I can feel my comrades' ki raised, feel the murmured heat of rising blood. We will never be more ready.

There are no words for it, the expectant noise of the arena and the heady scent of bloodthirst in the air-- knowing that before the set of sun one will either be triumphant or destroyed, devourer, or devoured. No language games here, nothing of quiet verbal subtlety, but all terrifying swift motion and pump of blood and furious understated haiku of battle. Every move must be perfect, in every thing balanced and deadly. No room for a wrong move, a misstep, a false breath. The world comes tumbling down. Welcome the end-- you must embrace death to earn life.

Such things a demon must learn.

Easy enough for me to say, watching you enter the ring. Easy enough, at this distance, to call death beautiful. But fox, as you gracefully tread that ice-knife edge, I cannot take my eyes away.

Your opponent Karasu loves you-- such an adversary is the trickiest. You can see it in the toss of his head or the elegant dangerous wave of a time-bomb hand, he wants you. And, equally true, he means to destroy you, to watch your perfect face twist or sob, to see something of pain flicker in your too-green eyes.

Hn. Your own fault for being so unfairly beautiful. Even in that boy-body it leaks from you, I can see it shining from your edges, spilling over. Only to blind three-dimensional ningen are you that gentle child whose body you have learned to inhabit. Any fool with eyes could see the truth of you, tremendous power sheathed in a silk-strength form.

I have such eyes. Demon-eyes all, and jagan trained for an inscrutable goal-- nothing can distract my vision like you can. Ch'. If you knew, or cared to notice, I might consider it a weakness.

Anger wells up in me, obscure. Perhaps that such a clouded enemy soul should presume to know your end. Irksome arrogance. And yet, would I not dare a thousand bleeding rosepetals to step nearer--

I find myself understanding Karasu, all unexpectedly. The realization is too sharp to be sweet. Yes, to fight you, were that the only way I had to dance with you, to move fierce and hot, to swivel, body to body, with you. Willingly risk you forming strange fine flowers from my hot demon blood. We are matched; we both know that were we to fight the outcome would be impossible to tell. And what an adversary you would be, whata fight we could share.

Would you close your eyes, feeling the strength of your attack swallowing me whole? That close to you, thus wrapped in your rosewhip, would it even be pain, or something more--?

But I bury the thought, and deeply. I am not battle-thirsty enough that I would wish to hurt you. And I would not risk your enmity.

At least not now, not with Urameshi team depending on us in a tournament. I exhale slowly, letting go the building heat that my blood is singing to hold on to.

Well, go on, fox-demon. It is not me awaiting you there in the arena, stance broad and eyes feverishly alight. You must have another enemy on your mind.

And if it were me, there for you, would I see your eyes look so bright and dangerous? Would that taunting slant of smile touch your lips as bittersweetly?

Hn. Damn distracting, fox.

He is a powerful demon; your comrades are worried about you. Urameshi doesn't know that his heart is written on his face, but he shouts your name like the walls are falling down. And it may be that they are. All I know is that your breathing is unsteady, that your human body is shaking slightly with exertion. Perhaps I am worried about you too, but worry is such a small thin word for the ache that has become my heart.

Let go of Minamino Shuuichi. Unleash your youki-- it would dissolve away the lesser yoko with its potency. Erode the weaklings away; it is your power and therefore your right. The truth of you would slide sharp and clean through the hot thick air of the arena, through the fetid stink of a hundred thousand hungry, cowardly monsters. Dance with them, puny demons all, and show them who you are.

Aa. Yes. Oh how right, the shape of you through the smoke. Kurama. Headstrong devious conniving sensuous idiot fox. Perfect.

The simmering crowd boils over into shouts and cheering. They are wild for you, afraid to look away.

Watching your fight is like the watching the ending of the world. So well matched, a fight like destiny that pulls your bodies towards one another. No one can tell how it will end. Something sour is in the back of my throat. He is beautiful, that demon who fights you. I am skilled and quick, but I have never been beautiful. How fine the pair of you look, dancing each other's deaths.

Blow for blow you meet each other, deadly tendrils of your demon world mimosa and his gunpowder fingertips both scattering blood across the arena. How much of that blood is yours? You are still smiling, battlelust ferile on your face. You will feel the injuries, but later. For now it is all fierce deadly loveplay. He throws grenades like blowing murderous kisses, and you pivot and return in kind, growing a garden of death to twine round the finest lover.

Or perhaps I am merely out of my mind with wanting you, that every way you move is pure arousal, every return he makes is sweet as sex. Hn. Don't get cocky, fox, not every soul is as weak before you as mine has become. He will not let down his guard.

When Minamino returns the arena believes it is the end of you. Even Kuwabara and Urameshi wince to see you, they who know how strong you are. The wounds Karasu gives you are only sport now, not the powerful magic the two of you created before. I have never seen so much of your blood-- and yet your face is strangely still.

Suddenly I can tell from the set of your shoulders that you believe it is the end.

Oh, fox.

Thrashed, yoko and ningen as one, to within an inch of your lives-- what are you going to do? What damn stupid thing are you going to risk, to kill him? He has already won, fool, he cannot be worth your life to destroy--

I can feel the flare of your youki as you summon your last dregs of strength, can see the air shimmering in tortured waves around your untouched face. At that moment, along the skirling crest of your power, I can sense just how much he has hurt you, how deeply your blood runs.

I have forgotten how fragile ningen bodies can be.

If I could not feel the terrific wave of ki thundering out of you, if I did not sense it bursting into bloom to drink his evil blood, I would surely have killed him myself. As slowly as possible.

I am grieving for no reason I can name, that such a delicious fight should end this way-- that he should deliberately dance along your mortal nerve endings just to cause you pain. That is not battle--

No. That is battle. Sadistic son-of-a-bitch was fighting the only way he knew how, to drink the pain of those he loved. That is not the battle I would fight with you, though.

If I ever had the chance.

But it is my fight, Bui standing hugely in the arena, and I have no time for regrets or aching any longer. The odds are theirs, one fight in their favor.

So I have to win. This is nothing new.

It seems eternal and over in a second, all at once. We dash and move around each other, threatening, testing. He wields his axe as if he'd carved mountains with it, like a giant forgotten by time. But his fight seems strangely eloquent for one so big, oddly smooth in his attacks for one so rough-hewn.

Or perhaps it is because I imagine him to be you, fox, you may never know.

I am small and lithe beside him, and we have the measure of each other before too many heartbeats have passed. All too soon pretenses fall away, wards and caution cast to the winds, and I know the end is coming on fast. He is stronger than anyone thought he'd be, but I can see in his eyes that he is one like me-- he did not ask for such power, in itself a burden. We understand each other on this, and it sweetens the fight, as our youki build and crash together like conflicting tides.

And it is heady and sweet, the rush of black energy that channels through me, all around me, forming a face and a long serpent body and wings that beat like doom. Time ends and it is only me, living in my dragon, his redhot hungry eyes my own.

Watch me, if you can, fox. This is the only way that I know how to be beautiful.

I can feel an odd kind of gratitude in my adversary, honored to know the full extent of what I can do. The way a fight should be. Riding the black wave, I can barely react though, flying high and alone on the tail of the power I have summoned.

It is a cold sort of satisfaction to realize that I have won.

The blood is sluggish in my body and I cannot even tell where I am or if I am speaking aloud. I do not know where you are, if you are tending your wounds, or if you sleep as well.

If I wake up to find that you have lost for us, Urameshi, I swear I will...

The yellow demon sky wavers and swims in my imperfect vision, a dozen eyes no good against the rising tide of exhaustion. All fades to darkness.

Do demons dream?

Out of nowhere I remember Kuwabara's loud-mouthed question, though I do not remember was prompted it. Do demons dream? I do not think I answered him, baka ningen.

But while the kokuryuuha seeps slowly through my veins, evening of power, twilight restful sweet, I do dream. I do indeed.

Of a curtain of hair, now red like autumn leaves, now silver-grey like demon rain, showering down around my upturned face. I knew the first time that I saw you, Minamino Shuuichi, that there was something full to bursting inside you, your redheaded boyface a mask for the incarnation of something tremendous within.

Or perhaps I did not know it, but dreamed so long about it that I fervently willed it to be so.

It fascinated and repelled me, the quest class demon that I saw bent and wiggling to pounce, beneath the all quiet unsuspecting smile that was your human face.

Such an enigma.

And of this I dreamed, fire to ice, mortal blood to demon, fragile heartbeat to coolly perfect kitsune. How do you live, fox, straddled thus between? Do not the contradictions eat you from the inside out? You are ningen and yoko and neither. How can one mind--

And I know I am dreaming because you do not smile indulgently upon my questions, but rather consider them, and answer me sharply, unpeeling the wards from my deepest secrets. ~One mind does what it must. I do not dissolve and shatter into my components because I choose not to.~ Pause. ~As you choose not to, hybrid child of demons.~

Touch one human cheek, feel the frail pulse fluttering there, a dragonfly's wing in a hurricane. ~You cannot last.~

Your hand comes up to touch mine, wrapping human-flesh-- and whatever lives beneath-- around my fingers. ~I will last, Hiei. because I must. And so will you.~

And then lips that are neither ningen nor yoko find mine, tasting temporary like moonlight or mortality, and I surrender my heat beneath your lips because that is all I know... all that I know how to give you.

Sweet emptying kind of pain, soaking into my heart and I can feel my adrenaline rising, feel my ki threatening to dissipate just with your touch. A battle I do not know how to fight-- I do not know the language of losing and yet my insides sing to surrender to you.

Careful, fox, do you know what kind of blood beats now for you? You cannot wish for this, sweet untamed kitsune, you who could have any lover you would with only a toss of your head. Oh but your kisses are right, better than I could have wished--

You drink my fire-demon heat for what it is, an offering, and it turns your eyes golden with the hot forbidden ambrosia of it. And then deeper still, delicate razorsharp teeth worrying at the icedemon chill within me.

I can feel your body changing under my touch, can feel the muscles tautening and releasing, smooth shift, kitsune stretching under mortal flesh. Like a shiver, like starlit frost, like winter itself. So beautiful. Quicksilver enough to rush across the frozen bridge of my heart.

And so achingly familiar, ice wrapped around fire. Your animal heartbeat thunders against my chest, so juddering unsteady-- and then a silence so profound it could dissolve us both into the vastness of it--

Hn. Demons have no hearts to beat.

So what then is the rhythm that drives our movements, our dance that for once is not a battle but something older still, like tides moondrawn or the leap and crackle of original fire. It is banked between us as we plunder each other's weakest spots-- shudder with my touch as I shiver with yours, and not a heartbeat drumpattern to follow but the first insistent urgings of our own souls, mind to mind.

It is strong enough to dissolve us both, to melt our weapons and our souls alike, eroding away the baser till we are free and fierce and pure.

I wake suddenly, breathing ragged. I had forgotten that I was dreaming.

Nothing has changed.

Except that I can feel you watching me. Ch'. With such dragonfire still leaking from me, I'm sure the dream was on any demon bandwidth in the arena. Anou, let them wonder.

But you. Your eyes are green like warm human gardens, not the frightening preternatural plants you command. And you're looking at me so oddly. Fox, what are you thinking?

You walk towards me and I find my unsteady feet. It's no use trying to disguise my wobble as a swagger; I am too off kilter from dreaming. I know you know it, and you face me with a breadth to your stance as if you were standing off against me. I am too tired to be alarmed, but my blood is curling and uncurling inside me, like dragonwings.

You're not smiling but I can tell from the twitch in your soft ningen skin that you want to be. "Hiei."

I realize too late that I've kept silence for too long; I haven't got any words.

You finally smile, and there is a yoko in your eyes now, with joyous conquest on his mind. Something of your kitsune must be closer to the surface; your voice is an octave deeper. "You had only to ask. Baka koorime."

The kiss I surrender is far more potent that any kiss I could have forced, more delicious than even youki-touched dreamkisses. So damn fine, kurama. I've waited too long for you. My hands come up to find your hair of their own accord, to tangle in your foxsoft warmth and pull you closer still.

Kuwabara steps by us unawares, and eyes us sarcastically-- as if he'd ask again what demons dream. A glance, redhot and golden both, changes his mind. Yes, ningen, demons dream.

Of fire and ice and the ending of the world.