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You’re not so tough.
It was the battlecry of Hiei’s life, in Kurama’s opinion. And if it wasn’t a war cry, then it was certainly the sentiment that twined around it; the one he’d thrown into the teeth of the world since the day he’d fallen into it, swaddled and silent and seething. Thieves, thugs, would-be killers, associates, enemies, slavers, traders, demons and spirits, the security forces of three worlds, reality, gravity, heights - everything that had ever stood in his way had either heard those words or felt the force of the will behind them. You’re not so tough.
Tough enough to - what? Damage him? Defeat him? Imprison him? He’d seen all of that happen to Hiei, and more. And after all of that, there he’d be, at the end of the day, clawing determinedly up the sides of whatever pit he’d been thrown into, head down against the wind. You’re not so tough.
He wondered sometimes, in a casual sort of way, exactly what it would take to shatter that defense, turn those words into ashes in his mouth, in his heart. Wondered, too, if it would be Kurama himself who’d do it; if they’d wind up on opposite sides again and that time, or the next, he’d be pushed to that end, or take himself to it in anger or fear. He could do it, he knew; he had the skill and the history to turn Hiei’s sharpest fears against him, to shape the silence of his nightmares into words to shatter him like glass. Had the perfect combination of intimate understanding and refined malevolence to leave Hiei bleeding on the inside, those pretty eyes wide, stunned, knowing the words Kurama wouldn’t have to say. You’re not so tough.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before.
And...yet. And yet here Hiei was, sitting on his windowsill, grinning in that way that he always had when he smelled blood that wasn’t yet in the air. Older, now, but still small, deceptively vulnerable, deceptively fragile. All the knowledge of Kurama that he had, too, tucked into some practical wrinkle of his cloak or his mind, mutually assured destruction, nothing he could tear from himself without bleeding and bleeding right alongside him. Possible to destroy, yes, but tied so deeply to Kurama’s life, his self, that he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to, no matter how easily Hiei had made him want to in the past, no matter how bitterly he might want to in the future.
That was the truth at the heart of it all, wasn’t it?
You’re not so tough either.