InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Deja-vu ❯ Deja-vu Part Two ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, Kagome, or the no-doubt adorable children they would have together if the puppy would get over himself. As for Sesshoumaru…let's just say I'm working on an angle to get me what I want…if you review nicely, I may even share.

** This will be a one-shotter, broken into three parts. **

AN: Okay, I know I've got another fic unfinished, but I ran into a little bit of `lack of inspiration' (I got this Inu/Kagome thing going on right now---probably a direct result of Sesshou overload), so decided this would be a good one-shot exercise to get the creative juices flowing again.

Deja-vu

An almost pained grimace spasmed across the handsome face of the man with her long-lost love's eyes, and Kagome felt that slim hope dashed. This was not Inuyasha, but he still seemed so familiar, somehow.

Studying the spare, elegant lines of his face, even going so far as to trace the slender arch of one brow, Kagome took in the appearance of the man before her in small detail. The smooth, refined texture of his skin, almost milky white and flawless, rang distant bells of recognition. It seemed something was missing, though, some essential, defining characteristic that would proclaim his identity regardless of hairstyle or skin color.

"You don't know who I am?"

The question, issued in an unexpectedly deep baritone voice, startled Kagome and she jumped. Blinking, she wondered at the odd undertone of disappointment in his tone, almost as if he was hurt by her failure to know him. His wording implied that they had met before.

Wracking her brain for any shred of a memory of a man with eyes the same glittering topaz as Inuyasha's, Kagome had to admit defeat. Flushing in embarrassment that she had forgotten someone who obviously remembered her, she began to shake her head. Her abrupt movement was halted, though, by the sharp narrowing of the man's golden gaze. Sensation shot through her body, nerves tripping on buried instincts urging her to flee. Something about the dangerous quality his gaze now held released a torrent of conditioned responses, adrenaline…and memories.

Pain pierced the center of her skull, and her vision was overlaid with images of one of the most powerful creatures ever to walk among humans, who had tried to kill herself and her companion several times. Images of a demon lord with a ruthless nature, inflexible sense of honor, and a strange soft spot for a small human child.

Kagome sucked in a deep breath and blinked unexpected tears from her eyes. Joy surged in her heart that she had finally found a connection to her life in the past---and it wasn't trying to kill her. Yet.

"Sesshoumaru!" she breathed, hardly daring to believe her eyes.

She waited for him to confirm her proclamation of his identity, terrified he would deny her suspicions and she would lose this new-found contact. When his gaze softened and he gave a slight nod, Kagome couldn't contain her happiness any further. Reaching up with both hands to hold his face between her palms, she levered herself as far up onto her toes as she could and planted her lips firmly against his. When she released his mouth from the exuberance of her greeting, she was once again faced with the familiar, ethereally beautiful features of the demon prince she had known five centuries ago, royal markings and all.

It was an illusion to disguise him, then, she thought absently, not fazed that Sesshoumaru would be able to perform that bit of complex magic. The man could fly, after all.

At the sight of the stoic, unflappable Lord of the Western Lands, wide-eyed with surprise at her unexpected action and a flush creeping onto his cheeks, Kagome could no longer hold back the bubble of laughter welling up in her chest. It burst forth in a silvery cascade of joyous abandon, shattering the tense atmosphere of moments ago.

The relieved young woman abandoned Sesshoumaru's lips in favor of wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest and squeezing for all she was worth. She had no fear of harming him---only of making him so uncomfortable with her touch he would dice her into small cubes for her temerity. But, she reasoned, unable to make herself heed her inner voice of self-preservation, he wouldn't have sought her out with the obvious intention of her recognizing him if he had meant to kill her. Right?

All doubts and fears of imminent blood-letting were laid to rest when she felt his hand tentatively pat her back before settling there more firmly. A small, distant part of her mind marveled that Sesshoumaru, Lord of the Western Lands, renowned throughout feudal Japan as the most ruthless and feared of demons and staunch hater of humans, was hugging her. Higurashi Kagome, a human miko.

Inuyasha would have an apoplexy if he were here to witness his half-brother touching his shard detector. At the very least there would be cursing, blood, and property damage. She grimaced to herself. Let's face it---with Inuyasha involved, there would probably also be police, Air National Guard and the Army.

Kagome's laughter increased to the point of hysteria, and before she knew it, she was sobbing into the fine silk of Sesshoumaru's no-doubt designer tie, the cost of which could probably feed a family for a month. She couldn't make herself stop, though. It had been years since she had allowed herself the luxury of a good cry, and the feel of gentle strokes of comfort up and down her back, combined with the sound of a strong heartbeat in her ear and the scent of demon, so close to Inuyasha's uniquely spicy fragrance, broke down all resistance until she didn't want to stop crying. She deserved it, damnit, and there was no one in this time who could better understand all she had endured than Sesshoumaru.

Everyone else was gone.

A wave of loss and longing so acute she felt as if her heart had been sliced from her chest washed over her. She gasped with the pain of it, and was surprised when gentle hands pushed her back far enough so her face was disengaged from Sesshoumaru's chest. Thinking she had overstepped the bounds of personal space (duh!) and irritated the emotionally repressed youkai beyond repair, Kagome made to step back from the still-enticing comfort of his presence.

A hand on her back stopped her retreat, though, and Sesshoumaru hooked a gentle finger under her chin to force her tear-washed eyes to his. The warmth in his golden gaze arrested her thoughts, and the gentle empathy and echoing pain made the sharp talons of grief clawing her chest fade into a bearable ache.

Flushing in embarrassment, Kagome dropped her eyes from that knowing, probing gaze, suddenly bewildered by the normally cold taiyoukai's unexplainable warmth toward her. Whenever she had encountered him before, he was trying to kill someone or something---though to his credit, the last several encounters his targets had been mutual enemies, not Inuyasha and her companions. This compassionate, if obviously uncomfortable, Sesshoumaru was completely outside of her experience and she suddenly didn't know what to say or do.

Kagome's shoulders drooped and she winced sheepishly at her outburst of emotion. She refused, however, to back down completely, and once again met his eyes in a locked battle of wills. Even though she was a lowly human (though the demon prince seemed to have softened his attitude somewhat toward her race), she still had her pride, damnit. So, tilting her chin up again at a defiant angle, she asked the question burning a hole in her mind.

"What are you doing here, Sesshoumaru?"

Kagome covered the faint tinge of hurt she felt that Sesshoumaru---though he had most often been an enemy, never a friend, and only at the end of their quest could he have been loosely termed an ally---had not sought her out until now. Ten long years without anyone who would truly understand all she had gone through, experienced, bled and cried for…and now, to find that Inuyasha's brother, a man who had fought at their side, had been here the entire time…!

She didn't know why she had expected him to want to seek her out. Hell, after five hundred years, it probably was difficult for him to even remember her name, if he ever had remembered it, that is. After all, five hundred years ago, she had only been addressed by him as `wench' or `human' or, if he was in a particularly benevolent mood, `woman'.

She huffed in indignation at Sesshoumaru's obvious lack of a heart, and manners, and compassion, and finer emotion---hell, of emotion at all---and sense of loyalty…the list in her mind went on and on. She was unaware her sniffs of disdain had migrated into sniffling until the object of her furious mental diatribe was suddenly crouched down before her.

He had to duck his head to get his golden eyes to meet her chocolate ones, no doubt an uncomfortable posture. Kagome was shocked that the great demon lord would deign to lower himself, and was certain she was about to be blasted by a cold lecture on over-emotional human females or some such nonsense. So, when he reached out an elegant hand to gently wipe away a tear that had escaped her control, the young woman was doubly shocked at his display.

A wry twist of his lips, tinged with sadness and almost a smile, sucked her breath away. Kagome knew her eyes were huge, but she couldn't help it.

"What?" he asked with an air of innocence, eyebrows raised slightly, though amusement colored the word and ruined the desired effect.

"You---did you just…smile?" Kagome stammered incredulously.

Her only response was a widening of that barely-perceptible smirk into something she would call a…grin.

Ooohhh! She fumed. He's teasing me, the wretch!

"Well?! When did you learn to smile?" she demanded irritably.

"It's been over five hundred years, Kagome," Sesshoumaru reminded her gently, "even this Sesshoumaru can learn something in that amount of time." He paused mischievously (mischievously?!) and said with a sly look, "Even from humans."

Not being able to produce a suitable retort to that teasing reprimand---and reminder of time's inevitable passage---Kagome instead turned her attention to the other, more important, question in her mind.

"Okay, then. But you never answered my question about why you're here," she pointed out huffily, piqued she had once again lost a point to the insufferably arrogant demon.

Instead of opening his mouth and explaining his sudden reappearance into her life, he held out his closed fist to her. Puzzled, Kagome simply looked at the striped appendage, silently filing away the information that it was his left hand---something she had last seen being sliced off by Tetsusaiga in front of Inutaisho's grave---before returning her gaze to his.

She lifted a brow and said sardonically, "Congratulations, you have your arm back," she paused a beat then, "and this explains exactly…what?"

Rolling his eyes slightly (just what exactly had he been learning from humans these past five centuries?), he turned his fist over and opened it slowly. As the lean, tapered digits unfurled, something bright and shining was revealed.

Kagome found her heart pounding unexplainably in her ears, as if it knew what lay cradled within the palm of the demon's hand, before her mind could only hazard guesses. Breath lodged in her lungs as a tiny sliver of light, glowing feebly with its proximity to her holy power, reached her wondering eyes.

A sob caught in Kagome's throat and she reached out a shaking hand to pick up the Shikon shard, marveling anew at how it glowed in pink-white purity at her touch. Raising tear-stained eyes to Sesshoumaru, she managed to choke out a single question before her throat closed with the force of her turbulent emotions.

"How?" It was a whispered plea, a prayer for confirmation of her aspirations and dreams, a demand that her heart not be broken by false hope again.

Just as surely as the shard lay in the palm of his hand, so did her heart, for this Shikon shard was the key to her happiness---but only if Sesshoumaru came by it in a very specific way.

Eyes soft with understanding, the demon lord, once an antagonist to his brother's role of protagonist, spoke the one word Kagome needed to hear above all others.

"Inuyasha," he said, the name pregnant with meaning.

Inuyasha, Kagome breathed to herself. Inuyasha. She repeated the name in an endless glowing litany of hope and happiness, unaware her lips were moving in time to the chant in her mind.

Inuyasha had given this shard to Sesshoumaru. To give to her, hoping she would go back through the well to him? Or, and her heart suddenly grew cold at the thought, had something happened to him---had he died?---and his brother was returning the shard to the Protector of the Shikon no Tama?

Something of the growing horror of her thoughts must have shown on her face, for Sesshoumaru shook her shoulder to break her free from the downward spiral she had been riding into depression.

"He gave this to me, to give to you to use," the demon lord assured her, then said hesitantly, "should you so choose, of course."

For a split second, he seemed torn between a hope that she would use it, and despair of the same, but Kagome shook it off as a result of emotional upheaval and an overactive imagination. It was ridiculous, thinking Sesshoumaru would care one way or the other if she were around or not.

"Is he all right? He's not hurt, is he? What about Kikyou? I thought he used the Shikon no Tama to make a wish? If he did, then how did he get this shard? Was it shattered again?" A truly horrifying thought occurred to Kagome, and she blurted out, "Did Naraku come back?!"

Her breathless questions were halted by Sesshoumaru's cool hand across her mouth.

"Be silent, woman!" he admonished, but his hold on her remained gentle. "Inuyasha is fine, as insolent and rash as ever," he assured the frantic woman under his touch.

"Naraku has not returned, Kikyou is still dead," for which Sesshoumaru seemed immensely relieved, "a wish was never made on the Shikon," Kagome gaped in surprise at this revelation, "but it has been broken again."

Kagome felt her shoulders slump with defeat, and all the boundless joy of moments ago drained out of her in a puddle of devastating disappointment.

So, she thought to herself bitterly, I'm needed as a `shard detector' again, nothing more, nothing less.

Kagome: Ano, TT…do you think it's safe for you to be out in the open?

TT: Huh? Sure. Why do you ask?

Kagome: *pointing over TT's shoulder at Sess bearing down them* Because he looks pretty pissed about something.

TT: Uh-oh. I forgot about his contract on `Yume'. Gotta run! I hear my mommy calling!

Sess: Woman, don't move a muscle! Where is Chapter 7?

TT: Uh, the check's in the mail…?

Sess: What human nonsense are you spouting now, wench? Have you, or have you not, finished Chapter 7? *steps close to TT and snarls threateningly*

TT: *moves toe to toe with Sess* You don't frighten me, Fluffy! I control your script---that means I can make you do whatever I want, to whomever I want!

Sess: Need I remind you, woman…you have a contractual obligation to `make me' kill something in Chapter 7 of `Yume'! *smiles evilly* Or do I have to call my lawyer?

TT: *gasps in horror and backs up hastily* No, no! I'll behave! *slinks off to computer to work on stubborn Chapter 7* Damn idols and their demands. Don't they realize I have fangirls who are demanding lemon scenes-not battles? *grumble, grumble*