The monsters take his cage and put him in a cold, stone cave. He tries to bite their paws as they carry it, succeeds once. The monster screams as red blood pours from the gash in his fingers, Inuyasha smells his blood, tastes it, the metallic, salty tang, and for a moment, can see the white bone and purple muscle. A grin of triumph makes its way across his face as the creatures drop his cage and run to their comrade, wrapping parts of their strange, removable skins on his wound. He licks his lips. Their blood doesn't taste as good as the wild pigs, but it satisfies him to know that his tormentors are suffering.

They beat him then, with sticks and long gray hairs that are sharp like claws, and when they leave him alone in his cage he just lies there, without the strength to whimper, more silent tears pouring down his cheeks. They cover his cage with the skins of his old friends, and leave two strange stones, one with a hole in it and filled with water, the other flat, with a strange smelling piece of meat on it.

He yearns for them now, as he never has before. There is an ache in the pit of his ribs, a longing to be back with his pack that makes him want to howl his sorrows to the moon. It actually hurts him, he realizes, to be away from them, away from their soft coats and warm, smelly breath. He wants Kikyo, and Jaken, and Hiten and Maten, and Yura and Kirara.

Snuffling, he pulls his bloody legs into his chest and tries to sleep. He only dozes; most of the night he wakes up, disoriented, and then he remembers where he is.

He decides to stop eating, which makes his days in that cage worse. He watches as his skin grows tight on his bones and growls whenever anyone comes near his cage, especially those who come with food.

He learns the faces of the humans; there is one, who comes and sees him most often, and he calls it Long Hair. Long Hair sometimes sits on a stool near his cage, with a strange square plant with many, many leaves in it and no stem, and two red things on the outside of it with shiny sun colored symbols on it. He makes human noises at the plant, filling some ritual that Inuyasha cannot hope to understand. He just talks to it, occasionally looking up at Inuyasha in his prison and baring his teeth. There is another human, the same one who he sank his teeth into, who brings him his food and takes away the old plates. Inuyasha calls that one Screamer.

No one dares come near his cage. Screamer holds his food on a stick, grudgingly pushing the meat and the water between the bars.

He grows thinner, and weaker, and hungrier. He hopes he is dying, as he lies in his corner of the cage, falling into shallow dozes and waking when he hears someone coming. He begins to think he actually is dying. He no longer can do anything but growl when he sees the creatures, his bones are too tired and he aches.

One day, as he lies in that sunless prison, he hears different sorts of noises coming from the stone passageway, the footfalls are lighter.

He opens one eye, and regards with disgust, a human he had not seen before. It has long, thick black fur on the top of her head, and strange blue eyes. The multicolored, changeable fur that all humans wear about them is different from the other creatures, long, flowy, hiding its legs. He deduces, in his slow minded state, that it is female.

She sits on the floor, ignoring the stool used by Long-Hair. Her paws, so alike to Inuyasha's and yet so clean and unbent, reach into her blue skins at her waist, and pull out a mango.

His eyes widen.

She takes a sharp, shiny thing from another part of her skin, that Inuyasha can only deduce is some sort of magical stone, and very neatly slices a small piece off the fruit. Her fingers, stained yellow and sticky with juice, ever so slowly squeeze between the bars and towards his mouth.

He bites her then, hard on her first two fingers. Blood-scent fills his nostrils, and his yellow eyes focus on the tiny droplets that are falling onto the mango.

The female winces a little, and a grunt comes out of her, but she does not scream, she only pushes the fruit into Inuyasha's mouth. Bravefingers, he decides to call her, and he lets her feed him the rest of the fruit. He is too tired to object.

When it is done, she sucks on her hand, healing it a little. He is surprised to see a human licking its wounds, so wolf-like.

She looks at him then, with very blue eyes, and makes a noise with her mouth. It sounds different than the other human voices, not monotone or screechy, but musical, like bird song.

He meets her gaze aggressively, with his amber eyes, and then confusion clouds them. Something in her eyes makes him think of things he had forgotten long ago.

Blue eyes, black hair, dress, petticoats, shoes, sea smell, ship, sail, wooden planks, clinging to the hem of someone called Mother's skirt. We're going to make a new life for ourselves, comb, soap, stinging eyes, cry. Go play with girl, play with rope, play with sailors, play with Daddy, pretend about things. Pull her hair. Make her cry a little, be a gentleman. Happy birthday. Flashes of things that were before Sesshoumaru and wolves and island. Inuyasha's eyes widen. He shakes a little.

Her eyes widen too, and she touches his dirty face with her clean white hand. She says his name then, a strange memory of things he used to be, an echo. "Robert," she says, "Robert."