Winter was fairly sure where most of her own feelings lay. She'd already come to terms with the fact that her feelings from when she was younger hadn't changed much, and that they were likely to be unrequited. But she wasn't going to let that ruin the fun she was having traveling with the two.

Fortunately, the traveling was mostly unremarkable, and what trouble did arise Hiei took care of swiftly and with prejudice. He did especially keep an eye on Winter those times, making Yukina smile.

It took Winter a couple of times to notice he was keeping a closer eye on her when that happened, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. She had herself pretty convinced that he didn't feel anything out of the ordinary for her, so she just sort of assumed it was because she was the most helpless member of the group.

It took a while, but eventually Hiei did start conversations himself. He hung back a bit, walking near Winter.

"What did you do before all this?" He made a motion to encompass Makai and himself and Yukina.

Winter was susprised at the questions.

"Not a whole lot," she admitted anyways. "Pretty boring life. Desk job and such." She glanced at him. "Why?"

Hiei shrugged. "You adjusted to all this well," he said with a little shrug. "I wondered if your life had been like this before."

"No, not at all," Winter replied, shaking her head. "Boring human life. I'm just lucky I sort of knew what to expect when Peg and I ended up at the temple."

Hiei nodded. "I suppose knowing about us helped."

"It did," Winter admitted. "I knew what to expect. What not to say, what to stay away from... and what not to expect." She couldn't help but grin a bit. "Though I could see Youko under Shuichi and that was weird, wasn't expecting that one."

"Really?" Hiei looked at her, surprised. "Hn. The fox would either be intolerably curious, or hate that." He smirked a bit.

"Yeah, it surprised me," Winter agreed. "And I never got around to asking Shizuru if she could see the same thing, and Kazuma wasn't around to ask."

Hiei shook his head a bit. "Kuwabara didn't know until the Dark Tournament," he said. "He'd never seen Youko before."

"Right, but Youko also hadn't surfaced before then, either," Winter pointed out. "Makes sense that nobody would have seen him under Shuichi before then."

Hiei considered that for a moment before he nodded. "After that, though, Kuwabara didn't look at him or think of him any differently," he did point out.

"I know, but he's also gotten stronger since then, which is why I wanted to ask now and see if there was a difference," Winter replied. "Doesn't matter, at this point, but it's still weird to see whenever I look at Kurama."

Hiei snorted quietly. "I can imagine," he said, not bothering to hide his amusement at that.

"If you could see it, you'd think it was odd too," Winter retorted, grinning a bit.

Hiei snorted quietly. "I could," he said after a moment, glancing at her. "If you'll share." He was well aware of the fact that he could just get the image without her even knowing, but that felt wrong with her.

Winter opened her mouth to agree automatically, and then paused. It wasn't like him to ask permission like that. As far as she knew, he typically didn't care whether or not anyone knew he was rummaging around in their head. Something had changed.

"Yeah, sure, go ahead," she said after a moment. She would ponder this new development once he'd found what he was looking for.

Hiei nodded and went to go find the image he wanted. When he got it, he paused for a moment before he snorted.

"The fox looks ridiculous like that."

"Exactly," Winter said. "That's what I see all the time when he's around. And I know that's not supposed to happen, really."

"It's not," Hiei agreed. "I'm not sure why you can see both of them to begin with."

"I don't know either," Winter said. "But I'm just going to roll with it for now, it's nowhere near the thing I need to focus on most right now."

"And what do you need to focus on?" Hiei looked at her, pausing for a moment. He was genuinely confused; this wasn't her quest, after all.

Oops. She hadn't meant to pique his curiosity like that.

"Just... some things that were brought to my attention," Winter replied cautiously.