Inuyasha remained where he had fallen upon Kagome's "sit" command, sulking. The wolves were long gone, escaped to wherever their den might be, and the mountainside had fallen silent and still, save for the stirring of feathers in the breeze.

After a while, Kagome knelt down to check on the hanyou. Sango was impressed. She herself had no intention of going anywhere near Inuyasha right now.

"Why did you help them escape?" he asked.

"He was injured," Kagome explained gently. "And they weren't bad at heart."

"Not bad?!"

For once, Sango was in agreement with Inuyasha. The wolves had killed entire villages full of humans, and the killing had not even been to provide food for their kin. A senseless waste, for which they still had no explanation. And somehow Kagome saw the wolves as sympathetic?

"Didn't it occur to you that they might kill you when they kidnapped you?" Inuyasha was saying, looming angrily over Kagome now as he warmed to his topic.

"But they protected me," she protested. "They aren't just violent."

"I guess what she's trying to say is she became sympathetic toward them," Sango chimed in dryly. She wasn't very impressed by the explanation, but the wolves were long gone anyway. It didn't much matter right now what she thought.

"It's hard to hate someone who makes grand declarations of love for you," Miroku added, entirely unhelpfully. Sango glared at him. She was trying to smooth things over, and he seemed to have the opposite idea.

"Bah!" Inuyasha growled.

"Inuyasha, wait —" Kagome called after him, but he paid her no mind at all. He was obviously fed up with the entire situation. Better to let him cool off, Sango thought, than pursue too closely.

It seemed the monk was in agreement. "Sorry to bother you, Kagome-sama, but there's still work to be done," he said, insinuating himself beside Kagome.

"Oh. Right." She looked utterly downcast. "The jewel shards."

Sango stood guard while they two of them extracted the jewel shards from the bird youkai's mouth, though there was nothing left to guard against. Kirara came over too, with Shippou perched on her shoulders, helping to keep an eye out.

"One from the bird," Miroku tallied.

"And the one that was taken from Kouga," Kagome added. She seemed strangely forlorn.

Sango decided to stop trying to figure that relationship out. It just didn't make any sense, and it wasn't likely to make more sense if she tried harder to figure it out. Better to focus on the problems at hand, and the ones likely to arise in the near future. "Won't that Kouga guy just come back to get his shards as soon as he's healed?"

"Most likely," Miroku agreed. "I doubt we've seen the last of him."

Kagome was quiet. "If they ever meet again, I wonder if Inuyasha and Kouga would fight again."

"They would." The words escaped before Sango even realized she meant to say them.

"Definitely," Miroku added.

"You said that so readily…" Kagome sighed. In defeat or exasperation, it was hard to tell. "I guess they really will fight if they ever meet again."

"For now, maybe you should try cheering Inuyasha up," Sango suggested. She hoped that a kind, reassuring gesture from Kagome would help get the hanyou back to his normal self… and keep the group from falling apart here and now.

Kagome looked anything but certain about the idea. Not that Sango could really blame her. He'd been a real jerk. She could almost picture him sending them all to the wolves with one last jibe about Kouga.

"He did nothing but worry about you the whole time you were gone," Sango added, trying to focus on the positive where she could find it. He had worried about Kagome, and that worry had probably at least played a role in his reaction to Kouga once Kagome was safe and sound.

But as Kagome approached the sulking hanyou, Sango couldn't help but wonder if she'd done the right thing. Maybe pushing for a reconciliation wasn't the right move. Maybe it was too soon… but she didn't much want to spend the rest of the day on this desolate mountain watching her friends sulk at each other.

"Um, Inuyasha?" Kagome began. She'd edged over to where he was crouching, and now plopped down beside him like she ordinarily did. "I'm sorry I made you worry," she told him. She had her back to the rest of the group now, as did Inuyasha, but Sango could imagine her giving him her sweetest smile. "Thank you for coming to save me."

"Hah. Wouldn't you have preferred if I didn't come to save you?"

"What?"

"He completely suckered you in with his stupid sweet talk. You pleaded for his life!"

This… was not going at all the way Sango had hoped it would. Ordinarily she might have felt bad about openly eavesdropping, but in this case she felt it best to keep an eye out in case she needed to intervene. And it was starting to sound like she would need to intervene.

Shippou sprang from Kirara's head to Miroku's shoulder, vying for a better view. Sango cast a sidelong look of disapproval at the both of them. Just because she needed to keep an eye on the situation didn't mean they needed to gawk, too. Didn't Kagome and Inuyasha deserve even a little privacy?

Apparently not.

"You mean when he said he loved me? Were you worried about that, Inuyasha?"

"What?" Inuyasha was on his feet, and on the defensive. "Of course I wasn't worried about that!"

Somehow I doubt that, Sango thought, but she kept it to herself. No need to make things worse; Inuyasha and Kagome were doing a fine job of that all by themselves.

"I don't have any such feelings for Kouga," Kagome stated. She clearly hoped that would be the end of it, but she had seriously underestimated Inuyasha.

"Nobody asked you that!" The hanyou was becoming more and more agitated.

"But—"

"I'm fed up with this. This conversation stops now."

He obviously meant for that to be that, but Kagome didn't go anywhere and neither did he. The pair sat in awkward silence for a very long time. Sango knew this was a bad sign, and that an explosion was likely to ensue, but she had no idea what to do to prevent it. Anything she said or did might set it off.

What do we do now? She looked imploringly at the monk, but it seemed he had no idea what to do, either. He just shrugged and looked exasperated.

I guess we'll just have to wait and hope they work things out, she decided.

They didn't have much longer to wait.

"Just what did you get up to with that guy?"

To Sango's surprise, it was Kagome that exploded. "Just what are you implying? Is that why you've been giving me weird looks all afternoon?"

Inuyasha, of course, immediately went on the defensive. Even though he'd started it. "You don't have to get angry with me, you know."

"Maybe I wouldn't if you'd stop jumping to perverted conclusions!"

"Shut up!" he snarled. "I don't even want to look at you anymore!"

"Oh, all right then." Suddenly calm, she turned to Sango. "Sango-chan, can I borrow Kirara?"

"Of course," she said, a bit hesitant because she did not like where this situation was going one bit. The last thing she wanted to do was drag herself and Kirara into the middle of Inuyasha and Kagome's lovers' quarrel. "Where are you going?"

"Bah," Inuyasha added unhelpfully, "she's probably gonna go chasing after Kouga."

Kagome stiffened, her face reddening as she turned to glare at the hanyou.

"I'm going home, you idiot!" she snapped. Sango had never seen her so angry at Inuyasha before.

Without so much as a farewell, she climbed onto Kirara's back and took off. Sango watched them go, feeling deeply uncertain. Where were they going? Would she need to wait here so Kirara could hope to find her again when she returned? What if some danger befell them on their way?

There was something about all this that she just didn't like at all.