A/N: WARNING! just for those who didn't notice in the summary, DO NOT READ unless you have finished watching the anime, as you won't understand what I'm babbling on about (Though watching it still might not help!) and it has spoilers for the ending. So DON'T read if you haven't watched it yet!
Also this is based on my understanding of the ending, so it might not make much sense to others and others might understand it differently.
Chapter 1 - Rebirth, And New Meetings.
Hige pulled his hood up as he continued down the pathway and into an alleyway. The rain pounded on the thin cloth protecting his head from the freezing water. This was all automatic to him now, he had wandered these streets so many times that his feet could get him to his destination without his brain getting involved, leaving it to concentrate on his thoughts.
He winced slightly at the pain in his arm when he carelessly turned a corner causing his arm to collide with the edge of the wall and grabbed it with his already bloody hand. He pulled away once he was sure the collision had not reopened his wound and let the rain wash the blood off of his hands, watching the reddish coloured water flow down the nearby drain.
He repeated past events over and over in his head, how everything had turned out, how everything went wrong. The events for a previous Earth, one further into the future than this one was now. Hige winced at the memory of the fight with Darcia.
Hige, already injured from his previous fight, limped in front of Cheza as to protect her from the newly transformed Darcia who had just launched himself at the flower maiden in an attempt to steal her away from the wolves. But Blue jumped at him, protecting Cheza and the wounded Hige from the lunging wolf, sinking her teeth into his side.
Hige could see the purple wolf had gone insane from the look in his eyes and watched helplessly as Darcia suddenly twisted his body in midair so that he crushed Blue against the floor as they landed. He felt panic bubble up in his stomach as he saw blood fly up in the air from the impact.
Cheza clutched at her head trying to block out the wolf blood that was terrifying her as Hige felt the panic reach its limit and ran as fast as he could, with his injured leg to help Blue, only to be thrust backwards and sent flying by the attacking wolf.
Darcia then walked over and pushed his paw down on Blue's throat causing her to whimper. Hige heard Kiba yell 'No!' as the evil intent showed in the mad wolf's eyes and he bit deep into her neck. The brown wolf struggled to move as he called out desperately to Blue, her blood pooling beneath her neck and felt frozen from the shock and fear for her life.
Then the fear was replaced with anger at the insane Noble. He could barely move and watched as Kiba jumped in front of Blue to protect her and Hige used the distraction and dug his teeth into Darcia's back leg unleashing all his rage for the attack on Blue.
Slowly the mad wolf turned around and it was Hige's turn to suffer his wrath and more blood flew into the air and stained brown fur.
Then the Noble went for Cheza and carried her away. Hige could see the conflict Kiba was having; help his dying friends or go save Cheza. So he quickly reassured Kiba that he would look after Blue and to go.
After watching the white wolf jump up the side of the mountain he tried to walk over to his beloved Blue, as he left a trail of blood behind him, and sat down next to her. Hige reassured her that he would keep his promise and wouldn't leave her, while he stroked her hair out of her face and slowly watched the light fade from her eyes.
Suddenly Tsume arrived and Hige filled him in on Darcia's doings and asked for one last favour from the gray wolf. The pain was making it hard for him to talk but he managed to ask Tsume to take his life using his own fangs. The scarred wolf looked shocked at the request but after some convincing he placed his fangs around Hige's neck.
Hige told him that they would meet again in paradise before Tsume snapped his fangs down and after a split second of sharp pain everything went dark. . .
He sighed at the memories; he never knew what happened at the end. Did Kiba and Tsume save Cheza? Did they make it to paradise?
Hige sighed at the thought of them all going to paradise without him, then shook the thought away, he knew Blue would never have gone without him. She had never really cared about paradise, they had promised to always be together since it was all they wanted. He had decided to look for her no matter what so that he could keep his promise to stay with her; he wouldn't let her be alone. His thoughts took a depressing turn as he realised that she was probably alone while he was wasting his time in this stupid town, he wanted to be with her again and he missed holding her and how he couldn't help but smile when she looked at him. He could remember standing with her and holding her as tight as he could while she told him she would go wherever he went. The thought put a smile on his face. At the start of their journey his paradise would have been to have lots of different female wolves around him, but now there was only one he wanted and no-one else could even come close to being as important to him as she was.
Suddenly Hige's stomach made itself know with a loud rumble. Hige scratched the back of his head and laughed to himself 'Well better get some food' as he realised he had been concentrating on his thoughts so much that he had forgotten he was meant to be looking for some food. He looked up at the sky and noticed that he had also failed to notice that it had stopped raining and put his hood down, releasing his frizzy brown hair from its confines. Some rats scurried past and he entertained the idea of eating them like he had done with Kiba once in Freeze City but he could feel his stomach protest and favoured the idea of pinching some human food from a food cart instead. It didn't take him long to sniff out a hot dog stand that was surrounded with hungry customers and craftily pinched a few from the distracted vender, it was what he had done in towns on their journey to find paradise. Hige dashed around the corner before anyone could notice his thievery of the hot dog. He sat down on a step and started to practically shove the whole thing into his mouth at once.
After he had finished off the hot dogs and was licking the mustard and ketchup off of his face he noticed a couple of stray dogs watching him from behind the nearby trashcans, he recalled seeing them earlier on as well when he had been searching the alley ways for any signs of the wolves or the others having been there. There was a medium built one, who was slightly muscled and Hige guessed that he was probably around Toboe's age, maybe a little older, that seemed to be standing slightly in front of a smaller dog. The smaller one was defiantly younger than the other, and he could only guess that it was still a young pup that probably would need its parents to survive. The elder of the two was mostly white with a few black splodges on his back and tail, while the younger was all black except for his front left paw which was dark brown and Hige guessed by their ages that they must either be friends or possibly brothers since he could see some similarities between the two and the older ones protectiveness was also very brotherly. Hige noticed the black one was looking at the last hot dog he had behind him-he had been planning to save it till after he had finished a last search of the town for Blue-and then noticed just how skinny the dogs really were-clearly strays-and decided he probably wouldn't be able to concentrate on searching for clues if he had food around.
He ripped the hot dog in half and held it out for the curious dogs who edged a little closer and sniffed at the strong scent, the younger closing his eyes as if it had been a long time since he got this close to real meat, but they were reluctant to come any closer. He smiled, checked that there wasn't anyone around in the back allies and threw it towards them, revealing his wolf form to them. He sat down where he was in an attempt to try and reassure them that he wouldn't hurt them and that he wasn't an untrustworthy human trying to capture them. The older one got a little shifty at the sight of a dangerous wolf but the younger didn't seem to care and bounded towards the food with his tongue hanging out, when suddenly a bigger, well muscled, husky-coloured dog jumped in front of him. The startled pup jumped back and dashed behind the other for protection, as the new biggest dog growled at the youngsters to get away from the food.
Hige was about to get up and help the two dogs when the gray and white dog ran off while threatening the others to follow, leaving the reluctant white dog to follow as well as the terrified youngster struggling to keep up with his tail down and his ears folded back as if expecting to be snapped at again. Then Hige was tempted to speak up and help them out, since the pup reminded him of Toboe a little, but decided that a wolf probably shouldn't get involved in these stray dogs issues and his opinion wouldn't be very welcomed, after all wolves would never let a dog get involved in their problems. But as he watched the dogs run away he couldn't but feel that the eldest of the three was familiar in a bad way, only to shake the feeling away since he clearly wasn't a wolf or Blue so it didn't matter who they were, they probably couldn't help him. He looked at the hot dog that had been left on the path and sighed at the wastefulness of it, picked it up and shoved it into his pocket after dusting off some of the dirt-he'd eaten worse before. Then walked on to go and check the city again even though he didn't hold much hope for finding anyone.
Hige had been searching for hours and only managed to cover about half the city, asking the rats and birds if they had seen any of his friends but none were particularly cooperative and the ones that would listen to him seemed to be rather edgy, in the end he gave up trying to get any information out of them. He slowly made his way back to the hot dog vender's cart and gave up searching the city, he had already searched it once and found no trace of her, none of the animals were helpful and he didn't dare ask a human about it.
On his way he noticed a tiny darker alleyway and stopped in his tracks. He couldn't remember searching down this way before, but there was no way he would have missed it. Slowly, he looked down and saw a faded blood splatter on the floor and a trail leading away from the scene, and it came to him why he hadn't been down this ally before. His head jerked round as he heard a whimper from behind him and saw the black pup from earlier watching him, eyes wide with terror, seeing Hige's true form and probably realising how scared he should have been the first time he saw Hige's wolf form. The youngster slowly started to back up away from Hige, but there was no way he was going to let the dog get away-maybe none of the other animals could tell him what he needed to know but maybe the black dog, or his friend had seen the others-or more importantly, Blue. He tuned round slowly, so as to not spook the already scared dog, and tried to speak as calmly and as friendly as he could, even though he wasn't really a great lover of dogs, let alone stray ones,
"It's okay kid, you don't have to be so skittish, I'm only trying to find some of my friends. You haven't seen any around have you?" The youngster just stared at him, it was a little creepy to Hige and he decided to try something else,
"I saw that you seemed to like my hot dog earlier," at the mention of food black ears twitched and he seemed to become a bit more relaxed, he even moved slightly closer to Hige so that he didn't have to practically shout so the pup could hear him,
"Well I still have that half a hot dog if you want it, seemed a shame for it to go to waste" Hige put on a sort of innocent face and looked away, only glancing at the other out the corner of his eye. The pup seemed to perk up and walked over to him, already drooling at the thought of meat,
"You look hungry anyway." Hige couldn't help but chuckle at the kid's sudden eagerness to get to Hige, practically tripping over his own paws as he halted to a stop half a metre away from the wolf. Hige pulled the hot dog out his jumper pocket and placed it in front of black pup. Sitting down he decided that it would be good to first introduce himself to the strange dog,
"So kid can you at least tell me your name? You know since I gave you some food and all, and I'm called Hige, just so you know."
The younger of the two looked up after eating most the offered food in one mouthful and swallowed the bit of bun he had in his mouth,
"I-I'm F-Fido" He said nervously, looking down at the small bit of hot dog that was left on the floor. Hige laughed at how uneasy the poor pup was and got out the other half of the hot dog and rolled it towards Fido,
"Here you can take this back for your friend, the white one." Fido just stood there and looked at it, then at Hige,
"That was Mutt, he's my brother. How come you're being so nice?" Then the kid sat down and tilted his head in a way that made the pup look adorable, any human would have awed at the cuteness of it, but Hige wasn't one for cute things, to him it just looked like Fido was suspicious of him and simply replied
"Well you looked half starved and I didn't really need it, since I can always get more." Fido stared at him again in amazement and it was Hige's turn to feel suspicious. The pup swallowed the last of his hot dog and walked up to Hige, sitting directly in front of him,
"You mean you can get this stuff whenever you want?"
Hige watched the excitement build up in the kid's eyes at the thought of it and Hige sighed, hating that he would have to explain it and knowing that since Fido was still a kid, he probably wouldn't understand.
"Well you see Fido, wolves can trick humans so that when they look at us they see another human not a wolf, it was something we had to do so that we could adapt and survive." The pup lay down and tilted his head in confusion again, just like Hige knew he would,
"How did you manage to do that? Could you show me how?" Fido's tail started wagging as he got all excited at the thought of being able to trick humans just like Hige could, and this made the brown wolf laugh, defiantly like Toboe,
"Well it's hard to explain, I guess you could say that wolves put a spell on the humans." At this Fido's ears dropped and his tail came to a halt,
"Oh. So I wouldn't be able to do it." The kid sounded so sad that Hige felt a little bad that he could help Fido trick the humans as well, then realised he was starting to like this dog, it was nice having a pup around again and started to miss having Toboe around, asking all his questions. Then Hige decided that he would help Fido and his brother out while he was in the city,
"Well I can't show you how to trick them but I could pinch a few more hot dogs for you and your brother if you want." Hige could practically see Fido smile and laughed, when the pup's face seemed to drop and he looked shocked as he just stared behind Hige.
"Fido you're going to get into trouble again if your seen talking to strangers, Indiana would blow up at you if he could see this." Then they sighed, but Hige was frozen where he was lying at the sound of such a familiar voice,
"Go back to the den, I think Rover was looking for you." Fido nodded at the female behind Hige and said good-bye to the brown wolf before picking up the half of the hot dog that was still on the floor and ran down the small alleyway behind them. Hige stood up and turned round to look at the black animal standing behind him, his eyes were wide with shock and he couldn't stop staring at her causing her to look a little freaked out. He bounded over to her as fast as he could yelling,
"B-Blue!"
~To Be Continued~