Chapter 21

The sea tastes like salt today,

And waves knock against my oar

My boat sways to silent song

I can no longer see the shore

I've sailed for many years now

Always forward, never back

And yet with you I go in circles

And the floorboards have begun to crack

You, old enemy, Whirlpool of my Soul

I want no more of this water you own

The sea feels heavy with your presence

And it's all I've ever known

Shall I ever escape you?

You're the seaweed around my neck

Slowly strangling, surely prevailing

Your storms cause my shipwreck

This tidal pull, from moon to wave

Exists between you and I

We're at world's end and I simply must know—

Will I drown before I die?

The woman carrying Megumi in her arms took one long, careful breath and exhaled as she finished humming her tune out. Rivulets of river water snaked down her arms and bled into the fabric of Megumi's shirt. Had they been in the river? Megumi wasn't so sure. Even as she tried to organize her thoughts, that melody returned to drown them out again. It was pretty in a way that almost haunted her. Megumi wondered what it would be like to be trapped in an eternal cycle with someone; an infinite game of push and pull ebbing against your person for eons and eons. How curious a concept–and yet, how typical. In her current drowsy state, with her consciousness bordering somewhere between being awake and asleep, Megumi's exhausted mind tried to remind her that she knew this cycle very, very well. Why? The Twin Dragons, of course, she told herself.

The Twin Dragons–Timidity and Temperament, Temperament and Timidity. Sun and Moon, Moon and Sun.

Megumi and Katsumi, Katsumi and Megumi.

Something almost shocked her then. Why was she remembering such a name?

Or, more accurately, how had she ever forgotten?


"My name is Katsumi," she huffed as she crossed her arms. The girl's delicate chin jutted forward a little bit and her pout slipped out with it. Megumi couldn't help but laugh at the sight; she was funny and Megumi liked her very much.

"It's nice to meet you, Katsumi." Megumi flashed her a wicked grin before a tiny giggle tumbled past her lips. "I like your hair."

Almost as if she was reminded of their existence the moment they were pointed out, Katsumi raised her hands to finger one of the twists in her pretty brown hair. Her brows pinched incrementally as she ran her hands over her locks, almost as if what she felt was puzzling to her. "Aren't you going to compliment my eyes?"

"Whatever would I do that for?"

Katsumi flushed and stammered. "Well . . . everyone always does."

Of course, they were certainly worth complimenting. Megumi had been around for what, one and a half centuries? And in all her time on this plane, she had never met someone with such vibrantly colored eyes before. There was a miko once with piercing green eyes, but never anything as unnatural and intense as the two blood-red irises staring straight into her soul right now.

Megumi's lips slipped into a coy smile as she reached over and grabbed the girl's hand to stop her from fidgeting with her hair any further. With one hand gently secured in her own, Megumi used the other to reach down towards the ground next to her and pierce one of the stems with her nails. The plant that she extricated from the earth came easily and almost eagerly from its place in the ground to where Megumi slipped it into the captive hand she held, using both of hers now to guide Katsumi's fingers around the delicate bud and leaves.

"They're very pretty indeed," Megumi finally said as she looked away from the flower and towards Katsumi's faintly blushing face. "Your eyes are as pretty as red spider lilies."

Her lips parted, but no sound came out, and something about the way Megumi had succeeded in completely robbing the stranger of her speech made a small spark of glee flit about inside of her. "You . . . yours . . . yours too," Katsumi babbled. It wasn't until she finished that she realized her own lack of eloquence. Megumi realized it too, and her pearly laughter rang out around them.

"You're the only red spider lily here, dummy." Just as she got the words out, a brilliant idea flashed through her head. Megumi offered her hand out, and for a moment, Katsumi only stared in shock. "I think I'll call you Spider from now on. How's that?"

Katsumi's hand twitched, reached, and hesitated. "From now on?" Megumi nodded . . . and Katsumi took her hand. "But what am I supposed to call you?"

"Call me Megumi, if you'd like." Something about the way her newfound friend's lips pursed made her wonder if that wasn't a satisfying proposal. Perhaps it was because she was already set on a nickname? "On second thought . . . I've been thinking about a nickname for myself. Something short and sweet, but I don't have anyone to try it out on. Would you like to call me Meg instead?"

Katsumi lowered her eyes as she smiled, looking more towards her new flower and less towards Megumi. "Okay, Meg."

Megumi squeezed her hand. She could tell that they would be good friends.


"Hey, Spider, come look at this!" Katsumi's eyes narrowed at the name, but she shuffled over anyway. When she was near enough, Megumi cupped her face with both hands. The gesture caused an explosion of rogue on her dear friend's cheeks, but Megumi was more focused on tilting Katsumi's face so that she could see what Megumi was talking about. "Look at that big dog over there! The white one, against that snowy tree? Have you ever seen an animal with such crazy stripes?"

Judging off the expression on Katsumi's face, she hadn't. "I wonder if it's the only one in the world?"

Megumi hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe. Kind of like how we're the only Dragons?" Katsumi nodded.

They'd been traveling together for half a century now, give or take, and while they'd certainly seen their fair share of oddities, Megumi certainly couldn't recall anything like that beastly dog with those jagged indigo spikes. Sure, she'd seen plenty of beasts and demons depicted in the shrines of mikos and monks alike, but never anything like this. Katsumi was even younger than her, so the chances of her knowing any sort of possible answer to the question Megumi currently posed were even slimmer.

Of course, none of Megumi's questions would receive answers if they couldn't find where the dog went.

"Meg," Katsumi murmured, half lost in scanning the tree line, "I think the dog vanished."

Megumi snorted. "Dogs don't disappear, dummy. They always leave tracks."

"Not if they're especially keen, I'm afraid."

Both heads whipped around at the sound of a man's voice from directly behind them. He was tall, impressively so, with a proud set to his shoulders and fine white hairs that whispered out of the ribbon securing most of it. Those jagged blue streaks that had flanked the great inu's sides were now haunting the stranger's cheeks, strong and vibrant against the pale color of his skin. He wore strange armor, with a peculiar splash of jagged spikes blotting its surface. If it weren't for the fine quality of the clothes he adorned under the armor–a fineness that reminded Megumi instantly of her hime birthright–then Megumi would've pegged him for a warrior, or a general perhaps.

And if it weren't for his eyes, Megumi would've pegged him as yet another irrelevant face in Japan.

The man had golden eyes like those precious hours between dawn and dusk; those fragments of the sun that painted the world in warm hues even if only for a moment. And in those precious seconds the water became like molten gold; the meadows like seas of copper; the world like the eyes in his face.

In short, Megumi found them just as captivating a sight as hers or Katsumi's.

Perhaps . . . perhaps the temples were wrong? Could there be another like them?

A gentle tug on Megumi's arm pulled the elder Dragon back to reality. Once she'd secured her companion's attention, Katsumi pointed to the forest behind them. "The dog," she whispered. "The dog is gone."

The man before them chuckled. "The dog has a name, child."

The Dragons' eyebrows raised in tandem at the elder man's jab. "Oh? And what might that be?"

He grinned, and when he did, Megumi caught sight of the wicked pair of canines that the . . . well . . . canine was sporting.

"Toga."


Katsumi's breath mixed with the steam rising up in gentle tendrils from the hot water of the onsen. Megumi's skin felt alive, tingling, flushed, and brimming with energy. For some reason, she felt like she couldn't avert her eyes from the water she'd so firmly fixed her gaze upon. Just beyond its surface, she could see her own hands, cupped in her lap and covering everything below her waist. With her hands pressed against her thighs, she was all the more aware of the way they felt unnaturally hot to the touch. Was it possible, she wondered, that the water was just hotter down there? She couldn't understand why her temperature fluctuated so strongly.

It occurred to her then that the girl soaking next to her was hardly breathing either.

"Megumi . . ." Katsumi shifted in the water, and the tiny waves lapped against Megumi's shoulder. They were close. The setting sun was throwing deep layers of clouds across the horizon and drenching them in stunning shades of scarlet, tangerine, and blush.

The heat of the onsen was forcing a blush on her exposed skin. Katsumi's, too.

How long had they been friends now? Fifty, sixty years? Seventy? And how many of those years had they spent with Toga and his family? Megumi's eyes glanced heavenward as she scrutinized the sky that looked so much like the irises of their host.

Her host, of course, and his son.

She had been surprised to see that Toga's son was so different from himself. Toga was composed and yet relaxed, powerful without boast, calm and yet cunning. Sesshomaru was . . . stiff. That was a good way to describe him. He was nearly impossible to approach–and she'd already been living in the shiro with him for a decade or two. They had butted heads for a solid majority of that time, though. Katsumi seemed determined to keep the two of them pitted against each other, ever since Sesshomaru had laid brutish insult upon emotionless comment at every chance he got. Not everyone, Megumi thought, was very fond of the idea of sharing their home and their parent's attention.

Especially when you're an heir to something as grand as one of the four Cardinal lands. So when Katsumi had heard the first jab against Megumi, she'd practically declared war against the inu heir.

But lately, Megumi felt like he had really been warming up to the two of them. Megumi was especially fond of the time Sesshomaru conceded out of his busy schedule to practice sparring with her. Her draconic powers were flourishing inside of her, brimming with life and teeming with an insane itch to be wielded. Of course, Sesshomaru had yet to beat her in a way that wasn't outright mortifying, but there was a weird sort of satisfaction in knowing that she could go as crazy as she liked without ever once having to worry about gravely injuring her opponent. And although Katsumi's powers were a close step behind her own, something about the precious quality of Katsumi's naked skin made Megumi almost apprehensive of ever inflicting even a scratch on her skin during a spar.

Temperament's skin was what Megumi liked to imagine hers would have been, had she lived and died as a human hime and not a Dragon.

And now Temperament's skin was brushing oh-so-faintly against hers.

"You've got another bruise," Katsumi murmured.

Startled as she was, Megumi's eyes followed where Katsumi's finger pointed. And sure enough, she was sporting a new blemish. Katsumi's breath puffed out in the space between them and just barely ghosted against her shoulder. And Katsumi herself . . . heavens, she was so close.

"I wish you wouldn't fight with him."

For a moment, Megumi wondered who Katsumi was referring to. And then it clicked. "Who, Sesshomaru? We'll fight regardless of whether or not it's with our bodies or our voices." When Megumi laughed, her shoulders shook. And when they shook, Katsumi's fingers brushed against her.

And then they were frozen at her sides when Katsumi kissed her shoulder, over the bruise, and lifted her wide eyes to meet Megumi's.

"My human mother said kisses were spells. Spells to heal, if placed against wounds." Katsumi pulled her head back a little bit so she could look at Megumi better. "Spells for lots of other things, too . . . but healing, mostly."

"How could they possibly do that? Humans don't have power like we do."

Katsumi's eyes glazed over as she pondered the question. "I don't really know. But she told me that touch is supposed to be healing when it's done right."

" . . . And when it's done wrong?"

Katsumi laughed, kissed her shoulder again, and stepped out of the water. "When it's done wrong, you get marks like that."


Katsumi screamed.

Katsumi screamed, and her throat burned, and her tears ran hot and raw and she screamed.

These were the memories Megumi had seen in Rin's head.

But now she knew who they belonged to–not to the Dragon of Temperament, but to Katsumi.

And Katsumi's once-pure skin was torn and shredded. She had fallen, the bones in her legs had snapped as easily as twigs, and she had screamed. The pain paralyzed her and threw blinding white sparks of white across her vision. Her mouth went dry as she called for help, again and again, before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.

And then they found her. Servants, Megumi realized. Ones she hadn't seen since she was first welcomed into Toga's home. They roused Katsumi awake with all of their brutish jostling. As Katsumi remembered, Megumi watched, and the servants–the traitors–carted their prize away towards their true master.

Ryūkotsusei.

That had been the name of the dragon, right? The one Sesshomaru said had played a great hand in Toga's downfall? And he had had spies in Toga's very home. For centuries, by the looks of Katsumi in these memories.

The sounds of panting wolves behind Megumi had her spinning around, looking for the giant muzzles that felt like they were right behind her. But when she spun around, there was nothing; just a sea of emptiness that reminded her she was not in Katsumi's head at all; she was in Rin's.


Katsumi had only been gone for a few years now, and yet the hole inside of Megumi felt as raw as ever. She stood before the open maw of the cave, her bare feet ghosting over the newly sprouted sprigs of grass as she wandered farther away from the cliff. This was her second time visiting the moon pool that Toga had discovered for her. It was such a weird thing to consider: HER pool. Her very own place in the world was carved out a millennia ago over the course of a thousand moonlight nights and filled with saltwater from the heavens themselves. It was so ancient that only a select few of the scrolls that she had discovered carried passages speaking of its existence. There were some Dragons that had lived their full lives and never found it, not even once. There were others still that had theories and hunches and even attempted to build replicas based on what they had read. So really, Megumi ought to count herself lucky for being one of the Dragons that actually got to find the sacred cove. And she did, she truly did–but a small part of her heart ached, almost guiltily so, because she knew Katsumi could never experience the same.

Megumi had read the scrolls in those shrines, and so she knew that there was no set amount of time between the reincarnations of Dragon's births. Katsumi's replacement could be born ten minutes from now, twenty years, or the scariest possibility of all: never. There was no guarantee that the Dragon of Temperament would ever return now that its most recent host had been lost. The very thought of the Dragon being lost forever sent a shiver straight through Megumi. As far as she was concerned, the Twin Dragon spirits were essentially the closest tie to Katsumi's memory that she still possessed. For it to never resurface again was essentially to never have a connection to Katsumi again.

And an eternity without Katsumi . . . sounded lonely.

The Dragon of Timidity forced herself to shake these thoughts out of her mind. She liked to imagine that Katsumi would scoff if she knew Megumi spent so much time wallowing in her head and kicking the dirt.

The wind picked up behind her, and even her draconic nose could scent out the figure approaching behind her. Toga had insisted on joining her once again on her journey here. In the years since the loss of Megumi's dearest friend, she and the man that had taken her in hadn't had many chances to truly spend time together. Between her grieving process and his duties as a husband, father, and Cardinal Lord, it was a firm understatement to say that they'd had their hands full. So it really was nice that he had been able to take the time to pull away from shiro life in order to spend some time with her. Megumi would certainly take whatever she could get.

"Ready to go, Megumi?" She looked over her shoulder at Toga and nodded, perhaps a little reluctantly.

"Frankly, I feel as if I've taken far more of your time than you ought to give me."

To that, Toga chuckled. He didn't stop walking until he was at her side, and it was there that he waited while Megumi set to reforming the mirage he had urged her to place about the cave's entrance. "My dear, I'd give you time itself if I could."

Timidity chewed on her bottom lip lightly as she mulled over her guardian's comment. "Is such a thing as manipulating time possible, Toga?"

A low noise sounded in his throat. Megumi recognized it from their time in the shiro as a sound he made when he was doing some serious thinking. "Perhaps," he finally decided. "Or perhaps not. All of my years on this earth have made me a firm believer in the philosophy that the only certainty the kami award us in life is uncertainty itself. There may one day be a way to manipulate time, as you speak of, or maybe that day will never come to pass. Even we higher beings cannot pretend to have a capacity grand enough to foresee those things coming to pass."

As far as answers go, it was very much the kind she expected Toga to give. Ask him anything deeply philosophical, and he would simply smile with his eyes and give a long-winded answer that was frankly the verbal equivalent of a graceful yet nonchalant shrug. Just then, she could sense her concentration on the mirage begin to waver, and so she redirected her attention in full earnest. But of course, Megumi was young, and it was difficult to refrain from letting her mind wander for too long. Before she knew it, she was asking the question she really meant to pose when she asked if altering time was even plausible.

"If time ever became malleable in our hands . . . do you think we could ever bring someone back? Or fix someone's fate?" Despite being unable to see his expression full-on from where he was standing, Megumi could sense without a doubt the weight of Toga's full attention settling on her. He must be studying her, then. There was no way he hadn't figured out why she had posed such a question in the first place now.

But instead of making a mockery of her unspoken train of thoughts, Toga did something curious: he shared a philosophical anecdote of his own. "I have found that I am able to achieve greater peace of mind when I treat my actions as irreversible. It would do no good for a Cardinal Lord to question all of his decisions, would it not?" Toga glanced towards her as he said that, and even from the corner of her eye could she see the warm, amused smile he sent her way. "When I treat my past as a fixed point in time, I am able to focus less on what I could revise and rewind and more on what has yet to come."

"Because the future has yet to pass?" Megumi ventured.

"Exactly. And if we govern ourselves by that belief, then the same can be said of one's fate. Fates and futures are held in the same palm . . . each can be tossed in the air at any second, for any number of reasons, for they have yet to settle on the ground." Just then, the daiyoukai laughed softly and shook his head. "You ask such a curious question, for someone newly awakened to the powers of bending souls."

Megumi's spine straightened, even as her voice began to quiver. "I thought . . . perhaps if it was possible to adjust where I was in time, it would be possible to use my powers to save Katsumi from meeting her end."

It was poetic punishment that Megumi would discover her ability to toy with another living creature's soul only after she had lost the person closest to her. How cruel indeed to only be blessed with the very thing that could have saved Katsumi only after she had been taken away. And as desperately as she tried, Megumi felt like she was fighting an unbeatable opponent in her efforts to avoid kicking herself for not being–well–better.

If Megumi had been smarter, or quicker, or older, or more powerful . . .

Then . . .

Then Katsumi . . .

Almost as if he could sense her rapidly spiraling thoughts, Toga's deep voice was quick to intervene and derail them. "Time is a relentless force. It knows no mercy, nor cruelty; no punishment nor blessing; no good nor evil. Time is simply an ever-flowing river. And that current cannot be reversed, nor coaxed to greater haste, nor halted. You may wish for all the world to have gained enough skill to wade into the water safely at any given moment, but the uncomfortable truth of our nature is that in the end, we submit to its will." Toga placed a gentle hand atop her head, and one of his claws gently twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. "What happened has happened, Meg. You know as well as I that it was something that no amount of power could have helped undo. And even if you had power enough to stop it, could you have mastered control over your abilities in time to harness them?"

Whether she liked it or not, Toga was right. Megumi had had problems with controlling her powers before. The emotional output from the distressing loss of Katsumi and her choice to throw herself into work afterward helped her awaken more than just her soul-bending powers. Megumi had also harnessed a finer, more potent way to pry into and tamper with memories: a grand-scale experience that she hadn't fully taken seriously until she had accidentally wiped Katsumi from the memories of everyone at the shiro, save for Toga and herself.

She hadn't been trying to–all she wanted to know was if anyone at the shiro had any memories of the last night Katsumi had been seen alive . . . and in her haste for answers, she'd robbed herself of one of the last few ties to Katsumi left in this cruel, cruel world.

It was a small consolation at least that she had the basic story to cling onto: Katsumi's sleep had been fraught with nightmares during the first trip Toga and Megumi had taken to the moon pool. Like any child filled with fear, Katsumi had sought Toga out for comfort. Katsumi hadn't known that Toga and Megumi weren't there; a fight beforehand had spurred Megumi in a fit of stubbornness to withhold any mention of her trip the following evening with Toga to Katsumi.

A mistake that Megumi had paid for with the life of her Twin companion.

Megumi was told, upon her return, that Katsumi had wandered all the way to the cliffs in search of Toga. Megumi could only guess why the comfort of Kimi wasn't nearly enough to satiate Katsumi's distress. Megumi could only guess what Katsumi had even dreamed of in the first place.

Megumi could only guess what Katsumi's final thoughts even were.

Katsumi had wandered so close to the cliffs that she had fallen. The servants had reassured Toga that her death was instantaneous, but what Megumi didn't understand was why Katsumi's body had been burned in a volcano to honor her memory. Had it truly been that bad of a sight? It must have been, for her death to be instantaneous. Or was that just the story Toga relayed to Megumi because he could smell the guilt and self-blame that practically oozed out of Megumi's pores in the first weeks after? Megumi guessed she wouldn't ever really know.

Or that's what she thought, up until the image of Katsumi standing before her in perfect health clouded her field of vision.

And if it weren't for the complete rigidity of Toga as he stood next to her, Megumi would have doubted if what she saw was truly real.

But perhaps time wasn't done messing with her yet.

"Spider?" Megumi choked out.

When Katsumi's eyes shifted towards Megumi she froze where she stood. They had lost some of the intensity of their red, a phenomenon Megumi hadn't thought possible, but they burned with a malevolence that more than made up for it.

What . . . had happened?

"Not now, Meg. I'm not here for you." Megumi watched with astonishment as Katsumi's eyes narrowed into hard, angry slits. "I'm here for him."

Then Katsumi's gaze shifted, away from Megumi, and towards Toga. Based on the lack of any sort of reaction from the stoic inu Megumi had a feeling Toga was just as caught off guard as she was. Either he was waiting to see what Katsumi's next move was, or worse: he knew, and remained still for fear that he was about to come to terms with it.

Megumi waited with her throat tight and her body practically frozen in place for Katsumi to say something. Or for Toga to say something. Hell, for HER to say something. But no words could make it past the lump in her throat and it seemed that Toga had absolutely no intentions of making the first move either. Whatever game they were now playing, the ball was entirely in Katsumi's court to throw.

And it looked like she was about to take aim.

"I'm here to make him pay."

Before Megumi could even ask what that meant, The air around Katsumi began to stir with the unmistakable murmur of an insane amount of energy being summoned. Katsumi's dark eyes flashed, bitter with pain and hatred that Megumi couldn't understand in the slightest. As Katsumi raised her hands, pulling the Twin Dragon of Temperament's spirit out of her with each motion, Megumi remained glued in place with eyes wide in horror. And while her stillness seemed too great an obstacle to mount, the unwavering stance of the man next to her seemed more like a choice.

Why?

Why did he do nothing but stand, unflinching, without bracing for the torrential wave of power that Katsumi was invoking?

Why did it feel like he was just . . . waiting for it?

Accepting it?

"I've waited so long to see you again," Katsumi bit out. "I waited, hoping, BEGGING to return to your side. But I can wait no longer. You'll pay for your crimes, Toga. For all of them." Katsumi's hair began to swirl around her head, and as her eyes flashed molten red, Megumi finally understood.

"Katsumi, no!"

It was too late.

It was always too little, too late.

"I hereby curse the soul of the Dog Demon Toga-sama, Cardinal Lord of the Western Lands. From this day forward, his soul shall be bound to the words that I utter until they have come to fruition. His soul shall know no peace until it has fulfilled the decrees of this bond, and these shackles shall never abandon him. He shall find no key in death, nor life, nor the hands of the kami themselves. From this moment forward, his soul is mine to weave."

"Katsumi, please! Sto–"

"In his future, he shall abandon his mate and heir for a ningen woman, with whom he shall sire a hanyou. He shall devote his remaining years to the woman and the bastard son, and he shall turn his back on those who cherish his name. His death will leave nothing but anger in the hearts of those whom he has forsaken. His future is sealed."

Megumi collapsed to the ground with a sob.

"Katsumi, what did you do?"

Katsumi wouldn't even look at her. In fact, she was already turning around and walking away. And maybe it would have been easier to have pulled her back or stopped her. Maybe it would have been easier to confront her, to truly demand an explanation out of her, but when Toga sank to his knees suddenly for all the world it was as if Katsumi was no longer there. Megumi's focus was entirely on the daiyoukai then, as the world around them faded into soft blurs and she tried to quell the tidal wave of panic swelling within her stomach.

"Toga? Toga!"

The inu groaned lightly but offered no words. His eyes remained downcast and partially closed, head tilted to the ground. Megumi wasn't sure what scared her more: the silence or the way it looked like Toga had lost all the fight within him.

"Forgive me," he murmured, but offered no more than that. A bead of sweat rolled from his brow down his nose and Megumi watched it plummet all the way to the grass. Was it a painful thing, to have your very soul toyed with? Megumi had heard tales of metaphysical pains to the heart being enough to kill mortals before.

Could those sorts of things kill a daiyoukai if done to the soul?

Megumi's confusion and heartache seemed so suffocatingly large as it churned within her, threatening to spill out of her at any second, as one part of her begged to comfort Toga and the other pleaded to run after Katsumi. Her emotional pain continued to rise, drowning all other thoughts, cascading over every inch of her body until Megumi felt like she couldn't breathe past the pressure inside of her lungs. Toga's soul was broken, permanently altered, and so was her relationship with Katsumi. Two of the most precious things to her were now irreparably damaged and Megumi couldn't do a single thing about it. There was no way to undo it, no place in time she could run to except for the future and all of the horrors that it now held in store for her and Toga–

That was it.

The future.

Megumi took a breath as deep as she could manage in light of the tsunami raging inside of her. She forced her mind to still while she attempted to remember Katsumi's phrasing. She reminded herself what she stood to lose should she fail and added a silent note to the kami to please, please make sure she did this right.

Megumi only had one shot.

"I hereby curse the soul of the Dog Demon Toga-sama, Cardinal Lord of the Western Lands. From this day forward, his soul shall be bound to the words that I utter until they have come to fruition. His soul shall know no peace until it has fulfilled the decrees of this bond, and these shackles shall never abandon him. He shall find no key in death, nor life, nor the hands of the kami themselves. From this moment forward, his soul is mine to weave."

Toga groaned again and sank even lower to the ground, and still, Megumi pressed on.

"In his future, he shall do all that has been named. But there is more for him yet. When his time is near, Toga of the Western Lands will rip two fangs from his mouth and forge twin swords, one for each child - the now and future one - so they will not carry spite for their sire beyond the grave. Through these blades, may his will be conveyed, and may his pack listen. His future is sealed."

When the last syllable fell past her lips, all of her emotional buildups did too. Toga's eyes fluttered briefly before rolling back in his head. He only groaned once before he slumped over, unconscious on the ground next to her. Before Megumi could even check on him, Katsumi's hand was against her throat as she yanked the other Dragon's up to her feet in order to force Megumi into looking into her cold, hard eyes.

"What the fuck did you just do?"

Megumi's body involuntarily flinched back at her former friend's admonition. "What did I just do? What did I just do? Katsumi, what the fuck did YOU just do? What happened to you? Where did you go? Why are you doing this?"

Katsumi snarled before using the hand around Megumi's throat to fling her back to the ground. "You wouldn't understand."

Anger was starting to spike inside of Megumi as she quickly scrambled to her feet. "The hell do you mean, I wouldn't understand? Katsumi, I fought for you, I laughed with you, I cried for you–hell, I even loved you! So don't you dare tell me that I wouldn't understand! If I couldn't understand, MAKE me! But don't shut me out!"

Katsumi's eyes flared again, and she was back in Megumi's face. "I wasn't the one that shut you out! You were! You fucking abandoned me! You, Toga, and the rest of them! All of you! And now you're defending him?"

That hard knot in Megumi's chest came back, thousands of times stronger than before. Memories of the last fight the two of them had had came flooding back, and suddenly Megumi was filled with a nauseatingly enormous amount of regret. Toga's words about being unable to change the past came rushing back and danced around in her head as Megumi began to slowly back away.

"Katsumi, please. You can still talk to me. We can still fix this."

Katsumi's advance on Megumi's person suddenly seemed hostile. "Fix this? Can you really fix THIS?" In one swift move, Katsumi had yanked up her sleeves all the way to her elbows. The sight alone made Megumi inhale sharply. 'Ugly' was the last word she would ever think to use to describe the skin of the woman she'd spend all those years with. But her skin was marred, littered with straight silver scars and knobby pink ones. Some of them overlapped like tree roots over rocks, and they plunged right over veins and under bones. It was a horrid, horrid sight. "Megumi, this is beyond fixing. You can't make this better. You can't, you can't, you can't."

A tentative silence slipped in between the space between them, as the weight of what Megumi had seen sunk in and Katsumi moved to cover her arms once more. She moved with a gentle clumsiness that betrayed the pain she obviously still felt emanating from her limbs. Whatever pain she felt paled in comparison to that which clouded her expression when the next word slipped accidentally past Megumi's guard. "Spider . . ."

And suddenly, all the rage was back.

"Don't. Don't ever call me that again." Katsumi's fingers twitched, and Megumi's eyes latched onto the sparks of raw power snapping off of Katsumi's skin. And a good thing for it, too: she was able to summon enough power to block the first blast just in time. "In fact–don't ever call me anything ever again. As far as I'm concerned, you and I don't exist anymore. Meeting you was a mistake. Meeting ALL of you was a mistake." With each syllable she uttered, Katsumi enunciated them with a bigger and bigger wave of power. Each blast pushed Megumi further and further back until they were so far away from Toga she couldn't even see him anymore. Megumi made the mistake of averting her eyes to try and scan the tree line for his body. When Katsumi understood the reason for Megumi's averted gaze, her attack increased tenfold, as did her wrath. "You're always so damn worried about him! About all of those inus! I wish you had never met them!"

As soon as Katsumi uttered the phrase, Megumi could nearly feel the tangible shift in the intention of each blast sent her way. Megumi recognized this particular application of their shared gift because it reeked of the exact format she used by mistake into accidentally forcing Kimi and the rest to forget Katsumi. Megumi knew that should she get hit with that, Katsumi's command would be realized, and she would lose precious memories just as all the others had. To avoid being hit by even a spark from it, Megumi used her own power to attempt to balance it out, wrapping the blast of Temperament's spirit with an equal dose of Timidity in an attempt to neutralize it. But Katsumi wasn't done yet.

"I wish you would forget about the day we met, too. And the day we met Toga. I wish you would forget that stupid nickname you made up for me. I wish you would always wonder what you did for the past half-century of your life with them. The past century with me. I wish you would forget every onsen trip, every sparring match, every time my lips brushed your skin and every night spent under the stars and every compliment and every hope and every dream and every secret and every single memory you ever shared with Kimi or Sesshomaru or even me–"

Katsumi was nearly shouting now, and the sphere of energy between the two of them had grown so large that it was brushing against the tops of the nearest trees. Megumi was fighting with all of her strength to keep the growing mass stable, but she could tell the edges were starting to waver, and even a fraction more would cause the whole thing to burst. In a frenzied burst of panic and desperation, Megumi tried the only thing she could possibly think of to back Katsumi down from the ledge she was about to push both of them off of. Because so much of Megumi's own power had gone into counterbalancing the giant mass, if it were to explode now, it would take both Megumi and Katsumi's memories of all that she had specified in its explosive wake.

Megumi's eyes brimmed with tears. The sphere was wobbling so much now that both of them could see clearly how unstable it was now. And still, Katsumi pushed on, pushing Megumi back further, farther, harder. "Katsumi, please; I can't lose you! Not again; not like this!"

Katsumi took one last, good look into Megumi's eyes. When Megumi saw the bitter tear glistening against her dark lashes, the surprise was enough to make her concentration waver just a fraction.

And that fraction was all Katsumi needed.

"I wish you never remembered I loved you."

Perhaps it was a good thing so much power had built up. When it finally snapped, the initial shockwave alone was enough to knock the two of them unconscious well before their airborne bodies actually hit the ground again.


Author's Note:

WOOHOO! One chapter closer! So sorry about how long it took for me to update. . . . How are we feeling though? Shocked, disappointed, or excited? Or something else entirely? Don't worry, I've still plenty more plot twists to throw your way. Hope you guys are still loving the story! If you'd like, please consider leaving a review while you can! Perhaps I'll dedicate one of the last few chapters to you, hm?

Until next time!