Fade to Black

"Oi monk! Get back here!" Kouga roared, tearing after Miroku through the forest.

Miroku, of course, had no intention of obeying and just pumped his legs faster. There were benefits to a childhood spent being a Sphere guinea pig: a normal human could never have escaped a youkai. Thankfully, Miroku was far from normal

Panting ever so slightly, he reached into his robes and pulled out a fistful of rumpled, stained papers. His last. A wolf howled, sounding uncomfortably close, and he composed his mind, tapping into the sea of serenity hovering just at the edge of his consciousness.

The sutras flew out of his hands, and Miroku blurred, scent and sight fading into the forest.

oOoOoOoOo

"Oi, wench," InuYasha called from his perch at the edge of the campsite, staring up at the tiny sliver of moon. Kagome turned from the stand she was building over the fire with a strained smile.

"What is it now, InuYasha?" He had been doing this all day, starting conversations only to dismiss her with his customary scoff. Something was on his mind, and though she was sympathetic to his struggle to open up, her patience was wearing decidedly thin.

"Do you… what do you know about youkai?"

She sighed and set her pot of water onto the shaky stand to boil. "I don't know how much of it is actually right, considering that I learned it in school, but enough, I guess. Why?"

He did not reply, and she shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. He was sitting on a large boulder with his back to her, glaring down the mountainside that they were currently camped on. The village that Yura had decimated lay far below them in the valley, the freshly dug mass-grave of the villagers a painful reminder of something she would rather forget. At first, InuYasha had refused to even move the bodies, arguing that the carrion animals would take care of that. One hysterical outburst later he was industriously digging a large pit to pile the unfortunate villagers into for their final rest. Kagome had not been able to look at those bodies without either throwing up or sobbing uncontrollably. Even now, her heart ached in guilt that no number of InuYasha's gruff, reluctant assurances that it was not her fault could assuage.

"What do you know about hanyou?" he blurted out suddenly, and Kagome blinked.

"Not a lot. Practically nothing, really. Why?"

Again, he said nothing, and Kagome scowled. "Be like that, then."

The water was beginning to bubble, and she rummaged through her pack for a packet of dehydrated rations to boil. She was getting sick of nothing but noodles and nutrition bars, but at the same time she was nervous about what she was going to eat when they ran out. Which, she noted while delving through the seemingly bottomless pack, would be soon.

She ripped open a packet and poured the noodles and flavouring into the water. Out of the corner of her eye she saw InuYasha's ear twitch.

"You should eat, InuYasha," she called.

"Keh. I'm not like you, human."

"But I'm sure you still need to eat."

He snorted. "Says the wench who knows nothing about hanyou."

"If you're half-human, you must need to eat. Come on, you were badly hurt. Eat something. Please?"

They had this argument almost twice daily, and Kagome fully expected InuYasha to scoff and call her a weak human again.

She did not expect to look up from stirring the pot directly into glowing golden eyes not a metre away from her.

"Gaaah!" she shrieked, falling backwards with no grace at all. Glaring furiously at the hanyou, she picked herself back up and brushed the newest dirt off her filthy uniform. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Keh. How much longer, wench?"

She blinked. "You're eating?"

Was she imagining it, or was that a tiny blush on his face? "Your cooking isn't gonna kill me, is it?"

Back on more familiar ground, Kagome scowled at him. "You'll get nothing if you keep that up."

"Hurry up and gimme the food, wench."

Shaking her head in wonder that he was not only eating, but seemed to be less defensive than usual, Kagome rooted through her bag in search of the hitherto unused second bowl for InuYasha. She divided the noodles and broth evenly into the two wooden bowls and handed him the food with a pair of chopsticks.

It soon became clear that InuYasha had never before come across the concept known as 'table manners'. Nor the idea of 'chewing'. Kagome stared in horrified fascination as InuYasha, for lack of a better term, consumed the food. 'Eating' would be an inappropriate word, as she did not really think that the food paused in his mouth at all or that it was possible to make those kinds of noises during the process of eating.

InuYasha paused, noodles hanging from his mouth, broth dripping off his nose ---and, strangely, his eyebrows--- chopsticks poised, meeting her wide-eyed stare with a nonplussed look of his own.

"Gwmp?" he asked irritably around the noodles, which Kagome roughly translated to mean "what?" She shook her head, unable to form words, and he turned his attention back to his noodles.

The food was gone in barely another two seconds, and his bowl was thrust beneath Kagome's nose.

"More."

She blinked. "Sorry?"

He rolled his eyes and shook the bowl obnoxiously in her face. "More food."

Dumbly she poured her own portion into his bowl, too shocked to even get angry at him for being rude and taking her food. She was not even hungry anymore. In fact, she was feeling rather nauseous, and so she meekly watched InuYasha and his food, jaw hanging open loosely as InuYasha snorted, garbled, snuffled, and made noises she had no hope of identifying in his single-minded determination to fill his belly.

It was gone in an astonishingly short period of time, and he threw the bowl in her general direction, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, burped obscenely loudly, and generally radiated the satisfied aura of a well-fed man.

"That was good. What was it?" he asked, as Kagome opened and closed her mouth a few times like a guppy before his question even registered. Numbed, she picked up one of the packets and read the side of it.

"It's called ramen."

InuYasha burped again, and leapt back onto his rock. A contented smile was plastered across his face as he settled back into keeping watch, scratching his belly absently.

"I like that stuff."

Kagome's composure finally returned to her and she quirked an eyebrow ironically. "I hadn't noticed."

In reply, InuYasha swore luridly and slapped himself. Kagome blinked. Nothing she had ever said had had that effect before…

"Whaddya want, you old geezer?" he snarled, which had Kagome bristling immediately.

"Excuse me? Geezer? I see your brain has finally gone into full meltdown if that's the best you can do," she yelled, warming her argumentative muscles up for a full-blown confrontation. They had not had a decent fight for a few hours, and she found herself itching for it.

InuYasha stared at her in confusion, head cocked and ears perked. "What are you going on about, wench?"

Kagome gaped, not prepared for his unusually calm reaction. "I was… You called me a geezer," she finished weakly.

"I didn't mean you, idiot," he scoffed and waved his clenched fist around as if to prove the point. "This is the geezer."

Kagome very intelligently replied, "Huh?"

He rolled his eyes at her and leapt down from the rock, knocking her gently on the head with the closed fist. "Anyone in there?"

"Master, I must object to this treatment," his fist said in a muffled, disgruntled voice.

There was a moment of silence, in which Kagome's eyes bugged and she quickly re-examined any preconceived notions of her own sanity. InuYasha lifted his fist and proceeded to verbally abuse it.

"Listen, old man, you try and snack on me again and there'll be a hell of a lot more coming to you than this," InuYasha growled, and his hand cowered.

"Please, master, you know that I am your most humble vassal---"

"Only vassal."

"--- and I have only your best interests at heart. It is hard and tiring work. Surely you would not begrudge an old servant a meal at the end of a long, exhausting journey?"

"I'll tell you what I---"

"InuYasha, why is your hand talking?" Kagome asked in a small voice.

"What?" he snapped distractedly, annoyed at being taken away from the argument.

"Your hand," she answered, slowly and with very wide eyes. "Why is it talking?"

"My hand…" he repeated just as slowly, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed as he stared at her like she had grown a second head. As the penny dropped, he burst out laughing.

Kagome felt her face grow hot. "It's not that funny," she hissed.

"My hand! Talking! This is good… even for you, wench," he gasped out between raucous cackles, and Kagome's face reddened. It was one thing to fight with him, quite another to be laughed at by him.

"Sit!" she yelled, and the hanyou plummeted face down into the rock of the mountainside with his mouth still wide open with laughter. A thin coat of sand covered his tongue, and things, in his opinion, very quickly became un-funny. His growl was cut short by a reedy voice.

"Oh, well done, Mistress Kagome!" his hand enthused, a small ball slowly squeezing out from under it. "I've heard that the command spell was a sight to see, but the description does not do it justice."

Kagome blinked, kneeling down to squint at the tiny little lump jumping up and down in front of her in excitement at InuYasha's condition. The tiny lump that just happened to know her name.

"Who the hell are you?" she screeched shrilly, InuYasha's ears flattening in protest.

The lump, the size of her littlest fingernail, coughed embarrassedly and brushed itself off. Are those…arms? Four of them?!

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Myouga the flea, the most loyal of Lord InuYasha's servants, travelling the length and breadth of the land in search of news that would benefit him and his cause."

Kagome allowed that to sink in, carefully avoiding the fact that there was a talking flea on her lap, which she was sure that her brain would have trouble with if it really registered. Instead she seized on the most relevant seeming information.

"InuYasha has servants?" she asked incredulously.

Myouga coughed again, but straightened almost defensively, his miniature chest puffing up. "Well…"

"Keh." The newly mobile InuYasha slammed his fist down on the other youkai with a force that made Kagome cringe. "Some help you are. Where've you been? You didn't happen to notice me locked up in a warehouse for fifty years?"

The muffled reply was sheepish. "Ah… yes, well, I had been made aware of your condition a some years ago, and have been keeping in touch with Lady Kaede---"

InuYasha's growl was feral, and raised the hairs on Kagome's arms. "You betrayed me for that witch?"

Myouga was abjectly horrified, his arms waving back and forth frantically. "No, master! She wanted to uncover the truth of your imprisonment, and I of course believed in nothing but your innocence! You could never have done what it was she claimed."

InuYasha's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What did the hag tell you?" His voice was deceptively soft.

"Lady Kaede claimed that you killed her older sister in order to steal the Jewel, causing her to seal you with her remaining strength before she died. But I trusted in you, master, and bid Kaede find out the truth."

There was a moment of silence, so tense that Kagome could barely breathe. InuYasha's face was dark and violent, but Myouga seemed to be oblivious to any and all warning signs, quite calmly jumping onto the ground when InuYasha's fist loosened enough to free him.

"InuYasha…" she began, trailing off pitifully. What could she possibly say? This Kikyo had obviously meant a lot to him, and he had just been accused of her murder. When the eruption came, it would be terrible, she was certain.

"It's nothing," he snarled, but there was no heart behind it. Kagome's chest ached for him.

"It most certainly is something, master. I could not allow such an insult to go unaddressed, and Kaede herself was eager to discover the truth," Myouga piped up, oblivious to the tension.

"Yeah, I'll just fucking bet she was," InuYasha grumbled.

"Now, master, there's no need for that. After all, it was certainlylikely that you might have---"

InuYasharoared.

Kagome fell onto her back, adrenaline zinging through her system at the sheer power of the sound. Myouga was quivering in fear in InuYasha's fist, snatched up by the furious hanyou. Kagome pushed herself onto her elbows and stared. InuYasha's eyes were a strange colour, almost red, and his fangs looked particularly vicious.

For the first time, she felt a twinge of fear when she looked at him.

"Flea, you just crossed a line. I could never have killed Kikyo. Get out of my sight before I rip you apart," InuYasha whispered. His voice was deeper, more visceral, somehow, and it sent tremors through Kagome's body, instincts screaming at her to run away like Myouga was doing. His tiny body was soon invisible as he frantically hopped away.

Kagome looked back at InuYasha. His entire body was taught, muscles almost quivering, every line screaming that he was dangerous. She pushed her instincts to the back of her mind and stood slowly.

"InuYasha… I…" She wracked her brain for something to say that could possibly offer him comfort. In the end she opted for a pathetic, "Are you okay?"

There was a silence before he turned slowly to meet her concerned gaze. "Okay? Am I okay?"

She said nothing, already knowing that she had messed up.

"I'm peachy fucking keen, bitch. See, I live in the real world, where weak humans who know nothing about life never survive. I had to fight for every little thing I've ever had. Humans hate me. Youkai hate me. My own fucking brother hates me. So it really doesn't surprise me that the only one in the world who is supposed to be onmy side thinks it might have been fucking likely that I killed the only person who ever cared about me! So welcome to thereal world, Ka-go-me, and get used to it, 'cause it ain't going away. Trust me."

With that he snarled and leapt off down the mountain before she could blink.

It was the most he had ever said to her at once, but Kagome wished he had never said any of it.

oOoOoOoOo

"Sis! Si-i-is! Let me down," the boy half whined, half laughed as the strong hands of his older sister swung him around the dark courtyard. The moon silvered their sweat and skin, ghosting over Sango's hair as she whipped her head back and laughed. Kohaku, all of nine years old, laughed as his older sister flung him around as easily as a doll.

She spun in a tight circle, Kohaku's body flying horizontally of the ground as she gripped his biceps. He giggled and squirmed, but only for show; Sango rarely had time to play with him. To play around, act like idiots and just be together was something to be cherished.

Finally, Sango pulled him to her and collapsed, her little brother held to her chest as she fell backwards onto the dirt. The two breathed hard, still giggling every now and again, and she pressed a kiss on his tousled hair.

"You know, soon you'll be breaking my records with those muscles. Your body took to your augments like nothing I've seen," she said, almost absently.

"That doesn't count for anything, sis. There's no one who can fight as good as you, no matter how strong they are," he replied with an emphatic hug. She shook her head with a smile and sat up, rearranging Kohaku so that he was cradled in her lap, his forehead against her neck. His tenth birthday was within the week, but Sango had received orders, her first Solitary mission ever, and she was to move out the next morning. This would be the first birthday of Kohaku's that she had missed in his entire life. She had held him as he took his very first breaths, and cleaned him after his birth.

Her arms tightened around the boy, and he snuggled closer in return, happy to be affectionate as long as no one could see him being 'soft'. His only sister was his idol, protector, advocate, disciplinarian and comforter all in one. There was no one he trusted more in the world. Their father was always busy, their mother dead since his infancy, and Sango was practically the only parent he had ever known.

He could trust her, he knew, and he made his decision. "Sis, I've got something to show you."

Sango let the now-wriggling child go, and he sprinted towards the verandah of their quarters. Instead of bounding up the steps as she had expected, he veered to the side and dove beneath them. Sango lifted a brow. He had obviously discovered her own favourite spot for hiding as a child. She only hoped that the spiders under there did not scare him, or invoke his pity to bring them into the house. Kohaku had always had a thing for strays.

He emerged, dusty and with a small scrape on one cheek, cradling something to his chest. Sango narrowed her eyes as a suspicion began to niggle at the back of her mind. Speaking of strays…

"Sis, you have to promise not to tell anyone," he began, and Sango shut her eyes tightly with a grimace as her suspicions were confirmed.

"Kohaku, where did you find it?"

He scowled and hunched over his bundle protectively. "It's not an it, it's a he and he's called Kai!"

Sango sighed heavily and stepped towards her brother. "Kohaku, give it here. Father won't even have to know, I'll ---"

"No! Sango, I won't let you take him!" His voice was shocked, his face devastated, but Sango hardened her heart and pried his arms apart to take the tiny fuzzy bundle he cradled. Even with his newly augmented muscles, hers were stronger and the struggle was brief. The kitten looked up at her and mewled softly, burrowing into her chest. Kohaku found these strays every so often, and although she knew it would break his heart, she did not dare encourage him. Theirs was a brutal life, one with no room for compassion. If she did not do this now, he would have a harder fall later on in life. For the umpteenth time, she wondered if her brother would ever make it as an Exterminator.

Kohaku shook with little hiccupping sobs, his head hanging forward to hide the tears. Her heart went out to him, but she had no choice. No unauthorized animals. That rule was very strict, and the kitten would be killed if it was found.

Still, hewas her little brother, still just a child, not even ten years old. She knelt in front of him and wiped his eyes with the hand not full of fuzzy kitten.

"Kohaku, there's no other way. Where would you keep it? Under the house? What about when it rains and there's a flood down there? What will you feed it? Nutrition bars? It would never stay down there, anyway, and when they find it they'll kill it."

He glared at her, betrayal and fury wrinkling his freckles in a tear-stained scowl. "They'll just kill him now when you give him to them."

She sighed and cupped his face with a gentle smile. "I won't give it to them. I'll set it free somewhere, tomorrow when I go."

He was sceptical, she could tell. His eyes were still hurt and distrustful, but she had never lied to him. "Really?"

"I promise."

His face broke out into a grin, and Sango smiled back, ruffling his hair in a way that made him duck out of reach bashfully, caught between adolescent embarrassment and hunger for affection.

As he took the kitten and ran to stow it back under the house until she left, her smile faded. What was going to happen to him, she wondered, when it came time for him to become an Exterminator? When he was faced with the harsh, bloody reality of what their family had done for so many years, what would he do? A little boy who loved nothing more than playing with butterflies, of all things, when given a weapon and told to kill… what would he do? He had been spared so much of what she had gone through.

She had never been like her brother, she was sure, and he would never be like her. By his age, she already had four kills under her belt, where he just had theory to go by. But then, maybe that was for the best. She could see her mother through those freckles every time he smiled, and hear her when he laughed. Without him… what would she do? That last part of her that cared, that felt anything, would die, and she would become nothing but the killing machine that they had made her. Her father, although she respected and loved him, expected so much from her. Theirs was not an affectionate family, and the only time the austere Commander Tsuyoki offered even the vaguest approval was when she lived up to those expectations. Affection came when she exceeded them, as in her Solitary trial.

Kohaku was not cut out for her kind of life, that much she could tell. Not the way that she was. She could bear solitude, the weight of duty, and the blood on her hands. Fighting came naturally to her, as easily as walking came to most people. She had been fighting since before she could talk, and there was nothing left in her that had not been moulded to make her even better at it. Her body had become a perfect human machine designed to take on even the strongest of supernatural beings. Augmentations, adjustments, hormonal conditioning, muscle restructuring…was there anything left of what her body had been at birth? Kohaku had begun this process, and although his body had taken to the adjustments more successfully than other subject ever had, he was untried and inexperienced.

Her mind was the same, honed into an instrument that saw in terms of tactical advantages and weaknesses, any shred of compassion or human empathy burned away in countless conditioning sessions, untold horrors that she had studied and analysed, simulations of missions requiring her to forget who she was and just do what she was told.

Kohaku had been spared that, at her insistence. She had to try and preserve that innocence in him. He knew how to fight, in the sense that he had studied since a small child just as she had, and he was good at it in the practice grounds, but he had never been in a battle. He had not been conditioned to ignore the screams of the dying in favour of tactical analysis. He was a little boy who loved animals and rainbows, and she would not have it any other way. She just hoped that she could keep it that way. If she lost Kohaku the way that she felt lost…

"Sis, you coming?" Kohaku called from the steps of their house, and Sango shook herself. She had no business thinking such thoughts. Tomorrow she would be away, and there was no room for doubt in the mission of a Solitary.

She had to be strong.

oOoOoOoOo

Kagome fidgeted in her place by the fire, fiddling with a pebble distractedly. InuYasha had not returned, and it was dark. There wasn't even a sliver of moon to see by, just the circle of her campfire. She was alone, a scant few nights after being attacked and nearly killed.

Had she mentioned it was dark?

There was another strange sound from somewhere to her left, and she whipped her head around, tense and terrified.

"Why hello," a smooth voice crooned from behind her.

"Eeek!" Kagome shrieked, spinning around inhumanly fast on her knees, ignoring the pain as the hard ground tore the skin. The fire caught her attention and she lunged for it.

She brandished a flaming branch before her, squinting into the darkness beyond the circle of light. "Get away!"

A low male chuckle came from her right and before she could turn a strong hand gripped her wrist.

"Put it down," her assailant whispered breathily into her ear in a sensual voice that pushed buttons she didn't even know she had.

Tension thrummed through her body as her survival instincts kicked in, lighting a cold fire in her veins.

"Let mego!"

Throwing all her body weight into him, she elbowed him as hard as she could, making contact with flesh. Her attacker stumbled slightly with a grunt. It was all she needed to twist out of his grasp and swing the torch.

He was fast to recover, fast enough to lean out of reach of the flame. Too fast to be human, surely, her brain thought critically. Torch brandished defensively and muscles tense, she examined the man illuminated by the flickering light. Young features, handsome but cold. He met her stare frankly and fearlessly, hands raised in a placating gesture, one of which was wrapped in some kind of beading. His robes were rumpled.

Robes meant monk. Monk meant Sphere.

"I'm not going back, so you can just tell the Sphere that. I'll die first," she hissed with all the venom she could muster.

An affable smile spread across his face. "You misunderstand me, my dear. I am no Sphere agent."

"I don't believe you."

A shrug. "That doesn't matter. I'm merely a self-interested party seeking… well, I suppose you could call it an insurance policy."

Kagome blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"Can't we discuss this like rational adults?" he enquired, sounding so genuine and unthreatening that the tip of her torch dipped slightly before she recovered herself.

"No! Leave. Now."

He sighed, as if she were a foolish child who left him no choice.

"Very well. Don't say I wasn't reasonable about this," he chided, before blurring before her very eyes. The torch flew out of her hands, a sharp pain blossomed in her back and she fell to the ground.

Miroku stared down at the unconscious girl. If he leaned a little to the left, he was quite sure he would be able to see up her skirt.

Why, yes, indeed he could.

Crouching down to the ground and scooping one hand beneath her shoulders and one her knees, he hummed quietly to himself. She was a pretty one, for sure. She would fetch him a good deal since they wanted her so desperately. She would be enough to get rid of this damn hole in his hand.

Ignoring the stab of what little conscience he had left, he turned and walked off into the night.

oOoOoOoOo

There's only one good thing about mountains. They're a bitch to climb, always cold, not much game to hunt, but they always have caves. One of which I've chosen to be my sulking place. A rock is digging into my back, but I'm to stubborn to move. Normally I wouldn't even feel it.

It's the new moon, the one night out of every month that I'm no longer an outcast. I turn into a weakling instead. Can't smell, can't hear, can't see, and my body is so fragile it's being bothered by a rock. No wonder the humans have to breed so much, use all that technology. They simply can't survive otherwise.

I feel a twinge of guilt as I think of the wench, but I'm not too worried. The bounty hunter is dead, and it'll take more than a couple of nights to send another one. That perverted headman is dead, for the better. The only thing that'll hurt her is herself.

Finally I give in and shift to the side, away from that damn rock.

Stupid human body.

oOoOoOoOo

"What do you want?" Kagome demanded the darkness where her captor was hiding, wriggling to try and ease the pressure off her bound wrists. They were starting to tingle, and she knew that the bindings were too tight. She could not see further than the small ring of firelight from the tiny campfire, but she knew he was there. Strange as it was, she could… feel him. It was niggling at the outside of her mind, almost like she was inside a bubble and something was pressing the outside of it.

"I know you're there. Whatever it is, I won't give it to you! And… and you'll be sorry when InuYasha finds out you've taken me!"

The man chuckled, and she squinted harder.

"Where was he tonight, my dear? What makes you think he hasn't abandoned you?"

"He hasn't!" was all she had in response. Besides, he would not. Would he?

Somehow she knew the man was smiling.

"You are a naïve young woman. There are things about this world that you simply do not understand."

That was probably the worst thing he could have said to her at that point. Sheknew she did not understand, and she was sick of people telling her that. How was she supposed to learn, anyway!

The bubble was under more strain, as if he was pressing it on purpose. Seizing on the inspiration she had found against Yura, Kagome closed her eyes. Come on. I'm calling you this time, she begged. The same strange sensation built inside her body, filling her chest and head.

She grasped the power, imagined the man pressing against her bubble, andpushed him away from it.

There was a strangled cry from the dark, followed by gasping as the man fought for breath.

"Such power," he wheezed. The presence touching her awareness was gone. Kagome shook slightly, feeling irrationally tired yet her being tingling with an alien invigoration.

"Let me go," she ordered.

His breathing was laboured, but he still managed to chuckle again. "Now I see why they want you. With that power harnessed…" He left the sentence unfinished, and Kagome did not much want to hear more.

"This is the last time I'm asking. Let me go, or I'll make you."

There was silence, and then her captor stepped forward into the light. It flickered in his eyes and a shiver ran down her spine. There was no expression in his face, simply cold desolation. What would it be like to feel so lost?

Slowly he smiled at her.

"Please. Try."