When Kirigakure Shura awoke, it was to the bittersweet realization that she was still alive.

Training kept her eyes closed and her breathing light as awareness gradually settled in. She was inside somewhere. Not the shrine or any of Hachiro's other hiding spots. Wherever this was, it was warm with soft things to lie on, a far cry from the prickly straw bed of her youth.

Someone must have found her then, taken her somewhere to recover but who would-

"Shura-san?"

Oh, God no...

"Try not to move," Yukio said, his hands blurry things that hovered over her as if to prevent her from doing just that. "You've lost a lot of blood."

"...I'm fine," the redhead croaked out. The pain from before was definitely still there but it was manageable, easily ignored in favor of far more pressing matters. "What are...you two doing here?"

"Mephisto told us you disappeared," Rin said. Instead of rushing to her side like she'd come to expect from the half-demon, he was hanging back, his eyes periodically darting between her and the door as if he couldn't decide where to go. "Who did this to you? Was it that Smurf-bastard? It was him, right?"

Smurf what?

Sleep was calling to her with the promise of sweet oblivion, dulling her thoughts and turning her body to lead. Ignoring Yukio's disapproving stare, Shura forced herself up, grimacing at the strain. The room spun a little, black spots dancing in her vision but she recognized the outdated style of the inn from the night before. "What else did Mephisto say?"

"Nothing." Yukio began sorting his supplies, putting things away in a neat and methodical manner. "We were supposed to contact Sir Pheles once we found you but taking care of your injuries came first." The teenager frowned, eyeing the mostly pristine bandages where the collar of her yukata hung loose. "Actually, you're moving better than I was expecting. And when I treated you the wounds weren't very deep..."

He trailed off, waiting for her to shed some light on this medical mystery.

Shura's first instinct was to lie.

Mephisto clearly hadn't told them yet, for whatever reason. An out perhaps, or maybe just his convoluted way of telling her to deal with this herself. Regardless of what his reasoning had been, the important thing was that Shura could lie because even just the thought of them knowing the truth made her skin crawl.

Shura had spent years crafting and maintaining a carefree façade, fashioning herself into someone who wouldn't be missed by anyone. No friends or family. No lovers beyond the occasional hookups. Even her colleagues, the people she easily spent the most of her time with were far too used to death to truly mourn her loss.

And that was fine.

Exactly how it should be because Shura was barely a person, let alone a good one. Nothing but a placeholder who had failed at the only task she'd ever been given.

Grow stronger, give birth, die.

The words as much a noose around her neck as they were a source of comfort. They gave meaning to her existence and Shura had clung to them. They were her normal, so whereas other nine year old girls were playing with toys, Shura was valiantly trying to seduce a man nearly four times her age.

Shiro wasn't a saint by any stretch of the definition but he'd never been depraved. He'd pushed her away when she tried to sneak kisses, had yelled at her when she managed to crawl into his futon at night but as much as her actions had clearly bothered him, he'd never held them against her.

Young Shura hadn't understood the kindness in that, hurt by his continued refusal of her advances. But all it took was some mental gymnastics and soon everything became crystal clear to the kunoichi-turned-exorcist-apprentice.

Of course Shiro wasn't interested in her yet. Scrawny from years of malnutrition, hair constantly matting because she couldn't be bothered to brush it, often choosing to cut the knotted bit up and feed it to her Fang instead. Not to mention her current lack of assets.

Those had to be the reasons Shiro wasn't tempted.

Not a problem. She could make herself pretty and clean if he wanted, and in just a few short years her flat chest would be anything but. Shura might not have known her mother but Hachiro had insisted Tatsuko was the most beautiful woman ever so she just needed to be patient and soon, hopefully very soon, Shiro wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her.

But life is rarely smooth sailing and before Shura could fully grasp the situation Shiro was tearing his arm from her desperate hold. Ordering to stay put while he strode off into the unknown, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

The nuns tried to comfort her, the other girls at the abbey tried to welcome her, but it was no use. Pain and rejection were quick to mangle into anger and other things.

How dare he.

How dare he leave her when he knew she had NOTHING.

But anger, she learned, was difficult to maintain and it wasn't long before hope came creeping in again, brittle and ugly and drenched in desperation.

He'd be back. He had to come back because if he didn't Shura couldn't do what she was supposed to. Hachiro had told her to return with a child and she didn't dare show up empty handed. Obviously there were other options – plenty of men whose leery gazes made the redhead want to test her Fang like she had in the village – but they weren't Shiro and even though she was mad at him for discarding her, she missed him. Missed the comforting smell of cigarettes and gunfire.

So she waited, throwing herself headfirst into training, pushing and pushing until the hurt on the outside drowned out what was on the inside.

"He's coming back," she'd insisted when the nuns talked about moving her to a different branch. "You'll see!"

But little by little days turned to weeks which then dragged on into months before culminating in single night of utter calamity. Desolation and death, all wreathed in hell fire of the deepest blue.

And still Shiro did not return. Not to check on her, to confirm whether she was even alive. Not to take her back like she dreamed about at night. He just stayed gone and Shura had felt...lost.

Becoming an exorcist wasn't so much an active choice as it was a way to pass the time. Something to impress Shiro with, to show she wouldn't be a hindrance to the newly appointed Paladin. The other exwires were a joke anyway. Soft and weak-willed where Shura was not. Even without wielding her Fang she was already stronger and more agile than most junior and even some mid level exorcists. Natural abilities bolstered by years of training and Hachiro's blood.

Her Naga familiars never passed on any messages from the Hydra and Shura tentatively took that to mean she wasn't taking too long yet even though several years had already gone by. The now teenager was almost completely sure he couldn't force her back to Aomori. Almost wasn't good enough though, and as frustrating and unfair it all was, Shura was committed to her mission.

The Blue Night hadn't just been a literal disaster, but also a logistic one. Hundreds of exorcists had died while the number of demons had all but tripled and as the new Paladin, Shiro was being rushed from one branch to the next, assisting with missions and boosting morale. Add to that all the paperwork and meetings and it made perfect sense she'd barely caught a glimpse of him lately.

Make no mistake, she was still mad about it. There would be yelling and swearing, maybe some blood drawn if things got really heated, but then they'd kiss and make up and Shiro would finally, finally, finally give in. They'd fuck or make love or whatever he wanted and then she'd have a child and then-

Well, whatever happened after was a problem for the future.

Getting his attention for the first time in years would be the hard part but Shura had a plan. Violence was what had drawn Shiro's eye to her in the past, what's to say it wouldn't work again. And when her little pranks failed to yield the desired effect, the redhead turned to new sorts of mischief. All it took was a little skin and the guys who'd heckled her for beating them in fights turned to simpering idiots. Drooling after her with offers to carry her books or buy her drinks.

It was honestly pathetic. As if she'd ever be interested in snot-nosed brats that still reeked of milk. She had standards. Strength was everything to the Kirigakure clan, and who could be stronger than the man who'd felled Satan.

Caring for that woman's children changed nothing, you hear. Shiro was still a man, and men were slaves to their desires. Shura just needed to rile him up a bit, show him what he missing out on by wallowing in his grief. So what if Yuri had died. Shura was still alive! Young and beautiful, and if Shiro wanted to she'd gladly let him find solace in her body.

But instead of falling in her arms like she'd wanted, he rejected her. Again.

Years of what little time she'd had, wasted. Stolen from her by a dead woman and her cursed children. Shura despised them. And then Shiro had the gall to try and pawn that Scaredy-Four-Eyed brat off on her as if the priest hadn't spent years ignoring and neglecting her.

What did it matter to her what happened to them. Shura wasn't nice enough not to blame them, wasn't human enough to care what the cruelty of the world would do to ill-fated boys with hell fire in their eyes. She-

"Shura...?"

Rin's brows were furrowed in concern that only deepened when she didn't respond. Even Yukio looked apprehensive, unsettled by her silence. Both of them staring, waiting for answers, trusting her more than she could ever hope to deserve.

She should lie. She really should. It was by far the kindest thing to do and yet...

"I'm going to die soon," she mumbled, silently vowing that if by some miracle she made it out of this place alive she was going to gut Mephisto like a fish.

xXx

The boys' reaction was pretty much exactly what she'd been expecting. Yukio asked questions here and there, his calm demeanor in stark contrast with the gears she could see turning frantically inside his head. Rin was the opposite, sweet but impractical. Loud in his eagerness to save her from the inevitable.

They were both such good children, a spot of warmth in her otherwise cold life. And while Shura was infinitely glad to have met them, she regretted that her death would bring them any pain.

No preventing it, really. There was no negotiating with Hachiro. No threat that would work. The only card Shura had left to play was one she had no intention of using. It had taken her years to defy her upbringing but she'd done it and to throw all that away now wasn't something she could bear. No, if it came to that, Shura would simply have to-

The door opened and somewhere inside her, buried deep and hidden so well that Shura hadn't realized it even existed, the very last sliver of futile hope faded to nothing.

"If you guys are done yapping and being sappy," the Demon King said, "we can get on with that phone call."

xXx

Babysitting, Egyn decided, had to be the single most boring fucking thing on the planet. Father's oh-so prized possession was a moron, plain and simple, and even if his human twin was not nearly as intellectually challenged, he was still human which was arguably worse.

"Can't you order Hachirōtarō to release Shura from her contract?" said human twin asked. Such a stupid, pointless question that Egyn refused to even deign it with a response.

Still, in the interest of playing nice.

"Demons don't fuck with another's contract. Isn't that like exorcists 101 or something?"

"Hydra fall under the element of water, your orders should take precedence."

You'd think that, wouldn't you

"What can I say, I'm a nice guy," Egyn shrugged, turning back to the window. It was dark as pitch out and light was reflecting off the window and back inside in that annoying way but the demon could feel the tumultuous movement of water outside the glass. Great, just what he needed. More fucking snow.

From the corner of his eye he could see Glasses hauling a furious Sword Brat back by his shirt, the move far too smooth to be anything but practiced.

Seriously, why were they even here? It would have been so much simpler if Egyn was alone. He'd have had 'Tatsuko' at the shrine already and negotiated a suitable deal with Hachiro. The whole thing would have taken an hour, maybe two tops. Instead the King of water was stuck with tweedledum and tweedledee, both of whom he was finding increasingly more difficult not to murder or at the very least hurt.

If the King of Water didn't know any better, he might suspect Samael didn't even want his toy soldier back but if that were true, wouldn't it have been easier not to act at all?

This entire situation reeked, and not just because of the plants.

'Tatsuko' pissed him off too. Not that he'd expected anything else – her entire existence was a source of displeasure for him – but even so. Samael's report claimed she'd returned to Aomori of her own volition. An idiotic move on her part if you asked him. She'd been in the clear, well out of Hachiro's reach and not doing all that bad for herself, all things considered, so why risk it? Did she want to die or something?

Well, judging by the swell of despair and twisting misery her heart exuded that assessment might not be too far off the mark. Figures. Humans liked to feel sorry for themselves, they got off on that shit.

"So you're just gonna sit there and do nothing?!" Sword brat snarled, hands balled into trembling fists by his side.

The half-breed had been riled up since the phone call, pacing and snapping and clearly itching to let loose. At first, Egyn thought that was just how he was, volatile like Iblis had been, but now he realized the poor little fool was just fatally stupid. Blissfully unaware of the disastrous effect 'Tatsuko's' emotions were having on him.

Even if he was only half demon, their kind was practically hardwired to seek out and feed on negative energy. Harmless and in some cases even revitalizing, like a shot of caffeine on a slow day. Assuming you took the necessary precautions, of course, kept your own soul nice and isolated from the outside influence. Because the alternative was getting overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings not your own, kind of like what he was witnessing now.

Pathetic. A disgrace to demons everywhere.

"For now? Yeah, I am." Couldn't the idiot see she wasn't in any state to go out yet? Egyn carried her once already and it ruined his jacket. No way he was doing it a second time and especially not with these bozos around. He needed his hands free in case he needed to cover his ears lest their stupidity turned out to be contagious.

"How the hell is that helping, you Smurf-Bastard!"

"You know what isn't helping," Egyn snapped, wondering what the actual fuck a smurf was. It obviously wasn't flattering. "All your fucking noise. Ever wonder why hospitals are so quiet? It's because recovering becomes impossible when pea-brained hormonal shit stains keep making a racket!"

"You-!"

"Why Iblis wants to train you is beyond me," the demon continued, enjoying the way Sword Brat flinched at the mention of her name. He also didn't miss the little spike of nastiness from the human twin, his heart so much more expressive than his face. Good, this he could work with. "You're clearly too stupid to understand anything she might try to teach you and don't think I'll be stepping in to safe your sorry half-breed ass!"

"As if I even-"

Whatever the half-demon might have said was lost in a gurgled choke the instant a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Glasses was wearing a decidedly unpleasant smile, flooding the room with a tantalizing cocktail of anger-fear-envy that made his twin shrink away.

"What is he talking about, Nii-san?"

"...Well, I, uh...," Sword Brat babbled weakly. "I was gonna tell you but then I had that mission with Shiemi and then the thing with Shura happened and- Hey!"

"It seems my brother and I have some things to discuss," Glasses said, dragging his flailing twin towards the door. "Try to get some rest, Shura-san. If anything happens, we're right outside."

The latter part was directed at Egyn, delivered with what the human must have thought was a menacing stare. The demon just smiled, soaking up the animosity and wiggling his fingers in a mocking wave.

"Take your time," he cooed. "And don't worry. I'll take such good care of her."

"What?! NO! Yukio, we can't just-"

Sword Brat's dissent was cut off by the closing door, his shouts growing dimmer with each step.

Finally, Egyn thought, turning his attention to the remaining occupant.

"Now then, let's have a little chat."