InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Chapter Forty-Four ( Chapter 46 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 08.24.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 583 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 08.24.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 583 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.THE HEART WITHINSummary: She has carried vengeance in her shadowed heart for 500 years, sacrificing her self for that dream. Now, Sango just might get her chance… (IY/YYH crossover) A/N: Sorry for the long wait. I’ve been in the throes of packing (ugh) and haven’t had much time to write. Hope you enjoy, and yes, cliffies suck. =P
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH CHAPTER BLACK, THE THREE KINGS SAGA
Chapter Forty-Four
Kurama was swept off his feet and sent crashing through the wall by the power of her blow. The raw fury exploded out of her curled fist with such force that a shrieking wind sprang up out of nowhere. Plaster fell in huge chucks as white dust rose, churned by the winds that buffeted the room, centered around the glowing figure of the angry taiji-ya.
Hiei watched impassively as Kurama gingerly got back to his feet, wiping the blood off his lip with a wry look. Even as Hiei watched, the silver hair streaked with red, the fox form dissolving into Kurama’s human one just as the winds dissipated in one final, errant breeze. The flaring jyaki around the slayer flickered and died. Sango stood there panting, her chest heaving as the ruby glitter faded from her brown eyes.
Eying the look on her face, Hiei moved before she even turned to flee.
How could they? How dare they? After all that had happened between them, after all their coldness and indifference? After each had left her alone, basically abandoning her after sharing something she hadn’t with anyone else. She wasn’t a wanton---although Youko had certainly made her into one. And where was Kurama after that? Gone, leaving her with a sorry apology and no damn excuse. And Hiei---damn him, he had simply disappeared, with no word and even less excuse. How she hated them for that!
No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t hate them. She couldn’t. For she loved them too much, damn them. Though they hardly deserved it, and she was a stupid fool for it. But how else could they have broken her heart so fully, each in their turn and each in their own callous way?
How could she forgive that? For it was still there---all the horrible emotions, all the pain and turmoil and wretched loss she had so neatly pushed aside, deliberately ignoring so she could go on with her life. And here they both were, oh-so-casually pulling her back into that whirlwind of pain and betrayal and bitter darkness.
She had carved out a life for herself, had friends now and a purpose---something she’d always need. And she had found it on her own, without them. And she was happy, damn it! And she could be more than content with that. It was enough, damn it!
And yet here they were, stirring up emotions she didn’t---couldn’t!---want, wrenching her life around to suit their arbitrary whim. For where were they, when she had needed them?
And now? She was just supposed to blithely lay all that aside, just because they airily reconsidered? Whimsically decided that they had some claim on her affections? How was she to give her heart back into their keeping? For she couldn’t trust them---they had already stamped all over her heart once, she couldn’t let them do it again. She wasn’t that stupid.
But, gods, they knew how to push every button. Knew just how to get under her skin, tear all her barriers down and stab her right inside the heart. “We love you,” he’d said, so simply. As if that was enough---
*Why isn’t it?*
She stiffened, eyes widening as she stared up into the scarlet demand of Hiei’s. The Jagan floated serenely above those too-red eyes, bathed in a shimmering green radiance as he used it to invade her thoughts.
How typical it was of him. Of them. Arrogantly assuming she would be okay with whatever they did, accepting their boorish highhandedness as if there was nothing else she could do. She hated that.
Hiei shrugged, unconcerned. Her eyes narrowed and she mentally snarled, *You don’t have the right!*
He smirked then. “No?”
“No!”
“Says who?”
“Me! Says me, Hiei!”
“Are you challenging me, hanyou?” he growled, eyes narrowing dangerously.
“Challenging you?” She laughed bitterly, reminded of Lord Tenga‘s words about demons and their mates. “And what would that be, Hiei? Your version of a marriage proposal?”
“Hn.” He finally let her go as she pushed away from him, only to freeze when she saw Kurama regarding her from a casual stance against the wall. He had slipped from his kitsune form, and his green eyes held too much understanding and too much pity.
“Sango…” he began, but her heart-wrenched demand cut him off, all of her pent-up pain tumbling out in one single, stupid question.
“Why did you leave me alone?”
“Fear,” he said simply.
“Fear.” She couldn’t believe he could just stand there saying it so calmly, as if she should understand their reasons with that single word. Maybe she did, a little, but it wasn’t enough of an excuse.
“What does it matter?” Hiei demanded impatiently. “That was then, this is now.”
Sango turned incredulous eyes on him as Kurama warned softly, “Hiei---”
“No, fox,” Hiei growled, eyes pinning Sango in place.
“She’s a human---”
“She’s a demon,” Hiei emphasized.
“I’m both, you jerk,” she snapped back, fed up with his attitude about ningen.
“Are you?” he softly taunted. “Then why do you not embrace the darkness inside yourself? Why do you fear it?”
“I don’t fear it,” she spat. “I know full well what I’m capable of---”
“And yet you won’t use it. Won’t give in to it. Won’t let it out.”
“Let it out? Are you crazy?” Her fists tightened. “Don’t you remember, Hiei? In the Forest of Fools? When my rage sent half the forest insane? Maybe you can use your dark hate and bitterness at the world to feed your raging Dragon, but I refuse to hurt others just because---”
“Don’t denigrate me by your pithy human definitions, hanyou,” he snapped. “Especially when you deny your own.”
“Deny---”
“You’re a demon.”
“And a human. Or is that reminder too sordid for you?”
He laughed. It was not a true laugh, but bitter and mocking. She wanted to slug him.
“Sango, Hiei is just trying to---” Kurama again tried to step in between them, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“I don’t care,” she cried, fury and tears warring within her, so close, so damn close. She blindly backed away from both of them.
“Why do you keep lying to yourself, hanyou?” Hiei growled, his weight shifting subtly as if he would spring.
“Shut up,” she cried in anguish, hating them both for the way they continued to push her.
“You deny yourself, hanyou. You deny your true nature.” Ignoring Kurama’s warning look, the short demon stepped forward.
“I do not deny anything, Hiei. I define myself, who I am and what I’ll be---”
“Hn. A pithy excuse to hide the fact you’re terrified of the truth.”
“The truth? And what truth is that? That everything is just sweet and peachy in the land of fools? That saying---what you did---” she glared at Kurama, unable to say it herself, “is enough to wipe away the past? That it’s supposed to make everything all right?”
“Yes.” Kurama surprisingly intruded, when she thought he, at least, would understand that it couldn’t. Simply mouthing the words didn’t make it right. Love could hurt you if you let it---
*Love can also heal you, Sango,* Kurama suddenly said inside her mind, so softly, so gently, her heart tightened even as the tears gathered. She blinked furiously, not only to keep the tears back but to understand how he could do so. She looked at Hiei, and the Jagan was glowing, as if he were lending the fox aid, but---wait---
“What are you doing?” She choked, staring transfixed as the short demon slowly, determinedly jerked at the sacred sutras bandaging his right arm.
“What do you think?” he growled, tearing the last bandages free. They fell away with a slithering hiss of silk, and the unwrapped Dragon glowed with a ghostly light, purple tints fizzling along its twisting black surface.
“Hiei, you really should learn a new way to express yourself, rather than just through violence,” Kurama commented dryly.
“Hn.” The apparition let a small smile play about his mouth as he smirked, his red eyes lifting to Sango, who stood frozen, staring at the dark lights flickering over the jagged tattoo along his raised arm. The eyes etched into the back of his wrist glowed with a ghostly fire, already calling to her.
“No,” she breathed.
“You fear the Dragon because it calls to the darkness within you, slayer,” Hiei said, his palm slowly extending.
“No…”
“That is the truth you deny, Sango,” Kurama gently added, his green eyes swirling with golden tints, like the sun breaking through the verdant shadows of the deepest forest. “The darkness within yourself. The darkness that is so completely youkai, and so completely yours.”
Her heart sped up, and she could feel the faint spider on her chest burning in answer. Her jyaki rose, burning up inside her very being. It was a tidal wave rising to swallow her up inside of it and never let her be free again of the rage and darkness and bitterness that came along with it. She had been chained by that darkness for so long---how could they demand she surrender herself back into that awful turmoil of pain and sorrow? How could that ever possibly heal her, when she didn’t need healing, she just needed---
Love.
True love, undying love, forgiving and jealous love. Heady and despairing, held so tight it set you free even as it chained you and claimed you. Tore through every barrier you tried to put up and left you naked and crying, because it left you so completely vulnerable. Tore you to pieces, because it could tear the very heart right out of your chest when you lost those you cared so much about. Father, brother, teacher and unspoken love---so lost, so gone forever and yet still there. Held so close, in memories so bittersweet because you knew they were gone forever and yet still there with you, but not with you, not really.
How could she dare that pain again? How could she let it consume her so utterly that it turned to hate so bitter it burned inside her for five hundred years? Five centuries spent seeking a vengeance that had been almost laughable in the end---Naraku killed by a mere flea demon and turned into a fucking bath-mat of all things. A mockery of the very fire of vengeance that had burned inside of her, claiming her in a darkness of spirit that had left her cold and alone, always so damn alone.
How, how could love so twisted be in any way right?
Because you let yourself feel, and in feeling, freed yourself to be yourself. All emotions, all things, both bitter and jealous and loving and kind. All the terrible, terrible beauty of being wholly, unapologetically and completely accepted for who you were, all bad and good, all petty and pithy and beautiful and giving. Not only accepted by yourself but by those who were so completely touched and healed and torn and chained by it in turn---by you, in turn.
For as you could not live without them, they could not live without you, and while there was always that possibility of pain and loss, of terrible heartbreak, you had to give it a chance. Just a chance, a small chance, for when you did, and when it was returned, then the very heavens opened up and your soul sang in joy at finding one so worthy. So worthy of you and you so worthy of them, so loved and protected and nurtured and held so tight. Not alone anymore, never alone, because you were together.
Together to face the emptiness of a world that could be so cold and indifferent. A world of days passing by, one as like to the last as it was to the next until---until you stopped, arrested and transfixed by the burning light of a feeling so powerful it lifted you up out of the darkness. Then smothered you back inside that darkness as it held you close, so close, devouring your very self into all the burning emotions that came with it. All the spectrum of emotions---light, dark, it didn’t matter, for it was what it was and it was you, and that was enough.
Enough for everything---and everyone.
Sango turned burning eyes on them, the tears spilling unheeded down her cheeks as her heart soared at the burning looks in theirs. Hiei, with the fire at its hottest, Kurama, with the sun in its utter glory---she reached out to both of them, traced the tears on their cheeks in wonder that they would let the emotion that overwhelmed her overwhelm them as well. And then she was enfolded in heat, heat so blazing and pure as their minds touched, one’s thoughts blending unto another’s and then another’s. The fire of their love blazed up into a torch never to be quenched as the jyaki flared around them in astral flames, blazing so high it blanketed the very light of the world around them as they hung, suspended, in that glorious truth.
And the heat, the heat was rising over her skin, touching it in feather-soft kisses as strong arms held her on either side, so gently but so fully, supporting and restraining, for she wanted, needed, had to---
Sharp thuds on the door intruded, snapping her out of that overwhelming heat. No, no, wait, what---a muffled curse as Hiei glared, an apologetic grimace as Kurama shrugged, and she was slowly sinking back into awareness of her surroundings.
Hiei held her against him, nuzzling the side of her neck as if he could not help it even as his smoldering red gaze was directed on the door Kurama was answering. The fire demon’s right arm snaked around her waist, the dragon stark against his tanned skin as he impatiently growled. Sango shivered, and he absently planted a kiss just behind her ear that had her closing her eyes and inhaling sharply. Hiei smirked, and she wanted to hit him just as much as she wanted to kiss him, the jerk.
“It’s the bellhop---our new room is ready,” Kurama said, opening the door enough to show a four-armed, hairy brute with a neat uniform and jaunty little cap. A thick unibrow rose, and he cocked his shaggy head in sudden interest. Abruptly reminded of how she stood in the arms of a naked fire youkai, Sango blushed.
Kurama smiled slightly, his eyes darkening as she stared at him. The kitsune slowly crossed the room, deliberately ignoring their audience and forcing her to look up at him as he came closer. The look in his deep green eyes was so achingly tender Sango’s breath caught. When his elegant fingers reached out to gently brush a stray hair behind her ear, she shivered for much the same reason she had at the touch of Hiei’s lips, which were even now playing lightly with her ear lobe.
“Shall we go?” the kitsune asked softly, a husky quality to his voice. Hiei impatiently growled, and Sango slowly nodded, her heart all but pounding right out of her chest.
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH CHAPTER BLACK, THE THREE KINGS SAGA
Chapter Forty-Four
Kurama was swept off his feet and sent crashing through the wall by the power of her blow. The raw fury exploded out of her curled fist with such force that a shrieking wind sprang up out of nowhere. Plaster fell in huge chucks as white dust rose, churned by the winds that buffeted the room, centered around the glowing figure of the angry taiji-ya.
Hiei watched impassively as Kurama gingerly got back to his feet, wiping the blood off his lip with a wry look. Even as Hiei watched, the silver hair streaked with red, the fox form dissolving into Kurama’s human one just as the winds dissipated in one final, errant breeze. The flaring jyaki around the slayer flickered and died. Sango stood there panting, her chest heaving as the ruby glitter faded from her brown eyes.
Eying the look on her face, Hiei moved before she even turned to flee.
ooOOOoo
“Damn you,” she sobbed, and whirled, straight into Hiei’s arms. She blindly fought him, but as always, he proved too strong. She hated him for the gentle way he held her even as she futilely beat against his chest, his hold slowly tightening until she was enfolded inside his solid warmth. He said nothing, offered nothing but his silent acceptance as she cursed and cried, her tears falling freely now.How could they? How dare they? After all that had happened between them, after all their coldness and indifference? After each had left her alone, basically abandoning her after sharing something she hadn’t with anyone else. She wasn’t a wanton---although Youko had certainly made her into one. And where was Kurama after that? Gone, leaving her with a sorry apology and no damn excuse. And Hiei---damn him, he had simply disappeared, with no word and even less excuse. How she hated them for that!
No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t hate them. She couldn’t. For she loved them too much, damn them. Though they hardly deserved it, and she was a stupid fool for it. But how else could they have broken her heart so fully, each in their turn and each in their own callous way?
How could she forgive that? For it was still there---all the horrible emotions, all the pain and turmoil and wretched loss she had so neatly pushed aside, deliberately ignoring so she could go on with her life. And here they both were, oh-so-casually pulling her back into that whirlwind of pain and betrayal and bitter darkness.
She had carved out a life for herself, had friends now and a purpose---something she’d always need. And she had found it on her own, without them. And she was happy, damn it! And she could be more than content with that. It was enough, damn it!
And yet here they were, stirring up emotions she didn’t---couldn’t!---want, wrenching her life around to suit their arbitrary whim. For where were they, when she had needed them?
And now? She was just supposed to blithely lay all that aside, just because they airily reconsidered? Whimsically decided that they had some claim on her affections? How was she to give her heart back into their keeping? For she couldn’t trust them---they had already stamped all over her heart once, she couldn’t let them do it again. She wasn’t that stupid.
But, gods, they knew how to push every button. Knew just how to get under her skin, tear all her barriers down and stab her right inside the heart. “We love you,” he’d said, so simply. As if that was enough---
*Why isn’t it?*
She stiffened, eyes widening as she stared up into the scarlet demand of Hiei’s. The Jagan floated serenely above those too-red eyes, bathed in a shimmering green radiance as he used it to invade her thoughts.
How typical it was of him. Of them. Arrogantly assuming she would be okay with whatever they did, accepting their boorish highhandedness as if there was nothing else she could do. She hated that.
Hiei shrugged, unconcerned. Her eyes narrowed and she mentally snarled, *You don’t have the right!*
He smirked then. “No?”
“No!”
“Says who?”
“Me! Says me, Hiei!”
“Are you challenging me, hanyou?” he growled, eyes narrowing dangerously.
“Challenging you?” She laughed bitterly, reminded of Lord Tenga‘s words about demons and their mates. “And what would that be, Hiei? Your version of a marriage proposal?”
“Hn.” He finally let her go as she pushed away from him, only to freeze when she saw Kurama regarding her from a casual stance against the wall. He had slipped from his kitsune form, and his green eyes held too much understanding and too much pity.
“Sango…” he began, but her heart-wrenched demand cut him off, all of her pent-up pain tumbling out in one single, stupid question.
“Why did you leave me alone?”
“Fear,” he said simply.
“Fear.” She couldn’t believe he could just stand there saying it so calmly, as if she should understand their reasons with that single word. Maybe she did, a little, but it wasn’t enough of an excuse.
“What does it matter?” Hiei demanded impatiently. “That was then, this is now.”
Sango turned incredulous eyes on him as Kurama warned softly, “Hiei---”
“No, fox,” Hiei growled, eyes pinning Sango in place.
“She’s a human---”
“She’s a demon,” Hiei emphasized.
“I’m both, you jerk,” she snapped back, fed up with his attitude about ningen.
“Are you?” he softly taunted. “Then why do you not embrace the darkness inside yourself? Why do you fear it?”
“I don’t fear it,” she spat. “I know full well what I’m capable of---”
“And yet you won’t use it. Won’t give in to it. Won’t let it out.”
“Let it out? Are you crazy?” Her fists tightened. “Don’t you remember, Hiei? In the Forest of Fools? When my rage sent half the forest insane? Maybe you can use your dark hate and bitterness at the world to feed your raging Dragon, but I refuse to hurt others just because---”
“Don’t denigrate me by your pithy human definitions, hanyou,” he snapped. “Especially when you deny your own.”
“Deny---”
“You’re a demon.”
“And a human. Or is that reminder too sordid for you?”
He laughed. It was not a true laugh, but bitter and mocking. She wanted to slug him.
“Sango, Hiei is just trying to---” Kurama again tried to step in between them, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“I don’t care,” she cried, fury and tears warring within her, so close, so damn close. She blindly backed away from both of them.
“Why do you keep lying to yourself, hanyou?” Hiei growled, his weight shifting subtly as if he would spring.
“Shut up,” she cried in anguish, hating them both for the way they continued to push her.
“You deny yourself, hanyou. You deny your true nature.” Ignoring Kurama’s warning look, the short demon stepped forward.
“I do not deny anything, Hiei. I define myself, who I am and what I’ll be---”
“Hn. A pithy excuse to hide the fact you’re terrified of the truth.”
“The truth? And what truth is that? That everything is just sweet and peachy in the land of fools? That saying---what you did---” she glared at Kurama, unable to say it herself, “is enough to wipe away the past? That it’s supposed to make everything all right?”
“Yes.” Kurama surprisingly intruded, when she thought he, at least, would understand that it couldn’t. Simply mouthing the words didn’t make it right. Love could hurt you if you let it---
*Love can also heal you, Sango,* Kurama suddenly said inside her mind, so softly, so gently, her heart tightened even as the tears gathered. She blinked furiously, not only to keep the tears back but to understand how he could do so. She looked at Hiei, and the Jagan was glowing, as if he were lending the fox aid, but---wait---
“What are you doing?” She choked, staring transfixed as the short demon slowly, determinedly jerked at the sacred sutras bandaging his right arm.
“What do you think?” he growled, tearing the last bandages free. They fell away with a slithering hiss of silk, and the unwrapped Dragon glowed with a ghostly light, purple tints fizzling along its twisting black surface.
“Hiei, you really should learn a new way to express yourself, rather than just through violence,” Kurama commented dryly.
“Hn.” The apparition let a small smile play about his mouth as he smirked, his red eyes lifting to Sango, who stood frozen, staring at the dark lights flickering over the jagged tattoo along his raised arm. The eyes etched into the back of his wrist glowed with a ghostly fire, already calling to her.
“No,” she breathed.
“You fear the Dragon because it calls to the darkness within you, slayer,” Hiei said, his palm slowly extending.
“No…”
“That is the truth you deny, Sango,” Kurama gently added, his green eyes swirling with golden tints, like the sun breaking through the verdant shadows of the deepest forest. “The darkness within yourself. The darkness that is so completely youkai, and so completely yours.”
Her heart sped up, and she could feel the faint spider on her chest burning in answer. Her jyaki rose, burning up inside her very being. It was a tidal wave rising to swallow her up inside of it and never let her be free again of the rage and darkness and bitterness that came along with it. She had been chained by that darkness for so long---how could they demand she surrender herself back into that awful turmoil of pain and sorrow? How could that ever possibly heal her, when she didn’t need healing, she just needed---
Love.
True love, undying love, forgiving and jealous love. Heady and despairing, held so tight it set you free even as it chained you and claimed you. Tore through every barrier you tried to put up and left you naked and crying, because it left you so completely vulnerable. Tore you to pieces, because it could tear the very heart right out of your chest when you lost those you cared so much about. Father, brother, teacher and unspoken love---so lost, so gone forever and yet still there. Held so close, in memories so bittersweet because you knew they were gone forever and yet still there with you, but not with you, not really.
How could she dare that pain again? How could she let it consume her so utterly that it turned to hate so bitter it burned inside her for five hundred years? Five centuries spent seeking a vengeance that had been almost laughable in the end---Naraku killed by a mere flea demon and turned into a fucking bath-mat of all things. A mockery of the very fire of vengeance that had burned inside of her, claiming her in a darkness of spirit that had left her cold and alone, always so damn alone.
How, how could love so twisted be in any way right?
Because you let yourself feel, and in feeling, freed yourself to be yourself. All emotions, all things, both bitter and jealous and loving and kind. All the terrible, terrible beauty of being wholly, unapologetically and completely accepted for who you were, all bad and good, all petty and pithy and beautiful and giving. Not only accepted by yourself but by those who were so completely touched and healed and torn and chained by it in turn---by you, in turn.
For as you could not live without them, they could not live without you, and while there was always that possibility of pain and loss, of terrible heartbreak, you had to give it a chance. Just a chance, a small chance, for when you did, and when it was returned, then the very heavens opened up and your soul sang in joy at finding one so worthy. So worthy of you and you so worthy of them, so loved and protected and nurtured and held so tight. Not alone anymore, never alone, because you were together.
Together to face the emptiness of a world that could be so cold and indifferent. A world of days passing by, one as like to the last as it was to the next until---until you stopped, arrested and transfixed by the burning light of a feeling so powerful it lifted you up out of the darkness. Then smothered you back inside that darkness as it held you close, so close, devouring your very self into all the burning emotions that came with it. All the spectrum of emotions---light, dark, it didn’t matter, for it was what it was and it was you, and that was enough.
Enough for everything---and everyone.
Sango turned burning eyes on them, the tears spilling unheeded down her cheeks as her heart soared at the burning looks in theirs. Hiei, with the fire at its hottest, Kurama, with the sun in its utter glory---she reached out to both of them, traced the tears on their cheeks in wonder that they would let the emotion that overwhelmed her overwhelm them as well. And then she was enfolded in heat, heat so blazing and pure as their minds touched, one’s thoughts blending unto another’s and then another’s. The fire of their love blazed up into a torch never to be quenched as the jyaki flared around them in astral flames, blazing so high it blanketed the very light of the world around them as they hung, suspended, in that glorious truth.
And the heat, the heat was rising over her skin, touching it in feather-soft kisses as strong arms held her on either side, so gently but so fully, supporting and restraining, for she wanted, needed, had to---
Sharp thuds on the door intruded, snapping her out of that overwhelming heat. No, no, wait, what---a muffled curse as Hiei glared, an apologetic grimace as Kurama shrugged, and she was slowly sinking back into awareness of her surroundings.
Hiei held her against him, nuzzling the side of her neck as if he could not help it even as his smoldering red gaze was directed on the door Kurama was answering. The fire demon’s right arm snaked around her waist, the dragon stark against his tanned skin as he impatiently growled. Sango shivered, and he absently planted a kiss just behind her ear that had her closing her eyes and inhaling sharply. Hiei smirked, and she wanted to hit him just as much as she wanted to kiss him, the jerk.
“It’s the bellhop---our new room is ready,” Kurama said, opening the door enough to show a four-armed, hairy brute with a neat uniform and jaunty little cap. A thick unibrow rose, and he cocked his shaggy head in sudden interest. Abruptly reminded of how she stood in the arms of a naked fire youkai, Sango blushed.
Kurama smiled slightly, his eyes darkening as she stared at him. The kitsune slowly crossed the room, deliberately ignoring their audience and forcing her to look up at him as he came closer. The look in his deep green eyes was so achingly tender Sango’s breath caught. When his elegant fingers reached out to gently brush a stray hair behind her ear, she shivered for much the same reason she had at the touch of Hiei’s lips, which were even now playing lightly with her ear lobe.
“Shall we go?” the kitsune asked softly, a husky quality to his voice. Hiei impatiently growled, and Sango slowly nodded, her heart all but pounding right out of her chest.