Four Quarters

North

The night was mild, but humid and moist with the mists of spring, so that it felt unpleasantly chill. Hakkai's hands were cold as he paced his section of the forest. His senses said nothing was there with any ill-intention towards them, which didn't, of course, mean nothing was there. Small stirrings, little rustlings, spring-time activities in progress. Smell of last year's leaf-mould, heavy and pungent; smell of new growth, green and burgeoning. A busy place, a busy night, for all that it was so quiet: one that kept his senses alive and on edge. Silently he moved through the line of trees, saw a slender sapling standing in the shadow of a huge oak, saw it wasn't a sapling, froze. Movement, dark on dark, as it turned its head to him, long strands of darkness moving in the tree's shadow and a pale flash of face. No sense of enmity there. In that unhurried movement the instinctive recognition of a friend. With a lifting of his heart that he didn't even notice, Hakkai stepped towards the figure even as it stepped towards him. Then both stopped, slightly abashed.

"Yaone-san." He ran an embarrassed hand across his hair.

"Hakkai-dono." She smiled briefly, and ducked her head.

"Everyone well, I trust?"

"Yes, thank you. Perfectly."

Silence. She was biting her lips. A small air of unease.

"You're out patrolling?" he asked. "Like us?"

"Yes. We heard about- a gang of youkai. In the woods. Different from the usual." Her voice trailed off.

"Yes, us too. Disturbing. Have you seen anything?"

"No. I don't think they're here," she said, in that low clear voice of hers that made him think of brook water over stones. "I don't sense them at all."

"No."

Silence again. If not the youkai, then what?

"Hakkai-dono." She looked at him straight on, large brown eyes under her dark brown bangs. "I'm in your debt for the other day."

"Oh please," Hakkai smiled. "Don't mention it."

"You saved my life."

"Not at all," he said, piling the smooth-worn courtesy into a wall to defend them both. "I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was a perfectly natural thing to do."

"I can't afford to be in your debt," she told him, kindly, gently. Inexorably.

There was nothing to say to that. He said nothing.

"We're enemies. If I meet you in battle tomorrow, there must be nothing holding my hand back from the attack."

His face creased in distress. "You're not in my debt. If you feel any obligation to me, I release you from it. Truly--" he tried to make her understand-- "you owe me nothing."

"My life. It's not nothing to me." She smiled to take the sting from the words, but Hakkai flushed in mortification anyway. "I can't live under such an obligation. You must permit me to repay it."

Hakkai looked away. He knew what he should say to her, what Sanzou would tell him to say. The obligation you feel is your doing, not mine. Live with it. Your honour is a load you've chosen to carry yourself. I'm not responsible for lightening it an ounce. And easy enough for Sanzou the monk to say it, who followed the way of nonattachment. Sanzou wouldn't hesitate to speak the words that would set Yaone free of her debt, and himself free of her demand. Nor would he care that he might have bought that freedom at the price of her hatred. I'm not the monk Sanzou is, Hakkai sighed to himself. In the end, perhaps, there was little to choose between Sanzou's refusal to be burdened by any attachments and Yaone's refusal to be burdened by any obligation. Both wanted freedom, and it was someone else who had to pay for it.

"I don't require it," he said, "but I won't refuse you if it matters to you. How will you repay me?"

"With my body," she said. "I have nothing else you might need."

Hakkai felt himself flushing bright red. "You- you can't mean- what I think you mean?"

"My status is low, I admit- a mere apothecary- but I am still virgin," she said. "I understand men value these things."

"Yaone-san--" Hakkai stared at her. He collected himself. "Yaone-san, don't you know who I am?"

"Who you are?" Her eyebrows met in puzzlement. "Cho Hakkai who travels with the monk Genjou Sanzou."

"Cho Hakkai who was once a man, Cho Gonou. Who slew a thousand youkai and became youkai himself. I am the enemy of your people, Yaone-san."

"I know you're a great warrior," she said. "There's no shame in lying with you, even if you belong to the other side."

"No." He looked at the ground. "This wasn't war. It wasn't soldiers I killed- not entirely. I wiped out a whole tribe of youkai. Men. Women." He swallowed. "Children. Small babies. Someone called it genocide. They were right. There's innocent blood on my hands. I don't have- the right- to lay a finger on you."

There was silence. At last she said, "I don't believe you."

"Believe it, please. It's true. So you see- what you ask is impossible."

The silence went on even longer. He had to look up at her finally. Her face was even paler, with a stern expression; and behind her eyes was the pain of a huge betrayal.

"I understand. It's impossible. But still it must be done. More so now than before. I cannot be in the debt of one--" she swallowed, "such as yourself." Hakkai looked at her, thinking that one never knew- you never knew how much something mattered to you until the moment you lost it. She gave him a small smile that nearly broke his heart. "I think- I could almost weep, to have lost the enemy I thought I had. But that would change nothing, and so--"

"What is, is, Sanzou says." It felt like an epitaph. "There's no use crying because it isn't otherwise."

"True." She laid her weapon on the ground and began to undo the fastenings of her short jacket.

"Yaone-san. This can't be. There must be something else you can give me. I--" He didn't want to say it. It was too private. She'd undone the thin chains that bound the top of her outfit about her neck so that it fell open. Her breasts glowed palely in the misty moonlight. She was about to open the waistband but her hands stopped.

"Are you saying you don't want me?" she asked, not looking at him.

Hakkai couldn't answer. His eyes were on her round breasts, with their little dark nipples, and couldn't leave them. There was a small pang under his heart, like a poisoned needle sliding in. Round and full and so soft-- His mouth moved, but no sound came out of it. She looked over at him.

"You do, don't you? Very well then." She unfastened the opening of the short skirt.

He swallowed hard. "Yao- Ne-san. It's-- cold. You needn't--" Soft, warm, comforting under his hands-- Don't do this, don't do it. He knew it was madness to do this but he was aching with some feeling he'd forgotten even existed--

"I don't mind the cold," she said, indifferent.

She was half-undressed. It was discourteous for him to remain clothed. He took off his shouldercloth, shook it out and laid it down as some minimal protection from the damp ground. Took off his glasses; prised off his shoes. Undid his shirt fastenings and took that off as well. She'd sunk down onto the cloth and was pulling off her little shorts, legs closed and arms before her so that he couldn't see. He knelt beside her and put his shirt around her shoulders to shield her from the dank. He smelled the warmth of her skin newly opened to the air, the bodiless smell from her shoulders and the deeper smell from under her arms and between her breasts. He had to reach out to touch, just touch, the smooth skin of her neck. She flinched and shivered, but then deliberately lowered her shoulders and waited. Enduring him.

"It's cold," he said again, helplessly. "Maybe if you undid your hair?"

"Oh- yes," she said, as though glad to be reminded. She unfastened the two long tails, and her hair fell about her to the hips. She pulled it across her, across breasts and belly and thighs. He heard her swallow. She stretched out her legs and lay back on the ground and Hakkai lay down quickly beside her, sheltering her body with his own, so she wouldn't feel exposed to his eyes. Her skin was warm next to his bare chest and his hands ached to touch it.

"Sumimasen," he whispered, and his hand slid under the long dark hair and touched the softness, felt the little nipple stiff with cold against the palm of his hand. She drew a deep breath and looked straight up at the sky. Enduring him. It was so sad, so sad, because the touch of her body was melting him, making him go all swimmy-feeling inside with an unbearable tenderness. Such a long ago feeling this was, from farther back than he could even remember. His groin was hardening and pressing against his jeans, and he felt himself being pulled towards her as though he was a river flowing out of his body.

He brought his head down and did what he hadn't done in centuries, it seemed- cupped a warm smooth breast in his hand and kissed it. He put his mouth to her nipple and flicked his tongue across the nubbly tip. She drew a deep surprised breath. After a moment she brought her arm across the back of his head, and her fingers sank into his hair. His face lay between the valley of her two full breasts that cradled him in their softness, a loving safe haven.

That was when the pain came. Hideous, unexpected, too sudden to dodge, it cramped him from neck to groin; squeezed his heart and his lungs and his belly rigid so that he could barely breathe. He gasped in small breaths in the little space the pain allowed him, 'annh- annh- annhh-' with his mouth twisted open and his eyes staring sightlessly. Memory held him clamped motionless. Kanan- Kanan- Kanan put her arms about his neck, held him to her breasts, Kanan arched beneath him as he sucked at her nipples, moaning with pleasure and laughing with happiness. Kanan was warm and soft beneath him, wet and slippery with sweat as they lay pressed together smiling at each other, wet and slippery inside where he lay inside her moving so sweetly in and out where she welcomed him Kanan was-- His voice squeezed out of him high-pitched and mewling 'ohh-- anhh--aunhh' with the enormousness of it hurts it hurts his legs drew up to his chest and he doubled in half, face pressed in agony to the smooth skin of her belly. "Hakkai-dono," a voice said, alarmed, a little afraid his hands and Kanan's palm to palm, fingers linked as he kissed Kanan's mouth, her cheeks, her neck, his long hair mingling with hers on the pillow brown and brown no difference between them, Kanan's wide hips pillowing his, Kanan's plump thighs holding his legs all of Kanan's sweetness holding all of his-- He choked suddenly, as if about to vomit, but it was tears that came out of him, racking and wretched. He heard his raw weeping voice muffled in the smooth muscled flesh where his mouth lay. Kanan laughing with him, Kanan's arms about him, the two of them together he sucked air cresting another wave of pain, scalding tears burning him like poison running out of a putrefied wound.

"Hakkai-dono," the voice said, more insistently, and the body beneath his shifted and sat up, so that he was crouching with his head in its lap. He turned his head, an effort, moving the stiffened muscles of his neck and shoulders, and saw looking down at him, dark eyes perplexed, a youkai woman Yaone-san his friend the enemy- He got his rigid mouth to work, whispered around the horrible pain blocking his throat, "Help-- Yaone-sa--" oh my friend help me help me it hurts so much-- Her warm hand touched the back of his neck where it had turned to stone. "What is it?" she asked.

"It hurts," was all he could say.

"What hurts? Inside?" Her hand reached towards the scar on his abdomen.

"Nh-nh." He shook his head fractionally, face screwed up. His neck wouldn't move. He caught her hand and held it, hard.

"Ahh," she said, understanding something at least of his distress. Her other hand smoothed his hair back and forth, back and forth.

He couldn't say any more. His throat choked any further words. But the warmth of her hand in his, the rhythmic stroking of his hair, slowly slowly eased the cramping of his body a little. His lungs took in more air. He was no longer suffocating but his tears ran all the heavier, like clouds loosing the full burden of their rain. Kanan. Kanan. Why did you leave me? the knife she'd thrust into her heart stabbing into his own with its dull hard pain always, always... He was back again in the black black darkness of his loss, all of it compressed into a moment cold and dense as a dark star sucking the life from the universe. And somewhere a hand stroked his head, over and over, a hand lay in his, warm and soft, belonging to a world that still had life in it. His tears slackened, trailed off. There was nothing more left in him. At the last his body gave a great heave and he was able to move again, free from the grip of memory. He lay exhausted, breathing shallowly, smelling her skin beneath his face, and the warm scent of her thighs. He felt like a man who has been flayed alive. Aching and tender, the very air scoring his flesh. He drew a ragged breath. Put both hands over his face, and wiped his cheeks. And with an effort that nearly tore him in two, left the warm safety of her lap and sat up.

"I'm sorry," he said with a painful smile. "I've made quite a spectacle of myself."

"Oh no- really. It's alright," she said, confused. "But- ahh- who is Kanan?"

He started at hearing the name on someone else's lips. "K-Kanan?"

"You said 'Kanan' just now. I know I've heard that name before."

"I did?" He couldn't remember. "Kanan- Kanan, ne-" He smiled to cover the cramping of his heart. "She was my lover. She died. Three years ago." He smiled harder.

"I'm sorry." There was silence.

"I haven't been with anyone since," Hakkai said. "I wasn't expecting-" he looked at his hands- "this." He smiled on, listening to his heart mourning. "I miss her so much," he said, the bare hurting fact of it, and felt some kind of knot come loose inside him with those words. But it was if that tied-up feeling had been holding his senses back, because suddenly he could smell Yaone beside him, the very warm and alive woman smell of her filling the night and filling his brain. The throbbing skinned-alive feeling focussed instantaneously and unbearably between his legs.

"I'm sorry," she said helplessly, again. "How did she die? Sickness?"

"Oh- no." He tried to focus his swimming senses. "Hyakugan Maoh--"

"No!" Her voice was shrill with a shock that pierced the mist in his head. "Oh no! Oh noo." Horror on her pale face, and pain, and pity. She took his hand with both of hers. "Oh, Hakkai-dono..."

"Oh. You know him?"

She nodded wordlessly.

"Ah," Hakkai said. "Then-- you know how it was." Her hands were so vary warm. She was only inches away from him. They looked at each other through the darkness. He could reach out---

"Ne, Hakkai-dono-" she hesitated. Then she smiled at him, a real smile deep into his eyes, and said, with the little formality and the friendly reserve that was so much and so entirely Yaone-san, "If my body speaks to you of hers, then-- I would count it an honour, if you cared to use it so..."

"Oh- Yaone-san," Hakkai said helplessly, undone by her courtesy and sweetness. She leaned over and kissed him, an unpractised kiss on the mouth, not trying to use her tongue. Her lips were full and warm, lovely. He had to kiss her back, the same way, feather brushings of lip against lip, reaching out to hold her in both arms. Her own long arms went round his neck and they lay down together on the thin cloth beneath them, with the wet-grass smell all around.

Hakkai kissed her mouth and her cheekbone and the corner of her eye; kissed her pointed ear and her warm neck and the dip between her collarbones. Her skin was soft and flushed with life, speaking straight to his flesh. Hakkai felt his selfness slipping away, felt himself becoming a panther of lust crouched above its victim. So easy simply to let reason go entirely and console his starving body in hers. She'd made her offer straightforwardly, fully prepared for what pain there might be. He'd seen her get up after she'd been hurt in a fight, still able to smile with the blood running down her back, to make her courteous adieus. It would be pointless- insulting, even- to make allowances now out of misplaced pity or sentimentality.

But in the end he knew it wasn't possible simply to use her. Yaone was his friend. He had no wish to hurt her any more than he must. Even in their battles, he never wanted to hurt her. So he would stay himself until she was past the worst of it, and possibly even after. He focussed his breathing, an old old habit, and set a guard over his mind to keep it from getting lost in the things his body might tell it. Later, he told his body, later you can have what you want, and his body, good obedient beast, sat down to wait its turn.

Hakkai ran his hand down the long edge of her waist and hip and slipped it between her legs. The edge of his thumb stroked through the soft folds of flesh, feeling for the inner smoothness. She caught her breath in her throat, not a noise of pleasure. He met her eye.

"--hurts?'

"It's alright," she said, but that was bravery speaking. His fingers laid her petal-flesh open, but all was dry inside, not ready for him yet. Inexperience or fear, no saying which. Fortunately there was a cure for that. He slid down her body and put his mouth to the little knot at the top of her legs, feeling delicately about it with his tongue.

"Hakkai-dono!!" Clearly she hadn't expected that. He probed about the sensitive juncture of flesh, hoping he wasn't being too hard. She cried out, crying his name, desperately trying to close her legs.

"Yaone-san? Am I hurting you?" He raised his head.

"Please- don't--" Her face, what little he could see between the hands that covered it, was burning red. "It's-- I'm so embarrassed--"

"Embarrassed?" he asked, nonplussed.

"I-- I-- It's--" She gave a little sob and lost the next few words. "--shameful. Letting someone-- there--" Her voice trailed off painfully, as though even the words were beyond her.

"I-- see," he said, only half certain that he did. This strange modesty in the midst of love seemed an odd thing to find in a youkai- an odd thing to find anywhere- but here it was, an unforeseen obstacle. So now what? He seemed to be facing the choice of wounding either her body or her pride, with no desire to do either. He thought for a moment. Then he undid the headcloth from around his temples. "Yaone-san, put your wrists together, please."

"W-why?" she asked, even as she did so.

"I'm going to bind your hands." He tied them together with the green cloth. "You can't use them, you see? You're- well, it's as if you're a prisoner, so to speak. Whatever happens now is my doing alone. I take the responsibility for it. No shame comes to you because you had no say in the matter, yes?" He knotted them firmly, and slipped a finger in to make sure he wasn't cutting off her circulation. "Do you want to keep them like that or would you like them over your head?"

"Like this," she said in a very small voice.

"Certainly." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Are you comfortable?"

She nodded, huge-eyed.

"It'll be alright, really," he told her, hoping she'd understand.

"Yes," she whispered. "Thank you."

He bent his head again to the fork of her body. The garden smell of it was like a dark drugged mist pulling at his senses, pulling at his groin, trying to confuse his Self. He kissed the inside of her thigh, kissed the lean muscles of it almost down to her knee and back up, and her hips arched off the ground as he did so. He put one long leg over his shoulder, so holding her open. An unexpected sense of possession grabbed at his heart. Mine, a little voice said. Whatever I like and his body clawed at him desperately like a dog mad to be let out. Her stifled moan of shame brought him back to reality. "It's alright," he told her again, gently. Not mine. He smiled ruefully. Only so to speak. He put his mouth between her legs. She caught her breath, little muffled gasps, and he guessed she'd covered her own mouth with her fists.

He explored her by touch, so much truer a sense than sight. She was made a little differently from Kanan, different enough that memory stayed mercifully at bay. Fuller and rounder, like a double-petalled cherry blossom. Her inner folds were like small mothwings. He mouthed at them gently for the pleasure of it, before probing them open with his tongue. And inside was the silk-smooth flesh, now a little wet, that his tongue slid across easily, and round the rounded corner into the darkness within. Earth he smelled, and the sharp scent of growing things in the spring, but his tongue tasted sweetness like the sweet cold of a winter morning in the back of one's throat. A dry sweetness even though it came to his tongue as wetness. Pressed against the headland of bone he could barely breathe, and had to come up for a moment to catch his breath before going back in- in, in, as far as he could reach, knowing he couldn't reach far enough with his tongue alone. But soft and pliable it opened a way for him, licked at her inside, slipped in and out, in and out clever as a snake's head darting back and forth over the sill of her body. And her body responded, began to clench and open, began to pulse around his tongue and under his cheek- pulsed rhythmically and hard and Hakkai's brain gave him a message from its awake self--- Because all things considered, it might well be the first time this had happened to her, and if she had no idea what her body was doing--

He came upright, saw her with hands pressed tight to her mouth, hips arched off the ground, eyes staring in wide open confusion. He put an arm about her, keeping the edge of his other hand between her legs in case she needed its hardness. Her legs closed tight and ground against it. Her body was trying to reach his, so he pulled her to him, and at the touch his own body strained wildly at its leash to be free. Later he insisted to the dizziness that made his sight swim, later, and his body listened to him but only barely, going mad with her length and warmth moving against him and the little high-pitched mewling sounds she was making in his ear and the hot slick feeling covering the fist clamped hard between her legs. She arched and gave a long stretching shudder and relaxed, breath sobbing in her throat. Hakkai let her lie back and took his shaking hand away from her loosened thighs. He half brought it to his mouth to lick it clean, checked as the heady smell hit his nostrils, and wiped it instead on the grass. But the scent of her pleasure still filled the night and clawed at his groin let go let go let me go. His arousal was reaching the point of pain. Soon, make it soon please soon pleeease...

She drew a shuddering breath. "Hakkai-dono," she said, and there were tears in her voice. It killed him, the sound of her. He was aching all over with tenderness for her, wanting only to come inside and console her with himself--- "Hakkai-dono." She gulped and swallowed. "Untie my hands, please."

He reached and undid the knot. His brain told him in a remote fashion to be prepared for her attack. He half-tensed, waiting for it to come. But instead she put both arms about his neck and pulled him down on top of her. Her pelvis pressed hard against the unbearable hardness of his, and he groaned unthinkingly. "Show me what to do," she said in a low voice.

"Yaone-san-" he said with the last of his control.

"It's my choice," she said. "I won't lay it all on you. Do what you have to." She took a ragged breath. "I want you to."

That was the end of it then. He kissed her hard, full on the mouth. He straightened briefly, opened his jeans, opened his fly, and he was free at last finally, straining redly to be inside her. He kicked his pants from him. Free, now, free. He looked at her. She smiled at him, small and tremulous, from her flushed and sweating face. Eyes huge, a little apprehensive, but consenting. He raised one leg and laid it over his shoulder; held her under her narrow hips and slowly, slowly, slid his way in, watching her expression as she began to feel him inside her. So easy, so easy, he came into the happy darkness, and there was this small resistance, something half-blocking his way just inside. A little line between her eyebrows, a little tightening of the full mouth. Carefully, relentlessly, he pushed against it, the little barrier, and it gave way and let him in. She gasped once only. Her arms came up and held him around the neck, and he let his weight down on her, face in her loosened hair and mouth against her ear.

"Sumimasen," he said. "Can I--?"

She nodded, and he let Cho Hakkai go completely. Nothing now, no words, only the wonder of the warmth around him, the welcoming about him here where nothing could ever be wrong ever again, and how good it felt to be rubbing against the soft hardness of her inside, rocking back and forth inside the lovely lovely dark. Her arms had moved to his back, holding him bound to her with chains of flesh, and one leg lay crossed over the small of his back. He moved with her, or she moved with him, happily happily rocking on the short and endless journey. Pressure there, just there, that was where it would go off, and he knew he could make it last, make it go on longer, because this would never ever happen again. But instead he chose to be prodigal of his pleasure, like a man who spends his last coin on a flower for his buttonhole instead of food, because it was too sad to be stinting and miserly with this. When the wave came upon him he let it carry him in its swift run to shore and dash him in white foam on the sand.

He fell through space, fell through the lovely star-whirling depths, and came back at last, Cho Hakkai, as before. Yaone-san in his arms, face pressed into his neck; and a little dry sadness in his heart because the world was the way the world was. Politely he shut that sadness away in the closet where it belonged and looked to see how it was with her. She was breathing raggedly, her legs still pressing his body to herself, eyes tightly closed.

"Not done?" he asked softly.

She gave a little moan, halfway to a sob. "I don't-- understand--"

"Ahh. It happens." Used to happen, often-- He shut that memory away too. "Up we come, then." He got up, sitting back on his heels, and helped her upright. "Here." Hesitantly she came astride his thigh, and then sighed as if she'd found something she wanted. "You can lean against me if you have to." He put his arms under her hips, and she leaned forward with a little gasp and put her own arms around his neck.

She swallowed hard and drew her breath in with a small 'nnnh.' "No-one ever said..." she began, and gave a small gasp. "No-one ever said it was like this," she murmured into his neck.

"Mmhh," he agreed soothingly. She was sliding a little up and down, posting against the hardness of his thigh, face pressed tight against his shoulder so he couldn't see her. Just below his eyes were her ears, the pointed sculpted ears of a youkai. He fixed his eyes on them, to keep it clear in his head that it was Yaone-san he held against him, no-one else, because there was no-one else it could be. Yaone-san the retainer of the youkai prince Kougaiji, sworn to his service and belonging to him completely, and to no-one else. Yaone-san who had her mouth open against his skin, breathing hard against it almost like a kiss, Yaone the pattern of courtesy and honour who did him the honour of being his friend and his adversary, and had done him the honour of this intimate exchange. His hands cradled her buttocks that clenched within their grasp, and his chest was grazed by the soft swell of her breasts riding up and down them, and all of him was wishing that none of what had been, had been, because then he could kiss her mouth the way he wanted to. He felt her going tense in his arms, saw the ripple of climax stretch her spine and her neck and lift her face away from him as her fingers with their blunted nails dug into the skin of his shoulders. Then she was finished, and lay breathing heavily against him, eyes dazed and not back yet from wherever she'd gone. And in a far corner of his mind he wondered, only for an instant before the idea vanished, if perhaps this night might make up in some infinitely small and miniscule amount for the huge black injury he'd done to her people, who were now his people too. Because one becomes the thing one hates, and until you learn to love that loathed and rejected self- until then--

She made a soft little sound in his embrace. Rubbed her face against his shoulder like a tired baby drifting off. She was so warm next to him, and the air about them was so chill-- Time enough later to get up, get dressed, go back alone into that cold night. He reached, got his shirt from beneath his leg, and wrapped it round her. Her eyelids fluttered. She turned her head slowly, bemused, then pulled the shirt over so that half was covering him as well. Together they sank back down onto the thin cloth beneath them, cuddling warm and friendly and, Hakkai realized as he felt himself sinking into a strange torpor, sleepily in each other's arms. He yawned. The youkai in the woods. There were no youkai. Only Yaone-san. And then he was asleep

Yaone sighed a little, coming back from wherever she'd been- not asleep, exactly, but not quite herself. Warm here, and comfortable, curled up close, skin to skin, holding someone else's body who was holding you. It was nice. No-one had told her it was like this. That it happened so often and went on so long, and felt good in that indescribable way, and all about what happened before- she blushed to remember that, but her mouth smiled at the same time- and afterwards, this lovely lying-together melted feeling. There was-- her mind took sleepy stock-- a small ache inside her body, nothing important; and if she'd learned correctly, she was probably bleeding a little, but just now she was inclined to doubt some of what she'd been told, growing up. And there were- Yaone reluctantly rose to the surface of her consciousness- those youkai who were said to be in the woods, and doubtless it was dangerous for them to be lying here on the ground naked and weaponless, her and Hakkai-do...

Hakkai.

There was an ache inside her mind, not small. Deadly. "Men. Women. Children--" He'd killed a tribe of youkai, innocents who'd done him no harm. It hurt, a great black bruise in her head. Small babies. It hurt. It made no sense. Hakkai-dono who was so gentle, so courteous-- and, she remembered, so dangerous, so focussed in battle. Under the gentleness was inexorable purpose that accomplished exactly what it set out to do. Without malice, without self-regard, even, which made it all the harder to defeat. He could have done it. She just couldn't believe, still, that he would have done it. Tried to imagine him killing a defenceless child, and couldn't. He said he had, and she knew he didn't lie, so it was the truth. And it made no sense at all.

She puzzled at it unhappily, a dog worrying the cut which pains him. And remembered suddenly that other hurt in her mind, the name he'd said like a knife-wound in battle. Hyakugan Maoh, the name of terror that had nearly been her death. The sound of it had brought back in hideous clarity the moment, three years ago, when she'd learned what her death was to be- raped by the Centipede King and his tribe of youkai savage as jackals, until they tired of her and tore out her entrails for their feast. Saved only by the chance passing of Kougaiji-sama across her path- saved as the woman Kanan had not been saved. That was it, then. The iron and unforgivable wrong done to him had made him the enemy of her kind, who could kill even children. I understand, but.. But what was she to do now, who had lost her friend and her foe alike? I must learn to hate him in earnest. Only that way could she have a hope of winning and killing him as she must. He lay asleep beside her, fearing no attack from her. Knowing she would never kill a sleeping enemy. It had been wonderful to have an adversary like him, skilled and honourable and generous. If only it could have lasted. Her eyes were pricking her. Self-pity, she thought. He's the enemy. But the thought didn't help the dumb sullen misery in her heart.

She would get up now. She would leave him and go. And the next time they met... At the corner of her consciousness something was nagging at her still, like a child pulling on its mother's skirts. Something she'd forgotten, something that might be important-- She let her mind rove, looking to see what it was. The youkai tribe Hakkai-dono had slain. Hakkai said he massacred a tribe of youkai, a thousand of them. After his lover died three years ago, killed by Hyakugan Maoh. Three years ago Hyakugan Maoh's tribe was wiped out...

Her mind stuttered. The two facts were trying to merge into one, but it was like trying to fit a round lid on a square box. Hyakugan Maoh's devil tribe had been wiped out, yes, but-- but not like that. Their end had become the stuff of legend. They'd been slain suddenly, without warning, by a remorseless and invisible champion who'd hunted them like rats through the blood-stained hallways of their hold. Death himself had stalked Hyakugan Maoh's castle one rainy night, and no-one in the village below had heard a thing. Next day there was an eerie silence from the castle, and the day after that. The villagers cowered in their houses, wondering what great attack must be preparing. On the third day a provisions wagon came to the gates but none had been there to open for it. Greatly daring, and fearing the consequences of not making his delivery, the master entered alone, and returned shrieking in horror and joy. Corpses filled the castle, blood-black and stinking, and no living thing else. The terror that had preyed on the region for generations had vanished overnight. People talked now of the Saviour, the invincible hero who'd freed them, saying it had been the legendary Nataku himself come from heaven, and no-one disputed it. It would require a hero of Nataku's stature to have dealt with youkai like that, savage and ferocious from their birth. It couldn't have been- Yaone looked at Hakkai's face, peaceful in sleep with the good-humoured little curve to his mouth. It couldn't have been. It couldn't.

Wide-eyed, Yaone stared into the misty depths of the sky, Hakkai's breath soft in her ear, Hakkai's body keeping her warm, and felt something that was very close to fear. It couldn't have been, she thought at last. He's just a man. And the fragile certainty of that thought allowed sleep to take her at last.