Heh. You may notice as you read that I do not actually describe the conclusion of the episode in the tower! This is because a) I want to leave you in suspense, b) I don't like to write battle scenes, c) I have no idea what the 'thing' Aerie 'remembered' is, or d) all of the above. Pick whatever you like.

Disclaimer: I now own a copy of Inuyasha manga no. 19, and had a really strange dream in which I had Sesshoumaru on a chain, but otherwise I own nothing. Oh, except Aerie, because I bought her from her poor, grieving parents who think she's been dead for ten months anyway.

Dedication: This chapter is dedicated to my dear sister, annoying as she is, also my beta reader. Reviews as froggiesrcool, consistently, although she doesn't have a penname yet.

biggest anime fan: SHE LIED TO ME? (looms threateningly) Heh. Don't hurt her. Hope the exams went well. I sincerely doubt you know the bun place I'm talking about. Wrong continent, in a little town named Lebanon. (Maya would like me to add that they also have good doughnuts.) All I'll say about Miroku's fate is that it involves me conferencing with Mel to get my facts straight. Hm. How thoroughly do you read disclaimers? Because if you don't read carefully that's not a hint. Regarding Kileb: I like him too! (I'm actually way too fond of most of my bad guys.)

Glad you understood, glad it's still funny. I'm sitting here writing review replies because everything I've tried to write today has been morbid and bloody, so that may set my post date back a bit. Thanks for asking about the dawn; made me realize my timetable was getting a little screwed up. Oh, and this one's longer!

Gem Gamgee: You aren't getting hit with them. Thank you for believing me. SO THERE INUYASHA! My sister is happy you liked her line. Sis: Happy happy happy! (She really just said that.) It actually was hers, too. She was sitting next to me when I stole that line and quoted it the way Anikin says it, and she came back with the way Han says it, and then she said STARWARS, and since randomness is the purpose of those author's notes, I put it in. Kihii! So happy you like me! I love you too!

NefCanuck: Hah! I didn't resolve it! Take that!

Trisaksmom: Sorry you didn't like it. Making this one longer. Say…will writing the next chapter of this be a good excuse for not doing chores from now on?

silverfingers: Glad it's funny and all. Thanks for reading it even though you didn't know Inuyasha! So flattered! I do know it's not original, by the way, though. (Which is what I meant on your story – just teasing.) I GET KUDOS! Yay!

Imomen: A crush? No-o…. He just likes her…. That wouldn't be fair if he had a crush on her, him so young and all…. She plays with him, and it's more interesting than Kagome playing. (I.e., he's a little boy, Aerie would do things like mock-fight him and build little villages for the purpose of being flattened, etc. Believe me, Kags is sweet but not much fun from the viewpoint of a small boy.) Plus he's kind of defensive about liking her in the first place, because he knows Kagome and the Inu don't, much.

medlii: (You last 'cause I have the most to say) Yeah, I enjoy writing these titles. I like orange hair! You're right, not enough villains are redheads. Yeah, his name was intentionally not mentioned. No, he doesn't look like Naraku, but he acts a little like him (and has a very faintly reminiscent backstory) and I was just keeping people from any misconceptions.

Heh, you caught that, with him remembering the 'loonie in robes' while most everything else was a blank. Actually, I thought about that, but let's just say that Kil' was attacking the memories of things that actually mattered to Inuyasha, and his shot-term memory wasn't affected, shall we?

I actually used a direct quote from Yodah in the first draft of that, but it didn't really fit, so I took it out. Trisak isn't really much like Yodah at all except that he's really old, not human, knows a lot, likes to make fun of people without them knowing…. Well, put like that it sounds like he is like Yodah, but I swear he isn't! Glad they did help; I didn't want to go through them again in the chapter and slow things down, but I didn't think it was really clear…. Go Sango! Here's the chappie.

Kagome sat and stared into the fire, Inuyasha's head in her lap. She was actually kind of wishing he wouldn't get his memory back, because he'd been so sweet all night since she had truly and completely lost her voice. He'd lit the fire, fetched things for her and Miroku while he cooked and she looked after Sango, played with Shippou, and he hadn't sworn once. And then he'd fallen asleep with his head in her lap. Why did he only do that when he was human and incapacitated? Miroku was asleep, too, at a decent distance from Sango, and Shippou had fallen asleep looking toward the tower where Aerie was. He was really worried about her. Kagome was glad he'd fallen asleep before the weird noises and lights and explosions had started to come out of it. She stroked Inuyasha's hair absently.

"Kagome!" called a tired voice. She looked up, squinting into the darkness. She couldn't see a thing. She was starting to hate moonless nights almost as much as Inuyasha did. As he usually did. Wait…she could make out something. A slim black form, practically lurching toward her.

"Aerie?" she said uncertainly, glad to find that her voice was back.

"The same." Aerie agreed, sitting down next to her with a groan. "I thought he never slept on the new moon," she added, gesturing toward Inuyasha.

"He doesn't; he doesn't have his memory right now – hey, stop it!"

"Stop what?"

"Trying to distract me from asking what happened! What happened?"

"I found the guy who got Inu."

"And?"

"I didn't kill him. He got away."

"And?" Aerie looked at Kagome and her lips twitched.

"And I'll wait until everybody wakes up to go into detail because if I've learned one thing in the past ten months it's that I hate telling stories about stupid positions I've gotten myself into more than once."

"What's been special about the past ten months?"

"Kagome," Aerie said, "You're fishing. Do I ask you questions? Do you ask any of the rest of them questions? I don't want to talk about it." Not without talking to Trisak first, anyway, she thought. "Maybe later on. But we'd better wake everybody up now. I'm not sure how many more cronies he had holed up in there, and I'm drained." Her eyes fell on Kagome's hand, still stroking Inuyasha's hair without noticing. "Or, if you really want to stay here and keep him there, I guess we could do that too." Kagome flushed.

"See, that's not fair! That's why I asked you. You know everything about us, but what do we know about you? Nothing! You could be some kind of demon in disguise, a murderer on the run, or anything! Just tell us!" Aerie looked up and met Kagome's eyes for the first time since she had arrived back.

"You're right," she said. "I'm sorry. I will tell you sometime. As much as you know about anyone else. The outlines. Really, you're the most private pack of people." Kagome nodded.

"I guess we are. Shoot. Then we can go."

"Not now. I'll tell you about Kileb, the guy in the tower, though, since I suspect he's going to hold a grudge about this."

"Alright. Go on."

"Let's wake the others up, then. I mean, you aren't going for sole knowledge of the battle, right? Everyone okay?"

"Sango still hasn't woken up." Aerie raised her eyebrows and went over to the taijiya.

"Start waking people up," she said, putting her hand on Sango's forehead.

"Yes'm." Said Kagome. Aerie grinned.

"I deserved that." She murmured. "Got too used to Trisak and the others doing what I told them. Now, what's the matter here?" She laid her other hand on Sango's diaphragm. "Hm. Bump on the head, and a little poison." She worked on healing the concussion, keeping the purple inside the bone, and ran through Sango's veins, clearing the poison out. She could have gone faster if she hadn't been hiding it, but she'd gotten in the habit.

Sango slapped her. "Hey!" Aerie protested as the demon slayer opened her eyes. "What was that for?" Sango blushed.

"Sorry. I thought you were the monk."

"Why, my dear Sango, I am injured," said the slandered monk, looking over Aerie's shoulder. "How can you think I would take advantage of your unconscious state?" Sango made a face at him.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"I'd say…six hours." Aerie said. "Dawn should be in about three more. Inuyasha'll be changing back."

"Er…he's…dead, Aerie."

"I am not," Inuyasha grumped, apparently having been re-reminded by Kagome again of whom he was.

"He says he's not dead," Aerie told Sango.

"Will people please stop saying that?"

"Did he just say please?" Sango asked.

"He did! He's been really nice tonight, and he played with me, and – Aerie! You're OK!" Shippou jumped onto her, almost knocking her over. She caught her balance and gave him a hug.

"Hey, bucko. You were worried about me?"

"You bet!" Shippou exclaimed. "You went in there to fight all by yourself and I was afraid you'd get killed because you're human and you're really easy to kill."

"Not that easy," she told him, smiling. "Believe me." And, until recently, not all that human, either. I. Hate. That. Jerk. Why didn't I kill him?

"Tell me what happened, Aerie! Did you get the guy who stole Inuyasha's mind?" Shippou asked, clambering onto her shoulder.

"Hey!" Inuyasha protested, making a swipe for the kitsune that missed because Aerie leapt backward onto her feet, Shippou tumbling into her arms.

"Please don't do that," she requested tiredly. "I've been either fighting or climbing stairs for the past three and a half hours, and I'm exhausted, and my nerves are shot to hell."

"I'd like to hear about that battle, if you don't mind." Miroku put in. "What manner of being was it, that even Inuyasha was not stubborn enough to stand against?" Aerie sighed and sat down beside Sango, and the tachi followed suit, those who were on their feet. She set Shippou on the ground beside her, where he moved off to sit with Kagome, who didn't jump around at ridiculous angles, even if she was muttering to Inuyasha at regular intervals. Aerie didn't say anything for perhaps three heartbeats, and then she remarked, as if to the universe in general,

"He used to be human."

"Not another Onigumo," Inuyasha groaned. Miroku raised his eyebrows.

"I was thinking, not another Peach Man," he said mildly.

"Not really. Though I guess he's more like the Peach Man than he's like Onigumo. As far as I know he did what he did to himself voluntarily and with only minimal aid."

"You know him?" Kagome asked, startled. Aerie winced.

"I know of him. A good deal. And we have met before. He's kind of…my Naraku, you could say. My nemesis. Except that isn't right, Nemesis was the goddess of vengeance, and I haven't done anything to him, or you to Naraku for that matter. So we're their nemeses."

"Aerie," cut in Kagome, "I'm sure what you're saying would make perfect sense in English, but in Japanese it's gibberish." ((A/N: Does anyone know the Japanese for nemesis, arch-foe, etc.? It'd be nice if you could tell me.))

"And you're babbling." Added Inuyasha, ever tactful. Aerie blushed.

"Yeah. I'm tired. And I don't like being…looked at. Makes me feel like prey." She cleared her throat. "Maybe I should start at the beginning. His name is Kileb."

"Harmless-sounding name," Sango remarked. "What does it mean?"

"I have no idea. It's the name his mother gave him. He's used a number of others over the years, but that one keeps coming back to haunt him. That's because of the Faer." She paused. "I'm telling this badly," she said. "No more questions unless it's really important. Okay? It keeps sending me off on tangents just when I'm getting into my stride."

"What's a tangent?" Shippou asked Kagome.

"It's to do with geometry," the girl answered, "I'm not sure why she just used it. But hush." Aerie's super-dooper magic mastery of Japanese was not perfect. She wrinkled her nose and began.

"Alright. I'm good at stories; I'll treat this like one. Once upon a time there was a queen. She ruled a people who never died, and who knew no fear. One day, when walking in the places humans lived, she found a child. He was half-dead with starvation though he had no more than a hand's worth of years, and he told her his name was Kileb. He had been thrown from his home, he said, because he saw things in the fire. She took him home. At first all was well. He was a child, and a clever, sweet-natured one, and among the ageless Faer he quickly became everyone's darling. He had everything a boy could desire. Adventures, stories, tutoring and training in every discipline. But, as children do, he grew up. It was not enough anymore to hunt and play and make music and hear stories long into the night. He wanted to tell stories, too, but he had no adventures or strange sights to tell of. He had only his few years in the woods and the marble walls of the land where he had grown up, and he was lonely. He had not been studying long enough at anything to understand the discussions the others held about things that really interested them, he had not known any of them long enough to be able to communicate many minutes' speech in a glance – and he would need many more centuries before he could. Some instinct within him, too, was telling him to hurry, that he had to get out and do things now, because he would not have long, but he did not understand that that was what it was saying. All he knew was that he was no longer happy.

"After a time he asked the queen to take him out among the human kind when she walked, and she consented, and was glad, for she had known that he was unhappy, and had guessed more nearly at the reason than he. They walked out of her forests, out of her world, and to a place where humans lived. At first they were walking down a road, a muddy, dirty road, and he looked at the people they were walking beside and did not understand why their faces were so different from the ones he had grown up knowing – all so afraid, so tight. And he did not know why they looked at him and the queen, and why their eyes turned hard and unhappy. He did not recognize the jealousy in them, for though he had thrown his tantrums as a child, he had never felt this deep resentment, and he had never seen this look from someone else. Then they were in a town, and it was loud, and crowded, and foul smelling, and he looked about with wide eyes. As they walked he saw the marks of famine, of illness, of war, starving children and plague-ridden families and old soldiers with war-wounds of every kind. And he asked the lady 'What is wrong with them?' and she said 'They are hungry. They are sick. They are wounded.' And Kileb replied, 'I know those words only from stories. Is this what they are?' And she nodded.

"All that day they went through the town, along many roads and up many alleys, into dark, foul-smelling dwellings and to those people with no dwellings at all, bearing bread, and smiles – a thin, cracked smile on his part, but a smile – and the queen's healing hands. Sometimes they were cursed for their charity, by folk too proud to accept it, sometimes they were thanked, and sometimes the people fled before them without ever knowing why they were there. As the sun was going down, Kileb could stand it no more and he turned to the queen and asked 'Why are we doing this, milady? Why are we here?' The queen sighed and leaned against the wall of one of the human buildings. 'I come here because I have to remind myself who they are,' she replied. 'Because I want to heal the life of a child and hold her on my hip and have her smile at me, to make a weary mother laugh, to see a father embittered by his lot take joy in his family again, to help an old widow in her loneliness a little. Because they are people, and I cannot, must not let myself forget it, far away in my ivory tower.' Kileb did not understand, and she saw it. She sighed. 'I hope I did the right thing,' she said, 'When I brought you home.' He sighed, too. 'These people…' he said. 'I'm like them.' It was almost a question. 'Yes,' she replied, 'and no. You are enormously lucky; you have more than any of them. You don't need to fear anything as long as you have us. And you will have us, as long as you live.'

"And at the next house, there was death. The queen helped lift the body of the plague victim and wrap it in its shroud, and then left the family to mourn. 'What was that?' Kileb asked her. 'That was Death.' Was what she told him. 'Every being must face it someday. Humans die every day, whatever anyone might do.' 'All of them?' he asked. 'All of them die?' 'Yes.' 'And me?' He had figured it out quickly, more quickly than she would have thought. She realized she had neglected ever to talk to him about mortality. 'You too,' she told him as gently as she could. Luckily he did not seem inclined to running away or shouting or crying. He was just quiet for a long time. Then he said, 'Can we go home now?' 'Of course, kitling,' she replied. 'Of course.'

"After that he was very quiet. He began to spend time in the Great Library, which held books from every source you can imagine, reading. Devouring the writing, which was mostly human. Beings who weather millennia often tend not to bother with memoirs. If someone wants to know something they know, they can always ask. So the collection was made up of works by humans, demons, a few other transient species – that is what they call those of us who die – and Kileb was doing his research this way. He learned about death from the writings of those long dead, about mortality and sorrow. Also he learned about the Faer themselves, as the humans had seen them. And this was less good, because he learned much that was not true, in accounts that confused them with demons and with elves and ghosts and a hundred other kinds.

"Now, among humans, when a person spends several months in withdrawal from the world, people start worrying. But this was a society where a decade was considered legitimate time for contemplation, so no one thought to bother him. And then, perhaps a year after his trip away, Kileb discovered the black grimoire section of the library. It was full of directions for some of the foulest practices ever imagined, of the scribblings of the mad, the power-hungry, the paranoid clutchers at immortality and omnipotence. It was the worst thing he could have found. Because Kileb, in his readings, had discovered jealousy. He had come to resent his understanding of the people who had brought him up, their power, their freedom, and their immortality. His own power had been trained, in an offhand manner, by those who had appointed themselves his tutors in his boyhood, and he knew a few childish charms and knew he could probably do more. Now he understood what Oithorin had meant, when he had said regretfully 'Not time enough to teach him anything worthwhile, anyway.' And he resented it bitterly. He began to study.

"It was ten years later when he felt he had learned enough to satisfy him temporarily. He left the library. It had been over a decade since he had last done so. Everyone was pleased to see him. They greeted him and so on, but were troubled. He did not smile back at them; he wore a distant look. One day the queen came upon him in the woods, having just experimented with his craft by killing all the life in a glade. She was appalled. Strong words were used. He cursed her. He was insanely jealous by now, and madly afraid of death. He was thirty years old, and had spent too many of them bending over dusty grimoires in the dimness and he already felt old before his time. The next time she came upon him, he actually attacked her. His strength was not great, but she would never have expected that viciousness from her dear kitling, despite what she could see had happened to him. His spell burnt her. When he saw her body lying on the ground he was sorry, but instead of realizing that he was following the wrong path he grew afraid, and fled.

"I know less of what happened after that. I know that he came to one of the places where humans lived, that he settled among them for a while, that he took the ways of stealing life from others that he had learned in his studying and used them. He moved through centuries that way, and he gathered ever more power, more ruthlessness, and worked to make himself less…human. He did not want to need anyone. He did not want to care. His image of humanity would always be of those hours spent slaving away, trying to ameliorate the woe of the poor. A few thousand years later, he took over his first kingdom. By then he forsaken his body entirely, leaving it entombed in an eternal coma somewhere hidden, done away with his soul, and frozen the heart that loved in ice. I don't know what you would call him now. He took over worlds, bending millions to serve him, and he took war to the queen and her people. They had to learn to fight, which sits well with few of them. Nevertheless, they learned it well. One of them trained me. A few months back, there was something of a showdown. The Faer helped with a rebellion that had been festering in his conquered lands for centuries, and he was thrown down and his city leveled. I am told that he vanished in the battle. He is still willing to do anything to live forever. He is cold and ancient and insane and all that…but he is also rather personable, well-spoken, clever, and hard not to like when you meet him. So one must be careful. I had hoped he was dead, but he appears to have come here. And now he is going to have it in for the lot of you, given that Inuyasha escaped him and the rest of us helped him do so." Aerie finished, blinking slightly at her own turn of phrase. No one had ever actually told her this whole story in such detail, but she had gotten pieces of it from Lel' and Trisak, and the conversations…she could remember them as if she'd had them herself. Residual memories, she thought, shaking her head. But jeez it's creepy.

"Very interesting," said Miroku, his eyes disturbingly keen. "From what you say, he is very dangerous. So why were you able to defeat him without being injured?" Aerie winced. Trust him to come to the point about that.

"He's not very strong right now…but he's already put together an army. Most of it wasn't here yet, and now that he's left it'll probably disintegrate. Demons are not really into teamwork."

"Aerie…." Miroku said gently, obviously informing her that she was not distracting anyone. "Why are you afraid to talk about yourself?" Aerie shrugged. She wasn't entirely sure. Part of it was the sheer annoyance of having to explain it all. Part of it was the fear that they would somehow reject her once the story was all told – it had happened too many times before. These last months wandering aside, she had learned very young that the best way to lose friends was to let them find out too much about you. At least for her. A great deal of it was the thrill of being a mystery, inexplicable…magic. It's hard to get that in the normal way of things, although it was what she had always more or less tried for at school – being so ostentatiously strange that scorn was given the backseat to simple disconcertion. And a large part of her reticence was due to nothing she could understand. She just…didn't want to tell.

"It's nothing bad," she assured him, and the rest of the company. "Just, give me a while. None of you have made the others talk about your past except regarding things with a bearing upon the situation. I have to talk to someone about it first, as well."

"But you will explain yourself?" Miroku asked. Aerie held up her hand, palm outward.

"Scout's honor," she said. The monk understood the bit about honor.

"Good," he said, nodding, "That's all I needed to hear." She nodded back. He actually is my friend, she thought. He's going to trust me. I don't think I've ever had a human friend before. Not since I was little.

Okay, sorry about the longness and sadness of all that. In my defense, Kileb's story is really depressing! Most stories about people turning into evil power hungry villains are, I guess. But don't forsake me! (Also apologies the lack of Miroku-beating, for anyone who was looking forward to it. I think that'll take another chappie or two.) Sango's going to have her role maximized for a while, to make up for the unconscious period.

Inuyasha: I can't believe you made us sit through that whole thing.

Aerie: Not my fault. Anyway, it's a good story!

Inuyasha: Feh. Maybe if it got told at proper length when I wasn't trying so hard to hold onto my name, and wasn't such a sob story about some guy that screwed me over.

Trisak: Language! I'm sorry about your circumstances, but the story's the thing, isn't it? And considering that it was inserted into your story and it was a bit sob-ish, and I didn't want to rely totally on the patience of my dear readers, making it longer would have been really dumb.

Miroku: It was not so bad, sakusha-sama.

Trisak: Oh, hush, you're just trying to flatter your way out of what I'm going to do to you in a few chapters. It won't work, though. It's such a good plot device, I can't skip it.

Miroku: Groan. Why me?

Trisak:Hey, you got to be all wise and magnanimous this chapter. Now hush.

I'll make sure to have things happen next chapter…say, this is the first one absent cliffie! OK, if you can locate and cite the quote in this chapter, I'll dedicate the next chapter to you.