InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Chronicles ❯ Cause and Effect ( Chapter 39 )

~~Chapter 39~~

~Cause and Effect~

 

InuYasha stood, stunned, staring down into the well as the pink light that signaled the opening of the time warp died away. `She didn't . . . she just . . . what the . . . oh hell no!' he blustered to himself as his expression darkened to a near-murderous scowl. “She's not getting off that easily!” he growled as he hurtled the side of the well and descended into the flash of pink light.

 

`Wait till I find her! If she's not still standing in the well-house when I get there, I swear I'll sniff her out and . . . and . . . and . . . oh hell, she'll be so sorry! Always telling me she wants me to tell her what I'm thinking, and then when I do, she says she can't kiss me! Sneaky wench!'

 

His feet hit solid surface on her side of the well. “Kagome!” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the sides. He ignored the ache the sound inspired as he pushed off the ground and flew out of the hole.

 

She wasn't in the well-house. She wasn't in the courtyard. All the shrine windows were closed, so he couldn't smell exactly where she was but her scent led to the back door, and he stomped after her.

 

“Hey, InuYasha!” Souta greeted as InuYasha slammed through the door. “I thought Kagome said you weren't coming with her this time.”

 

“I'm not staying,” InuYasha answered as he kept moving.

 

“Did you forget something?”

 

“Keh! Yeah . . . I forgot what a sneaky wench your sister is.”

 

Souta looked confused but he turned back to the video game he was playing and shrugged. “Kagome's in her room,” he called after the hanyou, who was already half-way up the stairs.

 

InuYasha didn't stop as he neared Kagome's door. Raising his fist in time to slam it wide open, the door hit the wall with a nice loud crash and bounced back. InuYasha was well past that, though, and the door slammed closed again. He didn't have a chance to relish the incredible noise his entrance had created. He didn't get a chance to look around the room for the sneaky wench. No, in an instant, the pungent salt of her tears filled his nostrils. A second later, Kagome was wrapped around him, lips on his, fingers buried in his hair, a low moan ripped from her throat as she kissed him as though her life depended on it.

 

He forgot that he was angry, forgot the frustration of her answer on the other side of the well, forgot that he was supposed to be leaving on a quest, forgot what it meant to breathe. She surrounded him, blinded him, dulled his senses to anything that didn't have to do with her. She wrapped around his mind as her body molded against his, and if he'd ever fought against his feelings for her before, he didn't remember it.

 

Through the desperation of her mouth under his, he could feel the underlying quake, the trembling of her body. Scorching heat radiated from her, surrounding him in a blanket of warmth, and she offered him her heart as his mind slowed to a crawl. The current of sensation shocked him, the wash of her tears cleansed him as she held onto him. Mind spinning away in the inundation of sentiment, thoughts centering wholly on need, cherishing her as she relinquished control to him, InuYasha growled, and her answer was a whimper. Against his lips she drew on him as one feeling tumbled into the next with such fluidity that he couldn't tell where one part of him met another. Thought became tactile, the force of nature that was Kagome, alive in his arms, yielding and soft, yet demanding and harsh.

 

Her lips trailed to his chin, his jaw, down the arch of his neck, settling on the hollow where his pulse quickened under her lips. He fell back against the wall, needing support as Kagome grew relentless. Drawn to that place, that vulnerable spot, concentrating her attention as he let his head tilt to the side, he whined as she kissed him, moaned as she nuzzled against him, growled low as she acknowledged her control. He whimpered, standing still, allowing her to have his submission, even as he wondered hazily, did she know what it meant, to permit her this? Dragging her teeth against his skin as she sought out his lips once more, he couldn't help his indistinct wonder, `Can she feel me trembling under her fingers?' Hands dropping to his shoulders, she clutched his haori as his mouth claimed hers again. She collapsed into his arms, and he held her, steadied her, offered her the strength she needed even as she fueled his desire to live.

 

She dragged her mouth away, drawing in a ragged breath, liquid eyes swirling with undiscovered passion as she gazed at him. “I should have done this back there,” she whispered, her tone a caress to his ears. “I should have kissed you and held you and told you that you can't leave me . . . you can't.” She let her forehead rest against his chest. “Please, InuYasha . . . this is enough for me. It's all I've ever wanted.”

 

He sighed. “I'd think you'd be happy to see me claim Musashi.”

 

She closed her eyes and pulled away from him, taking his hands and dragging him over to the bed to sit with her. “Is it what you want? Would it make you happy? Because it isn't about me. It shouldn't be about me. It's about you.”

 

He couldn't help but feel as though there was something that she wasn't telling him. She stared at her hands, folded together in her lap, her teeth worrying at her lower lip, and he could smell her anxiety. “Why does it bother you?”

 

She slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, eyes bright with tears that didn't fall. “If you go . . .” she trailed off, as tears spilled over, running down her cheeks. InuYasha flinched and reached out to wipe them away as more rose to replace them. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath. “You'll . . . I've seen it. I can't be strong . . . without you.”

 

He pulled her into his arms, against his heart, smoothed her hair as she sobbed. `I wanted it for her . . . .'

 

`But she's never wanted it, either, InuYasha. In your heart, you know that, and she's terrified that she'll lose you. Musashi . . . isn't that someone else's dream . . . ?'

 

“Kagome . . . .”

 

She sniffled and shook her head without looking up. “Don't say it,” she whispered. “Just . . . will you stay here? Just tonight?”

 

“Keh . . . will you stop blubbering if I do?” he asked gruffly.

 

She broke into a watery smile. “Okay.”

 

He pushed her bangs out of her eyes, kissed her forehead as she held onto his wrist. `I'd stay with you forever.'

 

 

::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::

 

 

“ `When I told him that I was to marry Takemaru, he acted like he believed it was for the best, that it was what was to be expected. I was, after all, human, and should marry a human. That night, though, as I sat, wrapped in his arms in Goshinboku, I could sense a sadness in him, a tension that hadn't been there before. He caught my gaze on him and smiled for me. He didn't often smile, but when he did, his eyes lit up, his entire face seemed to soften. I think perhaps it was at that moment that I realized that I loved him, and if I ever told him, I can't remember but I do know I never knew a time when I didn't know how much he loved me, too.' ”

 

“Have you read enough yet?” InuYasha grumbled as he flopped onto his back. “You women are too dramatic in your dairies.”

 

Kagome, who had been in the midst of indulging a romantic vision of InuYasha parents high in the God Tree, frowned and turned to face him, shaking her head slowly with a heavy sigh. “This is the sweetest story, and they're your parents. You ought to want to hear this.”

 

“Keh.”

 

“Just a little more?”

 

“And what do I get for being bored out of my mind?” She grinned and lay down beside him, wiggling around until she was comfortably situated with her head nestled against his chest. “You move around more than that runt-fox, you know that?”

 

She opened the diary back up. He stuck his hand in front of the pages. “InuYasha!”

 

“You never answered my question, sneaky wench. What's in it for me?”

 

“Ramen?”

 

“I get that.”

 

“Pocky?”

 

“Keh.”

 

“Dried potatoes?”

 

He thought that over then shook his head. “Keh.”

 

“My new calculus book?”

 

“Getting closer.”

 

“I could scratch your ears.”

 

“Nice try, sneaky wench. That's for you, anyway.”

 

“But you like it.”

 

“Keh.”

 

“Well, then you tell me. What do you want for it?”

 

“How about an apology?”

 

She lifted her eyebrows. “For what?”

 

His expression turned sulky, and Kagome tamped down the urge to laugh. “For saying that you couldn't kiss me by the well.”

 

The urge to laugh died in an instant as an entirely different urge took over. She swallowed hard and hoped he couldn't hear her heart hammering against her ribcage. “Okay,” she agreed slowly. “I'm sorry you didn't like that I said I couldn't kiss you by the well.”

 

“You call that an apology?”

 

“Why? Does it sound like one of yours? Now move your hand. I gave you what you wanted.”

 

“Keh! You're even sneakier than I thought!” he growled as his hand dropped—to cover her eyes.

 

“InuYasha!” she complained as she tried to pull his hand away.

 

“What? Don't like it? I gave you what you wanted,” he shot back.

 

She stopped struggling and turned her face toward him. The effect was marred by his hand over her eyes, she was sure. When he chuckled, she was positive. “How about this: if you let me read a little more to you, I'll kiss you.”

 

“Keh. Somehow I think that's more for you than it is for me, too.”

 

“Oh, really?”

 

“Well, if that's the best you can do,” he slowly drawled. “Before and after.”

 

He let her pull his hand down from her eyes. “Before and after what?”

 

“I thought all those books you drag around in bag you live in were supposed to make you smarter, wench. One now, and one when you're finished, that's what.”

 

“Okay,” she agreed easily enough. She pushed herself up on her elbow and kissed him soundly on the cheek. “There. You'll get the other one when I'm finished reading, and stop flattening your ears. I know you can still hear me.”

 

“Sneaky wench,” he grumbled as she opened the diary and did her best to ignore his pouting visage.

 

“ `I didn't see him the next day. He didn't come for me that night. A melancholy so deep, so encompassing, so hurtful that it pained me to breathe settled on me. All I could think of was that he was gone, and he'd taken my heart and my soul with him.' “ Kagome sighed and peeked at InuYasha. Eyes closed and features carefully devoid of any emotion at all, she couldn't tell what he was thinking as she turned her attention back to Izayoi's diary. “ `It was a week to the day when he returned. I was so stunned when I saw him standing on my balcony that I didn't know if I could believe my eyes. I'll never forget the way he looked. Bathed in the moonlight, he looked like an ethereal being, a creature of the daylight trapped in the folds of the night. I ran to him, I held him to me, and I kissed him. He told me he'd made a deal with my father. He would turn over Musashi to him in exchange for me. We left the next evening at sunset, after the wedding where I was supposed to have married Takemaru. I married him, instead, and he took me home, to his castle on the cliffs.' ”

 

InuYasha made a show of yawning.

 

Kagome rolled her eyes and found where she'd left off reading. “`We were happy. He didn't show emotion often, unless we were alone. Often hard to understand or even a little grumpy, he fought to hide his feelings behind a stoic façade. I knew better. He was passionate. I recall once, a hapless youkai wandered across our path. This inu-youkai should have recognized the Inu no Taisho and should have showed the proper respect. Instead Norimitsu insulted him for demeaning himself to keeping a human, and he nearly lost his life for the oversight. It was only later, after Ryukotsusei threatened my life that I'd ever seen him so livid, so open with his emotions, even if the emotion was hatred. Norimitsu thought to issue challenge instead. Sesshoumaru stepped in and sent Norimitsu fleeing for his life. We weren't bothered by him or any of his ilk again. They didn't dare.' “

 

Slowly, deliberately, the graceful clawed fingers wrapped over the top edge of the book and pulled it out of Kagome's hands. “H-hey!” she complained. “I wasn't finished!”

 

“Keh! You are now,” he replied in his `Don't-Even-Think-About-It' tone. “Now about that kiss . . . .”

 

Kagome made a face. “Hmm. The deal was that I could read the diary to you—”

 

“`Just a little more',” he mocked in a high-pitched tone. “And you did.”

 

“But you took it away before I finished!”

 

“Reneging on your end of the bargain? Sneaky wench.”

 

“I never said that!”

 

“Keh.”

 

“I didn't!”

 

“We ain't got all night, wench.”

 

“Hrmph!” She sat up and tried to grab his ear. He caught her wrist and pulled her close, flush against his chest. She gave a half-hearted attempt to free herself.

 

“You know what you have to do,” he goaded then blinked at her.

 

“Stop that,” she whispered.

 

He blinked again.

 

“I mean it! That's not fair.”

 

And again.

 

“InuYasha . . . .”

 

“What's wrong, Kagome? Can't stand it when I look—” blink, blink, “—at you?”

 

“Y—you—you're—I ought to purify you,” she threatened.

 

“Thought you liked me as a hanyou.”

 

She wrinkled her nose. “I thought I did, too. Go figure.”

 

His gaze narrowed but his eyes were bright. “And you say I pout?”

 

“Okay, so you know about the blinking. What're your weaknesses?”

 

“Keh! I ain't got none, wench.”

 

“None?”

 

“Not one.”

 

“Really.”

 

“Keh. Only you pathetic humans have weaknesses like that.”

 

“You're half-pathetic-human, so you've got to have at least one or two weaknesses.”

 

“And you think that if I did I'd tell you? That's a weakness right there.”

 

Kagome sighed and sat up. “So . . . I could, oh, I don't know . . . cry, and you wouldn't care?”

 

He eyed her for a moment, and she hid her smile as he sniffed for any traces of tears. “Keh. That's not a weakness. That's just annoying.”

 

“You have a weakness for having your ears rubbed, I know it.”

 

“Keh! I do not.”

 

“ 'Monk-in-Pain'-red looks good on you, InuYasha.”

 

“Keh!”

 

“So you didn't like it the other night when I rubbed your ears until you fell asleep without my diary?”

 

A devious look entered his expression, one that Kagome didn't like at all. “Where is that diary, Kagome?”

 

“Why?” she asked cautiously.

 

“Hmm? Isn't that obvious? I want to read it, wench.”

 

“Why?”

 

He shrugged. “It occurs to me that you obviously must have more than just the one weakness, being a pathetic human, sneaky wench.”

 

Sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed, InuYasha reached for the huge backpack. Kagome hugged him from behind and tried to pull him back. “Oh, wouldn't you know it? I must have left it behind!”

 

“Keh.”

 

“In fact, I might have accidentally kicked it into the fire . . . yeah, in the cave!”

 

“You're a really bad liar, Kagome . . . did you know?”

 

She let out a small cry as she nearly slipped over his shoulder and onto the floor as he leaned even further forward. He caught her, dragging her over and directly into his lap. “Falling for me, wench?”

 

Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at him. `Beautiful,' she thought vaguely, watching the gold twist around itself. In the depths of his gaze was a silent yearning, a question that he didn't dare ask her out loud. The flecks of gold tinged with silver undulated, pulsed, giving off a light, an energy of their own. Fire erupted deep inside her, shot through her body with the ebb and flow in his stare. She reached for him, tried to touch him, too close to the burn that was InuYasha. He caught her hand, held it against his heart.

 

“Kagome . . .” he whispered as his mouth dropped over hers. Her eyes fluttered closed as an explosion, a landslide of sensation pushed her forward, down the spiral into the abyss where words didn't matter, into a place where he was the only thing she knew. Her grip tightened in his hand, holding him close as his lips danced over hers. He was her weakness, the vulnerable part of her that she didn't try to hide. Everything about him whispered to her, spoke to her, called to her. She sighed as he nibbled at her jaw, tremors rolling through her as he licked at her ear. He growled softly, the sound mingling with his curious rumble. She smiled as he fell back, dragging her with him, refusing to surrender his hold on her.

 

He let go of her hand, wrapped his arms around her as he rolled, pinning her against the bed as his mouth dropped to her throat. He let his fangs rake against her as her head fell to the side. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she held him to her. His body strained against hers, the barely contained ferocity drove him nudged her onto dangerous ground. She could feel the power that flowed through him as it culminated, manifested in the way his fingers shook as he touched her, and every inch of her that he brushed against tingled with a million different fires that burned, raged, singed straight to her heart.

 

The rumbling in his throat soothed her even as his touch, his kiss, his breath on her skin goaded her further down the unexplored terrain. The exhilaration of being carried on his back through the forest as he leapt into the skies was dim in comparison to the feel of his dominance, and the shocking realization that she didn't mind it at all. She wanted this, wanted him. His hands cradled her face as he moved upward to her lips. She gasped he kissed her deeply, carefully, with a tenderness that he rarely showed, a gentleness touched her deeper than a physical caress ever could. He was the light that led her, the hand that reached for her, the strength that she needed when she felt as though there was nothing left inside her.

 

Want became an insistent ache, a necessity she couldn't express, an aspiration she couldn't articulate. The need to touch him, the burning in her body that begged for something that she knew he felt, too, threatened to consume her. Moaning softly against her lips, he murmured words that she couldn't understand. The waves of yearning crested on the tide of longing as heat collected in a central current that flowed through her. She reached for him, seeking the warmth of his skin as she tugged at his haori, his undershirt, feeling the flesh that welcomed her, he leaned into her touch. His growl was a primitive sound, tinged with longing, the combination sending more pulses of heat rocking through her.

 

He rose up on his elbows, stared into her eyes, his expression mirroring the way she felt inside. The distinct bond that she felt when she was near him—he felt it, too, and he stared at her with such wonder, such awe, as though she could hear his thoughts as clearly as she would have if he had spoken out, his fears, his indecisions were a palpable thing, a hurtful thing, a thing she didn't want him to suffer any longer. “You're beautiful, to me,” she whispered.

 

He opened his mouth to reply. She braced herself for the self-deprecation, the return to the InuYasha who hid behind his gruff exterior to force others back, to close himself away, and sudden anger that he would do that to her now surged through her. But he dropped his forehead against her shoulder, nuzzled against her neck. “Keh. You talk too much, wench,” he rasped out, his voice pleading and raw, rough and gentle, the paradoxes that were InuYasha.

 

“And you don't talk nearly enough,” she replied gently, wrapping her arms around his neck, holding him to her as she sheltered him. “Will you tell me why you want to take Musashi?”

 

He sighed and shifted so that he was flat on his back before he pulled her into his arms again. Her hand slipped under his undershirt to rest over his heart. His body trembled under her, and she smiled. “I don't want to. I have to.”

 

“But if it isn't for you then you don't need it,” she argued. “InuYasha . . . you can't be so careless. Don't you know? Can't you understand?”

 

“You're afraid I'll die? Keh! I can't be killed so easily. You know that.”

 

“I know you believe that,” she agreed softly as she pulled away from him, sat up and fought back the feeling of being completely alone. “I'm not afraid that you'd die. It's deeper than fear . . . I see it in my mind, I've seen it in my dreams.” InuYasha, lying on the blood-soaked mound of snow . . . . She closed her eyes against the image, willing it away and steadying her voice. “If you go after Musashi . . . .” Drawing a deep breath, refusing to cry when the tears made her throat ache, her eyes burn, her nose tingle, Kagome shook her head. “That's why I couldn't kiss you when you asked, InuYasha. I can't watch you do that.”

 

His frustration was thick. Radiating off him in waves, Kagome could almost see it. He sat up too, hands gripping the edge of the bed as he leaned forward. “What's the difference?” he demanded. “I've fought hundreds of youkai at one time. I've never backed down from a fight. You've never asked me to before. Why the hell now?”

 

“You've always fought to protect. You've never been the aggressor,” she answered softly. “There's a huge difference, can't you see?”

 

He didn't respond. When she dared a peek at him, she saw why. He was staring at his claws with something akin to horror. She closed her eyes, reaching out, drawing him into her embrace. `You didn't think of it that way, did you, InuYasha?'

 

Hesitantly he wrapped his arms around her waist, pacifying himself with allowing her to hold him as she stroked his hair, rubbed his back, rested her cheek against his hair.

 

They stayed that way for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

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A/N:

 

 

 

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Chronicles): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~