could possibly take another hit, had been all too easy to achieve. A better way to assuage his own yet again building anxiety of waiting for another shoe to fall, of Yusuke or Yukina deciding that he was indeed everything that Kurama had fought not to make him, and then to actively prove it.
At the very least the walk to their old spot is not interrupted by Hiei further dumping information onto Kurama's lap, probably much to the fox's relief. Instead, he simply reaches up to greet a plant as it come down to him, gently patting it on its large, budding head like a proud father.
"I would have been surprised, if you hadn't still been here."