Archive of Our Own ^beta

In hindsight, they probably should have seen the warning signs.

First: it had been a bad year for the village.

The crops were blighted before they could ripen, and with the stores already low, it was going to be a lean winter. Then, even as it was time to bring in the harvest, an illness swept through the village, carrying away both the very young and the very old, including Kagome"s long-time mentor. Already there were whispers of witchcraft, and with every baby that died, the whispers grew louder.

Second: the fact that they had always been different.

An elderly woman who had an old injury of whose origins she didn"t speak.

Her apprentice, an orphan girl.

Both obvious foreigners, and neither of them related either to anyone currently alive in the village, or to each other.

Both of them living on the outskirts, together, yet slightly apart from everyone else.

The older woman never married, the younger showing no interest in any attempts at courtship despite having recently reached marrying age.

Both of them healers of uncommon skill, who had yet been unable to save those who had fallen ill or to stop the spread of the plague.

She should have seen it coming.

Yet, when the torchlight fell over the threshold of their (now her) tiny cottage in the middle of the night, it still came as a surprise.

"Have ye really no family in the village, child?"

Slowly, trembling a little because of her own nervousness, Kagome raised her head to meet the old woman"s eyes.

"I have no family."

Not in this village, and not in any village—not anymore. She"d walked and walked and walked, but everyone she"d met on the road had only hissed at her or brandished threatening weapons, and every village she"d passed through had turned her away.

Nobody cared about a single orphaned child—an orphaned girl—who was not of their own blood.

"I see." The old woman let out a long, slow sigh. "I suppose I am in need of an apprentice, having no child of my own. If ye can learn the healing arts, then ye may stay with me."

Kagome was still rubbing the sleep and the dried tears from her eyes as she rose to answer the door, pulling on a robe. Nighttime visits were not a common occurrence, and when they did happen, the reason was never good.

"What"s the matter? Is someone else sick? What..."

The words fled, her mouth going dry at the sight of the many flickering torches and brandished farm implements.

"Don"t even try to talk your way out of this. After we were generous enough to let you live here, too!"

Kagome froze at how angry the headman"s voice sounded. She"d been expecting a desperate plea for medicine, but this... this was something else entirely. Before she could even pull herself together enough to defend herself (or, indeed, even so much as find out what they were accusing her of), the headman spoke again.

"Bring the witch to trial."

"What do you mean that you have a sister!?"

Though she"d only just heard about the subject in passing, Kagome"s little nine-year-old heart was practically bursting with the revelation. By this point, she was both settled enough and old enough to be curious… and also just young enough not to know better.

Usually, Kaede wasn"t quick to startle… but now she froze, her fingers bruising the herb she"d been in the process of pulling. "Child, who told ye about my sister?"

"I…" Suddenly hesitant, Kagome scuffed a foot against the dirt. "The butcher," she admitted at last, quietly.

She hadn"t understood, at the time, what it meant when the man had spat on the ground and muttered something about "the old hag going the same way as her sister if she wasn"t careful". She"d been too excited about the revelation to pay attention to the context. Now, she shivered as she realized that there had been… something… about the man"s tone of voice. The set of his jaw. The look in his eyes as he looked her up and down before slowly reaching for his long curved knife. Something not quite right.

Looking down at the plant in her hand, Kaede seemed to have realized she"d crushed it, for she lowered it gently down to the earth before letting out a long, slow sigh.

"If ye must know… I had a sister. Once."

Prove to us you"re not a witch.

Prove it? How was it possible to prove what she wasn"t?

Ironically, it seemed like it would have been a whole lot easier to prove she was a witch—do a spell, levitate, turn herself into a cat or that annoying neighbor girl into a frog. There. Done. Witch. But for her to prove that she didn"t have powers? They"d never believe her when she told them she couldn"t do it—they"d only believe that she wouldn"t.

The judge and the six townsmen all looked down on her through narrowed eyes, and no matter how desperately she looked from face to face, she was unable to detect even the slightest trace of sympathy. Instinctively, Kagome wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered. She was still in her sleeping shift, her bare feet nearly numb against the cold stone floor.

She just appeared one day, out of nowhere, with no family to speak of. Suspicious.

She is too cheerful. Always humming, always smiling. What does she have to smile about?

Doesn"t look like us, either. Always knew witches brought their devilish ways from across the seas.

And why is she not yet married? My son was interested, she turned him down…

They had hurled their accusations as if she wasn"t even there.

"There is only one way to resolve this." The judge, whom she had always known as a kind, grandfatherly man, now looked thoroughly menacing as he rose and began to walk toward her. Instinctively, Kagome took a step back… only for her back to immediately come up against the chest of one of the guards standing behind her. There was nowhere to run.

"A test. A witch may resist showing her powers, but the devil looks after his own."

It was hard to remember exactly how old she had been when she first saw him.

Old enough to feel the clench in her thighs. Still just too young to understand what it meant.

It was a pleasant summer day, she remembered that much, and she was out picking blueberries—they would make a nice treat to go with the evening meal, and Kaede didn"t like her to sit around with idle hands. She had just dropped a handful of berries into her basket when she saw movement.

Kagome froze. Of course; she wasn"t the only one who wanted those berries.

What if it was a bear? She tried to remember what Kaede had told her to do if she ever encountered a bear. Don"t run, stay calm, use whatever she had with her to make herself look bigger… and at that moment, the only thing she had with her was the large basket she was using to collect the berries.

With a small gasp of fright, hoping she was doing the right thing rather than inviting the bear to just eat her instead of the berries, she lifted the basket and held it high above her head.

The bushes in front of her rustled. She squeezed her eyes shut…

"The fuck do you think you"re doing?"

…okay, so Kagome had to admit she didn"t know a lot about bears. Only what Kaede had told her, and she"d never actually seen one in person. Even considering her own ignorance, however, the one thing she was certain about was that bears didn"t talk.

Slowly, she squinted open her eyes.

There, standing in front of her, was a boy.

And not just any boy, either: this one had white hair, and golden eyes, and fangs and claws and…

"Well?" He scowled, crossing his arms. "Trust me, I can reach "em just fine without your help."

Then, belying his point, he reached over, plucked a blueberry from the basket, and popped it into his mouth.

…Kagome realized that she was still holding the basket high over her head.

Slowly, cheeks burning, she lowered it back down to the level she"d been carrying it at before.

"What? Got nothing to say?" Nose twitching, he bent down to look at her. "Lemme tell you, you"re one weird little—"

At that moment, Kagome could no longer resist, and by bending over, he had brought his head within her reach. Wordlessly, she gave in to the urge she"d had since she"d first laid eyes on him, and reached out to stroke one of the triangular white dog ears that poked out from under his hair.

With a yelp, he immediately leaped back, as if her touch had burned him. From a distance that was safely out of arm"s reach, he glared back at her for her presumptuousness. "What the hell!?"

"Your ears… they"re so soft." Somehow, it was the only thing she could think of to say.

An involuntary gasp left her body as her back smacked into the surface of the deep liquid.

They"d tied her hand and foot before throwing her—not gently—into the giant steel cauldron, and the water was so frigid her limbs immediately locked up anyway. It covered her face, invading her nose and mouth as instinct overrode her attempts to hold her breath. She was going to sink like a stone and—

…and after only a few seconds of panic, she found herself bobbing gently back to the surface. Tilting her head back, she took in desperate gulps of air.

The panic that she was about to drown had been so great, it took her a moment to register the whispers.

"…floating…"

"…holy water won"t accept a witch…"

"…told you, the devil looks after his own."

Kagome"s heart sank as she realized the full implications of what they were saying. They"d thrown her into the holy water to check whether she would float.

"We have our proof." The judge stepped to the edge of the platform, looking disdainfully down to take in the whole of her shivering and waterlogged body. "Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I am surprised he showed himself to ye."

She was back in Kaede"s hut, doling out blueberries. Kagome blushed.

"Do… do you know him, then?" Not meeting Kaede"s eyes, she picked up a single blueberry, rolling it between her fingers as she examined it with much more care than was actually warranted.

"Aye, I know him." Kaede sounded amused. "After all, he has been here for far longer than ye have."

"What—I mean, who—" Looking down at the blueberry between her fingers, she realized she"d started squeezing it so hard the skin had split. Hastily, she tossed it back into the bowl.

Thankfully, Kaede seemed to understand what she was trying to ask. "Inuyasha is a demon."

Immediately, Kagome"s head shot up. She"d just had an encounter with a demon? That was even worse than a bear! All that time, he"d been standing right in front of her, and she hadn"t even realized.

Because demons, she"d always been told, were winged, horned creatures with forked tails that lived in the flames of hellfire and tortured bad humans after they died. While the boy she"d met earlier—Inuyasha, his name was—certainly did have fangs and claws, those ears couldn"t be mistaken for horns in anything but the poorest of light, and if he did have a tail, she was somehow certain that it would be fluffy.

…and he hadn"t hurt her. He hadn"t even threatened her. He"d only talked with her, like a person, and then left as quickly as he came.

"A demon? But…" She trailed off, trying to reconcile everything she"d always been told with the actual evidence that she"d just seen with her own eyes.

"Aye, there are many demons that are indeed very close to what ye"ve been told. But there are many varieties of demons in this world—just as there are many varieties of humans—and they are not all good or evil any more than all humans are."

"Confess. When did the devil first come to you?"

Cold, exhausted, shivering, water dripping down her face, Kagome still did not have the breath to do anything but gasp.

"Answer, witch. When did the devil first appear to you?"

"I"m not a—"

Before she could even finish speaking, her face was slammed back into the freezing water.

Instinctively, she struggled, her only thought to get her face out of the water, she couldn"t breathe… but her arms and legs were tied, and the hand of the guard held firmly to her neck no matter how desperately she thrashed.

By the time they finally pulled her head back out of the bucket, her chest felt as if it were about to burst open and there were black spots swimming at the edges of her vision. She had long since lost the strength to thrash.

"When did the devil first appear to you?"

"I"m not—"

Immediately, her face was engulfed once more in the grip of the icy water.

When they pulled her out this time, she couldn"t see at all for the spots swimming in front of her eyes, and it took long minutes for her vision to clear as she gulped in air. She knew what her interrogator was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

"When did—"

"I already told you again and again, you jerk!" All at once, the words were spilling out of her without any thought as her pain and frustration and anger at the injustice of it all finally boiled over. "It isn"t my problem that you won"t listen to me!"

Kagome had never thought that it was possible for an interrogation to be so quiet.

When her interrogator"s lips curled up into a small, tight smile, she knew she"d made a mistake.

"So now you see." He turned outward to face the other men in the room, arms spread wide. "The witch has shown her true colors at last."

"Tell me, child. What do ye know of witch hunts?"

"H-huh?"

Kagome had been curled up on her bed and sobbing inconsolably. She had been prepared for Kaede to come to her with kind words, calming tea, and balm for her bruises and scrapes, and she"d been just as prepared to refuse to let herself be soothed by any of it… but this non-sequitur snapped her out of her wallowing more effectively than any amount of coddling ever could.

Sitting up, she wiped her eyes as another sniffle escaped her. "Wh-what do witch hunts have to do with anything?"

True, there were stories. There was an elderly widow in the town, with a mouth like a wrinkled up grape, who whenever Kagome got too close to her fields liked to tell her stories about wicked women who spread illness and blighted the crops until the people united to cleanse the village of evil. Still, those were just stories… right?

The mattress dipped under Kaede"s weight as she lowered herself to the bed with a sigh. Then, she turned to look her directly in the face, her expression more serious than Kagome could ever remember having seen it before.

"It is time that I told ye," and Kaede"s face had never before seemed so old, or so lined with pain, "what happened to my sister."

Only a few minutes ago, Kagome could barely feel her toes. Now the merest brush of her bare feet against the cold floor burned like fire as they carried her off to the next torment.

They wouldn"t even let her walk on her own two feet, with dignity. Instead, they had lifted her up by the armpits, one man on each side, and dragged her along, knocking her off-balance with a sharp jerk every time she managed to get her legs under her.

How could she have been so stupid? She knew better, Kaede had taught her better, and still she"d let her emotions get the better of her and blurt out the first thing that came to mind, and now that they"d gotten a "confession" out of her, however oblique, that meant the real torture was about to start.

"You… your sister was accused of witchcraft?"

After getting into a scrap with those three boys, Kagome hadn"t thought that there was anything in this world that could make her feel worse than having to drag herself home, covered in bruises and scrapes, and then explain to Kaede that she"d gotten into a fight because some idiot farmer"s son had called her a devil"s child and a changeling. Now, though, sitting on her bed in her dark room, curled around the rock in her stomach and listening to Kaede tell her about how her sister had been tortured to death because one of the villagers had seen her with Inuyasha and accused her of consorting with the devil, she was starting to realize exactly how much worse it could get.

"Aye. And myself, simply by association." Slowly, her fingers rose up to lightly touch the patch over her eye. Kagome shuddered. As long as she"d been here, she"d wondered where the old injury had come from; now, she wished she"d never found out.

"So how did you survive?" She was shaking uncontrollably, her voice coming out in a whisper.

"The answer to that is simple, but by no means easy. I didn"t confess."

When they slammed her up against the wall, the force of the impact was nearly enough to make her see stars. By the time her vision cleared, she had already felt the heavy iron restraints clamp around her wrists.

She didn"t even notice the leather collar until it was wrapped around her neck.

Gasping, she struggled instinctively to get it off… but her hands were already chained to the wall, and trying to thrash against it only tightened it further. In the end, the only thing she could do was stay as still as possible as they pulled the leather tight around her throat, nearly enough to cut off her air, and then attached the back of it to a hook on the wall, so high up that she had to force herself up onto the very tips of her toes if she didn"t want to strangle.

"Sweet dreams, witch." The first guard patted her cheek before he walked away, laughing raucously at his own joke.

The second was more serious. He stood there a long time after the first had left, staring at her. Had Kagome not already been struggling to keep herself high up enough on her toes to keep breathing, his scrutiny would have left her squirming with discomfort.

"I suggest you use this time to contemplate your sins. Repent, and there is still a chance that you might be saved." With a self-righteous nod, he began to sweep away from her, only to turn back at the last second. "Which is more than I can say for your familiar."

Familiar? What familiar? Kagome didn"t have a—

Her increasingly frantic thoughts were abruptly cut short by the sound of a low growl on the other side of the cell.

Even as she struggled to stay on her feet, she felt her eyes being pulled in the direction of the noise. She didn"t remember there being a dog in here… but…

It took her a moment to figure out what she was looking at.

On the opposite side of the cell was some sort of structure that was made out of aged wood. When they"d first brought her in, she"d barely even noticed it, and it had only registered in some corner of her mind as a storage chest or a piece of furniture. Now that she was actually looking at it, though, she realized that it was actually a cage, made of deceptively flimsy-looking wooden bars… and that it was not empty.

A small movement within the cage turned out to be the twitching of an ear. Then, the mass of white hair shifted, and the occupant lifted his head to bare his teeth with a warning growl.

The golden eyes that she remembered were now blood red.

The tentative wisp of hope that had just began to unfurl within her suddenly curdled into dread. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the boy in the cage across from her was Inuyasha… but at the same time, that wasn"t Inuyasha.

"What did you do to him?" She wanted to sound angry. Instead, she found her voice coming out in a whisper.

He was naked, or nearly so. The cage was so small that he could neither sit, nor stand, nor even lie down on the floor, but was instead forced to hunch, like a captive animal. As she watched, he threw himself against the bars with a snarl of rage… but rather than the flimsy wood shattering under his assault, he ended up being thrown backwards, accompanied by a yelp of pain and the stench of burning flesh.

"Every bar of that cage is made of blessed wood. It would not be able to contain that creature, if not for the fact that it was an unholy monster."

All at once, Kagome felt her vision going red—and this time, it had nothing to do with her lack of air.

"What have either of us ever done to you!? You"re the only monster here, you—"

Without the slightest change in expression, the man turned away from Inuyasha, and kicked her feet out from under her.

The leather around her throat tightened, cutting off her air completely as she was pulled downward by the full weight of her own body. Her thrashing arms bruised and scraped her wrists as they fought against the restraints, and her legs kicked wildly as she struggled to regain her purchase against the floor, but every time she managed to put a foot on solid stone, it seemed to skid right out from under her, as if she were trying to dance on ice. Her vision was going dark. Slowly, her thrashing stilled as the strength ebbed out of her limbs like water. So this was how it was going to be, then. This was how she was going to die. She was—

Something wrapped around her waist, and then her whole body was hefted off the ground.

For one brief moment, she neither knew nor cared about what exactly had caused the change in her circumstances: she was too busy gasping for air. Slowly, though, as her vision stopped swimming, she realized that the reason the collar had loosened was that her captor had wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet.

No sooner had her vision stopped swimming than he set her back down again.

This time, at least, she was prepared for what was coming, and managed to get her feet back under her just in time for him to set her down… and then strained to keep them under her, because she had the feeling that if her legs gave out, he wouldn"t lift her a second time.

"Your guilt is already proven, witch. Every moment you continue to live is at our grace. Remember that, the next time you consider speaking out of turn."

Then, without another word, he turned and swept out of the room, letting the heavy iron door clang shut behind him.

"Are you fuckin" serious?"

Biting her lip, Kagome looked up at the high tree branch. The only thing she could see was the curtain of silver hair that hung down over the side.

"Of course I"m serious!" She crossed her arms with a pout; she didn"t like it when he made her feel silly. "So how about you just answer for once?"

The brief rustle of the leaves above her head was the only warning she got before a red-and-silver blur dropped down to land directly in front of her.

"Have you ever actually fuckin" looked at me?" As a matter of fact, she had, as often as she could manage to sneak a glance, but Inuyasha really didn"t need to know that. Scowling, he pointed at his ears. "You really think I could just walk into a village?"

Looking down at the ground, Kagome bit her lip. Sure, she"d known the chances of him saying yes were unlikely, but… she"d wanted so badly to stroll through the market with him and show him all the sights. Just this once. "Maybe if you wore a hat, you could—"

"You really think a hat is going to make me look normal?" He scoffed. "Well, you can fuckin" forget it. I ain"t getting rocks thrown at me again."

Giving a final decisive nod, he turned back to her as if to declare the discussion settled, but then looked taken aback at the sight of her face. "Wait, why are you crying!?"

"They… they threw rocks at you?" Kagome"s vision was suddenly blurring through the moisture in her eyes.

"Yeah, but it was a long time ago. I"ve learned not to go into a village since—"

"That"s happened here?"

"I-it"s not like a little rock could actually hurt me or anything! Stop crying!"

Whatever he was about to say next was abruptly cut short by Kagome throwing herself forward and wrapping her arms around his waist.

"Hu—wha—buh!?" was his incredibly articulate and intelligent response.

"I"m sorry." Kagome sniffled, pressing her face into his chest. "I"m so, so sorry that people were so cruel to you."

"Inuyasha." Long moments passed between every time she spoke, and even then, she dared speak only in a whisper, fearful of losing what little breath she had.

It wasn"t that he was deaf, or insensible: she could see his ears flicking and swiveling to follow every noise, and the mere sound of her voice was enough to draw his focus. He could hear her… but, he met her words only with a low, dangerous growl, or even by throwing himself against the bars of the cage and getting burned for his trouble. There was no sign whatsoever that the red-eyed beast on the other side of the cell even so much as recognized her—indeed, all of his reactions so far indicated that, in the event that the barrier between them was removed, he had every intention of tearing her to shreds.

"Come on, Inuyasha." Her legs were full of cramps, and she could only pray that they would continue to hold her up until someone came in to release her from this trap. "It"s me, Kagome." Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes and began to slowly run down her cheeks. "Don"t you recognize me?"

The only answer she got was yet another snarl, accompanied by the snapping of teeth.

"Inuyasha, please."

She was begging, and she couldn"t even be sure of what she was begging him for. After all, she already knew that he could not save her.

"The old hag talks too much." He crossed his arms as he said it, his ears flattening back against his head.

It had been one thing to find out that Kaede had once had a sister, even to find out that her sister had lost her life in a witch hunt. It had been another thing entirely to find out that Kaede"s sister and Inuyasha had once been… well, something.

How old was he? Kagome felt suddenly self-conscious that this inhumanly beautiful boy might have been looking at her this whole time and seeing nothing more than an annoying little kid… or worse, just a second version of his dead lover. Kaede had told her before that she and Kikyo looked alike, enough so that they could easily have been mistaken for blood relatives. When she"d been younger, she"d relished hearing that, because it made her feel that maybe she was almost like Kaede"s real family. Now, though, the very thought that she might be mistaken for Kikyo was a heavy weight squirming slippery and cold in her stomach.

Then, there was another thought that was somehow even worse.

"Did… that is, the day Kikyo died…"

A low, dangerous rumbling sounded deep in his chest: a warning growl. "We are not talking about this."

"But if she was your… that is, if you knew each other… then…"

Why didn"t you save her? She couldn"t even force out the words, because no matter which way she phrased the question, she knew it would come out sounding like an accusation… an accusation which he unfortunately seemed to have heard anyway.

"I wasn"t fucking here, okay? You really think I woulda just stood back and let those bastards murder her, is that what you think of me?"

"I—"

He had not laid a hand on her, had not even moved toward her… but still, she reeled back as if struck.

"I wasn"t here, okay? Now leave it." Before she could even open her mouth to apologize, he"d bounded off into the trees.

The sound of the cell door creaking open on its hinges brought both relief, and a new source of fear.

Relief, because Kagome was honestly beginning to feel like she would not be able to hold herself up on her toes for much longer. Fear, because the return of her jailers meant the beginning of some new torment.

She knew now what had happened to Kikyo. She knew how Kaede had lost her eye.

The man who came into the room wasn"t holding chains, or a whip, or thumbscrews. He was holding a bowl.

"The next choice you make will determine your fate… as well as your guilt."

Slowly, Kagome raised her head. "What choice?" Her voice was coming out in a frightened whisper.

The man did not respond right away. He simply set the bowl down on the floor, within her line of sight and out of her reach, and walked right back out of the room.

Kagome had just enough time to panic that she was being subjected to some hidden test when he came back in, dragging a chair.

It was easily the most uncomfortable-looking chair she had ever laid eyes on: rigidly straight-backed, made of heavy wood, and that was to say nothing of the leather restraints on the arms and legs, which left no doubt as to who exactly this particular piece of furniture was meant for. Even so, by this point her legs and lower back burned so much with the constant strain of keeping herself on her toes that she thought she would have happily sat on a bed of nails, just as long as it meant that she could sit.

When the guard unlocked the restraints and removed the collar, she nearly wept with relief… but when he forced her into the chair, she screamed.

It wasn"t even that he was being rough with her (though he was certainly making no effort to be gentle, either): it was just that after spending all night in the same strained position that the very act of moving into a different position now hurt, sending spikes of agony through her muscles at every point her limbs were forced to bend. Despite her cries, though, her captor showed no mercy, pushing her down into the chair and forcing her knees to bend when they could not bend on their own, then tightening the leather restraints around her wrists and ankles while she was helpless to do anything but whimper.

"Now." He knelt down in front of her, so that the two of them were at eye level. "As I told you earlier, the time has come for you to make a choice."

Kagome simply looked at him, and said nothing. Pleas and appeals to mercy held no currency here, and she"d already asked him to explain what he wanted of her and gotten no answer.

As she watched in silence, he picked the bowl back up and held it in front of her face, tilting it just enough for her to get a glimpse of the clear liquid inside.

"This is water."

Now that the whole of her mind was no longer preoccupied with simply trying to breathe, that was all that it took for her to realize how thirsty she was. Unconsciously, she leaned forward toward the bowl, her tongue sneaking out to lick dry lips… only to jerk herself back as soon as she realized what she was doing. "You"ve poisoned it," she accused. Her voice was coming out in a rough whisper.

To her surprise, he let out a low chuckle. "I assure you, I have not." Then, as if to prove his own point, he dipped a small ladle into the bowl, and tipped it unhesitatingly into his mouth.

With bated breath, Kagome watched him, straining not to blink, but she was unable to detect any sort of trick: the water had gone into his mouth, not onto the floor or back into the bowl, and she clearly saw the bob of his throat as he swallowed. Still, they both waited, him kneeling there smiling and her sitting where he"d trapped her and fixing him with her gaze, but after a few minutes it was impossible to deny that he was suffering no ill effects.

"If you require further proof, I"ll even allow you to test it yourself." Then, before she could react, he"d dipped the ladle into the bowl once more before tilting it into her mouth.

Kagome had intended to spit it right back in his face—whatever his intention was with that water, it could not possibly be for her benefit—but her body had other ideas. No sooner had the moisture splashed across her tongue than she was gulping it down by pure instinct, mouth open and tongue peeking out between her lips as if to beg for more.

If she thought she"d been thirsty before, that couldn"t even begin to compare to how parched she felt now that she"d actually tasted water. Her lips were cracked, her tongue felt like parchment, and she kept trying to swallow only to find that there was nothing actually there to go down her throat. Letting her have that tiny little sip and then withdrawing it had been a far crueler torture than just letting her go thirsty.

Still, she could not let herself forget about the possibility that this might be part of some other sort of game.

The liquid was water, there was no longer even the slightest doubt of that. As to whether it was only water… well, she could not deny that she had not tasted anything in it that might be poison, nor was she suffering any ill effects that could not be attributed to everything else she"d been forced to endure over the last couple of days.

This was a trap. Everything in her was screaming that there had to be some sort of trap… but as things were, she"d been left with no choice but to walk into it.

Her head hung low on her neck, as if being dragged down by its own weight. "What choice do you want me to make?"

"One that"s simple enough." Gently, he sloshed the bowl. "This is the only water that will enter this room today… and it"s up to you to decide who gets to drink the rest of it."

Involuntarily, Kagome licked her bleeding lips. She was so, so thirsty. In that moment, had someone offered her a choice between a barrel of water and her own weight in gold, she would not have hesitated in choosing the water… but even so, she knew what she had to do.

"Give it to him."

Even as she made the choice, she was braced for argument. For the man to tempt her further, to ask for confirmation that she was absolutely sure. Instead, he simply gave a brisk nod, and carried the bowl over to Inuyasha"s cage.

At the stranger"s approach, he growled, claws curling into the floor, but the man paid him no mind. Instead, he laid the bowl with the water down on the floor. "Today is your lucky day, dog." Then, using his foot, he slid it between the bars.

Cautiously, Inuyasha leaned forward; from her current position, Kagome could just see his nose twitching. Reassuringly, he seemed to be unable to smell any poison either, for after a few moments of sniffing he lowered his head to lap at the contents of the bowl, his tongue curling down to dip into the water.

It wasn"t until he gave a pained yelp, acting less like a thirsty man who"d just been offered water for the first time in days and more like someone who"d tried to eat hot coals, that she realized that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

He jerked back, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the bowl, but their captor was ready for him, jamming some metal implement down through the top of the cage with a forked end that curved around his neck, forcing his face down into the water. "Drink, mutt, or drown."

Inuyasha yowled, thrashing ineffectually against his constraints… but his skin smoked at every point of contact against either the prongs that held him in place, or the blessed wood of the cage. "Stop it! Leave him alone!" Kagome cried, over and over again, tears now streaming freely down her face… but her pleas went unheard and unacknowledged, the judge standing there as cold and unyielding as the iron he wielded while the half-demon he held pinned thrashed and struggled and let out growls that sounded suspiciously like whimpers. For long minutes that crawled by like hours, the horrible scene dragged out, until the judge removed the metal prongs, the empty bowl rolled from the cage, Inuyasha curled in on himself in a whimpering ball, and Kagome was finally able to see the angry red burns all over his face.

That hadn"t been poisoned water. It had been holy water.

As the door slammed shut in the wake of the judge"s exit, Kagome knew with a sinking heart that whatever test she had been set, she had just thoroughly failed it.

The day after their argument about Kikyo, Kagome saw no sign of Inuyasha, nor the day after that, nor the day after that.

On the fourth day of silence, she decided that she had to find him.

She told Kaede that she was going out to pick berries. Then, once the old woman"s back was turned, she packed up her basket and bolted for the woods.

She had packed up all of the foods she knew Inuyasha liked: a loaf of that morning"s fresh-baked bread, a jar of preserves, the butter she"d personally churned the afternoon previous, and the choicest cuts of their salted meat. Had Kaede known how much of their food stores she was running off with, she was sure her mentor would have had a few choice words for her about hard winters and waste… but for once in her life, Kagome couldn"t bring herself to care.

She remembered all too well what it was like to go hungry, and to have no one around who was willing to feed her.

For hours on end, she wandered through the woods, stumbling, dirtying her clothes, and calling his name over and over as the sun climbed up to its peak, and then began slowly sinking back toward the horizon. As dusk fell, she was forced to admit defeat and start trudging home, having eaten a good half of the food herself despite her lack of appetite and having accomplished nothing other than giving herself sore feet and a multitude of scratches.

When she trudged back through the door at sunset with not a single berry in her basket (not having realized until halfway through the day that she"d long since picked all of the blackberries, and that cranberries would not be in season for at least another turn of the moon), she was expecting a raised eyebrow and a knowing look from Kaede.

She was not expecting to find Kaede"s body sprawled across the floor.

The basket tumbled from numb fingers as she let out a cry and rushed to her mentor"s side, but even as she reached out, she knew that it was already too late: Kaede"s body was cold, her limbs stiff. Whatever had happened, it had happened hours ago. Biting her lip, Kagome shifted her clothes just enough to see the telltale black-and-blue spots that mottled her skin.

How long had she been hiding this illness?

Kagome let out a sob as a whole new guilt came crashing down on her. Maybe if she"d been there, she would have been able to help Kaede. Instead, she"d spent the whole day traipsing around the forest and calling out for someone who clearly didn"t want to answer her.

That guilt stayed with her as she dug the grave by the light of the stars and a single candle because the waning moon had not yet risen, as she painstakingly dragged Kaede"s body outside and buried it as best she could, as she said a few tear-choked words over the mound of earth.

This—all of this—had been her fault.

If she hadn"t pried into his past, then Inuyasha wouldn"t have disappeared. If she hadn"t been out all day looking for Inuyasha, then she might have been able to help Kaede... or at least she might have been there so Kaede wouldn"t have had to die all alone. If she hadn"t allowed her own insecurities to get the better of her, if she"d only listened when Inuyasha had told her to drop it, if she hadn"t assumed the worst of him, even by implication... should, should, should. Now, she"d lost them both forever, and she couldn"t even apologize.

That night, Kagome cried herself to sleep.

She spent the whole night drifting in and out of uneasy consciousness, and could not even be sure that she truly slept… until there came the torchlight, and the knock on the door.

"Inuyasha. Inuyasha, I"m sorry."

Helplessly, Kagome looked at the mess of white hair in the cage across the room, but he made no move to answer, not even flicking an ear to indicate that he"d heard her.

The chair had been taken away, and she had been restrained again, only this time, she"d been forced into a sort of squat that put her full weight on the muscles of her thighs, which were starting to shake and burn… and that was after she"d spent most of the day strapped to a table with a wet cloth over her face, thrashing and screaming helplessly as water was poured in a steady stream over her nose and mouth and she had to fight for air.

In the end, she simply hadn"t been strong enough. In the burning agony of having no breath in her body and the mad panic of drowning again, and again, and again, all day long, for hours on end, she had found herself grasping desperately at the only lifeline that was available to her: telling them what they wanted to hear. Now, it was there, in all of their official records: Kagome was a witch. Inuyasha was her familiar. She"d called up the devil a year ago. Every solstice and equinox, she sacrificed babies and drank their blood. Anything, anything just to make it stop.

It didn"t matter that she"d said all of it under duress: as far as everyone else was concerned, she"d confessed, and was therefore a proven witch. Come sunrise tomorrow, she would be faced with either the noose or the stake.

…once she was executed, what were they going to do to Inuyasha?

An accused witch who did not confess might be found innocent, and be allowed to go free… but Inuyasha was a demon. His mere existence was considered an act of guilt. Was there really no way to save him from being put to death?

"I"m so, so sorry." A sniffle escaped her as her eyes slipped closed, tears now running down her face. "The last thing I said to you… that was awful. I never should have asked you that question. You wouldn"t even be here if you"d never met me. The only thing I do is mess things up."

For a second, all was silent… but then, something stirred on the other side of the room.

"Keh. You"re giving yourself way too much credit if you think I wouldn"t"ve ended up here anyway."

Immediately, her head shot up with a gasp. "Inuyasha!?"

At first, she was confused. Though his voice had undoubtedly come from inside the cage where he was contained, Kagome could no longer see him: no matter how many times she blinked, the familiar mass of white hair refused to materialize.

It took her a few minutes to realize that that was because she was now looking at a mass of black hair.

"Inuyasha? Is that…?"

""Course it"s me, dummy." He spoke before she could even finish getting the question out, cutting her off with a haste that said he really didn"t want to discuss the matter further. Then, with a slight rustle and a few groans, he kicked out hard at the bars of his cage.

Earlier, he hadn"t even been able to touch that wood without suffering horrible burns. Now, though, it fell to pieces under the force of his blows.

Finally, he pushed himself to his feet, shaking splinters from his hair as he kicked one of the bars aside with an irritated scowl. By some miracle, Inuyasha was free… and Kagome was finally free to get a good look at him.

Her earlier assessment proved to be correct: he was almost entirely nude, left with only a tiny scrap of cloth to preserve his modesty. Under any other circumstances, she might have blushed… but now, she was too busy assessing what else she could see, growing more and more horrified with each passing second. His chest and stomach were littered with bruises, there were dried bloodstains around his nose and mouth, and his limbs and face were covered with burn marks from where his skin had accidentally (or not so accidentally) made contact with the bars of the cage or with the holy water he"d been forced to drink. For all of his boasting that measly human weapons couldn"t do him any damage, it seemed that there were at least a few humans who knew how best to hurt a demon.

When he began walking toward her, one leg dragged, leaving a steady trail of blood along the floor. Once he"d reached her side of the cell, he braced himself against the wall, bending his working knee before straightening it back out again with a hiss, and Kagome realized that he was trying to figure out a way to lower himself to the floor that wouldn"t cause further pain to his already-battered body. Eventually, he just gave up and let himself fall, thumping to the ground behind her with a barely-stifled moan.

"Inuyasha!? Are you o—"

"Damn it, Kagome, would ya just shut up and worry about yourself for two fucking seconds?" His hands brushed her arms, feeling around for the knots in the ropes.

It seemed to take ages for him to undo the knots. She could feel his fingers brush her skin as he worked at the ropes, cursing under his breath, while she held her breath, expecting at any moment to hear the clomping of booted feet. At long last, though, her arms were free, no jailer had come, and Kagome was finally able to move.

The problem was that, while being forced into such an uncomfortable position for such a long period had left her muscles screaming in agony, now that she was free, moving also hurt. Even an attempt to sit down had her collapsing in a heap, choking down her cry of pain.

"Shit! What hurts!?" He looked close to panic, hands twitching as if he wanted to help, but was afraid that touching her would cause her more pain.

"Everything." Then, realizing that that wasn"t particularly helpful, "Everything"s all cramped up."

For a moment, they sat in silence. Then, she heard the sharp intake of breath as he started scooting along the wall.

"Inuyasha, you shouldn"t be moving yet! You"re still—"

"What did I just say?" Then, before she could protest further, he reached out for her leg and began gently pressing his fingers into the muscles of her calf.

There was a part of her that wanted to protest the propriety of their current position, but his fingers were gentle, and warm, and the first good thing she"d felt for the past couple of days (had it really only been a couple of days?). So instead, she tilted her head back, and studied his profile.

It was still, unquestionably, Inuyasha. Despite the change in his hair and eye color, his facial features were the same. She"d recognized his voice (even if it did sound just a bit softer). Yet, the dog ears she"d always loved were gone, as were his claws, in addition to his vulnerability to holy objects. It was almost as if he were…

"Inuyasha?" Slowly, she stretched out her hand, stopping just short of the side of his face. "Are you… human?"

The only answer she got was a slight jerk of his head, but despite his clear discomfort, his fingers stayed gentle.

When he finally did speak, it wasn"t to answer her question. "There." He released her leg. "Try moving it."

Slowly, cautious of another spike of agony, she stretched out her leg. It was still stiff, but to her immense relief, she could actually move it around now without wanting to cry.

She had to fight back a sniffle as she looked up at him with watery eyes. "Thank you."

"Keh. Now gimme the other one."

There was another long stretch of silence while he gently massaged the stiffness out of her muscles, not exactly awkward, but not exactly comfortable either. Finally, though, Kagome felt that she had to speak.

"I"m sorry, I shouldn"t have pried. You don"t have to tell me anything if you don"t want—"

"This is where I was."

It was such a non-sequitur that for a few seconds, Kagome could only blink up at him and respond with a very intelligent "…huh?"

"The night Kikyo died." He was not looking at her, face turned instead to stare into the corner of the cell.

"Here?" Horror dawned on her as she finally realized which question he was answering. "You mean you were captured before!? That"s horrible! How did—"

"Not here." His gestured impatiently at the walls. "This is where I was." The hand swept back, indicating his own body in a single sweeping gesture.

"You mean… you were human?" He gave a brief grunt, which she took as affirmation. "So this is something that"s happened before?"

"It"s a hanyou thing." He was, she noticed, using the word from their own native language, rather than saying "demon" as the other villagers did. Slowly, he let his head drop, chin resting lightly against his chest. "Every new moon night, from sunset until sunrise. When they took Kikyo… it was a new moon."

"But that means it wasn"t your fault!" Finally, she saw what was actually behind his touchiness when it came to any mentions of Kikyo: guilt. "There was nothing you could have—"

"Don"t you see? I was hiding, because I was a coward who didn"t want anyone to see my time of weakness! I didn"t even know until it was already too late! If I"d just—"

"Inuyasha. Stop. Stop." Without even being aware that she was doing it, she found herself reaching out, placing one hand on either side of his face, gently turning his head until he was forced to look at her.

"It is not your fault," she repeated, with emphasis. With a sigh, she tugged him down, their foreheads touching. "Don"t absolve those men for the guilt of their own actions. They"re the ones who chose to do this."

For the moment, they simply sat there, listening to each other"s breathing (and not saying anything when it sounded suspiciously like sobs). Finally, though, Kagome pulled back. "So what do we do now?"

True, they were in a better position than they"d been in before: Kagome was free of her restraints, and Inuyasha was out of his cage. That still didn"t mean their prospects were good. They were still locked inside of a jail cell. They were both still injured—with the limp he had, she doubted Inuyasha would physically be able to outrun any pursuers even if they did have somewhere to go. Inuyasha was human. And, she was still due to be executed come morning.

"Right now? Nothing." He crossed his arms with a scowl. "We gotta wait for dawn."

"Inuyasha, I"m going to be executed at dawn!"

"No you"re not, because I"ll be back to normal and I"m not gonna let that happen!"

He"d spoken so emphatically he was nearly shouting. After a brief pause, during which the silence stretched out between them, Kagome nodded, and let herself slump against him. He looked briefly panicked before letting out a quiet "Keh" and leaning his own weight against the wall.

It was impossible to tell how much time was passing: sometimes, the minutes seemed to drag by like hours; others, she could have sworn that full hours had passed in the blink of an eye. Finally, though, something happened to rouse her from her half-stupor.

Footsteps.

Immediately, she jolted awake; turning to look at Inuyasha through panic-widened eyes, she saw that he was also alert, eyes fixed on the door, jaw clenching and tension in every line of his body.

He was still human.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, and even though she did not repeat the vulgarity out loud, Kagome could not help but agree with him.

It was too early. She was supposed to be executed at dawn… but of course, that was just the execution. She"d failed to account for the possibility that they might bring her out before dawn, while they were still trapped in the cell and Inuyasha was still human.

They would find Inuyasha while he was helpless and injured. They were going to find out about his greatest weakness. Once they"d taken care of her, they were going to lock him away again… if they didn"t just kill him outright.

She didn"t even think about what she was going to do. Instead, as the key turned in the lock, Kagome found herself pushing herself to her feet and staggering over to the cell door, ignoring Inuyasha"s yells of "What the fuck do you think you"re doing!?" as he fought unsuccessfully to rise.

The door had barely even creaked open when she leaped right at the guard.

At this point, Kagome was hungry, dehydrated, sore, and sporting numerous injuries, and the guard was a good head taller than her and at least twice her weight… but he"d also been expecting to fetch a broken-down and restrained prisoner, not to be met with a tiny, screaming mass of flailing limbs who threw herself on top of him and started clawing his eyes.

For Kagome"s part, she didn"t have any sort of attack plan or strategy: she was just striking blindly, fighting to inflict as much pain as she could as quickly as she could, her only thought to keep his focus on her and off Inuyasha. Initially, the element of surprise worked in her favor as she screamed, bit, and gouged with everything she had… but soon enough, she felt a pair of meaty hands wrap around her upper arms hard enough to bruise.

"You think the devil will save you now?" He shook her like a rag doll, rattling her teeth. "Your fate is already sealed. So why don"t you at least save your soul, and repent like a good little—"

A whoosh of displaced air above her, and her face was splattered with something wet.

Looking up, she saw that the top of the guard"s head had been sliced clean off… and that Inuyasha was now standing over her with bloodied claws.

Though his face was twisted with animal fury, his eyes were clear, and their normal gold color: he was fully aware of what he"d done. Inuyasha had just killed a man: not in self-defense and not because he"d gone feral, but in anger. In order to protect her.

The scariest part was, if she had been able, Kagome couldn"t be sure she wouldn"t have killed that man herself.

At any rate, she didn"t have time to think about it now: from the other side of the door, there came the clomping of more booted feet, and before she could even begin to consider what to do next, Inuyasha had scooped her up in his arms and bolted right for the window.

The wood of the cage that had held him earlier had been blessed by holy power. The stone of the prison wall, apparently, was not: it crumbled to pieces under his claws, and Kagome buried her face in the crook of his neck as the unexpectedly cold air of the outside world seemed to slice right through her.

She wasn"t sure how long he kept running. Long enough that, by the time he stopped and set her down, they were in a part of the woods that was completely unfamiliar to her.

They were on the bank of a stream. At the sight and sound of water, Kagome"s dry mouth ached, and in a flash she was kneeling on the ground, dipping her cupped hands into the water. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Inuyasha doing the same.

It took her a moment to notice that, rather than slaking his own thirst, he was staring down into the water he"d scooped up, his hands shaking so badly that large droplets were splashing out and falling back into the stream.

Holy water.

The thought lanced across her mind with a horrible clarity: he couldn"t even drink without reliving the abuse he"d been subjected to. Even now, the burns were still there on his face, angry red and blistered against the tan of his skin. Was the rest of it still inside of him, poisoning him? How much longer until it finally left his system?

Slowly, she edged herself over, and leaned up against his side.

By this point, she was starting to shake a bit herself.

All at once, Kagome was hit with the full weight of what had been done to her—what had been done to both of them. She"d known most of those people her whole life. She"d traded with them, played with their children, brought them medicine when they were sick. Yet, in the end, all it had taken for them to turn on her was a streak of bad luck… and the fact that she was different.

The first sob tore its way out of her throat in a choking gasp of air. Within seconds, she was pressed fully up against Inuyasha, clinging onto his arm so he couldn"t run away, crying onto his shoulder without heed for the snot and tears that she was getting in his hair.

For his part, he slowly seemed to go from tense and shaking to almost completely limp, slumping down into her as if he"d been on alert for every second of his life but had finally reached the point where he had nothing left to give.

It was impossible to tell how long they sat there. Eventually, though, she was all cried out, and they still needed to figure out what to do next.

"We can"t go back to the village."

Inuyasha turned to look at her incredulously. "Really? Ya think?"

She shoved him, not caring that she"d never be able to actually move him. "You jerk, I was talking about what we"re supposed to do now."

"Doesn"t matter." All at once, his voice was dull and lifeless again to her ears. "We can"t go anywhere."

It was true, she realized as she slumped back against him. Yes, they could go far away from here, and she could find some other village to settle down where they"d never even heard of her. But, people were always suspicious of outsiders, and for a half-demon, there was no such thing as a safe place. Sooner or later, there would be another witch hunt… and the next time, they might not be so lucky.

Should she just resign herself to surviving in the wilderness, then? Sleeping in trees and caves, trusting in Inuyasha"s ability to live off the land? No—there had to be somewhere where they could go. Where both of them could go.

"Where do you go in a world that has no place for you?" By this point, she was thinking out loud, talking more to herself than to him… she certainly hadn"t been expecting any sort of answer.

"Keh. If the world doesn"t want to make a place for you, then you"ve just gotta carve one out yourself."

The young woman was all alone.

Alone… and frightened. Her body was covered with bruises and her wrists and ankles bore the marks of recent restraints, left starkly visible by the thin shift that did nothing to protect her from the freezing temperature of the bare stone floor. She was hungry, thirsty, in pain, and trembling with fright, facing her death because her tormentors had forced a confession for something she didn"t do. After all, her actions didn"t matter—not when her actual crime was simply being different.

"Psst!"

With a jerk, her head turned to follow the source of the noise. There, through the bars of her window, she could just make out the faces of two people: one diminutive and dark-haired, the other with a wild mane of hair that glowed silver in the moonlight.

"Hey," a male voice whispered. "Do you wanna live?"

Slowly, a hand extended through the bars, reaching down to her. Desperately, without thinking, she reached back to take it… but recoiled before she made contact when she saw the claws.

"it"s okay." The second voice, this one female, was gentle and soothing. "We already knew that you aren"t what they said you were. They lied to us about witches—maybe they"ve been lying to us about demons too."

At first, she hesitated. It was all too obvious what she was thinking: if she accepted help from a demon now, then she actually would be guilty of what she"d been accused of. Then again, there was no longer any reason for it to matter: in the end, her innocence had not saved her.

Taking a deep breath, she reached out, and let the clawed fingers close around her wrist as the bars of her cell window were sliced to dust.