Tempting Fate — Part 4

"Something I will never understand for the life of me," Kogi said in an offhand sort of way as he critically examined my cuticles, "is why on earth humans are born with such useless claws…"

I shrugged neutrally, looking out over the placid forest lake with an unconcerned air. "Why are foxes born with tails? There is no 'why.' They just are."

"Hmm…?" he hummed, still concentrating on the blunt nails as he toyed with my fingers. He seemed to be dissatisfied with my answer, but did not continue to pursue it. Instead, he experimentally bent and tested the ductility of several of my overgrown fingernails. Kogi was nothing if not insatiably inquisitive. "Why are some longer than the others?"

I shrugged again. "Human claws are weak and break easily. But they're constantly growing, so that makes up for the loss… Not all of them grow at the same rate—like hair. They're actually made out of the same stuff. Just modified skin. It's a pretty slow going regeneration process though, compared to other parts of the human body."

Intrigued, he looked up at my face and cocked his head. "What's the fastest, I wonder…?" Smirking, I then proceeded to stick my tongue out at him and pointed at it. The action spoke for itself. He grinned that wide, earsplitting grin, then quickly darted forward to snap at it playfully. I fell backwards in order to evade him, laughing brightly as my back hit the sandy shore of the lake when he took advantage of my loss of balance and pinned me down. I regarded the mischief dancing in his eyes with a weary reprimand in mine. Unlike Zenko kitsune, Yako kitsune took the idea of a practical joke and ran for miles with it. They had the rather nasty propensity for taking things too far…

Still, I found myself enjoying the time I spent with Kogi more and more… He knew next to diddly-squat about humans, but seemed more than willing to learn. 'So that I can take care of you properly,' he insisted. He could be so sweet sometimes that I found myself oddly hesitant to explain that humans did not share the same lifespan as youkai—that when I 'grew up,' he would still be the same as he was now. I felt myself fingering Tsubaki's spell beads more and more as I began to second guess my less than pure intentions regarding the exuberant kitsune. Because when it all came down to it…he was merely a means to an end.

Getting attached was a mistake.

"I have an idea," he said suddenly, breaking my train of thought as he crossed his arms over my chest, setting his head on top of them to stare at me expectantly.

"Oh?" I blinked, pushing any feelings of guilt to the sidelines for further brooding upon later. "This should be good."

He tugged at one of my hands, subjecting the brittle appendages once again to his careful inspection, testing the pliantness of which with careful teeth, making my cheeks go a bit pink despite myself. Then he 'hmm…'d, and fixed me with a look. "If all goes well, I'll let you know in a couple of days."

And with that, without even a by-your-leave, he was gone in a swirl of leaves, leaving me alone by the lakeside shore.

For a while, I just lay there, staring at the clouds in the blue sky peeking through the parting in the branches overhead, and let out a long sigh at the strange ache left behind in my chest. I was becoming entirely too accustomed to his presence. I actually missed him when he was gone. The attraction came on hard and fast, and I could no longer play it off as a simple fixation easily forgotten with the passage of time. Frowning, I extracted the loop of sinister bespelled beads from the pouch Tsubaki gave me and ran them between my fingers meditatively, which had become a bit of a habit lately.

Was I really so far gone that I would condemn the life of another to prolong my own?

Feeling eyes on me—or a singular eye, rather—I turned my head slowly to peer out at the murky lake Kogi and I ended up frequenting so often. Narrowing my own eyes at the suspiciously amphibious ocular appendage sticking out of the still water staring at me curiously, I bit out rather unpleasantly, "What are you looking at?"

As if bitten by the scorn in my tone, the eye winced then darted back into the water with a splash. Letting out a bit of a snort, I scowled and sat up with a grunt, turning reluctantly back in direction of the village. Looking back, it was an amazing contrast, how much more time I spent in the forest now than in the tiny bundle of huts that served as the fledgling town of Edo. These trees surrounding me felt much more like home in comparison, despite the many dangers within.

But then, ultimately, wherever Kikyo went, I followed. Even if she was much less inclined these days on allowing me to do so… In fact, she was much more likely to allow the company of Inuyasha as aid when she left to purify one demon or another in pursuit of the jewel; that rankled just a bit… The half-demon still liked to pretend that he only stuck around for the jewel, but we all knew the truth. If not for the lone fact that I knew he hadn't even been aware the jewel's existence when he first started tailing us, then there was the unbridled devotion he demonstrated in protecting Kikyo—even when she didn't need him to—that spoke for itself.

Despite my best efforts at reverse-parent-trapping them—even going so far as to beg some rather nasty kitsune pranks off Kogi—the two of them had formed a bond. That was weird for Kikyo. Even weirder that Inuyasha was a hanyo, and Kikyo was rather strongly against those kinds of relationships as a matter of principle if nothing else. While the logical part of me rebelled that there was something wrong not on just a hypocritical level here, and that allowing the bond to solidify was a mistake in regards to my careful planning, the side of me that knew how to pick my battles also realized that I was up against two very, very stubborn idiots who were 'in love' with each other.

I scowled at the very notion of such a thing.

"Oi!" Speak of the devil… "What are you doing out here, Kaede-gaki?! Kikyo's worried sick!"

I halted in my perusal of the rough path back to the village before me and glared up into the bows of a maple tree, gesturing to the direction I trekked expletively. "Where does it look like I'm going!? Timbuktu?" I rolled my eyes at his puzzled expression with a slight shake of my head. "Did she send you?"

He huffed, crouching on the branch and crossing his arms in his sleeves, petulantly refusing to meet my eyes and avoiding the question. "Keh… What's the deal with you and your sister anyway? Your relationship is bizarre."

For a second, I examined the relationship between me and Kikyo in connotation to the word 'bizarre,' then I pictured Inuyasha and Sesshomaru and burst out laughing. "Haha! 'Bizarre!' You're one to talk! At least we don't try to kill each other every time we cross paths."

Then I proceeded to turn and keep walking, giggling to myself as I went despite his protest of, "Hey! That's completely different! You don't even know what you're talking about!" When I all but ignored him with a simple, knowing 'hmph,' and continued on down the path, he huffed again and traversed the branches aerodynamically until he was able to drop down beside me, falling into step without missing a beat. It was then he grumbled, "You're creepy when you say shit like that… Is it some freaky miko thing?"

It was the first time he actually addressed it directly with me. It was a bit of an understanding between the two of us that I knew a lot more than I let on. I didn't exactly filter my thoughts when I was around him. Really, because he already knew that I knew what I knew, so why sensor it? He sure as hell didn't sensor himself when he was around me, and I appreciated it. Sure, maybe we weren't exactly the most forthcoming pair in the universe, but at least we were honest with each other where it counted…mostly.

So, I told the truth. "No. Not a miko thing. It's more just a Kaede-the-Worst-Miko-Ever thing."

"Ya ever gonna tell me what 'it' is?" he prompted pointedly, eying me with narrowed, luminous eyes.

"Nope." We were being honest here, after all. "Probably not."

I heard him growl deep in his throat and my hackles went up a bit as he bit out harshly, "You knew me before you even met me! You knew I would meet Kikyo! Why did you tell me to stay away from her!? Huh!?"

I halted in my tracks, staring straight at the ground as my mind froze. Slowly, my gaze moved to take in his strained form, muscles tensed, as if staring down some fierce youkai instead of a twelve-year-old girl, eyes gleaming with determination—that same look he got whenever he protected my sister. And for the first time, I really saw him.

…He was smarter than I gave him credit for.

Finally, after a long, drawn out silence, I admitted bluntly, "If I don't kill the spider demon who gave me this—" here I pointed out the nasty scar tissue on the junction between my neck and shoulder "—Kikyo will die." I paused as his eyes widened, allowing him to take this in before I continued in a subdued tone, "I don't know how…or when. But if you being here means what I think it means…" I shook my head and broke off. "Your presence just makes it seem like things are hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion. Let's just say from the moment I first saw you, it was like an omen of death began to hang over my sister. It gets heavier every time I look at you because I feel like time is running out." Another silence, and for the first time, I looked upon him with regret in my eyes. "It's nothing personal, Inuyasha, but for all intents and purposes…I can't stand the sight of you."

He returned my stare intensely for another moment before turning away to concentrate on the path before us. Then he crossed his arms behind his head with his usual unconcerned façade and addressed the bits of sky between the thinning bows overhead. "Feh… Guess I can see how you feel that way, now that things finally make some sort of sense with you. Thanks for telling me, Brat."

I blinked at him. He seemed to be taking things fairly well, considering…

Then his eyes flashed, and the smirk on his face widened into something I could only describe as murderous. "Now…tell me what you know about that fucking spider."

The tone of his voice garnered no argument, and I sighed. "You're going to try and kill it too, I gather?"

"Ain't gonna be no 'try'…" He left the implications of that to speak for themselves.

I frowned, but shrugged. It couldn't hurt to have another pair of eyes—and a rather good nose—at work on tracking down Mini-Naraku. Resigned, I tugged on his sleeve, pulling him over into an alcove next to the babbling brook we'd been following. "Alright then. First things first: It's poisonous. The little bastard's tiny, but it's got a nasty bite—and it's fast. If you're going to go to town on it, then let's assume you're going to get poisoned at some point or another too. Sit—" I motioned towards the bank of the brook.

He scowled at the word choice. "I'm not a dog—"

I rolled my eyes dramatically and cut him off, "Don't argue with me for once, and just do it for the love of god—you are so stubborn! You wanna get poisoned and die, or do you want me to fix it so you don't?!"

Eventually, he did as instructed, albeit reluctantly. Holding a clawed hand out for inspection, he questioned, "So, how does this work?"

"The little shit poisoned me, remember?" I pointed to the scar that attested to this fact for emphasis. "I managed to neutralize it with my reiki though, so even though it's still in my system, it doesn't bother me. I'm going to gradually introduce the poison into your system and get it to do the same for you."

"You're going to do WHAT?!" He attempted to snatch his hand back, but I held firm and eyed him angrily.

"Don't be such a whiner! I don't know what you're complaining about! I'm the one who got the full blast of it!" I wrestled his wrist towards me insistently and stung him a bit with my reiki as a reprimand when he still struggled. "It's just a drop. You're tough. You'll be fine, ya great big crybaby…" I grumbled as I searched for a vein, ignoring his protests and pushing his sleeve up, poking and prodding until I found one in the crook of his elbow. Leveling him with one last glare that dared him to put up further resistance I produced a tiny knife from my sash I usually used for carving and other such delicate tasks requiring precision. "Hold still, and quit growling at me, or I might just be inclined to cut somewhere else…"

He went slightly pale at the thought, and because he didn't seem to know whether I was serious or not, bared his arm with another 'Keh!' and looked away. Really…he was worse than a little kid getting a booster shot. Rolling my eyes again, I carefully made an incision about a centimeter in length, then sighed. Next was the hard part. Closing my eyes, I painstakingly sought out the place where the spider's poison had rooted itself in my system. No matter how many how many times I purged it, it always seemed to produce more. This was the first time I attempted to control it directly.

It was gross. Like, literally, sickeningly gross. I wanted to puke it was so bad. Naraku's poison didn't like being manipulated, that was for sure. But it was in my body. And as far as I was concerned, anything that entered my body was mine. Like it or not, it was now a part of me. And as such, I gritted my teeth against the nausea and willed it to my fingertips. This probably wasn't the most sanitary of methods to do this, but then again—medieval Japan. It wasn't exactly the most sanitary of eras to begin with.

Sighing in exasperation at how surprisingly wimpy the inu-hanyo was being over the whole issue, I decided to just get it over with as quickly as possible, pressing the bead of blackish ichor into the cut and healing the skin overtop of it in one quick swipe. Healing was not something I preferred to do, but I had to admit I was getting better at it. With more knowledge, and a little bit of creative ingenuity, I might even be able to do something useful with my useless reiki nature.

Inuyasha cracked open an eye to survey the problem area, and seemed a bit surprised. "Hey, that wasn't so bad!"

I sent him a longsuffering stare that he avoided flawlessly. "Don't get too excited. I'm not a hundred percent on hanyo immunization rates, but I'll take my best guess and dose you once every other day for a couple of months—excluding your special nights. That could be…bad."

"Bad? BAD?!" he exclaimed, waving his arms for emphasis. "Are you trying to fucking kill me?!"

"If you were listening," I told him through grated teeth, "I just told you that I'm trying to avoid that! Besides, even if you did get poisoned on your human night, I wouldn't let you die! If I could handle it, so can you. Just trust me, okay?"

"Feh… Kinda hard to do considering I feel like you're gonna stab me in the back every time I turn around!"

"Believe me," I told him with a deadpan expression. "If I was going to stab you in the back, I would've done it already…with an arrow. You and I both know I could've. But I didn't. So stop complaining already. We've got bigger problems." I sighed, holding my head in my hands. "Killing the spider notwithstanding…there's still the jewel. Where you cut off one head, ten more grow back in its place… When the hell is it going to end?"

He went real quiet—quiet enough that I looked up at him in question. "…I know how to get rid of the jewel."

I blinked at him dubiously. "You do, do you? I'll bite. What do you think you know?"

Scowling at the condescending tone, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away from me. Then, in an uncharacteristically subdued tone, he explained, "If I wish to become a human, the jewel will be purified and disappear."

Slowly, an almost unidentifiably emotion seeped in to pool in my gut like acid—a mixture of rage and indignation, but not for myself. No. It was for him. Because even though we didn't exactly get along, I still held that modicum of respect and hero worship buried deep, deep down under my own insurmountable pride. Soft as a threat, I whispered, "…Did Kikyo tell you that?"

"Yeah," he said defensively, with a slight blush to his cheeks. "What of it? She's right, isn't she?"

"No…" I seethed, my eyes narrowing calculatedly in a dead serious expression. "She's not."

Carefully, as if stepping around landmines—Inuyasha knew how the two of us could get—he asked, "…What do you mean, Kaede?"

"Tell me this, Inuyasha:" My eyes flicked back to him with a flash of anger, and I shot the question at him heatedly, "How is wishing to become a human any different than wishing to become a demon?" Almost vindictively, as if fueled by the dumbfounded look on his face, I answered on my own. "Sorry, that's a trick question. See, there is no difference."

Face contorting into one of heated frustration, he shot back, "No difference—that's bullshit! It's completely different—"

"Oh, yes, my mistake. The outcomes themselves would be quite distinct, I imagine. Tell me, how old are you exactly, Inuyasha?" I asked in a conversational tone.

The question, if not the entire conversation itself, seemed to throw him for a loop. His face flushed red. "Wha—What the heck does that have to do with anything!?"

"And I used to think only women were self-conscious about their age…" I rolled my eyes at him. "Just answer the damn question."

"I—I—" He seemed really stressed out. Finally, he blurted, "I don't know, okay! I stopped counting at a hundred and fifty! It's gotta be more than that…" He rubbed his head and seemed to be counting off numbers on his fingers in a futile attempt to remember.

I stared at him pointedly. "Hm. That so? Funny. The oldest human I know of died at a hundred and twelve something. What do you think would happen if you became human?" His eyes widened exponentially and I watched as his face paled slightly. "And how many years do you think it took for your brother, or your father to control themselves and their youkai blood well enough not to go on a howling rampage? A hundred? Two hundred? Either way, getting hit by a full demonic transformation from being a hanyo to something like that is bound to have…nasty consequences. You'll probably wake up one day with blood all over you and have no idea how it got there—"

"Enough already! I get it!" He cut me off, veiled horror and disgust reflected in his yellow orbs.

"Do you?" I asked quietly. "They call the jewel cursed for a reason, Inuyasha. It's almost alive, and it has a will of its own. It likes to find 'loopholes.' It finds the worst possible, even with the purest of wishes. A youkai who wishes to become human will become just that…with all the long years they lived under their belt to show for it. A human who wishes to become a demon will become a monster. One who wishes for eternal life will live for eternity, but will be plagued for the rest of their existence to watch all their loved ones die in the most gruesome of ways—" I broke off, shaking my head slowly. "The point is…a wish is selfish by nature. Even if I wished for the jewel to vanish and do nothing, I'd be doing it for my own selfish purposes, therefore it would always find a way to come back. Only someone of a perfectly pure heart, and immense spiritual power can make that thing disappear for good. No one else. Now do you understand?"

Slowly, after a long, uncomfortable silence, he nodded. "…Yeah." He then fixed his stare on the motion of the water tumbling over the stones in the creek bed, and neither of us moved for a long time. His disappointment was almost palpable—a living entity in the air.

Clenching and unclenching my hands, I hesitated before speaking again. But it was on my mind, and it had to be said. "You're alright, ya know? I might not like you very much, but you're fine just the way you are. And don't let anyone tell you different. Especially not her." I frowned deeply. "Love's not supposed to be perfect. So if she really loves you, she'll figure out a way to deal with it. We—I wouldn't have you any other way. So don't go trying to change yourself just because of some girl—"

An arm wrapping around my shoulders and hugging me closely to his side abruptly halted my uncharacteristic stuttering. The affectionate one-armed squeeze betrayed his rough words. "Anyone ever tell ya you talk too much, Kid?" Without waiting for my flustered response, he pulled me up with him and tugged me along. "Come on. Kikyo said that if we took too long she was going to try and cook something." At that, we both shivered, but then he laughed, "You're the only one who can make anything halfway decent around here! What are you going to make tonight? Is it that special stew? You're going to make that, right? Right?"

Pushing aside my shock at his friendly attitude, a slight smirk adorned my lips as I couldn't help but taunt him with, "Only if you 'beg' me for it…"

"Fuck that. Come on! I was poisoned today! Give me a break, Kaede-gaki!" he complained loudly as I laughed in his face. When we emerged from the tree line, a cool spring wind came up to greet us as we crested the grassy hill overlooking the town. Kikyo could be seen at its base, surrounded by village younglings, no doubt gathering herbs for whatever foul concoction she planned on creating in my absence. She waved at us with deceptive obliviousness on her perpetually serene countenance.

Thank heavens we made it back on time. The damage could have been catastrophic.

The crisis was thankfully averted over a steaming pot of venison stew I had allowed Kikyo no part in the making of. Inuyasha teased her for her abysmal cooking skills, and actually got her laughing for the first time in I don't even know when. It was contagious, and soon enough, all three of us were struggling not to choke on our dinner. He truly knew how to make her happy…which I then realized was just as important as keeping her alive.

Slowly, gradually, irrevocably…my little family unit of two had expanded quite unexpectedly to include three.

I was awoken by a strange feeling of unease that night, and a compulsion to look at the stars. When Hikomaru, Kogi's little brother, showed up in a frenzy, nearly ambushing me and tempting me to purify his tail off just on principle, the dark feeling in my chest grew heavier. Something was wrong.

"Lady Miko! Lady Miko, please, you must come—"

"What is it?" I demanded sharply, my heart picking up in my chest.

"It's Aniue, he—he's—"

Without another word, I flew off into the forest faster than I could remember running in my life.

Okay, so, this is another pretty rough chapter, and a little bit shorter than usual, but I'm trying here.

A bit of an Inuyasha moment for Inu-hanyo fans. Tell me if anything seemed OOC.

And a slightly closer look at Kaede's sinister plans for poor Kogi...although at this point, it seems like she might be having second thoughts? Is there a tender heart hidden somewhere in that girl...?

HA. Yeah right.