A/N: Does it look like I own Wolf's Rain? Written mostly because my main "Paradise" series needs more cowbell, - er, Hige. Hige/Blue got me into the fandom; it'd be a shame if I forgot why I love the ship.
I knew how Tsume saw him. The gray wolf's distaste was obvious enough when yellow eyes lingered upon the big gut. Tsume always accused him of thinking with his pants, whenever my mate threatened to drop everything for my sake.
What I saw was a lot of guts. Perhaps Hige didn't question Kiba's drive as much as Tsume did. Perhaps he never tried to lead a pack of humans or wolves. He might well turn away from the search for paradise for the sake of his friends and loved ones. In my mind, this didn't mean that Hige did more thinking with his hormones. He just had the balls to know what was important to him. From what I had seen, Hige had never shrunk from a fight that he couldn't prevent. He'd always been the first to call Kiba back to the realities of our bodies' limitations when we were all too exhausted to even consider a whine.
Perhaps it was merely that I'd seen them from the view of a hunter, but to me, it was obvious: Toboe was the heart of this small pack, holding them together and keeping their conscience. Kiba was the spirit, propelling them onwards when all else seemed lost. Tsume was more than a bit of its mind, ruthless and cunning, keeping coldly on task when the spirit blanched and the heart went faint. Hige, in turn, would be the guts of the pack, and it would take a lesser mind than Tsume's to dismiss him completely.
And though she was not a wolf, there was one more member of this pack. Cheza was their dream, a fragile thing on the surface, but moving heart, spirit, guts, and even mind. Even me, whatever I was. I'd become used to acting as Pop's nose and fangs, but those roles were not needed amongst the wolves.
Yet there was one who insisted I was still needed, one who could look at me without the wariness that came from being hunted, one who could respect me as a fellow warrior wolf, one who trusted me to defend when he could not. And then there was Hige, who showed me that I was worth the acceptance his pack offered, however unspoken it might be. For him, I would offer them the eyes of a hunter to add to the body of wolves we traveled with.
Perhaps, through my eyes, even Tsume would see things differently.