TW for secondary-character death and suicide.

"It is generally agreed that it was poison hemlock which killed Socrates though you do see accounts claiming it was water hemlock, Cicuta virosa. The symptoms described in the 'Phaedo' are those of poison hemlock that is the slow numbing, first of the limbs but then the rest of the body with full consciousness being retained throughout.

Though the evidence is incomplete, it seems that quick acting poisons were known to the Ancient Greeks. The choice of a slow killer like poison hemlock seems odd unless Socrates, as a philosopher, wanted to know what it felt like to be aware of his own impending death."

— The Poison Garden

"I am a cage, in search of a bird."

— FranzKafka

The first time he meets her, she's ten, maybe eleven—he'll never know. Real ages, like real names or real families, are abandoned as soon as the girls arrive. When she walks up to the desk, she's holding hands with a girl who looks so much like her they can't be anything but sisters. He's standing in his usual place between Kagura and the wall, hands clasped in front of his masked face, watching closely. He likes to think that he can pick out the survivors with better-than-average accuracy. He isn't as savvy as Kanna or Renkotsu, but he's at least got a better handle on it than Jakotsu.

He likes to think that over the years he's learned to pick out the weak ones based on how they behave at the Welcoming (it isn't really a welcome, but their Fearless Leader has a fantastically ironic sense of humor, so that's what they call it anyway). The ones who approach in tears, sniveling and wiping their little noses on their little sleeves, never last long. The ones with wide, scared eyes don't make it, either. The happy ones, who clearly don't know where they are or what's going to happen next, are a toss-up. The ones like the girl she is dragging along are almost guaranteed winners. They've got something cold and sharp in their eyes and sometimes he wonders if they aren't killers already, at least in their own minds. He doesn't know what to make of her, though. She's crying and sniffling, but she whispers quietly to her iron-eyed companion and stands protectively in front of her. When her gaze meets his, her wet, runny eyes flash as deadly as her sister's. When it's their turn at the desk, she steps forward ahead of her sister, stands protectively in front. The cold one, who might as well be made of clay, watches over her shoulder like a ghost.

"We're—" begins the girl, wiping her nose on the torn sleeve of her ill-fitting kimono.

"Yeah, I don't care," Kagura cuts in, fanning her face and staring down at her list.

"But—"

"Nope, not at all. Let's see," she purses her painted lips and runs a finger down the list. "Where did we leave off?" she mumbles under her breath, "Got an A, I, U, E, O, so…" Kagura folds her fan with a snap and looks up, suddenly interested. "Kagome," Kagura says, jabbing her fan at the girl. She flashes a deadly smile. "Good for you, kid. Ka names are always lucky."

The newly minted Kagome just blinks at her, bafflement plain on her expressive face. "But," she begins hesitantly. "Kagome isn't a real name. It's a—"

"I was a Ka," interrupts Kagura. "So was Kanna," she gestures with her fan at the pale-haired instructor on her other side, opposite Mukotsu, who inclines her moon-white head in a shallow nod. "You'll meet her later. Kas are survivors. Anyway, go through that door and go down the hall. Take the third right to get to the showers for a proper washing and some new clothes. Congratulations on joining the cause. You're serving king and country. Make Lord Naraku proud. Next!"

Kagome opens her mouth to say something else, but her expressionless doppelganger places a hand on her shoulder and whispers something in her ear. Kagome snaps her mouth shut and stands to the side. She doesn't go down the hall, though. She fidgets slightly to the left of the table, clearly waiting for her sister. That's not a good sign either. Here, you've got to look out for yourself. If you spend your time waiting around for anyone else, you'll get eaten alive.

"Kikyo," Kagura says, snapping her fan open again and resuming a bored slouch. "Down the hall, third door on the right. Bath and clothes. King and country. Next!"

The two girls walk shoulder to shoulder towards the door. Kikyo's eyes are fixed straight ahead but Kagome's dance around the large room and linger on every other face, like she's trying to memorize them. When her eyes meet his, she flashes him a brilliant smile even though she still hasn't stopped crying. He can feel the corners of his own mouth tug up in response, completely against his will, and he is thankful for the mask.

They take bets, of course, on how long each of the girls will last. Mukotsu wins more often than he loses. When they gather that evening to drink their dinner and discuss the fresh batch of girls, Kagura speaks up first, "Ten coin on Kagome."

"Ten on Kagome to what exactly?" quips Goshinki, quick as lightning, like he knew what Kagura would say before she said it. In retrospect, he probably did. Kagura always bets on the Kas. It's a horrible strategy, but Kagura's superstitious. Mukotsu sniffs in disdain. Kagura loses more than she wins.

"To make it, dipshit!" Kagura snaps back. If Mukotsu had tried to make a crack like that, he'd be dead. Kagura doesn't like anyone, but she lets her siblings get away with more than the rest of them.

Goshinki cackles cruelly. "I'll take that bet. She'll be dead within the year." Goshinki doesn't bet often, but he's never wrong. Mukotsu's small hand, folded in the sleeve of his overcoat, tightens into a fist. He isn't sure why.

"Fifteen that Mayu drops first," offers Bankotsu, gesturing so wildly that liquor sloshes out of his shallow cup and trickles down his arm.

"Which one was Mayu?" Muses Jakotsu.

"Eh?! You don't remember?" Bankotsu laughs and spills more sake. "You spent ten minutes yelling at her for crying too loud after lights out!"

"But I yell at everyone for that," wails Jakotsu piteously, "It's not my fault they all look the same!"

"I bet Koharu go' first," Kyoukotsu says slowly, deliberately. "Bet…" his lips move as he counts slowly in his head, eyes focused furiously somewhere in the middle distance, "Fifteen. Fifteen that Koharu go' first."

Eventually, Renkotsu pulls out a piece of paper and begins making notes. Hands are shaken. Cups are raised and emptied and refilled. For the most part, Mukotsu just listens. Near the end, he sidles quietly up to Renkotsu's elbow and waits for the taller man to notice him. When he's finally got his attention, Mukotsu moves his mask aside to mumble, "Fifteen that Kagome survives."

Renkotsu studiously scratches down a note and nods. "For how long?" he asks.

Mukotsu considers this for a moment, shrugs his rounded shoulders. "End of the year, at least."

He doesn't normally have a lot of interactions with the younger girls, and he likes it that way. As the poison master at a school that trains up poisonous princesses, most of the work he does with the youngest ones basically amounts to simple arithmetic—weights and measurements that he writes out and sends to Kanna and Kaede in the kitchens, or herbs bundled into faggots for Renkotsu to burn in the fireplaces. Four drops of aconite per kilogram of weight; six parts laurel per ten parts rice. Once the weakest, least-tolerant are weeded out and burned out back with the rest of the rubbish, the remaining girls get more personalized treatment.

This year, though, things are not working out the way they should. His little office looks out over the courtyard where the girls gather for afternoon recreation, and now, for the first time ever, he is finding it difficult to concentrate on his work. He'll sit down at his desk, raised to a reasonable height by a stack of books, with every intention of figuring out how much nightshade Ayumi should be getting in her afternoon tea, when his eyes will pull up and out over the courtyard without his permission. He doesn't know why his gaze always fixes on her. She isn't ugly, of course—not by a long shot. Naraku only takes the prettiest girls and Jakotsu dresses them up and polishes them with the best that money can buy—but she isn't anywhere near the prettiest one here. She is, more or less, average. Anyone can tell Kikyo is the prettier version; pale and poised. Although she's only been here for a month, Kikyo shows every sign of being uniquely talented. Everyone on the staff agrees she's going to go far. Maybe even to the Western Kingdom, if the House of the Dog General begins to cause trouble again.

If he hadn't been measuring out her doses himself, he wouldn't even know Kikyo was being poisoned. While the other girls move sluggishly around the courtyard, doubled over and clutching their stomachs or staring listlessly into space, Kikyo stands tall and proud. After looking at her, Kagome is a study in contrast. Mukotsu has never seen a girl react so poorly to everything. Her lips are blue, her eyes are bloodshot and yellow around the edges, and she hasn't been able to keep anything down for so long that her teeth are turning yellow and no matter how much Jakotsu screams at her, she can't stop throwing up. If she was thin when she got here, she's skeletal now.

Disgusting, Mukotsu thinks to himself, squashing the worm of pity that wriggles in his gut.

He knows why she's fading so fast, of course. He is the poison master, after all. He knows it's because of the doubled doses she's been getting. What he doesn't know is why he's doing it. She isn't prettier than any of the others. (And he isn't sure why he keeps thinking about this in particular. Heaven knows he isn't good looking, so why does he care so much that she isn't, either?) She isn't smarter or cleverer or more talented. The only vaguely logical explanation that he can come up with is that smile she flashed at him at the welcome ceremony. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about it. Every time he sits down to write out Kagome's dosing for the week that smile flashes across his mind's eye and his hand moves without his permission. Four drops of aconite become eight drops of aconite; six parts laurel become twelve parts laurel. It isn't much and it doesn't make him feel better. His eyes don't stop sliding across the courtyard and he doesn't stop thinking about that smile.

She should be dead by now, but she isn't and that is strange. Even stranger, though, is the cluster of girls around her. Mukotsu takes comfort in the knowledge that he isn't the only one who is unconsciously drawn to her. Even on her sickest days (the ones when he's in the mood to feed her foxglove and broken glass), she's got a handful of girls braiding her thinning hair or crying into her trembling shoulder. He suspects it's kindness that keeps her at the center of everything. Kindness coupled with harmlessness. She is guiltless and guileless. Her thin fingers wipe away tears from other faces. Her chapped lips offer smiles to anyone who catches her eye, including Mukotsu when she catches him watching her through the window. He hates that smile. He hates the way it lays him bare and draws a matching, ugly grin across his face even though he doesn't want it to. Whenever that happens, he steeps her tea in Angel's Trumpet and stays awake all night to listen to her scream.

He figures that at least she'll be dead soon, and then he can finally get back to being serious. For now, though, his eyes find her even when he doesn't want them to.

After six months, he's still doubling her doses, even though he knows she knows he does it. He knows she knows because her eyes meet his over the rim of her mug during evening tea (and he isn't sure when he started lingering in the doorway to watch her drink it, but he lingers while she drinks). Kikyo watches him watch her sister and more than once he's heard the stone-faced girl whisper, "Yours smells stronger than mine," or, "Let's switch; you need a break."

But Kagome never switches mugs with Kikyo, no matter how sick she gets. And when her eyes meet his, they are filled with obvious curiosity— maybe even a wary friendliness— and he can see none of the hatred he is looking for. He wonders what she must think of him; what she's quietly inferring about his actions. Does she think it's some sort of special treatment? He wonders, Like I'm giving her some sort of an advantage? Playing favorites? He scoffs at the thought, sneers behind his mask. It's a ridiculous thought.

But then he pauses. Why is he doing it? He doesn't think he's playing favorites and, judging by her vacant stare and the frequency with which she collapses, he isn't doing her any favors, either. Again, the only explanation he can think of is his obsession with her smile. She is too young to be appealing; too scrawny to be alluring; too talkative to be attractive. But he still thinks about her. He wonders if there's something wrong with him. He thinks he should talk to Dr. Suikotsu about it, but he never does.

It's strange, he thinks one afternoon while mashing a handful of English Broom into an orange pulp, she hasn't died yet. In fact, after a certain point, she stopped getting sick at all. She still takes her tea with Kikyo in the evenings and her eyes still meet his over the rim of her mug, but her hands don't shake and she's put on some weight again. Jakotsu rejoices over the improved state of her teeth. Mukotsu peals crocuses and hates her smile.

After a year Mukotsu notices she has problems other than poisons.

"She's hopeless," Goshinki says with a dismissive wave of his hand. They are sitting around, drinking dinner together and complaining about their least-adept pupil. "She's got no sense of strategy."

Bankotsu snorts into his mug, "Or skill with a weapon. I mean, ok, she can handle archery a little bit, but that's mostly because Kikyo whispers pointers to her."

"She was supposed to be hunting rabbits for her lesson last week and do you know what that little bitch did?" Jakotsu opines, "She started crying! Said she 'couldn't kill a bunny!'" He pitches his voice into a grating falsetto. It sounds nothing like Kagome, but it's a joke so it doesn't have to. Mukotsu doesn't laugh but all the others do. "Can you believe it? A RABBIT!"

Even Kagura seems to be falling out of love with her newest Ka-girl. "It'd be a shame if she died," she says, slanting her deadly eyes at Mukotsu over her fan. Around the table, eight other sets of eyes slant toward him, too. "Rations are spread pretty thin now that the Dog's first-born pain in the ass is sniffing around the borders. It'd be nice to have one less mouth to feed."

They aren't allowed to kill any of the girls outright. Naraku is very firm on that subject. According to him, if a girl dies, she dies, but they shouldn't waste a resource if they can help it. This means that whenever they have a particularly challenging student, it falls to Mukotsu to get rid of her. That's one of the advantages of being a poisoner: you can get rid of whoever you want and it just looks like they couldn't hack it.

He squirms under their collective gaze, but it's Kanna who speaks up. "She's already immune to most of them." She says it the same way she says everything: Flat and lifeless. Kanna is Naraku's first successful poison princess; his first deadly flower. She knows almost as much about poisons as Mukotsu and she spends more time listening than talking. When her flat, blank gaze turns to him, he squirms like an insect impaled on a pin. "Mukotsu gives her the strongest doses and she is already adjusted to them."

The rest of the group considers this silently.

Mukotsu holds his breath and waits for accusations to cut like a knife. His brain scrambles to find the right answer before the questions even come. I didn't mean to make her so strong he thinks, but then I did it to make her strong he thinks, and at last, I did it because she smiled at me, but even he knows that sounds crazy.

"Well fuck me sideways," Bankotsu says, leaning back in his chair.

Jakotsu sucks his teeth and looks sour.

"Kanna," Kagura, Naraku's second surviving poison princess, says slowly, "Do you think she's ripe yet?"

Even Mukotsu holds his breath, waiting for her answer. If Kanna thinks she isn't, then there's still time to get rid of her, but if Kanna thinks she is, then Naraku will already have been informed and Kagome will already have a place in Naraku's tangled web of plans and her death will mean damnation for everyone present.

This is the flip of a coin, Mukotsu thinks wildly, hysterically, which way do I want it to go? Life or death? Heads or tails? He feels like he is torn in two, cut lengthwise from the top of his head and down through his face. Ripped into perfectly equal pieces, left hand and right hand falling away in different directions.

When Kanna finally says, "Yes," Bankotsu swears, Jakotsu looks sour, Kagura smirks, Kyoukotsu asks what everyone's talking about, and Mukotsu doesn't know if he is relieved or not.

It's an easy thing to see if a girl is truly poisonous, especially as young as Kagome is.

"Just taking some blood," Dr. Suikotsu says kindly. He says everything kindly, even when he's cutting someone open, which he has been known to do on occasion when he thinks someone won't be missed. Mukotsu knows this. He's ignored the screams and burned the bodies.

Kagome doesn't know this, though. She gives the doctor a tight smile and then squeezes her eyes shut in a childish avoidance of pain. She doesn't notice the way she turns her head away, exposing the long, breakable line of her throat to the doctor. She doesn't know how foolish she is.

Mukotsu knows all of this, too. He stands in the doorway, a wooden canister in one hand. If anyone asks, he's on his way back from the storeroom. No one needs to know the vial contains a nerve toxin chosen especially because he knows Kagome is immune to it and Suikotsu isn't.

But Suikotsu isn't an idiot. Even if Mukotsu weren't there to watch over the girl, Naraku would never let anyone get away with hurting Kagome— not when she's so close to being valuable. Naraku doesn't like it when his valuables are tarnished without permission.

When the blood is drawn and Kagome hops down from the examination table while Suikotsu carefully removes his gloves and throws them in the bin to be burned. Kagome catches Mukotsu's eye before he can scuttle away back to his office. She smiles. His wide, protuberant lips answer beneath his mask.

The goldfish swim round and around in their bowl. Their cheeks and eyes bulge. Mukotsu hates them for their ugliness. He hates how much it mirrors his own.

"Does this have to do with the bet?" Kagura asks, fanning herself as Mukotsu bustles around the room, making sure everything is tidy.

"What bet?" He snaps, distracted. It isn't often Naraku deigns to come down to the school, but he wants to watch this himself. Mukotsu is nervous and nervousness shortens his temper.

"The one we made when she first got here. If she'd make it or not."

He wishes she'd stop fanning herself like that. It's January and it's freezing. And she's messing up his papers. "Don't be ridiculous." He snaps.

"Then why'd you do it?" Kagura isn't the smartest one here; that award goes to Renkotsu or Kanna, he isn't sure which and he tries not to spend too much time around either of them.

He stills for a moment, but only for a moment. Quick as a wink, he's recovered himself. "You're being ridiculous," he snaps at last. "Now help me with these boxes. You know what he's like if things aren't just where he wants them."

Naraku is perched on Mukotsu's chair. Kagura is leaning against the wall like she's bored even though everyone knows she's watching intently. Mukotsu stands behind the table like a magician, dropper of blood poised in his left hand like a magic wand. Below it, the goldfish swim around and around, ugly and unaware. Mukotsu would hate them if his brain wasn't so completely devoted to keeping his heart from clawing its way up his throat. He's afraid to fail. He's afraid to succeed.

"Proceed," Naraku's smooth voice slips like a knife between his ribs.

Carefully, carefully, Mukotsu allows one perfect drop of Kagome's blood to gather on the tip of the dropper. Slowly, slowly, gravity does the work of the moment and pulls the drop down. For half a heartbeat it's suspended in midair and Mukotsu has just enough time to register fear, but not enough time to wonder what he's afraid of. Then the drop is a cloud dispersing in the water.

The goldfish swim around and around in their little glass world, ugly and unaware.

Mukotsu licks his lips. "It-it's never one drop that does it, my lord," he stammers out. Sweat gathers on his upper lip. His mask puffs out with his rapid breath.

"Yes, Mukotsu, I know," Naraku assures smoothly, like pulling a hand up a razor blade. "Continue, please."

Carefully, carefully, he gathers another drop and slowly, slowly, with steady hands he lets it drop into the water. Another half-formed moment for regret and then another cloud in the water. Two drops, and the goldfish swim around and around and Mukotsu hates them for it.

He doesn't wait to be told again.

Three drops, and he wonders why his hands aren't shaking.

Four drops, and he isn't sure, but he thinks the fish might be swimming slower now. Either that or his moments are stretching out to capture every painful nanosecond of fear.

Five drops, and he is sure that one more will kill him.

Six drops, and he wonders if maybe he can blame this on Kanna or Kagura. Or Kagome. He hates Kagome for putting him in this position. Stupid, smiling Kagome. He'd poison her all over again for this.

Seven drops, the water is beginning to turn murky.

Eight drops and Kagura lets out a little gasp. The goldish, ugly and unaware, are slowing down visibly now. Mukotsu looks to Naraku, seeking approval, hoping this will be enough.

"Proceed, Mukotsu," Naraku says, his voice like glass in his gums.

Nine drops, and Mukotsu thinks this one will do it, but the fish only slow further.

Ten drops and they stop their endless circling but their tiny, merciless gills continue to flap uselessly.

Eleven drops.

Twelve drops.

Thirteen drops.

Fourteen drops, and they begin to float sideways. Ugly little bulbous bodies. They twitch weakly. Mukotsu wonders if they're in pain. He hopes so, but he can't be sure.

Fifteen drops.

Sixteen drops, and they finally still.

"How long was that, Kanna?" Naraku asks lazily, calm as a snapped neck.

Mukotsu half-turns. He hadn't realized Kanna was even here. He isn't sure when she showed up.

"Three minutes and five seconds."

"And do we think that is a good speed?" Careful as a hangman's noose.

"No," Kanna shakes her head, "But it is a start. The best of any princess ever her age."

"Better than you were, Kanna?" Purposeful as sharp teeth in the dark.

Two weeks later, Mukotsu isn't surprised when Kanna is sent off on an assignment. The lord to the west, the House of the Dog, has been sniffing around Naraku's borders and Kanna is dispatched to take care of it.

He never learns what happens to her, but he never asks anyway. When poison princesses are sent away, they're never expected to come back, since according to international politics they never existed in the first place. When they go out, they do so under assumed identities and when their mission is done, they fade into obscurity and death. Kanna's absence is hardly noticed because she was hardly ever a presence at all. But this is a warning to the rest of them: Imperfection never lasts long.

After three years, Mukotsu always takes a more personal, tailored approach. They file in and out of his little room every week. Sometimes for checkups, sometimes for poisons. Kagome is no exception. He tries not to treat her any differently than he treats the others. He remains cold; separate. Or at least he tries to. He tells himself he doesn't notice the pale curve of her throat or the way her girl-body is aging into a woman-body. He tells himself he doesn't dose her heavily when he can because of it.

When he overhears the girls talking about him, he pretends not to notice that, too.

"He's creepy," says the girl Mukotsu recognizes as Mizuki. She giggles, high and sharp, reminding Mukotsu of the ugly birds that pick at the bones in the meadow behind the estate.

"He looks like a toad," replies Eiri. Mukotsu doesn't know how she is still around. He suspects Kagome of kindnesses the instructors never see. Not, of course, that he can prove it.

"Hey guys," Mukotsu doesn't know when he learned to discern her voice from the others, but he's as drawn to this as he is to her face. As he is to her smile. He hates her for it. He slips nightshade into her dinner and arsenic into her shampoo. She's deadlier than ever, uniquely talented, able to kill with a kiss as easily as with blood. Mukotsu takes a strange pride in her. "That isn't very nice."

"And he's always watching you, Kagome," says Sango. Sango is rough, angry in all the ways that can make her a killer and in none of the ways that make her useful. She's only allowed to survive because no one's managed to kill her yet. Mukotsu suspects Kagome has a hand in this, too, since it seems like Sango's ready to kill herself every other week.

"That's not fair," begins Kagome. She's on the spot now, and even though he can't see them from around the corner he knows she's nervous.

"Small minds talk about others," inserts Kikyo easily. Kikyo is a quiet shadow beside Kagome. She's almost as deadly and twice as lovely, but she's as distant as the stars and none of the others, save Kagome, can stand her. Like a good little killer, she wields this discomfort like a knife and acts as Kagome's savoir almost as often as Kagome gets herself into trouble.

Four years after Kagome first smiles at him and she's as toxic as they come. An ungloved hand can paralyze a man, a careless pinprick over a glass of wine can do much worse.

Despite this, Kagome is all but useless. Bankotsu has given up on training her with weapons. Jakotsu insists she'll never look like a real lady. She's afraid of Renkotsu's fires. She's got no mind for Goshinki's strategy. She can't lie, she can't remember the names of the people she's supposed to hate, and as far as anyone knows, she's better at recognizing harmless plants than poisonous ones. Her only real redeeming features are how poisonous she is and her inarguably magnetic personality. Everyone loves her, even her teachers, even though they don't want to.

She's useless, but even Naraku has been looking at her recently, and Kagura has started to wonder out loud if maybe their lord and master isn't planning on taking her for himself.

"Although god only knows what he'll do with her," Kagura wonders too loudly. Mukotsu wonders why Kagura keeps coming to his office to talk. He certainly doesn't want her here, has never encouraged her to do so. "He can't fuck her, he can't show her off in court because she can't stop talking for ten seconds, and he can't send her off to kill some noble who's pissed him off because she can't lie and she still cries when she kills rabbits. Maybe he'll give her a job here."

Mukotsu doesn't know what to think of this. He imagines what it would be like to have Kagome here instead of Kagura. He mentally pastes Kagome over Kagura. Kagome, leaning across his desk, waiting to hear his response. Kagome, her kimono gathering and falling open across her pale and perfect skin. Kagome's bright eyes locked on his face, deadly and beautiful.

Mukostu could touch her. Mukostu could take her in ways even Naraku can't. The thought disgusts him. He scowls behind his mask. "Don't you have a job you should be doing?" He snaps.

This is the year Sango finally manages to get herself killed. She runs off with a travelling monk who'd been lurking in the shadows for three days or so.

Naraku never takes well to losing what he thinks is his and he sends the girl's biological brother ("She had a brother?" Mukotsu asked. "Yeah. Funny how that works out, I guess. Kohaku— the kid— was one of the Saimyosho," Kagura replied, picking meat from between her teeth with one elegant finger. "Naraku's personal guard?" Mukotsu's genuinely impressed. "Yeah. You might've seen him around. Quiet kid. Freckles.") along with Bankotsu out to find them. When they finally caught up to them, they were splattered at the bottom of a ravine, still holding each other tight.

Mukotsu shares the news to the girls just so he can watch the devastation break like a wave across Kagome's face.

In the fifth year after he meets her, tensions are rising with the kingdom to the west. Kanna is a long-forgotten failure, but there's a whole new crop of poison princesses ripe for the sending off as assassins. Only one person is surprised when Kikyo is sent off to take care of things. She's going as Naraku's daughter, ostensibly an emissary of peace and good will from the House of the Spider to the House of the Dog. She's poised, she's delicate, she's deadly. Everything a princess should be.

After she leaves, Kagome cries for days. Cries like Kikyo's already dead, which Mukotsu realizes she very well might be. Mukotsu listens through the walls and cherishes the sound. He likes to think he's cataloging her tragedies, keeping a personal record of everything that goes wrong in her life. If Kagome is a goddess, he is a priest and a prophet. He writes the sadness and wakes the sadness and she brings the rain.

But a new batch of girls is brought in, since there are other foes to conquer. Among them is a toothless little scrap of nothing who gets named Rin. Rin cleaves herself to Kagome and Kagome returns the affection with a ferociousness that startles everyone but the other girls. Mukotsu wonders if the girls have seen it all along, or if nothing about Kagome can really be surprising after she's been around for this long.

But Kagome protects Rin with a fierceness that borders on crazy; borders on she-wolf and cub. When Jakotsu screams into Rin's crying face, Kagome slaps him. Hard. It would have sent him reeling if it hadn't sent him crumbling, paralyzed, to the ground. Afterward, Kagome cries. Everyone remembers to avoid her tears.

"It's fascinating," Naraku says warmly, like shrapnel in his throat.

The goldfish are dead. The water is still clear.

"Three drops. Absolutely wonderful. She's the perfect killer. You've created a masterpiece, Mukostu."

Kagura snorts indelicately behind her fan.

"Thank you, my lord," Mukotsu bows low, his wide mouth grinning behind his mask. "It is all in service to you."

"And I know just what I'll do with her." Naraku purrs, like quicksand.

Mukotsu stills, barely breathes.

"Her empathy will be her greatest weapon." Silky as a pillow over his face.

"I'll be avenging Kikyo," Kagome says. She's alone in Mukotsu's office. It's the first time she's ever been here and it's the first time Mukotsu's been aware of how tiny his office is. She's taller than he is now, her long legs tucked demurely beneath the chair but still close enough to touch, if he wanted to. And he does want to. He isn't sure if he wants to hold her or hit her, but either way, he won't because she's more poison than even he can stand at this point. The only comfort is no one else can have her, either.

He busies his hands with pulling vials off of shelves for her so he doesn't cave in and touch her.

"They say he's immune to poisons," she says, like she can't stand the silence.

He doesn't answer just so he can watch her squirm.

"But there's a difference between having a tolerance and being immune. Maybe I'll even see Kikyo again." Her haze turns inward, her dark eyes shuttering. "Or maybe Sango."

Once he's finished filling her poison rings and dipping her arrowheads, he says, "Good luck, girl." Like he doesn't know her name.

She brightens at once and, "Thank you, Mukotsu," she says, and he tries not to love the way she says his name, "For everything. I wouldn't still be here without your kindness."

Even after she leaves, her smell lingers. He wants to burn everything she's touched and cherish the ashes forever.

When she goes, Rin goes with her, because even Naraku knows Kagome will do anything if she has someone to protect. It's the cruelest thing he could have done, and Mukotsu thinks Kagome might have a chance at success because of it.

He doesn't doubt for a minute that Kagome, guiltless and guileless, will have no trouble getting close to the lord of the west. The question has only ever been whether or not she has the spine to go through with it. With Rin there, all big eyes and hope, there's no doubt about it.

Once she is gone, Mukotsu feels her absence like a cavity. Now the danger has passed and isn't coming back, he allows himself to indulge in thoughts of her. He wraps himself in fantasies of the girl he's spent years killing quietly. Drowns himself in them. Sometimes he imagines her all in white, a bashful, blushing bride.

I'm no good, but I'll do my best for you, he imagines her saying. Her eyes are down but her smile is his undoing. He imagines that she loves him. He imagines that she can't live without him. He imagines that she is suffocating when he's in the room. That she's been in love with him since that first moment their eyes met, waiting for him to notice her. He dreams that his smile, his ugly bulbous goldfish-eyes, are her undoing, too.

And sometimes he imagines her with her hands around his throat. His hands are around hers, too and he imagines the thick smoke of hate between them. She drives chopsticks into his larynx. A bad and broken thing who he doesn't want to marry, even if she asked. And he is wringing the life out of her lovely, porcelain neck. All the innocence in her large eyes turned muddy with hate and death. He sees god in the lines where they join.

He loves her and he hates her and he loves hating her and he hates loving her. He's wrapped up and twisted around her like a car around a tree after a bad accident.

"Hey," Kagura says, her fan pausing in its continual back and forth, "You ok?"

There was never any doubt Kagome, dear sweet deadly Kagome, would worm her way into the good graces of the lord but what no one ever considered was that the lord of the West might win his way into hers, too.

Mukotsu isn't clear on the details. He isn't sure how it happened, but all of a sudden, the entire House of the Spider is buzzing with the story of Kagome, hand in hand with Sesshoumaru the Killing Perfection, Sesshoumaru the frigid lord of the west, appearing before a cheering crowd, little Rin between them.

"He's taking her as his bride," Kagura reports, jealousy coloring her voice like hate, "And he's taking her little sister as his fucking ward!"

Mukotsu cackles, low and warbling like a toad. "Just wait until the marriage bed." He's proud of her for doing her job so well, tries not to think about Kagome's long and lovely neck arching underneath a faceless lord. Even if he cannot have her, no one else can, either. He's made sure of that. A deadly flower. A perfect work of art. "She's managed to do what none of the others could."

"No, no, no," Kagura waves her fan with a frantic, furious energy, "You don't get it. She wasn't wearing gloves. Neither was he. Skin on skin fucking contact and he didn't so much as blink."

The laughter wraps itself around his throat and squeezes so hard that he can't breathe or think.

"I saw them, Mukotsu. She looked happy."

And sometimes he imagines he is the lord, tall and elegant, standing over the prone body of Sesshoumaru. He's never seen Sesshoumaru so he imagines him ugly. Short and round, with bulbous goldfish eyes and a wide toad mouth. He imagines Kagome running into his arms. Sometimes he imagines forgiving her. Sometimes he indulges in hands around her lovely throat as he refuses to.

And then the whole world is on fire. It's chaos. The armies of the West have fallen upon the Poison Princess Academy like a swarm of locusts. Like a horde of demons.

"They're setting the girls loose!" shrieks Goshinki, loud and horrified. "Renkotsu, don't let them get away!"

Mukotsu moves beneath the smoke, smog spreading out around him like an oil spill. He chuckles to himself. He hopes the foolish lord is here, somewhere. Birds fall to the ground. Friend and foe claw at their throat as Mukotsu, the Poison Master, walks by.

And then he's there, strolling confidently through the mist. Mukotsu knows it must be him because he carries a broadsword and surveys everything like he owns it already.

"And you must be Mukotsu" the lord states, his voice low and rich in a way Mukotsu hates immediately. Would have hated anyway, even if he hadn't been the one to steal Kagome away.

Mukotsu doesn't answer, but unleashes a toxin so strong the grass between them blacks on contact.

The lord doesn't even pause, just continues to stride toward him, sword drawn, long hair blowing behind him, the light from Renkotsu's fires lighting him up like an avenging angel. He doesn't look human. He doesn't look real. Mukotsu hates him more than he's ever hated anyone except Kagome. He tries another poison. His own eyes water.

Sesshoumaru continues his relentless, slow walk forward.

"How?" splutters Mukotsu.

"There is not a poison in the world that I have not made myself immune to," explains the lord, his voice even as the tide, confident as a glacier.

Across from him, Mukotsu is small and afraid. He knows he will die before Sesshoumaru even raises his sword.

And it is not his life that flashes before his eyes. It's Kagome's, or something like Kagome's might have been. He sees her as a baby, although he doesn't see her parents. As a bright-eyed child, gap-toothed and befriending every villager for miles. He sees her trembling and crying but standing between her unconscious sister and the oncoming army, small fists raised to ward off the future that will come whether she wants it to or not even as the past burns down around her. He sees her walking for days between soldiers and girls she doesn't know from her tiny mountain town to Naraku's castle. He sees her holding her breath as Naraku walks down the line of prisoners and slaves, hand-picking the prettiest girls for his assassin's school and the hungriest boys for his army. He sees her dragged by her long, black hair into the welcome hall. He sees himself as she must have seen him, small and calculating, but curious and not as cruel as the others had been. He sees the painful years, the bile in her throat, the pain that leaves her curled around her stomach like a nautilus. He sees the sapling trust she had in him; the relief that this ache was not the pain she was so afraid of. In her small child-mind she already understands this suffering will keep her with her sister, with her new friends; will tie her to her new life because when she is bent double and heaving, Jakotsu cannot berate her for spilling her food and Bankotsu cannot demand she skins foxes alive and Kagura cannot laugh her wicked laugh at the silly little girls running around, trying to live. The poison was the only thing that saved her soul from suffering like Kikyo's or Sango's. Poison kept her from the ugly, merciless cruelty that found all the others. He sees how special she felt when her body accepted the poison as part of her; sees the fear reflected in even Kagura's feral eyes when Kagome walked too close; sees the bone-crushing jealousy and joy for Sango when she left and the equally devastating sadness when she was found dead, but also the even-worse jealousy because at least Sango escaped and at least she had someone she could hold. Kagome could never have escaped, he sees that now. Everything she loves ties her down. And then Kikyo was gone and Kagome had no reason or purpose left. At least not until Rin came. Then she had a reason but not a purpose. And then Naraku gave her a mission. He sees the fear that she would fail to kill the lord of the west and also her fear that she would succeed. The uncertainty in who she would be afterward whether she succeeded or not. He sees the lord of the west, cold and deadly, as she saw him— an impassable mountain, an unstoppable force. And maybe she tried to kill him or maybe she didn't, it hardly matters either way, because he was kind to Rin, kind to her even in his coldness and it was this kindness, hidden under frost and layers of propriety, which won her over in the end. When she learned she couldn't kill him, it was only a bonus. When she learned he loved her back, it was more than she could ask for. When she confessed everything to him (and she would have confessed everything to him because what is love without truth?) and he offered to set everyone, every last poison princess free for her, she had never thought he might fail. Mukotsu sees that now. She never thought he could fail because lords like this don't fail. Not ever. He would rewrite the stars and history if he had to. He could snatch his wife and her family from the broken teeth of hell. He might carry more swords than he has hands and use them all at once. But he won't fail. He could never fail. He is so unlike Mukotsu they are not even opposites.

And then the strange flashback is over and Mukotsu is watching the sword in its graceful, glinting arch back as Sesshoumaru, the killing perfection, the force of nature, raises his hand to strike Mukotsu down.

And then he wonders: Do I love her, or do I hate her? This is it, and he knows it. It's the last chance to try to cut through the ugly root of his own heart, to cut to the core of the issue. The coin is turning over and over in the air, and he's waiting to see how it will land. Heads or tails? Love or hate? Murder or save?

And it's so clear it takes his breath away. The universe is spread before him like a math problem, like four drops of aconite per kilogram of weight; six parts laurel per ten parts rice. And he knows the answer.

"Tell her—"

And the sword falls and Mukotsu is cleaved neatly in two, forehead to groin, two even halves. Ripped into perfectly equal pieces, left hand and right hand falling away in different directions.

Above him, Sesshoumaru flicks the blood off of his sword, turns, and continues to fight for the only woman who has ever wriggled between the perfect planes of his armor and into his frozen heart. His poison princess, his perfect queen. He will rewrite her history and unmake her future because he is a force of nature; because she deserves a scrap of happiness in this wretched life; because blood is the only kindness he knows; because it has never occurred to him to be cruel to her. Because he loves her purely and justly, without a shred of hate or anything dark at all.