The Long Road to Freedom 2: Fire on the Water

Ghost of the Past

        Kintsuke watched the village from afar, waiting in the field Myouga had directed her to for Inuyasha to arrive. The flea was correct, she'd rather remain away from the humans if she could help it, and Inuyasha had agreed to the quiet meeting here. It would only be a quick conversation anyway, and then she could press Myouga for information as she had originally wanted to do.

Inuyasha felt her before he found her waiting in the tall grass. He was surprised by what he saw, but now Myouga's words made sense. She was a half-breed, like him, perhaps having spent most of her years closer to demons than humans the way he had.

"You must be Kintsuke..." he ventured, wary of the stranger despite their shared affliction and associate.

She inclined her head to him a bit.

"Inuyasha, it's good to see you've finally grown into your kimono."

Inuyasha was not amused by the comment. He was glad, however, when Kintsuke cut right to the chase. He could appreciate a practical sort of person; but what was meant as a polite inquiry of his current state and development over the years somehow launched into an hours-long exchange of stories between the two. Everything from the year-long struggle against Naraku and the jewel to what the General had been like to the nature of half-breeds was touched on, and Inuyasha found for the first time in his life that he actually had questions about it all.

The sun was setting by the time they paused, and Myouga, ever the meddler, all but invited Kintsuke to stay.

"You're already here, and it sounds like you and Lord Inuyasha have a lot to talk about, not to mention she could help you with your skills in combat, sire."

"Hey, I do alright for myself, okay?" Inuyasha shot back.

Kintsuke merely smiled, not minding either which way Inuyasha decided. As she followed him into the village for dinner, though, she narrowed her eyes at the flea on his shoulder.

'What are you up to, Myouga? Why are you trying so blatantly to keep me here?'

***

Dinner was, to say the least, a tad stressful for Kintsuke, who found the fare strange. It was all human food, of course, but she grinned and bore it as best she could, not one to be ungrateful. She did, however, request her own pot for tea, plucking out one of the compressed disks of tea powder sometimes used as currency even among demons.

Hers was youkai tea, she explained to the bright-eyed girl they called Rin, and was not suitable for human consumption. At Kagome's urging, Inuyasha had tried some, hacking it right back up.

"'The hell IS this stuff?!" he fixed the cup and pot with an angry glower.

"Tea, Inuyasha; perhaps one day you'll come to like it."

Kintsuke mused, sipping her own cup quietly.

"Psh. Fat chance there."

Kagome and the others could only laugh.

The days passed in a peaceful manner, turning quickly into weeks as the two hanyou questioned and strengthened each other. Somehow, she'd avoided having to directly state that she, at one point, had been Sesshoumaru's personal servant. It simply wasn't something she wanted to talk about.

Having nothing better to do and nowhere to be, really, Kintsuke continued to idle, often finding herself convinced to tell stories of her time on the mainland and various differences in culture and languages for both Rin and the monk Miroku. Something of a scholar, Miroku's attention was rapt.