Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and I don't own any of its characters. I own the plot line, Ayame, and whoever else that doesn't have a place in the actual show.

Oh yeah, this is my idea and story of whom Touya and Jin's parents were, not to mention why Riesho is such a dick in the show. Hopefully, you'll enjoy!

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For three hundred years the tiny community of humans remained undisturbed in their mountain homes. Their contact with the outside world was limited, and they lived very simply. Their survival of the harsh, subzero winters was dependent on the rugged hardy breed of sheep their forefathers had perfected and no one else knew about. The minute village was peaceful, built by loving hands, and tended to by loving hearts, seeming not to have a care for the outside world. But, as most tiny mountain villages do, it held a secret closely guarded and tightly kept.

This secret's name was Ayame.

Only the villagers knew why she was kept as such, and any outsiders that may have happened upon them could only wonder why her hair was a pale mint green color, and of to why her eyes were a clear, pupiless ice blue. Or why she hummed a nameless, foreign song while tending minor wounds or illness, or why she always only smiled when you asked her name. Indeed, this young lady was quite an oddity in the village, but the people had grown to adore and love her as one of their own.

And for the years she had lived there, the good people kept her inhuman secret and relied on their powerful faith to keep it hidden.

But legends have their own way of coming true.

It had begun on the day a band of strangers came into town. There were seven of them; each dressed as if the cold did not touch them, each looking as if they were the very source of frostbite. Their faces were veiled, but their eyes spoke of subzero glares. The word 'demon' came upon many of the villagers tongues, and many had fled into their homes in the seven's wake, save but two.

The village was led by an old man who was well into his winter years, but he stood straight and tall, jaw set and eyes as cold as the band's leader's. He went by the name of Spalding, and it was he that the leader stopped in front of to glare down at the girl standing next to him.

Ayame glared back, hands clenched around a crystalline staff that glowed a cold blue when light hit it. She moved protectively around to bar the stranger from Spalding and raised the staff into a ready position. There were no words spoken between them, but it occurred to the bigger man that she was not just a simple villager. Behind his pale veil, a grin broke across his lips when the staff was thrusted upwards in warning.

So, this was the villager's secret.

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"You're lucky."

"And why is that?"

"Well, you weren't killed on the spot. It means that Master Touya has taken a liking to you."

"What would I want with him?"

"It's not what you would want. It's what he wants. You nearly beat him into his own snow bank. Not very many men have even come close, let alone a woman."

"You speak as if it's a rarity that the man needs his ass kicked."

"Oh, I'm not saying that his arrogance doesn't get annoying sometimes. You have to learn to just live with it eventually. Especially if you're going to be his mate."

Ayame stopped dead in her tracks with a large, exaggerated sigh. The young man she had been 'given into custody of' cocked an eyebrow and turned with a smirk.

"Something wrong, Mistress Ayame?" he asked innocently.

"I have said it once, and I will say it again as many times as need be. I will not, not now not ever, become that man's mate." She spat 'mate' out as if it had a foul taste. "I have a village to watch over. I don't need to be stuck by that ass's side for the rest of my life."

Kyra chuckled and shook his head. This Ice Maiden's personality was so contrary to the rest of her race that he couldn't help but take a liking to her. It was too bad that Touya already had claims over her, and he himself mated, or else he would have swept her off her feet the moment he saw her.

"Why am I being taken hostage, anyway?"

The question took the young Master a bit by surprise. He hadn't expected her to ask so soon.

"Don't consider it being taken hostage, Mistress Ayame. Look at it as you would an opportunity."

Ayame snorted and crossed her arms.

"An opportunity to do what? Be stuck with him until he's finished with me? Ha! I'd sooner kill the bastard and go to prison for murder than to be stuck with him."

"Mistress Ayame…"

"Oh for Kami's sake stop calling me that! I'm am nobody's 'Mistress'. If you must call me something, leave it at Ayame."

Kyra sighed.

"All right, Ayame it is. Now can we please get you back to the camp without any more stops? I may be an Ice Master but even I get cold."

Ayame reluctantly nodded and started up their short journey again, tired of trying to argue with Kyra. The man simply did not have enough sense to latch onto the bait she had just left right out in the open and run with it. She sighed inwardly.

"Are all the Shinobi like you?" she asked absently. Kyra gave her a puzzled look out of the corner of his eye.

"What do you mean?"

"You know. Not having the sense enough to argue. No sense of humor. Frosty exterior that eludes to an empty head."

It was Kyra's turn to stop, this time giving her an all out confused look.

"What?"

Ayame shook her head and sighed.

"Never mind."

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She gasped when another bucket of hot water was tipped over her head and sluiced down her bare body to join the rest of the hot water in the tub. Yui giggled when she saw Ayame's scowling reaction and set the bucket down to grab up a bottle of soap.

"Oh come now, it can't be that bad," she said in a light, humored voice. Ayame's scowl deepened.

"I can bathe myself, thank you very much," she growled, crossing her arms tightly over her breasts as the younger Maiden began to scrub soap into her hair.

"Yes well, a girl as pretty as you needs to be at her prettiest when Lord Touya calls for her," Yui stated with a smile. "You're lucky, Ayame. I got stuck with Kyra as a mate. How do you think I feel being mated to a man who loves nothing else but to watch snowflakes fall?"

Ayame sighed grumpily and tried to count herself as lucky. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be lucky about in her mind. She had been taken from her village home because she seemed to be a 'suitable' mate for the good 'Lord'. Why he had even been anywhere near her village was beyond her, as she suspected it would until he saw reason fit to tell her.

Bastard, she thought with a faint growl. The man has no honor! He never even asked me if I would like to go. Of course, had he actually asked I would have refused anyway, but the man remains to be seen as anyone I would have chosen for a mate.

Yui finished scrubbing Ayame's hair and poured another bucket of hot water over her head to rinse the suds away. Ayame didn't say another word, preferring to keep to her thoughts of what she'd like to do to this 'Lord Touya'. A small, devilish smile played across her lips when a particularly gruesome death came to mind.

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"You do realize that the girl could only slow us up in getting home, don't you."

Touya rolled his eyes at the statement and remained quiet, combing the mass of short, pale blue spikes that stuck out over his headband. Riesho shook his head at the Ice Lord's silence and crossed his arms.

"You're not making this journey any easier, Touya. The girl's going to slow down the entire band, I hope you know."

"The 'girl', as you refer to her as, will not slow us down any further than we already are. Why do you think I have chosen her as my mate?" Touya asked coolly, giving the younger Earth Master a slight glare.

Riesho gave an inward shudder at the dark blue, icy stare, though he would never admit to himself that he was severely undercut in power by the Ice Master. It was only by coincidence and sheer bad luck that his small band of Earth Masters and Apprentices had fallen in with the Lord's clan of Ice Magicians.

Still, the black haired man decided that outward questioning of the Lord's decision would be best.

"Are you seriously considering her to mother your heir?" he asked. "I would think that one thrust would break the poor girl."

"Our sex lives will be none of your concern, Master Riesho. What limited concern you will be allowed to have will surely not involve us or any whelp we may produce."

"And what if you do not produce?"

Lord Touya gave the Earth Master a firm, midnight blue glare before setting his comb down and turning to face Riesho fully. He stood roughly three inches taller than the greasy master did and he showed every inch of it when he folded his arms and looked down into Riesho's black eyes. Riesho paled and backed away a good three or four feet.

"You are doubting me, Riesho. That is not a wise thing to do. You forget what can freeze the very planet into a winter wasteland in a matter of minutes." Touya turned away and strode over to his tent door, turning and giving the lesser man a dark look. "You are not a Lord yet, Riesho. Remember that before you go challenging one."

When the Ice Lord left, Riesho's face turned toward a dark glare shot into the darkening evening. He raised a balled fist and his lip turned upwards into a snarl.

"You wait, Touya. Sooner or later, I will be."

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"So, how long have you been living in that village?"

"Most of my life."

"Have you never seen Koorime?"

"If I have, I don't remember it. All I remember is my mother bringing me to the village and leaving me there to help the people."

"Wow…what happened that you had to stay?"

"An illness. I helped to break it and waited for my mother to come get me."

"Did she ever?"

"I never saw her again."

"That must have been hard. Do you know what happened to her or her name? Maybe I can help."

"No, I don't know what happened to her. Her name was Ruri and I don't think you can help."

Yui sighed and gave the older Maiden a suffering look. There was no getting through Ayame's stubborn thinking, try as she might. Still, other Koorime Maidens were hard to come by outside of their homeland and Ayame was at least someone to talk to. Yui could name two other Maidens, but they had both left with the other half of the Lord's band, leaving her as the only female in the group.

Ayame grunted when Yui pulled the ties on her new robes tighter. The Maiden had insisted on helping Ayame get dressed and comb her hair, much to the new comer's grumbling. She was tempted to call her staff to her and give the girl a good thump on the head for her endless probing for information. The truth was that Ayame knew exactly what happened to Ruri, and exactly why she had been left in the village, but Kami rest her soul if she ever told Yui that.

"Aren't you done yet?"

"Hm? Oh, one more tug and they should be tight enough."

"Good, because I – ACK!"

Yui gave the ties one last hard tug and quickly tied them together into a big bow at the small of Ayame's back. Ayame gasped at the sudden loss of oxygen and turned to give the girl a frown.

"Don't pull so hard without warning me next time!" she said, getting her breath back. Yui giggled.

"Sorry, Ayame. I won't tug that hard next time."

"I'll dress myself next time. That way, I won't have to worry about suffocating from my own clothes!"

Yui was about to reply when there was a knock at the door and Kyra's voice after it.

"Is it safe to come in?" he called. Yui sighed.

"Yes dear, it's safe to come in."

The door opened to reveal a very snowy Kyra, a large smile pasted across his lips and cyan blue eyes twinkling. It had started snowing heavily while Ayame was getting dressed, and now there was a good two inches of the stuff layered on the man's shoulders as he stepped through the door, breath steaming in the burst of cold air.

"Master Touya will see you now, Ayame," he said with a deep bow, snow falling from the mantle of his cloak to the floor.

"He'll just have to wait," Yui scowled, going over and pushing her mate out the door. "Ayame's hair isn't even combed yet and she has got to have shoes on her feet. Wait outside until I tell you she's ready."

Kyra blushed and mumbled a 'yes dear', and allowed himself to be shoved outside. Yui slammed the door shut behind him and shook her head.

"Honestly, I have to wonder if that man has any sense in his head at all," she said through a fond smile. "Now, lets get you a comb and some footwear, shall we?"