The moon, like a perfectly curved blade slicing across the silken swathe of black sky, followed her as she ran…ran from the scene of the crime…ran from the keening cries of those who mourned…ran to shed droplets of tears on grass already wet with dew…

* Everything's so blurry…*

Her heart thudded as though preparing to burst from her chest, her feet pounded on the unforgiving turf of granite, rock and forest underbrush, her mind stumbled over unsorted thoughts she hurriedly shoved to some darkened corner of her brain, wanting to escape what was to come…wanting to forget her duty…

* Everything is so messed up…*

"Nee-sama…"

She closed her ears against the sound, shut her eyes to the specter that had arisen in front of her, raising his hands palm-up, motioning for her to stop…

* Everyone is changing / There's no one left that's real *

"Nee-sama…chotto matte kudasai…"

She heard the river before she came upon it…wedged in the middle of the forest… there was nowhere else to go…she fell on her knees, panting from exertion…

* I stumble then I crawl *

She opened her eyes and gazed bleakly at muddy waters that had eaten more of the land…she wanted to cast herself into it and be swept away by the currents, remembering a lost moment in time when there had been someone waiting for her to surrender to abandonment…

*I am lost without you / How can I live at all? /…I wonder what you're doing, / Imagine where you are / There's oceans in between us / … that's not very far…*

But she *had* left him far behind…and now someone else needed her…

*Can you take it all away? *

Dreading what was to come, she shifted her gaze to the patient but determined ghost who had followed her here…

Kodomo…only a child…The soul of a dying little boy floated a few feet away, gilded silver by the moonlight. His hair a cloudy mass of curls, his features clearly etched despite the transparency that all ephemeral fleshless beings had…he was smiling ever so sweetly…but his eyes pleaded…

* Can you take it all away? *

Iie…don't ask me…damn it all to hell, you're too young! You shouldn't be asking me for this…Her hands curled into fists at the sides of her bended knees and her reddish-brown hair swished violently as she shook her head in negation.

"Help me, nee-sama…" Even as he said it, the bishounen released his torment in a torrent of distortions…his eyes became twin black holes set in a skeletal mask…his curly hair lengthened and became a swarming mass of snakes releasing a foul greenish gas upon the air…his body twisted as though the hand of God had crumpled its paper thinness into a grotesque tattered rag…dozens of eyes appeared like sores on his rag-body, as though to compensate, for his eyeless sockets imitated his opened mouth in a soundless scream…

* You know that I'll protect you from all of the obscene*

The powers of darkness shall not make you their demon slave, little brother…With bowed head, the kneeling girl reluctantly embraced her newfound power…her hands wove and unwove in an interlocking pattern as natural to her as breathing…a dagger transmogrified and struck the heart of the writhing child-figure, making both child and girl flinch at the impact…still the girl continued her hand-motions, and her lips whispered the invocation almost soundlessly…

"I am the Goddess of Death…heed my prayer…I release this boy's soul into Meifu. Amakawa Ieyasu. I take his pain as he leaves Chijou and enters Meifu!"

A beam of light burst from the point the dagger had plunged into, surrounded the boy and pierced the kneeling girl who at the contact received impressions from him…the hulking figure of the child's father…the feel of the man's overpowering weight…strong hands encircling a fragile throat and snapping it easily, unconscionably…the sound of the boy's mother sobbing in the background…confusion, betrayal, guilt, humiliation, unbearable pain…

* You know that I will save you from all of the ugly*

The kneeling girl re-experienced the moment of death in that split-second flash of light…while the distorted image of the child gradually returned to its former beauty…a little boy again, smiling his sweet serene smile…

"Watachi tachi daijobu desu…honto ni…daijobu…arigatou nee-sama…arigatou gozaimashita…"

In a moment, the child had gone. Breathing heavily, the kneeling girl wept tears of both relief and rage, mourning the murdered child who would've become a vengeance demon if not for her…the dagger dropped, vibrating with leftover psychic energy, before it returned to its owner, plunging into her left palm…a mere needle's prick of pain, after what had just transpired…not the first, certainly not the last…

* Nobody told me what to throw / Nobody told me what to say *

Each time the dagger was used, she would remember each death it had dealt, as far back as her own past deaths, when she had been born and reborn human, and she would wonder how many more times the dagger would appear, how many more souls it would deliver to the other-world.

* Everyone showed you where to turn / Told you where to run away *

Lost souls had a way of seeking her out. Those who had died but didn't know they had, inevitably crossed her path, as though some whacked-out internal compass still signaled her location. Those who were dying violently were the most persistent. Accident victims. Suicides. Homicides. Sometimes she felt as though a neon arrow were flashing large and bright over her head with the invitation, "Come, she's here!"

The most heartbreaking of them all were the aborted children, lost because they sensed the wrongness of an interrupted destiny, angry and hurt because the very person who should have kept them safe had betrayed them instead.

* Nobody told you where to hide / Nobody told you what to say *

She needn't go out of her way to find any of them; they came to her, bringing their hurts, a maelstrom of emotions and memories, and she felt them, knew each of them, owned each of them in whatever form they chose to see her: sister, mother, lover, goddess.

* Everyone showed you where to turn / Told you where to run away *

She was Death.

*Can you take it all away? *

She would have given anything not to be.

*Can you take it all away? *

She would have given anything to remain only Kidou Hinata.

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"Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd

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"Are you alright?" Yukaeshi glanced searchingly at her younger sister as Hinata entered their room. She wondered why she kept asking the question, Hinata having ceased confiding in her or giving straight answers a long time ago; force of habit, perhaps. Yukaeshi had had a lifetime of looking out for her sister, and now that they were the only ones left in the family, such as it was…

"Why wouldn't I be?" Hinata sent Yukaeshi a faintly surprised look and a mega-watt smile over her shoulder, as she opened her sling-bag and took out the contents to lay them on the table. "I should ask that of you. I'm sorry, it took a little longer than expected for me to find the herbs we needed to make your medicine, but I have them all here, I stumbled on the last by the riverbanks."

"I'm feeling better, actually." Yukaeshi straightened from her prone position on the bed and sat up. Her silver-gray eyes met her sister's, and she sharply noted that their usually luminous caramel color had dulled into a murky brown. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"No trouble at all. And you're still drinking this, sister mine. I didn't go traipsing around in the dark for nothing, you're far from fully recovered." Hinata smiled again before turning back to her herbs and selecting a variety and grinding them up with a mortar and pestle. The movements were graceful, but Yukaeshi somehow found each hand-motion unwieldy, the faint thump-thump of marble hitting marble jarring in the quiet room. Nowadays, we're so polite to each other, so careful around each other. Like strangers.

The hour was late, most of the occupants of the inn had retired for the night, and the thick wooden walls effectively insulated whatever carousing was going on in the barroom, a floor below. Yukaeshi didn't wonder though about the hot water teapot that Hinata had smuggled into the room and was now filling with her mashed-up leaves. Her sister could and usually did charm people she met, and that included—perhaps prioritized—cooks. Hinata had learned charm from whom else but Gojyo, and persistence in all matters culinary from Goku, who was not only an expert, but made sure—or rather, nagged everyone else, to keep up with his standards. A memory of the monkey knocking heads with a matronly cook known for her bad cooking made Yukaeshi smile faintly. Before they'd left that dinky bed and breakfast, Goku had turned the woman into a class-A gourmet.

What Yukaeshi, her smile fading, did wonder and worry about was the cheerfulness that Hinata always showed her, regardless of whatever situation they were in, whether stuck in a roach-infested hellhole in the middle of nowhere or taking it easy in this quite respectable inn they'd chanced upon. She had a feeling sometimes that Hinata distanced herself from her emotions, as though trying to avoid touching on some hidden pain. It was a technique made familiar by Hakkai. Let it not be said that her younger sister had not learned anything from their sojourn with the West bound travelers.

"Arigatou." Yukaeshi accepted her teacup and sipped. Let it not be said either that she hadn't learned anything herself. Hinata was being distant, true, but her imouto had nothing on Sanzo when it came to impassivity…Yukaeshi quickly shunted thoughts of Sanzo aside. Months after she'd left the monk, she still smelled him in her sleep, woke up wanting to lose herself in his warmth. Wryly, Yukaeshi noted the irony of trying to force Hinata to confront her feelings when she herself had unsettled issues. Damn, now she was brooding like him…"I don't feel him anymore…"

Hinata cocked an inquiring brow over her drink. "Him?" There were four, no, five possible "him's". Liar. Two. Pants on fire. One.

Yukaeshi shook off any lingering thoughts of the violet-eyed monk. "Amakawa Ieyasu." She felt rather than saw Hinata's reaction, how the younger girl seemed to shut down. That damned wall again. Yukaeshi watched her imouto carefully set her cup on the table. So calm. So precise. Who are you now, Hinata?

"Ah…you concern yourself overmuch with my affairs." The smile was still in place.

"It's my business to look after the living." Maybe stubbornness was a family trait after all. I want my sister back, not this emotionless doll, my sister Hinata.

"Then why not stick to that?" Hinata headed for the door. She opened the door, but hesitated crossing the threshold. Yukaeshi was allowed only a glimpse of her back. "I eased his passage as best I can." Then Hinata closed the door.

Yukaeshi sighed. At least Hinata had conceded an answer. Yukaeshi would just have to keep trying. A little at a time. When will you quit running away and hiding, Hinata? If they ever meet up with Gojyo, Hinata would be able to blend in well with him in a bar since she'd been spending enough time there. Maybe Yukaeshi should be thankful at least that her sister was often mistaken for a male and that she didn't drink a lot. Only a little at a time. Stick to the business of the living, she'd said.

"Imouto, have you forgotten that you are still part of the living?"

She'd spoken the thought aloud. Predictably, it was met only by silence.

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To the Reader: This is gonna take a looong time to finish ^_^() I wrote this mainly as a shout out to the people who asked for a continuation—I hear 'ya, and am appreciative of the encouragement. I still have not obtained copies of GSM though, so my facts are literally blurry. I'm clueless about how exactly Homura died—the showdown between the quartet and the god is a definite must-know. I've got a hazy idea of where I want this fic to go, but obviously I need to be abreast of the material I'm messing with. In the meantime, thanks for your patience. ^_^