It was almost noon when Sanzo finally woke up that morning.

Only Goku was still in the bedroom and Sanzo sighed, mildly irritated that no one had thought to wake him up; they still had a demon to catch, and they'd already spent far too long in the village already.

But you knew that would happen, a little voice whispered in his head. Ever since you saw her, a demon girl untouched by dark magic…

Sanzo sighed again, the thought only adding to his irritation, and reached down to give Goku a little shake.

"Get up."

Goku rolled over, muttering something about breakfast. Sanzo shook him harder.

"Now, Goku."

"I'm tired, go away." The demon boy buried his head under someone's blanket.

"I don't have time for this," Sanzo muttered and pulled out his fan. It only took three slaps before Goku was more or less awake, glaring blearily at him from behind the blanket he was trying to hide behind.

"What the hell was that for?" he demanded, trying to roll over to go back to sleep. "Asshole."

"Get up, Goku, it's noon." Sanzo headed for the door.

"So? Since when do you get up early?" Goku demanded. Sanzo turned around threateningly and Goku flung up both hands.

"All right, all right, I'll get up, god…"

Sanzo had assumed that the others would most likely have gathered in the kitchen, and he was a little surprised, when he got there, to find only Hakkai pouring out a cup of tea.

"Good morning," Hakkai greeted him and smiled, presumably at Sanzo's expression. "Here."

Sanzo accepted the tea and looked around again.

"Where are the others?"

"Last I checked, Goku was still sleeping," Hakkai replied lightly. "Miya and Gojyo were outside talking when I came out."

"You left Gojyo alone with her?" Sanzo shot Hakkai a quizzical look and crossed to the open back door, looking outside.

Hakkai smiled again, but there was a serious note to his voice as he answered, "Yeah. I don't know what they were talking about, but I get the feeling that we had better leave them alone for awhile."

Sanzo didn't answer, frowning a little as he searched for them. It was only when a gust of wind revealed a sudden spot of crimson red and raven black against the gray that he realized where they were and what was going on.

"He's about to lay her right there. I'm going to kill him, the least he could do is not seduce her after she put us up for the night…" Sanzo started forward, but was stopped by Hakkai's chuckle.

"You do like her after all. I was starting to wonder what your problem with her was, the way you've been acting lately."

"I have nothing against Miya," Sanzo replied shortly, not about to get into what he felt about the girl. "It's the delay that's the problem."

"Maybe so, but…" Hakkai crossed the kitchen to join Sanzo, looking out the door thoughtfully. "We're supposed to be saving humans and Miya's spent a lifetime doing just that. It's possible that being here is somehow important to our quest."

"You think we're here because she needed our help?" Sanzo turned to look at Hakkai questioningly.

"Maybe. Maybe we need hers." Hakkai was still looking outward, his expression unreadable. "Miya is a lot like Goku and Gojyo and I, Sanzo, more so then you think."

I hate it when he does that, Sanzo thought irritably. I can't tell what he's figured out…

"It doesn't matter," he replied, turning away from the back door to sit down at the table, saying the words more for himself than for Hakkai. "We'll be gone soon anyway."

Goku, Hakkai, and Sanzo had finished breakfast by the time Miya and Gojyo came inside; Hakkai was already doing dishes and Sanzo was on his third cup of coffee.

"Hey, I just starting to wonder what had happened to you two," Hakkai greeted them cheerfully as they came through the back door.

"We were talking and I lost track of time," Miya replied simply, with a smile for Hakkai, then looked around the kitchen quickly. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even think about starting breakfast…"

"No worries, my dear," Hakkai replied lightly. "I'm afraid the three of us didn't wait for you to eat, but I did save you this…"

Miya accepted the tea and the plate he handed her from inside the oven with a grateful look.

"Thanks, Hakkai."

"No problem." He glanced up at Gojyo and added with a grin, "However you, my friend, are going to have to fend for yourself. Goku found your plate."

"Damn it, you little monkey…" Gojyo glared at him.

"I didn't know it was yours when I ate it," Goku protested and Sanzo looked up sharply, startled when Gojyo didn't pursue the fight. He took a closer look at both of them as Miya dropped down in the chair closest to the door and Gojyo leaned on the counter nearby. Miya looked exhausted, and the shadows under her eyes suggested that she'd been crying; Gojyo, for his part, seemed just a little subdued and drained himself.

Hakkai's making cryptic statements about her, god only knows what she and Gojyo did to each other out there, Goku looks at her like she's his big sister… What is it about this girl? Sanzo wondered, not at all pleased with the thought. It's taken two days for all of them to start acting as if she belongs here.

"We need to decide what we are going to do about this demon," he began abruptly, pushing his other thoughts aside. "Obviously, he's posing as a human somewhere in town and we need a way to find him."

"The demon had to come to the town before Miya, right?" Goku shrugged. "We just ask around and find out who arrived right before she did."

Gojyo reached over with a pair of chopsticks to take something off of Miya's plate.

"What makes you think he got here just before she did?" he asked with his mouth full. "It could be anyone that she pissed off while she was traveling."

"How long have you been on the road?" Sanzo asked, as Miya lifted her plate a little to share it with Gojyo.

"Five years."

"Yeah, but you're forgetting that whatever his plan is, it has something to do with us," Hakkai pointed out, drying his hands and coming over to sit at the table himself. "Our quest only began when the demons started to change. That would make it about a year at the most that he could have known that we would end up here."

"And even that would take some explaining," Miya reflected. She paused to smack Gojyo's hand away with her chopsticks from something she wanted to eat, then glanced over at Sanzo, apparently struck by a sudden thought. "You know, this is probably a bad time to ask this, and you certainly don't have to tell me if it's none of my business, but you never told me what this quest is that you're on."

"We'll explain it to you later," he replied shortly. "So we're back to finding out who came to the village right before Miya." He sighed. "I suppose the best thing to do would be to go and ask around."

"You don't think those assholes are actually going to help us, do you?" Gojyo demanded.

"I can go, at least they know me," Miya offered quietly.

"No. You're the last person that can go, after what happened last night," Sanzo replied. "They're already going to think that you are the killer yourself, they'll try to kill you as soon as they see you. Hakkai, you and Goku are most likely to get answers, you two go."

"I'll go too, just in case something happens," Gojyo commented and Sanzo nodded. Miya drained her tea quickly and rose to her feet.

"Well, if I can't be any help to you, there's some stuff I'd like to get done around here, if you'll excuse me," she said with a smile, and only waited long enough for them to nod before heading deeper into the house.

There was a second of silence after Miya vanished, then Hakkai began slowly, "I don't know if I should mention this, and I didn't want to bring it up when she was still here, but… I think that this may be more than just a way of getting rid of Miya or the four of us. Miya told me a little bit about what happened when she came here, and apparently she faced a similar situation, where the townspeople were nearly ready to kill her for being a demon." He hesitated. "I wonder if this isn't about killing Miya at all. I wonder if the demon's trying to do something else entirely."

"Like what, commit suicide by making her kill him?" Goku demanded doubtfully.

"No, like making her change like the other demons," Gojyo answered sharply. "She told me that she knew that if she killed a human, even to defend herself, she'd become like the others."

"And he wants us to see it happen," Sanzo finished grimly.

"Why would it matter if we saw her change?" Goku demanded, puzzled.

"Think about it," Sanzo snapped. "Could you kill her if she attacked us, or the village?"

"Well, if she was attacking us, I guess…" But Goku didn't sound at all sure.

"I could." There was an edge to Gojyo's voice, but the look in his eyes said that it wouldn't be for the same reasons that he killed other demons.

"I couldn't." Hakkai was very quiet.

"Exactly. We need to make sure that it doesn't come to that." Sanzo stood up. "You three find out what you can in the village."

The three demons nodded, but Gojyo paused at the door.

"What are you going to do?"

"Take care of something here."

---

Sanzo found Miya in the bedroom.

For a long time, he simply stood in the doorway, watching her with narrowed eyes. Miya clearly hadn't realized he was there; she was humming softly to herself, looking cheerful enough, despite the circles under her eyes, as she moved quietly around the room, folding blankets and making the bed.

He didn't know what it was that he was going to say to her. In all honesty, he wasn't even quite sure why he was there at all. It was just that after two days of skirting around the edge of things, he was sick of it, and he wouldn't know anything for sure until he dealt with it. Dealt with her.

All of a sudden, Miya paused, a blanket folded over her arms, and bent quickly to pick something up off the floor. It was a small bag, and Sanzo belatedly realized what it was; someone had found Miya's mah jong pieces in the living room the day before and had taken them into the bedroom to play. For a long moment, Miya stood, simply staring at the bag in her hand, and then, abruptly, she seemed to come to some kind of a decision.

She tossed the blankets to one side carelessly and knelt on one of the mats, shoving everything to one side and smoothing out a place in front of her. She sighed quietly, growing still, and her breathing became steady and perfectly even and Sanzo shifted, startled. She was kneeling in the single, precise beam of sunlight from the window and as it shimmered on her black hair, he could almost see the aura of serene concentration that brought back a rush of memories of the shrine where he had trained…

She reached for the bag without looking at it. The mah jong pieces spilled into her hand and she scattered them before her and the movement had all the surety of a practiced ritual and all the grace of a magical casting. Sanzo jerked without meaning to, stunned at his own moment of sudden anger, that she should be able to perform this ritual that was everything and nothing like the ones he had been trained in, that she should remind him so much of his home…

"You want to think that I'm a fool, don't you?" Her voice startled him and he stared down at her shining black hair. Her words held the soft, wandering quality of a deep trance, but there was a sense of precision to them, a sense that she knew exactly what she was saying. "And yet, you want to know if I can see what they told you, what you have been so determined not to let happen…"

He didn't move.

"They told you that there would be another that you would need on your journey. A demon untouched by the dark magic that swept over this land, a girl whose fate was tied up with your quest. You never wanted to meet me, did you? You never wanted to be faced with the suggestion that there was such a thing as fate."

"Fate is what the weak use to justify their mistakes." He didn't bother to hide his mockery.

"And yet, you are still here."

"Only to find out what it is that you haven't been telling us."

"That wasn't what I meant." For the first time, she looked down at the mah jong pieces scattered across the mat. "You didn't have to help me."

He didn't have an answer for that, either. Miya reached out, picking the stones that had fallen upside down out of the way with swift, sure gestures, setting them aside, then sat back when they were cleared away.

"What is it that you really want of me, priest, that I prove myself to you? Or is it simply that you know that you need to see with the eyes of your heart? You already know that I don't know anything more than you do, that, in fact, I know far less."

He was silent, watching her. She was still looking down at the pattern spread before her, one hand darting swiftly across the stones, marking each step as she made it, then, abruptly, she swept them into the bag. He didn't move as she rose to her feet and turned to face him, meeting his eyes.

"I see a path made clear and the end of an old life," she told him simply. "Mine, Sanzo. That's what I saw when I met you and that's what I haven't told you. In helping you, my path would become clear, and after all this time, that wasn't something I was going to pass up." She tilted her head to one side, searching his face. "But you know why this is happening. It has to do with the fact that you were told that you were going to meet me, doesn't it? You were told that I was going to be important to your quest, but you aren't the only one that knows that and someone is trying very, very hard to make sure that something goes very wrong. That's why this is happening now, after you got here."

The eyes of the heart…

"Yes." Sanzo dropped the words into the silence calmly. "That's why the demon is after you and that's why he attacked you now. He believes that you are the one that the Sanbutsushin told me I would meet. I have no idea who he is or what he thinks you are supposed to do, but I suppose we can ask him that when we catch him."

It was Miya's turn to wait silently, watching him, and he sighed.

"No, I didn't want to meet you, and no, I didn't particularly want to find out whether or not you were supposed to help us. I still don't. As far as I am concerned, we got involved with you by chance. We'll make sure that you don't get killed, but after that you're on your own, got it?"

She was smiling, humor sparkling in her amethyst eyes as if he had somehow said exactly what she expected – or wanted. Sanzo turned on his heel, not about to get into any further conversation with her.

She's nothing special, he told himself, heading outside. Just a young demon girl that someone thinks is important enough to kill. That's all.

A demon girl who hadn't suffered a change. A demon girl who had become close to his companions so fast it was unsettling. A demon girl who could see the unseen.

The eyes of the heart…

"Damn it!"