Hiei stood almost directly beside me on the uneven ground. I could smell burning pine, and thick smoke billowed high over the treetops. I could hear the roar of fire, and the rushing of the river beside us.

I watched as me-from-the-past burst from the tree line, quickly followed by Sam. We were carrying our fire shelters and rakes. I was digging into the ground, and Sam was panicking.

"This is my memory…" I murmured. Hiei said nothing, again just watching the scene play out.

I watched as Sam fumbled, and my heart broke a little as I tucked him into my shelter, and waded into the river.

I blinked, and I was staring into my own eyes as I was dragged under that killer rock by the roaring river and the tree that hit me over the head. I saw the last few bubbles of air slip from my unconscious lips.

I died.

Again.

I blinked, and I saw myself on the park bench in Japan. Me-from-the-past waved to Kuwabara.

I blinked, and Hiei and I were back on the riverbank in California. Rather than watch the scene again, I looked to Hiei.

"Are you doing this?"

"Be quiet." He finally answered me.

I couldn't watch as I died again.

I blinked, and we were back in the park in Japan.

Hiei snarled, and we ran through both memories again. He seemed unsatisfied with the recall. The glow under his headband intensified, and I developed a sudden and extreme headache.

The purple glow at the corners of my vision intensified, and I was in my apartment. John rose from his chair and dropped to one knee during dinner; the ring from my favorite jeweler looked so small in his huge hands. He was proposing, and I cried. Before I could hear the answer I knew was coming, the light surged again.

We were watching me fight my first fire.

We were watching me get my tattoo.

We were watching my first day of college – eyes gleaming and arms carrying too much stuff.

We were watching me graduate high school.

We were watching me peer out the airplane window on the flight from France to America.

Hiei flipped through my memories over and over again. I stood beside him as my life lay bare and exposed before him, and he still seemed unsatisfied.

We watched me die one more time, lingering on my dead body trapped in the river. The memory faded slowly to black as I died, and instantly snapped to Japan. Exactly how I remembered.

Hiei seemed to slide the memory in reverse – further intensifying my headache – and lingered in that darkness for a moment. I couldn't see him in that darkness, but it felt like he was waiting for something.

The violet glow surrounded my senses, and I blinked.

I was back in Japan.

I gripped the edge of the table with such intensity I almost expected the wood to crack. I felt sick, and my head was pounding. For the second time today, I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream.

I reached a shaky hand for my coke instead.

"She's human. And dead." I heard Hiei grunt to the others.

"What… was that." I found my voice around the coke can, but focused my gaze on the table. Oh, sweet table, don't ever change.

"Hiei examined your memories." Koenma said lightly, as though Hiei had just skipped over to the TV and picked my memory channel from in-between the news and the weather.

"Fantastic. Are you satisfied?" Please don't make me go through that again.

He paused before answering, which was not encouraging.

"We need to investigate further." He stood from the table with the gigantic file in his arms. "You will stay here at Genkai's temple until I reach a decision." At which the old woman murmured something obscene under her breath.

Before I had a chance to interject, He left with a fancy swirl of his jacket. I went to shout something to stop him, but the look Genkai sent my way could curdle milk. My stomach soured a little under her harsh gaze. Without moving, she had managed to turn that tiny body into a huge and imposing figure.

It freaked me out.

She crossed her arms over her chest, and laid down the law.

"You are to stay on the temple grounds. The forest is off-limits without an escort – corpse cleanup is not pleasant. I don't care what you do all day, but keep to yourself. There's food in the kitchen," she tilted her head in its direction "cook it yourself; I'm not your mother. This is a temporary arrangement. Do you understand?" The harsh stare continued, and I realized when she twitched one eyebrow higher that I was supposed to answer.

"Yes ma'am." Yes, Warden.

"Hiei will be watching you." Obviously to his great distaste. "So don't do anything stupid." At the mention of his name, Hiei gave me one final glare, and vanished. My eyes widened to roughly the size of dinner plates.

"What the – where did he go?" Genkai snorted, and Yusuke laughed.

"He does that. You had better get used to it."

For what felt like the first time since I entered the room, the atmosphere lightened a little. Yusuke leaned across the table, peering at me with an odd grin on his face.

"So," he started. "What's drowning like?" He seemed genuinely curious, and completely oblivious that he might have asked a slightly traumatic question.

"Urameshi!" Kuwabara hollered, "You're such an idiot! How could you ask something like that?!"

"Why not?" He hollered back. "It's a serious question – I've only died twice, and neither of them was in water; I'm just asking!"

The two of them proceeded to bicker to great volumes, with Kuwabara defending my delicate ladylike sensibilities (my inner feminist bristled a little, but it was amusing to watch), and Yusuke defending his right to ask whatever stupid questions popped up in his head. At some point they started wrestling in the middle of the room, and Kurama excused himself. Genkai didn't bother with niceties; she just left the room, giving Yusuke's head a kick on the way out. He didn't seem to notice.

There was a definite character to this strange group of people that categorized them as one of the strangest family groups I had ever encountered, but a family none the less. At some point, Yusuke ended up sitting on Kuwabara's back, pinning both an arm and a leg behind him, and I just burst out laughing.

"I'm sorry," I coughed out between giggles as they both looked up from their fighting, "I couldn't help it – You fight just like my brothers." They looked at me strangely, and it took a minute for my giggles to stop. It was a comforting familiarity.

Kuwabara and Yusuke spent a surprising amount of time with me in the temple long after Koenma, Genkai, Kurama, and Hiei had left. Occasionally Yusuke's demeanor would shift, and I could tell he wasn't yet completely convinced that I wasn't a threat – whatever that was about my having an 'aura' of Demon World. Kuwabara, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem talking about anything and everything under the sun.

Where Koenma had been no help at all, Kuwabara and Yusuke filled in a lot of blanks, and I tried to reciprocate. I would ask something like 'How can Hiei just disappear', and after answering, they would ask something like 'when did you become a firefighter'. It was like a long version of 20 questions, and it wasn't long before I realized their goal.

"You know," I said casually, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear, "you two are much better interrogators than Shuuichi." They both blinked in sync, and I smiled. They looked at each other, and grinned sheepishly.

"Caught us." Yusuke laughed. I shrugged.

"It's fine. I understand, I suppose. From what you've told me, you have every right to be cautious." I propped my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my hands. "I appreciate the kindness all the same. I was sort of worried that Shuuichi was going to start shoving sharpened sticks under my fingernails to get answers."

Yusuke and Kuwabara exchanged knowing grins, which was not at all comforting.

"…what." I asked, and Yusuke explained to me Kurama's plant mastery. Then they shared a good laugh over the complete look of horror that passed over my face.

"Stop laughing!" I yelled. "How is that funny? That's horrible – why didn't you tell me?" I knew why – they had no reason to trust me – but I realized now that if I hadn't been forthcoming with them, Kurama and his pointy sticks probably hadn't been too far down the road of possibilities.

"Stop freaking out," Yusuke slapped me on the back, and boy that hurt. "We're pretty sure you're harmless." To which I muttered a 'gee, thanks', which he ignored. "We just want to be sure. Can't be too careful, right?"

I thought about all the times a lack of cautious had gotten me into some serious trouble – most significantly, the time that ended in my death.

"I suppose." And we left it at that.

As evening drew near, Yusuke and Kuwabara excused themselves for the night. As they were leaving, I remembered a question that I had been wanting to ask.

"Hey - are there any spare clothes here?" They had been halfway out the shoji doors, and glanced back. My face flushed a little as I added, "I didn't exactly appear in Japan with a suitcase in tow." Yusuke looked at me thoughtfully, hand on chin.

"I don't think anything here would fit you, but my girlfriend's not much smaller than you – I can ask her?" I thanked him, and they left, managing to get into another argument before getting ten feet from the temple.

I watched them from the doorway, while simultaneously observing the temple grounds for the first time.

The temple had a wonderful wood porch that wrapped all the way around the building, and a little open-air connecting hallway that went to another building of the temple. I'm sure it had a specific name, but unfortunately I didn't know it.

The empty living-room opened onto an open courtyard of large stone pavers. The courtyard extended all the way to a steep hillside, where it dropped down into – what I assumed were quite steep – stairs. Courtyard met forest at that hillside, and it crept around the temple and extended far past my view.

I closed the sliding shoji doors, and retired to my tiny broom-closet-bedroom for the evening. My head was buzzing with new information, and while I thought that I wouldn't be able to rest, I felt exhausted as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I realized as I lay down to sleep that for all of the memories that Hiei had gone through, he hadn't bothered with anything after I came to Japan.

He hadn't seen my nightly shift back to America.

My secret.

A/N: I had a ridiculously hard time finishing this chapter; it just did not want to wrap up cleanly. Sorry for the wait, but I had to fix all the typos from repeatedly banging my head on the keyboard in frustration.