Confusion lingered for a long moment after Keiko opened her eyes. At first she thought herself safe in her village, but the single room home was unfamiliar, the rough blanket around her waist not her own.

She jerked up from the bed and winced as her side lit up with pain. She clutched her ribs for a moment, and realized her body was sore, but uninjured. Bruises and scrapes lined her skin, her left ankle throbbed, and she could only imagine what her backside looked like after her bad fall. To others she would look like she took a nasty fall down one of the many sloped hills in the area. She was lucky.

"Look who's awake. Are you alive, ya feisty wench?"

Keiko swallowed the scream instantly bubbling up in her throat, and glared across the room at the rugged stranger.

He smiled. "We should be even now, Keiko."

She gasped, for the first time noticing the bandaging tied around her upper arm, her ankle, and her clean face and hands. The odor of herbs lingered heavy in the air. He had taken her from the others?

She recalled Botan's panicked cries and her own mad scramble for the forest. The youkai of course had been faster. When the blackness took her she thought they had caught her at last, she was dying with her heart full of regrets, but at least she would see the faces of her mother and father. Some dark part of Keiko wanted her soul to ascend away from this dreadful place.

She watched him from across the room with wary brown eyes. He leaned against the wall, meeting her gaze with his own bored stare. She had no idea what to say to this creature. She cleared her throat. "Thanks for saving me, though I didn't ask you to." She frowned.

"How about some gratitude, I coulda let them eat you," he said, his lips in a tight frown.

Keiko considered his words. He probably could beat her to death with a single blow, though she sensed nothing vicious in his character so far. She tucked her legs beneath her and bowed, her forehead close to the dirt floor but not touching it. "Thank you," she conceded.

She felt the weight of his stare, but she kept her own eyes cast down. Sweat beaded on her neck, but she felt fear's cold grip constrict her heart. She felt vulnerable, helpless.

"Yeah well," he scoffed, "not gonna let a pretty girl like you get eaten by youkai trash."

Keiko jerked her head up and swept the curtain of brown hair from her face. She gaped at him, her eyes wide and dark.

A strand of hair clung to her face, beside her lips and Yusuke noticed it. Her lips were the color of apricot, and soft. Well, they looked soft to him anyway. It was unlike him to wonder about such things, or to go around thinking about kissing anybody. Youkai women(or youkai females, rather), were usually aggressive and foreign to him, and human women shrieked at the sight of his marked face. Even human whores wanted nothing to do with him. This girl, though, yes she feared him but she held her ground. She didn't beg or cry. He could practically smell the embers and coal from the flame that burned behind her eyes.

Keiko's thoughts clouded with confusion. Pretty? Could youkai even find human women pretty? Did the word hold a different meaning for this stranger than it did for her? She didn't want to linger here.

"I thank you," she mumbled quickly, and rose to her feet. "But I have to leave, my family needs me."

"What family? You mean the people who left you behind during that last raid." Yusuke commented darkly.

Her shoulders stiffened. "That was my own fault."

"Whatever." He snorted and turned his back to her as she crossed the room. "I ain't gonna stop you. Not a wise idea though."

Keiko didn't understand his meaning until she peeked through the shabby woven screen over the hut's entrance. She gasped. Nothing but blackness piled atop blackness. The clouds hid the moon and stars so she couldn't use the heavens for guidance. The forest loomed ahead, seemingly as vast and endless as the night sky above. She would be blind and defenseless, the blade of her mother's kaiken useless in the forests.

She must have slept several hours. She sighed. Her choices of the facing a youkai pack or dealing with this single powerful one left her with nothing. Panic buzzed in her veins like biting gnats. She prayed the others were ok. She had to know! But what could she do?

And now she was stuck here with this man, youkai, who had already touched her without her knowledge, had to share a vacant hut with him tonight and wait on the morning light. She wouldn't sleep. Her honor had already been damaged by his presence, not that anyone cared about the virtues of a poor farm girl. Maybe he thought her a village wife and not a maiden. In the old fables youkai whisked virgin girls away from their homes and families, presumed either the demon's new wife or his meal. She shivered.

She let the screen fall back in place and turned to glare at the back of Yusuke's head. "Are you going to hurt me?"

"What?" He snapped, and scowled at her over one muscular shoulder. "Oh yeah I just bandaged you up for nothing. We Mazoku love our prey wrapped up and wounded before we eat them."

He stared at her and waited for a comeback, but she hovered by the door, frozen. A wave of her fearful energy blasted his senses.

Keiko bolted.

He hadn't expected that reaction so he hadn't grabbed her in time. She had just took off! Yusuke sprung to his feet and stomped out the door after her. "Hey! I was joking!" He cupped his hands over his mouth and called her name, but only a few startled wildlife heard him and vanished into shadow.

He detected her presence west of the village. With her bruised ankle she hadn't gotten far. What a stubborn fool of a girl.

Yusuke caught up with her quickly. Blind in the dark, she had made a mad dash towards an open field and the start of the rolling hills. Invisible mountains towered above the black tree line. Yusuke roared in frustration. "Wait a second!" She was two steps away from a ditch. The mouth of the incline yawned in a dark stretch across the ground.

"Get away from me!"

Before she could say anything else he snatched her left wrist, but her right hand slammed down on his face, knocking them both off balance and down into the ditch.

Keiko let out squeal. Bristles and thorned plants dug into his back when they landed, Keiko above him, as he had tried to take the brunt of the fall, his arms wrapped around her waist. He blew a leaf away from his face. "Ow! That hurt you crazy bitch!"

She squirmed in his arms, furious. "You are a rude, sadistic demon-"

He held her wrist gently, even though she jerked her arm away from him and had grabbed fistfuls of his hair during the fall. "I'm not gonna eat you!" He spat. "I'm a hanyou!"

Keiko stilled. She stared at him. "Huh?"

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief that she had calmed down. "My mother is a human," he mumbled, scowling up at her. "Get it? And I was joking about you being food. Joking."

She studied him, suspicion still lurking behind her eyes. She leaned closer to him with an air of timid curiosity; he usually hated anyone staring but her petite hands spreading across his chest distracted him. He felt the weight of her lean legs on both sides of his torso and he swallowed.

A thoughtful expression crossed her face. "You do look and act like a human." She softly touched her cheeks and the skin beneath her eyes. "Well except for the.."

"Yeah I know," he grumbled. "Do me a favor and keep your mouth shut about what I just told you ok? Nobody needs to know. If anyone finds out they're dead."

She ignored his threat, not that he could blame her, he couldn't be very threatening when squashed beneath a small human girl.

"So it's a secret?" Yusuke thought he detected a hint of mischief in her eyes, though her face remained stern.

Her large dark eyes reminded him of a doe's, innocently curious and docile. Heat radiated from her body in the already sticky heat, blazing his stomach with the warmth of her thighs and the even hotter space between her legs. Yusuke shook those thoughts from his mind. He wanted her, and it irritated him. He chalked it up to being horny but something else nagged at him; he wanted her attention, wanted to see her blush in indignation. He had wanted to press featherweight kisses on her forehead while she slept curled beneath the blankets. A celestial maiden resting beneath the tree would have the shadow of Keiko's beauty. Yusuke had never once been poetic in his life.

"Yeah, it is." He grumbled. "Now, do you mind getting the hell off of me, unless you wanna get off on me. Maybe we can work something out." He grinned, one eyebrow raised beneath his dark fringe.

That did it. Keiko jumped off of him so fast she almost tripped again. Yusuke laughed as she steadied herself. "P-pervert!"

He grinned. "Lighten up will ya."

Embarrassed, and confused by his flirtations, she stood on the uneven ground with wobbly legs. Even in the dark she felt her cheeks color deep pink.

"We'll head back." He extended his hand. "C'mon. It's hard to see."

Keiko shied away from his request at first, but heard a screech in the night that could be anything from a fox to a spirit and thought better of it. She slipped her hand into his open palm. His calloused hand cut her like sandpaper, but he lead her back through the dark woods with confidence and for the moment Keiko felt grateful.

xxxx

Keiko sat on the rough wool blankets, shoulders stiff, as she stared at the fire embers flickering in the modest fire pit. The cool dirt floor seeped through the straw tatami mat and chilled her legs. She had kept her gaze anywhere but on the Mazoku as he tended the fire and laid down the bedding for the night. Eyes cast down, away from her handsome stranger. She swallowed her anxiety but remained silent, unsure.

Yusuke sensed this and sighed. In an effort not to spook her further, when they returned to the village he placed himself across the room, but Keiko wasn't alone in her awkwardness. The last and only human woman he had shared a space with had been his mother.

"Should I sleep outside?"

Keiko started. His words caught her attention and she peered at him with wide eyes. "Shouldn't one of us stand guard?" Anyone or anything could stroll right through the door.

Yusuke smirked. "I think we'll manage," he said dryly. "Besides I'll wake up long before anyone takes a step in this ghost village."

Keiko considered his words and relaxed, her gaze returning to the fire. Her eyelids weighed on her vision. The loneliness of these forgotten homes lulled her into pensive mood, as she pictured whole families swallowed up by disease, or war, who knows. She shivered. Warring human cavalries or youkai hoards, they both burned down houses and dreams.

"You're part of the youkai group destroying villages," Keiko stated simply.

Yusuke scowled. "It's nothing personal for me. I've been paid. He's searching for that ice maiden." When she didn't reply he added: "I don't get off on killing or nothing like that. I don't go out of my way to kill human beings, obviously." He shrugged. "We have beat some youkai ass too. Everyone wants that cold bitch."

Keiko bristled, but whatever thoughts passed through her mind she kept to herself. Yusuke hoped her fear had calmed but she still seemed pensive. Damn, he couldn't remember the last time he had actually talked with a human women. His mentors hadn't exactly taught him manners, either.

"I warned you to get away," Yusuke mumbled.

"We tried. Where are we supposed to go?" Keiko said with a glance toward the door, referring to the barren landscapes beyond the tree line, where crops had once flourished. A group of rogue samurai torched the village one summer, polluting the river with death. Samurai thugs owned the other land on two sides of Keiko's humble village. They had no protection, forgotten. Youkai hunted their game in the forests of the east. The scrawny villagers would last only days without shelter and water.

Yusuke studied her, her calloused farm hands rigid in her lap, patches of red clay stuck to her blue cotton kimono. Despite the poverty of her existence, Keiko's eyes blazed with rebellion; her heart bled from time to time but nobody, human or youkai, had broken her. And Yusuke in his various travels had seen shattered souls with dark eyes peer out at him from the human brothels. This one would still fight.

Something about the innocence in her warm eyes roused the feral nature in his youkai blood, but the human Urameshi Yusuke remembered what it had been like to be small and weak, and angry. People had tried to hurt him and for once chance had been on his side, some sort of fluke. Youkai blood, imagine that! But no luck or magic would save this girl.

Yusuke drew inwards for a moment, the weight of his shoulders suddenly heavy. Her bright eyes provoked a feeling from him he hadn't recognized in a long time; the urge to protect.

A yowl of anger sliced through the heavy night air, and Keiko winced. The same cry as before, maybe a bobcat maybe a hungry ghost.

Keiko remained silent as she watched him rise and drop down beside her, nothing unsure about his posture, but he didn't look her in the eye. His arm pressed against her shoulder, and Keiko's faced colored at the sudden contact, along with thoughts of his previous lewd comments. Some of his matted black hair tickled her neck.

Keiko wiped sweaty palms across her knees, an angry blush on her face. "What are you doing?" She cursed her lack of experience with the opposite sex. Youkai or not he had the same arrogant attitude as any young man, maybe worse.

Avoiding her question, he tossed one toned and marked arm around her shoulder, tilting her closer, her back pressed against his bare chest. She froze at the contact. "You rest," he mumbled, his voice gruff and his breath raising chills along her neck. "That noise out there ain't nothing. No human or demon is gonna get you now. Nobody."

Keiko thought she noticed a red tint to his cheeks and ears, but with the fire in the pit dwindled to embers and the darkness lurking, she may have imagined it. His hot flesh warmed her skin through the fabric, and his words and the gruff timbre in his voice boiled her blood.

So much work, and running, and fear. Now she had lost her mind and tangled herself with a strange man. Her parents would have been disappointed, but they were gone, weren't they? What did it matter. She let Yusuke enfold her small frame in his arms, and she felt like a paper crane held between the claws of a bear. She waited for an invasive touch, but none came.

Their silent agreement over the nonchalant physical contact rendered them both speechless. Yusuke's arms surrounded her but did not possess her; not caged but guarded by his presence. Keiko sensed a drop in Yusuke's confidence, the joker attitude nowhere to be seen.

She let the natural rhythm of his breathing lull her back into sleep.


/Slinks back into this fic...hey guys. I will try and continue this if I have any readers. It bothers me that it's been unfinished. I'll try and wrap it up, although I work and draw and sleep most of the time. I appreciate the lovely reviews, anyone taking time out of their day to give feedback. YOU ARE AMAZING. I appreciate the reader even if they don't comment or fav. It's here for mutual enjoyment. I hope people write more Yu/Kei fics in the near future.

& I know it sounds like Inuyasha(this chapter haha).

Unbeta'd. 2st edited addition.

(I compared keiko to a doe twice lol oops).

1/22/16