3AN: A cross between a vignette and a deleted scene. This was to have taken place sometime around Chapter 24, but it didn't fit in very well. It has some interesting information, however, and I thought it best to share.
Ayame's an interesting character, and I wish I'd had the time to further look into just what makes her who she is.
Through Dragon's Eyes
Saburo, like his older brothers, didn't have wings. With the exception of his five digit appendages, the three all looked the proper Japanese dragon. The five claws always gave them away- though those who didn't recognize them often thought they were Chinese. Chinese dragons had five claws and no wings. But European-Japanese mix dragons also had five claws and no wings. Provided they weren't Ayame. Ayame, though, looked simply like a European dragon, and that was okay too, because it wasn't mixing species, it was simply a foreign youkai.
The quartet weren't particularly fond of their heritage, but they had loved their parents. True to youkai tradition, neither was spoken of.
The taiyoukai often thought they were broken toys, misused by the thing that had taken over their father. And yes, they did drown themselves in the darkness that inhabited all youkai- the lust for power, the indifferent murderer, the malicious, sadistic, twisted things that they had to become if they wanted to live in the new world their family had become.
Ayame had come out worst- still only in her twenties when he had grown tired of the playful teasing their mother had always given him in everything he did. Ayame was the most like her, even then, and he had tied the child down and proceeded to give a visual aid why not to be like her mother.
Wings shredded, magic tied down with stolen holy magic none cared to dwell on, raped, dismembered, and finally eaten, piece by tiny piece. Ayame didn't like remembering her mother. Her brothers never asked about what she had seen. In the years afterwards, they saw him do the same to many others and didn't need to ask, to make their baby sister relive the sight.
She had broken. But she was youkai, and youkai always recovered, never kept scars.
Ayame was trying to erase those scars, and it was for that she had brought Souta here. So many rules to break. Don't become enamored of humans. Don't come here. Don't bring humans here. Do as I say. Break the boy, twist his mind until he can see nothing but you; and then bring him to me so that I can dissect him, discover what makes the Meirin blood so powerful, where the location of the Shikon no Tama is.
Ayame broke every one and was free of the usual sense of fear that accompanied minor disobediences.
She had no doubts that he would kill them when he discovered the transgression, but for once, it didn't seem to matter. It had taken decades of research, but they had discovered what had happened.
Ayame wasn't sorry for setting assassins on Inu-Yasha. She wanted him dead, because really, it was all his fault.
Meirin Akira, just a child, but powerful in holy magic as most Meirin scions were, had released Inu-Yasha from where he had been bound by expending all his power at once. The boy had never shown signs of magic again. That much energy hadn't been needed to release a hanyou from a short rest. Neither had it been enough to undo the centuries of taiyoukai reinforcement on the seal of an ancient dragon. But it had tried anyway.
It had released his mind, but not his power or his body. And it had run immediately to the first of its blood it sensed. Kino Hachiro, the youngest son, had disappeared under the continuous pressure of Ryukotsusei, the eldest son.
Ayame hated Inu-Yasha and the Meirin family for that.
It had been her and her brothers, over the years, wheedling the family down to a single, tortured child. Supposed accidents, brutal murders, disappearances. The only reason a single child survived to adulthood was so that the torture could be drawn out, passed onto the next generation.
Ichiro was the one to break it. Or perhaps the late Meirin Kaoru was. The man had had two daughters, and raised them to be true to their heritage, rather than changing to conform to the intruding Western society.
It had been Ichiro's turn, and he had chosen the elder, since there was no son. She had been on a pilgrimage, visiting shrines between hers and some destination she never reached. When Ichiro happened upon her in some remote mountain shrine, she had greeted him for what he was and made no pleas for mercy, for life. She was calm, cool, and accepting of the fact that the earth dragon had been there to kill her, and even scolded him for being late. Ichiro, startled, didn't make a move. And when they continued to stare at each other, he had seen something he never had in previous victims. An apology, and the mark of the gods.
Ichiro had turned and left without ever speaking, and had forbidden the others from approaching any of the descendants again. What exactlyhad spooked him, he never explained, simply said that only fools meddled in the affairs of the gods.
Ayame had been the one to break that order nearly thirty years later, befriending the youngest Meirin at the behest of her father.
She still hated Souta for being a Meirin, for being a descendant of the boy who had unwittingly released the spirit of Ryukotsusei upon her family. But his easy-going acceptance of who and what she was began to make her doubt their actions towards the family.
And Ayame hated him for that too. Youkai did not feel guilty for their actions.
She would never tell him the harm she and her brothers had done to his family. It was in the past, and Souta didn't live in the past. He lived in the now of things, and now he was her friend and that was what mattered.
And she found she didn't hate the young human at all.