AN: When Shippo met Souten. As a warning, I'm going for more of a tragic look at the S/S pairing. The ending will end on a happier note, but it won't be all roses, mostly because they're older and more serious. Shit happens.

Chapter 21: Contrite

"For here or to go?" The lady at the McDonalds asked, as she typed in my order.

"To go, please." I smiled and tried to count out some exact change. I was a little short so I gave the woman a twenty and waited for her to shell out my change in return. Jeez. And here all I wanted was some fries and a sprite.

"Super-sized sprite and a large fries." The lady finally sighed as she handed me my food. "Next!"

I walked out of the restaurant and took a sip of my soda.

"Excuse me." I heard a voice call and, seeing no one else on the street, I turned around to see who was calling. It was a girl. She was leaning against one of the walls of an alleyway, clutching her ankle. She was about my age and height, with black hair that she wore in two buns at the base of her neck. She was wearing a loose pair of cotton pants and a baby T-shirt with a brown bottom that eventually faded into a blue.

"Uh, hello. Can I help you?" I asked, scuffing my foot against the pavement in embarrassment.

'I hope she didn't notice me looking at her chest. Oh God. I'm such a perv!'

"I think I hurt my ankle. Do you think you could help me walk to the hospital?" She asked, looking a bit embarrassed as well Smiling in, what I hoped was a disarming way, I moved my stuff into my right hand, walked over to her spot at the beginning of an alley, and stooped down next to her.

"I'm sure I wouldn't mind." I smiled as I slipped her arm around my shoulders, put my left arm around her back and position my hand at the bottom of her ribs, so I wouldn't feel like a pervert again but I could still pull her to a standing position.

"I apologize."

"Oh, it's no trouble."

"That's not…" The girl began and I felt a sharp pain in my neck, before passing into darkness.

When I finally woke up, I found myself huddled in a corner, securely bound and gagged. Someone was not taking any chances that I might escape. That's not to say I was uncomfortable; it wasn't actually that bad, if you ignored the part where I was tied up.

I was lying on a blanket that had been folded in half so that the other half covered me and there was a pillow near my feet, which I must have kicked away while I was unconscious. I lifted my head a little and looked around. I was in a rather large cage, which was large enough for me to stretch out in comfortably. The girl from the alleyway was sitting a bit more than an arms distance away from the cage; she was holding a large clipboard on her lap and was holding a McDonalds cup in her right hand. Shaking the cup a few times to move the ice, she sipped the last few drops of her drink and placed it down by her feet. She grabbed a pencil from the clip part of her clipboard and pulled a strand of her hair off her face and pushed it behind her ear. She looked up from her clipboard and stiffened in surprise.

"You're awake." She blinked, before putting her pencil down again. "Oh, well, never mind then."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, with a frown. "No, never mind. Who cares?! Where are we? Why did you kidnap me? Who are you? What the hell is going on here?"

"That's… hm."

"Where's my stuff?!" I cried, already forgetting about my previous questions. "Where's my food?!!"

"Ah, that's an easy answer. I stole nothing from you. Except for your drink. I think it's all gone, unless you want the ice…?"

"No thank you." I frowned, my eyes narrowing coldly.

"I guess I deserve that." The girl laughed nervously and we lapsed into silence, while I processed my current position.

"So. You kidnapped me and drank my soda."

"Hey, I'm sorry, okay?"

"You kidnapped me and drank my soda."

"I said I was sorry, deaf boy!"

"YOU KIDNAPPED ME AND DRANK MY SODA! YOU BITCH!"

"Shut the hell up, stupid! You know, you're a lot nicer looking when you're unconscious."

"I'm also a lot nicer to people who don't horrifically wrong me."

"It's just a soda!" The girl snapped and we fell silent, glaring at each other. Finally, she looked down at her sketchpad and frowned. Hold the paper up so I could see it, she pointed to the picture. It was the beginning of a sketch of me. I guess she had been drawing it while I had been sleeping. It was astoundingly good actually, though I wouldn't have admitted it then.

"See this?" The girl asked, pointing to my face on the picture. "Why can't you act more like this?"

"Cause you're a bitch. Not to mention, your drawing sucks." I muttered and looked away.

I heard a low growl and the sound of ripping paper, before the crinkle of paper was heard and I heard something swish through the air. The something bounced off my ponytail and rolled into one of the corners of my cage. It was a piece of drawing paper from the girl's sketchpad.

"That was just rude." I sniffed.

"Like you're any better."

"I am the victim here!"

"Oh, please. It's not like I'm going to hurt you"

"You do know that kidnapping is a federal crime, right?"

"They won't catch me. I'm a youkai!"

"Uh-huh. If you're a youkai, you're pretty pathetic."

"You asshole! Just who do you think you are?"

"I'm Shippo Kitsune! Leader of the fox demons!"

"Blah, blah, blah. I see you mouth move and all I hear is shit"

"Oh yeah, and who are you?"

"I'm Souten Thunder, sister of the formidable Thunder brothers!" She smirked.

'Oh… fuck.'

"Really?" I whispered, trying to hide the fact that I was about to wet myself. "So… what do you want with me?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know?" I asked, gaining courage.

"Yes. Naraku ordered me to kidnap you, but I don't know why. You know, not that this makes much of a difference, but I didn't really want to kidnap you. I don't even like Naraku; he makes my skin crawl."

"So why do you work for him?"

"Well, he's the boss of the organization my brothers worked for. He says that my brothers were killed at a meeting and he says he knows who killed them. I need to avenge my brothers and he promised he'd tell me if I work for him. I will avenge my family!"

'Interesting. So, she doesn't know yet. Oh, thank God.'

"I know the feeling. My parents died because of their job, too" I replied honestly.

"I'm sorry."

"What did your brother's do?"

"I don't know. They would never tell me."

"That's odd."

"Not really. We never really talked about their job. Hell, we rarely saw each other; I was always busy with school and they had work. But they were always there for me and, every Saturday, we'd go out to eat for lunch or dinner. It was nice. And then…"

"They're dead." I finished in a whisper. I could hear my voice crack and I felt horrible too. Those two men, those two brothers, were dead because of me. It was my fault.

'Pull yourself together!' I mentally berated myself. 'It was you or them. You or them. You or…'

"Exactly." Souten nodded, looking like she was fighting tears. She finally looked over at me with a forced smile. "You know I'm really sorry about all this. I almost wish we had meet differently."

"Me too." I nodded.

'Oh yea. Definitely, me too.'

"You do understand, though, that avenging my brother's is important. They would have wanted it. Besides, that bastard still needs to pay. He took my family from me, and left me with nothing. Nothing!" Souten continued, her voice cracking. I watched as she covered her face with one hand and tried to fight the tears.

"You know, my parents… were murdered also. I… I also was very upset, as you can imagine." I continued, picking my words very carefully. "I killed the men who killed my parents less than three weeks ago."

I looked up to see that Souten was staring at me, her eyes blood-shot and puffy.

"I… I had no idea."

"I thought the deaths of my parents murders would make everything better, but it didn't. I though the ache would go away, but it didn't. Sometimes I have nightmares about killing those men. Killing doesn't fix anything. My parents are still dead and nothing I did changed that. I don't even feel better. If anything, I feel worse."

"Really?" Souten asked, as she stood and put her sketchpad down on the floor.

"Yes." I nodded, unsure what was going on.

"Then I'd better let you go."

"What? Why?" I asked as she unlocked the door and untied my hands and feet. I stood up and stretched. "Why are you doing this for me?"

"Because you're right." Souten mumbled, looking at her feet. "I mean… uh… what I mean is… well, thanks. I… I just missed them so much that I needed to lash out at someone to relieve the pain, you know? Of course, I sort of knew, deep down, that nothing was going to help anyway."

Souten sighed and looked up at me.

"It's always going to hurt… isn't it?" She asked with a frown, and I nodded in response.

"Nothing really helps." I replied.

"Well, I'm glad I met you." Souten declared, suddenly speaking with confidence. "If I hadn't, I probably would have taken my revenge. And then where would I be? I mean, this revenge didn't feel right already. So what would I do if I had murdered the man? Not to mention… there was just something about Naraku that warns me to be wary anyway."

Letting out a small sigh, Souten shrugged as she grabbed her stuff and smiled a falsely bright smile at me.

"But I've going to give up my revenge." She said, more to reassure herself than to inform me. She must have noticed that I didn't look convinced because she laughed, an empty and false laugh, devoid of happiness. "I'm fine. Really. I am"

"If you say so." I frowned. "Hey, why don't you come with me? There's someone you should meet."

OMAKE~ TIME~!

This is actually a comment from my Beta reader. I appreciate the humor.

(Cute, but I don't know how the hell they're going to work past this killing thing... bad way to start a relationship. "Uh, your brothers killed my parents, then tried to kill me, so I killed them. So, what about that soda?")