12 o'clock midnight. Miroku was sleeping on the floor in Souta's room. Sango and Kirara were curled up in Kagome's bed and Shippou was at the foot of it. InuYasha was restless, and couldn't find a vent comfortable enough to sleep on.

Again he decided to make his rounds. He had promised to protect the household, after all, so he might as well do it. Miroku, Sango, fine, Shippou, he was fine, Ms. Higurashi sleeping holding a novel, fine...everything was as perfect as it could be considering their loss.

The last person he wanted to see was the smart-ass cat hanyou, but since she was Kagome's family he knew he had to check. He went all the way up to the attic, and saw the flickering of the low quality black and white TV lighting up the room and bunny slippers on the floor. Marathon, however, was no where to be found.

"Where in the hell is she?" He scratched behind his ears and checked the rooms one more time. She keeps complaining about me running off and she does the same damn thing. He opened the doors and took a step outside of the house. There were fresh footprints in the snow, leading all the way up to the tree on which he was pinned.

He looked up. Marathon was resting in the branches, a blanket around her and a a small, worn out book in her hands. She looked tired as she flipped through the aged pages of the book with intense concentration. A cold wind blew past and she pulled the blanket tighter around her, then resumed reading.

"Just what do you think you are doing up there?" InuYasha asked, "It aint exactly summer."

"What difference does it make to you?" She looked down, and knocked some snow on his head from where she was sitting.

InuYasha's eye twitched, but he brushed it off and looked back up at her. "So, who is running away now? Complain at me all day and you turn around and do this."

"Excuse me, InuYasha, but I think I should be the one questioning you. I try to talk to you and you just walk away from me."

"YOU are the one who does that to me," he snapped back.

Marathon just grumbled and looked back at her book. "I needed the space, and I'm not planning to run off. Im busy."

"Doing what?"

"Were you always this annoying?" She hissed, "Its none of your business."

"I used to stay up in the trees for safety, so I could rest. I didn't have the luxury you guys do here. So when you go out here when you don't have to it makes me think you are up to something."

"Fine, you wanna know so bad. Come up here and see." Marathon pulled her cap down more and stared off into the distance.

"Wh..err..gh.." InuYasha scratched his head again. He had no idea what to make of the stupid cat, except that she was moody and weird like any other cat. The dog hanyou looked back towards the door and sighed, then made his way up the tree.

"Its obvious you just want attention, so what is it?" He grabbed the book away from Marathon and looked through it. "I can't read it."

"Maybe because it isn't in your native language, dork." She snatched it back, "Its my father's diary."

"Oh." InuYasha's expression softened, "Didn't he die or something?"

"I don't know. I wasn't exactly raised by either of my biological parents. I was passed off to family pretty quickly."

"Then you were luckier than I thought." InuYasha balanced himself on the other branch and rubbed his arms. "No relatives would take me, there were not even any to speak of."

"This is my story remember. Anyway, I.." She breathed out the cold air and tried to wrap herself up tighter, "Its getting too cold up here, maybe we should go elsewhere."

"It was your brilliant idea to come up here in the first place. Fine." He hopped down, "Lets go then."

Marathon shifted her legs to jump down, and then stopped. She shivered some and her book dropped, "Damn."

InuYasha picked up the book and looked back up at her."What is it? You coming?"

Marathon blushed horribly, "I am just now noticing how high up I climbed."

"Eh? What are you talking about?"

Marathon turned her body more so she could climb down the tree, but her foot against the blanket made her slip so she scrambled back up to the branch. "I said I'm fine! Just go on inside and I'll meet you there." She clutched her chest and made sure she had a steady hold on the branch.

"Don't tell me..." InuYasha could barely contain his laughter, "You are stuck, aren't you?"

"NO IM NOT!"

"You are! You are stuck, " InuYasha fell to the ground in a fit of laughter, "I've never seen anything so ridiculous in my entire life! "

"Kagome must've been on acid if she dated you!" Marathon shouted and shook her fist. "There is no way that a nice girl like her would touch a dirty mutt like you!"

"I guess I'll just take your precious diary and leave then." InuYasha tucked the small book away, "If I'm just a dirty mutt."

"Bastard!" Marathon leaned forward to swipe at him, but lost her footing completely and fell. InuYasha dropped the book and caught her, his foot slipping on a patch of ice and both of them crashing into a big pile of snow.

"So I was stuck.." Marathon spit out some snow, "So what?"

"So get off of me." InuYasha shoved her off and stood up. "I aint wearin my normal clothes so I'll be happy to go inside."

"Lets just do it, I left a snack in my room I wanted to eat anyway. Where did you put my book?" She began to dig through the snow, but InuYasha just pointed over her shoulder.

"Its over there, genius."

Marathon rolled her eyes and grabbed her book. She got her blanket from the base of the tree and looked at it. In the snow it was beautiful, and she instantly noticed the notch in the wood. She ran her fingers along it. "Kagome loved this tree."

"On the other side I was pinned to it for 50 years." InuYasha rested his hand against the trunk. "That hole in the wood would be where the arrow went through. Did Kagome tell you the story?"

"All she ever told me that this was how she met you. I got a lot of emails about her times with you, but they were not that detailed and they were pretty spaced out."

He walked back in, and after Marathon knocked the snow off her blanket, followed. They went up the stairs and into her attic room. InuYasha sat on the floor and Marathon on her bed.

"We can talk about me later," InuYasha rested his foot against her bed and grabbed a pillow to rest his back against, " Right now you were gonna tell me what you were doing out there."

"I was just saying before I wasn't raised by my biological parents. This diary from my father is the only link I have, and it tells me so little. He tells a story about how he moved from Japan to the United States for work, and found himself really alone cut off from the rest of his family. He explains how he lost job after job, until a woman came that changed his life forever. Here, I'll read.

'Her hair was the purest, most beautiful gold I have ever seen. No, I don't mean blonde, but real gold, like it was spun from the finest elements in the heavens just for her. Her eyes were passionate and strong, and glowed just as golden as her hair was. She was japanese, definately, I could tell from her accent and mannerisms, and looked to be just as far away from home as I was. We met on a nature walk, and afterwards headed to a coffee shop, where she began to tell me all sorts of fantastic stories that were very hard for me to believe. But by that point, I was so much in love that if she said that the moon was purple and the sky was green I would've believed her. I knew she wasn't the type to lie.

We saw each other more and more as time passed, and I finally got up the guts to ask her to marry me. She accepted, but she never used her real name on the records. To this day I don't know exactly why she was trying to hide herself, but I was willing to go to the ends of the earth for her. We married in a quiet ceremony, and went on to the task of preparing for our new child, which I nervously admit was conceived before the ceremony.'

InuYasha sat up on the bed and cocked his head so he could look at the strange text. "Guess that answers the question on which one of your parents was a demon."

"Please don't say that, I don't like that word." Marathon turned the page, "There are more entries.."

"Are you going to continue or not?"

"I feel weird reading this out loud, but fine..here is the last one dated in August.."

'I don't know where she is taking me. Something is wrong, there are people after her, and all she will tell me is that she is taking me somewhere safe. Our daughter cannot come with us either, she says it will be better for her if she stays with my relatives, that it would be safer for her. I strongly disagreed, but I cannot disobey my golden goddess. I love her. Her hair has dulled though, from the gold it once was, to a soft brown. I think it is because she is just as scared as I am. She promises that we will see our angel again, but the tone in her voice tells me she is not so sure.

Marathon, my baby, I hope we can be back before you get old enough to read this. But ifyou are, I want to tell you that we will not be gone forever. Me and my golden goddess will come for our princess once again, soon.'

InuYasha layed back against Marathon's bed. "Sounds like your parents really loved you."

"If that is so why did they never came back. They abandoned me. There isn't anyone I can trust." Marathon's claws dug into the bedsheets,and InuYasha glared at her from the corner of his eye.

"Yeah, your family cares so little about you that they flew you out to another country just because they felt like ignoring you," He scoffed at her.

"Don't start with me, dog-boy. You have no idea what it was like growing up for me! Not knowing what the hell you were, always having to hide!"

"You're nothing but a pampered brat! All you ever do is whine! I had to raise my damn self! My mother was beaten to death and my older brother wants me dead. I didn't have social services or somet other strangers to take up my case, I had no one! And when I finally meet someone who understands me she gets destroyed by some low life demon because I am not fast enough! Next time you whine and complain you think about that, Marathon." InuYasha sprang to his feet and headed towards the door. Marathon beat him to it and shut the door before he reached it.

"There you go again. You are the one who is selfish. Acting like you were the only one who lost Kagome. Heck, you aren't even family and you got taken in. And at least you had an explanation to who you were in life." She hissed, her claws scratching against the door.

"Yeah, I was nothing. But instead of complaining I made something out of myself. I got stronger, faster, and did what I had to to survive."

"And now that Kagome is gone you have gone back to complaining about your sorry ass life! You know, you need to sit down and shut up..you..you need...to.." She growled, "OSWARI!"

InuYasha stared at her in shock. He backed away, tears begining to form in his eyes, "Stay the hell away from me.." He left the room but Marathon grabbed onto his arm.

"Sorry."

"You better be." InuYasha ripped his arm away and stared her down.

"Fighting like this isn't going to get Kagome back. I just came up here to read you part of my diary, since you asked."

The dog hanyou stood there in silence, and rested against the door's frame. "I know my parents are dead, but you don't know about yours. That means there still is a chance they might come back. You may be pissed at them, but at least there is still a chance."

Marathon took her cap off of her head. Her ears flattened and she sat on the edge of her bed. She slowly bought her head to her knees and looked at her hands. She studied her claws, how they could extend and retract, and the fact that no matter how much she filed them down they were destined to be deadly points.

"Youkai, or demon. hanyou, half demon, human. Heard those terms all of my life. Used to think it was important to pick one and strive for it. After I lost Kagome, that stuff doesn't even matter anymore. Maybe it shouldn't to you either." InuYasha straigtened the covers on her bed, folding it over on one corner so she could get in easier and left.

She sighed and shifted nervously. Sleep wouldn't come easy to her that night.