InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fugue ❯ Fugue III ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

"Don't you ever get restless, just sitting around here?" Kagome asked several days later. The time was nearing midnight and she was stretched out on her stomach on the floor, idly doodling on a page of graph paper torn from the back of one of her lab books. She watched with a strange, detached interest as her pen moved across the crisp surface; behind it a long trail of ink unfurled like an endless flag. The television was flashing blue frames across the room and on the walls.

Sesshoumaru, messily dressed in his yukata and his hair nearly dried from his bath, was sprawled on the couch and staring at the television with drowsy eyes and a face so still it was difficult to tell if he was still awake or had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

For a moment he didn't respond and she thought he had in fact lost consciousness, until he stirred and the strange calm was broken, as though she had thrown a pebble into a smooth, glasslike pond. He slowly drew himself up to prop his head on his hand, like ripples moving across his still, eternal form.

"Why, miko?" he murmured. "Does it upset you to think I might be unsatisfied?"

The double-entendre, intentional or accidental, was not lost on her, and she squirmed, slightly uncomfortable. Looking back down, she saw that on the paper in front of her the line she was drawing was wavering, taking unconscious dictation from her embarrassed mind. Kagome stopped drawing and readjusted her grip. "Not really," she told him, concentrating on the paper and the pen in her hand. "But I would be a poor hostess if I did not ask you, every once in a while, if you were content with the state of affairs."

In between her answer and Sesshoumaru's response, she replayed what she had just said. Content with the state of affairs? she thought, her own voice playing flatly in her mind. I'm even starting to talk like him. She couldn't decide if this bothered her, or if she was content to be influenced. As though the volume had been turned up, the dull, muted noise of the television - some sort of inane jingle for dish detergent - danced on her nerves, and Kagome felt the muscles in her back tightening over one another in a knot of stress.

The space between them was beginning to grow again. She wondered if Sesshoumaru took a sadistic sort of pleasure in making her wait for his answers, rather than doing the courteous thing and replying right away. It was not the sort of thing she would put past him, but then again he was direct in his dealings. He dealt in taunts and threats, just like his brother. It was entirely possible, she supposed, that he took no particular joy in making her wait; it was entirely possible that he chose to think about his responses before putting them out in the open. As a creature that had lived centuries, he had probably learned to be patient.

Then again, he might have forgotten all about her. Human things, brief things, probably held little interest.

Kagome's fingers tightened around the pen, idly observing in the blue light of the television the way the skin of her fingertips turned violet and azure instead of red and white.

The fact that Sesshoumaru could still wind her tight as a drum was a marvel. Even after a few scant weeks traveling with Inuyasha she had been able to see what made him tick and discover some of the secrets that kept him angry and isolated from the rest of the world, and it was only the distance that spanned between her love and his loyalty that kept them at odds and occasionally angry at each other. Even then they could work it out by yelling and the occasional, well-placed "osuwari." How odd that even now she couldn't imagine raising her voice to Sesshoumaru - not because she hadn't thought about it, but because it still seemed suicidal.

Kagome felt even more peeved. At least with Inuyasha I didn't have to worry about getting my head melted off if I got angry at him. If Inuyasha were still alive, we would be yelling up a storm right now.

In her hand, the pen slowed to a stop. If Inuyasha were still alive... she thought again, and felt something heavy and dark slump around her heart, though she couldn't identify the feeling. Strangely, in her head, she felt only emptiness at that passing notion.

If Inuyasha were still alive, she thought, exploring the texture of the idea, I might have little quarter youkai babies right now. If Inuyasha were still alive, I probably wouldn't be in medical school. If Inuyasha were still alive, I'd blow off all my steam by fighting with him, and I wouldn't feel so tangled up in knots. A faint smile graced her lips; it was like a game, if she could ignore that queer heavy weight inside the cage of her body.

Let's see, she thought, if Inuyasha were alive, I wouldn't have said, 'I would be a poor hostess if I didn't ask you if you were content with the state of affairs.' I would have said, 'I'm just trying to be nice, you jerk.'

And Inuyasha would have said, 'I don't need you to be nice to me, I can take care of myself.'

And I would have said, 'Fine, I won't be nice ever again.'

And Inuyasha would have said, 'Fine!'

And I would have told him, 'That means no more special meals!'

And then we would have argued and felt a lot better or a lot worse, depending on the outcome and whether or not Miroku and Sango were around to smooth things over.

With care, Kagome let her head fall to the side, feeling the bones in her neck crack beneath the tension she had managed to build up merely from sprawling on the floor and speaking to the youkai on her sofa. If only she felt comfortable enough to fight with him, or he felt compelled to argue back, rather than rip her head off, life would be easier.

But we don't fight, she thought. Instead of fighting, we fuck.

That seemed to be the crux of it, except that it wasn't. Where she and Inuyasha could have done the same had it not been for the way their time together was aborted, or for the endless, agonizing albatross of Kikyou, she and Sesshoumaru came together in the dark and tumbled over each other, tangled limbs and lips, without love or hate or even any sort of mutual respect. There was something else to it, and Kagome didn't know what it was. She was afraid to study her emotions too closely, lest she find something stronger than her love for Inuyasha there.

Strange how easy it was now to stuff the guilt of betraying Inuyasha down into the dusty corners of her soul. Strange how she had felt the same when dating other men, but now it seemed so inconsequential next to other things.

Sighing, Kagome pressed her fingertips to her brow very softly, hoping to draw out the headache she could feel curling behind her eyes, coiled like a snake ready to strike.

"Perhaps," Sesshoumaru spoke, startling her out of her reverie, "you are the one who is restless, and you wish for me to feel the same?"

Blinking, Kagome realized that she had been staring straight at the same spot on her paper for more than a minute. She turned her head to look at him, feeling the sting of salt water replenishing her eyes. "That's not true, I don't want you to be restless," she said without thinking.

Without actually doing so, Sesshoumaru gave her the impression that he had heaved an exasperated sigh, and she could hear his unspoken chastisement: do not be so dense, miko.

Twisted up in frustrated annoyance again, she chewed her lip. "Well," she conceded, "perhaps I want you to be a little restless. It does get a bit boring around here."

"It grows boring everywhere," he replied, slowly pushing himself into a sitting position, like the rise of a slow motion mountain range. "Sooner or later, everything loses its fascination."

Consternation. "Not books," she said as he stood up; she rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand in order to follow his movements. "There's always more books to read." He had told her that himself only a few days ago when she had asked him whether or not he'd thought the world had grown more interesting since he'd sealed himself in the cave, and he'd replied that the world had certainly grown more loquacious. That, at least, was an improvement.

Sesshoumaru padded across the floor to stand next to her, and she tipped all the way over onto her back, feeling nervous and slightly aroused merely from his dominant stance and her supine position. He looked down at her in the dancing blue light.

"Sooner or later, one reads all the books worth reading," he said, giving her a critical look. "And then the rest are books one has read without reading, or that say things that are not new, or are inconsequential. No, books grow old, eventually."

"Fighting?" she suggested.

He snorted softly, and knelt down on one knee next to her. "Fighting loses its luster once one is the best."

Kagome tried not to look at the long seam of his yukata that pulled open between his knees, revealing the calf and the posterior curve of a muscled thigh. His silver hair was a pale blue in the light.

"Conversation," she said quickly. "Conversation doesn't get boring."

"Hmm," he remarked softly. "I suppose that it could be of interest." The way he said it seemed leaden. Kagome, stretched out on the rough carpet, stared up at him and wondered how well the years distilled knowledge of the world. How long would it take for everything to become old? she mused sadly. How long before even diversions become repetitive?

In the azure light of the darkened room, Sesshoumaru gazed down at her, and she up at him, and she could not read his face, nor the thoughts that lay hidden behind it.

Then, without preamble, Sesshoumaru scooped her up into his arms, rose, pivoted, and walked the few paces to the couch before depositing her on the cushions. It happened so quickly that she only found the time to make a surprised squeak when she hit the sofa, rolling into the cozy space where the back cushions met the seat.

"Whoah, what -?" she said, inanely.

Sesshoumaru lowered himself onto the couch, so smoothly it seemed he was caught in a controlled fall. She was half on her side, facing him as he slid a knee between hers and tucked her into the curve of his body, hiding his face in the crook of her neck and sliding an arm up her side to rest a clawed hand on her breast.

Despite the frequency with which this sort of thing seemed to occur, Kagome was shocked into silence as he curled around her and burrowed deep into the hollow created by the arch of her throat and the curve of her shoulder, breath stirring her hair. He lay half on top of her, hips against her thigh and firm leg lying heavily between her own, the hard planes of his chest pressed into her belly. He felt good and warm, and the weight of his hand on her breast felt only comforting through the thin fabric of her shirt.

He didn't seem inclined to pursue anything either, as though she were sexless. Kagome stared at the ceiling and concentrated on the soft puffs of air that curled against her neck and the spreading, relaxing warmth he provided.

After a moment, she laid a hand against his waist and closed her eyes, turning her head toward his.

She was nearly asleep when Sesshoumaru spoke.

"If it will please you, miko, you may plan an excursion," he said. "You need not worry on my account."

Kagome was instantly awake. If it would please me? she wondered. I need not worry? Is he just humoring me? Does he mean it?

She didn't know what to think. Against her stomach, she felt Sesshoumaru take a deep breath and then exhale slowly, relaxing against her.

But she was alert again, tense again, unsure why he would say such a thing. Did he care? Did he just want to keep the peace? Did he feel indebted to her? It was so difficult to know, and she would have to guess, because asking him was out of the question.

Annoyed, Kagome was suddenly resentful of his cool presence, of the weird comfort he brought her, of the way he had slipped so poisonously into her little life. If Inuyasha were alive, she thought, I wouldn't have to guess, and I wouldn't have to ask. I would know.

Sesshoumaru shifted against her, a long tendril of silver hair tumbling down to rest upon her chest. Kagome reached out and wound it between her fingers. Unbidden, but so sharply that it was almost real, she imagined that it belonged to someone else, before shoving that thought from her mind. Bad enough that she was disloyal to one memory - she didn't know if she could live with herself were she to be disloyal, even in her mind, to the memory that still breathed. And yet...

Unsettled, Kagome disengaged her fingers from his hair and drifted off into a troubled sleep.



Three days later Kagome walked into the living room to find Sesshoumaru with his legs crossed elegantly at the ankle and draped across the couch. Not bothering to ask him to move, she flopped down at the other end of the sofa and extended her legs across his, boldly claiming her own space. Glancing away from the television set, Sesshoumaru's head swiveled, eyes locking on their entwined appendages with an expression of vague horror, no doubt at her audacity. Kagome ignored him, because she had a fabulous idea.

Well, perhaps it wasn't the best of ideas. In fact, it was probably a fairly bad idea, but it would not let go of her. The moment she had awoken on the couch three days ago with a crick in her neck and Sesshoumaru snoring gently into her neck, the idea had latched its sharp, barbed talons into her brain and had hung on, despite all the rational protests she had made. She had made such silly, flighty decisions before and they tended to end in disaster; why, then, did she think that this one would end any differently?

Because, she thought emphatically, I am older, wiser, and this is just for a bit of fun. It's not like I'm holding the fate of millions in my hand. I just want to go out.

That would have been a perfectly good justification, except the parasitic thought had insisted on a certain type of outing.

Sesshoumaru was still staring in faint disbelief at her legs. The rational part of her brain, the part that always warned against too much alcohol or too little sleep, pointed out that she should probably move her limbs. Kagome ignored her brain, because what Sesshoumaru had suggested had been true: she was feeling restless.

Her skin felt too tight, as though she needed to stretch it out a bit, loosen it up and break it in. For the past three days her toes had curled in her shoes as though resenting their confinement, leaving little blisters on the tender tips, and she hadn't been able to find a place in her flat to alight. Sesshoumaru had sat, still as always, at the table or against the sofa, and watched her putter around like a house-cleaning robot on speed, polishing this or that, rearranging her meager possessions and then putting them back in their original positions. She couldn't tell whether he was laughing at her or not, and that made her more annoyed, more restless and at odds with her skin and bones, out of sync with the rhythm of her blood in her veins.

Restlessness made her reckless, too. Restlessness, she rationalized in the giddiness of her mind, kept her legs where they were. Restlessness was going to prompt her to say something in just a few moments. Restlessness was going to make her ask Sesshoumaru on a date.

Of course, he wouldn't know it was a date, but she would know what it was, though it wasn't out of any ridiculous notion of courting - no, of course not. Rationally, she had decided that the motions of a date would help her pretend to be normal for a bit, would give her the illusion that he was a semi-permanent fixture in her life rather than a creature that obeyed only his own whims. Why he wasn't gone yet was beyond her, but she was feeling more and more desperate to keep him there. He was an odd sort of company, but he was company nonetheless, and she couldn't deny the strange fear that held her in its thrall: one day she would wake up and he would be gone, and their story would be finished. Or unfinished, she couldn't decide which. Either way, her mind was made up.

"We're going to dinner and a movie," she announced, flashing him a grin.

He didn't smile back, merely arched an eyebrow. "Are we now?" he asked, sounding amused.

An unenthusiastic response, but not negative. Signs are encouraging, she thought. Proceed. Out loud, she merely replied, "Yes, we are. And you are going to not complain about the food, or I'll..." She trailed off.

Sesshoumaru arched the other eyebrow.

"... be quite upset," she finished lamely. "In fact, I might even cry." It wasn't the best of trump cards, she admitted, especially against him, but she'd once inadvertently cried herself out of a poor grade in an anatomy lab and that had been enough to remind her that sometimes weakness could be a fairly good bargaining tool. The stress had just been too much, and she'd burst into tears, prompting her professor to shift uncomfortably before telling her she could make the grade up if she came in that Saturday.

Kagome waited patiently for Sesshoumaru to say something along the lines of, "how impressive," or maybe, "go ahead," but he just looked at her with his slightly surprised expression. She forced herself not to fidget. Finally he pursed his lips.

"Hm," was all he said.

As though he had flipped a switch, Kagome suddenly felt lighter, crazier than she had in years. "Oh, good," she exclaimed, clapping her hands in what should have been an embarrassingly childish manner if she could have brought herself to care. "So we're going?"

He inclined his head. "When?" he queried, clearly either resigned or uncaring. Or perhaps that was just his normal mien, regardless of the emotions he felt. She was finding it more and more difficult to attribute any sentiments to him, because there could be so many to which he might be given, and so many more that she wanted him to feel.

Kagome imagined herself capturing little fluttering emotions, like butterflies, and pinning them to him, so that he seemed blanketed with a richly colored coat, even though underneath he stayed as pale and cool as always.

"Miko?" His voice was smooth and grave, hardly a question or prompting - merely a noise to bring her back to the present.

"Huh? Oh!" she said, startled. "Um... I guess tonight, if you feel up to it. I have a bit of money we can spend, and I know a couple of places that aren't too expensive but that aren't bad either, so... tonight?" She could hear the babbling tone in her voice, and wondered when she had become so addlepated and scatterbrained.

"That is acceptable," he said.

And like so many things he did, that brought her up short.

Oh, is it now? she wondered.

It was remarkable, really, how quickly he managed to kill her good mood, and without seeming to try at all. He hadn't insulted her or belittled her in any way, but something in the way he answered had irked her, even though the words were nothing but polite.

Perhaps that was what it was - he was almost always sparing and well-chosen in his words, never saying anything he didn't mean to say, never loud or brash, never slipping up or putting an elegant foot wrong. She drew her legs away from his, tucking her feet close to her body and leaning her knees against the back of the couch. "You don't have to go with me if you don't want to," she replied sullenly. "I know you're just going to humor me."

It was his turn to look slightly startled, as though he hadn't expected this of her, but he didn't say a word, nothing to let her know if her impression of his thoughts was correct or faulty, nothing to go on. She was captured or trapped, once again uncertain of how to proceed with him. She was running in place.

"Or you know what?" she said suddenly, all joy dissipating beneath his scrutiny and her frustration. "Let's not and say we did. In fact, I think I'm going to go out right now, and you don't have to endure my company any longer."

Why am I saying this? she wondered. What am I doing? What purpose does this serve?

She felt as though her control was slipping, the tension too much. Abruptly she stood and started to march toward the door, fully intending to leave and go for a walk, or see her mother and her family, anything to get away from the oppressive atmosphere, away from his assessing gaze.

Kagome strode by him, steps purposeful and eyes ahead when, without warning, there was a great amount of pressure on her wrist, and as she was pulled up short something sliced the thin skin on the soft underside of her arm.

"Ow!" she cried, and strangely, unexpectedly, she felt her almost-dormant powers flare weakly, reaching down through her core and grabbing her, and then just a flash of warmth and a curl of fear at the site of her pain and she was free again. The pressure on her wrist ceased and she stumbled forward.

I purified him, she thought. I just purified him.

And then, He is a demon. He really isn't like me.

In her mind's eye, Kagome watched as she burned away so many demons, like so many insects, as if they were nothing. In her mind's eye, she seared the flesh of the spider, she immolated his limbs and his organs, consumed his bones with her pure powers. And Sesshoumaru, this creature that looked almost like a man, whom she had invited into her home and her life and her body, was made of the same stuff as those horrifying demons, as Naraku who had nearly devoured the world.

As though moving through a thick glue, she turned her head to find the youkai staring at her with a look of consternation, or surprise, or annoyance - even now, I can't tell which, she thought, weirdly giddy - holding his hand at an odd angle, as if he'd been burned.

She thought of all the people he had crushed, just like she had crushed lesser demons.

Kagome wondered what her life expectancy was.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean - I didn't know..."

Sesshoumaru transferred his gaze to his hand as she burbled an apology, even now feeling weirdly guilty for hurting him. She hadn't meant to, she didn't want to, it was a mistake, and so on.

"Please, I'm sorry, it was an accident - "

"It is already healed," he said, cutting her off.

Uncertain and feeling weak, she took a step forward, and then she was suddenly whirled around to face away from him, suddenly locked in his arms against the cage of his body, and he held her so tight she found it hard to breath.

She didn't struggle as he slid his fingers down her arm to the palm of her hand, and she watched, as if in a trance, as he slowly pressed the claw of his thumb into the yielding flesh there.

When he broke the skin, she hissed in pain and a pure light lanced out, wrapping around his fingers, burning him. He jerked away.

Unreasoning worry gripped her, irrational and crazy, as though he were a man who had just pressed his fingers to a hot stove. "Let me see," she begged, ignoring the bleeding of her own hand, reaching for his.

"It is already healed," he repeated dazedly, as though he couldn't believe that it had happened in the first place. "But it hurt." And then, "Nothing ever hurts."

She couldn't believe him. She'd destroyed so many youkai with her powers, had never meant to do this to him, because there had to be something about him that was different.

But her reaction had been instinctual; she was a miko and he was a youkai and there was no changing that.

Her chest hurt horribly. "We should put something on it," she pleaded, babbling, letting concern and platitudes fill her mouth as her mind reeled and the universe splashed around her. "I have burn cream," she told him, as if that made any difference.

He allowed her to capture his hand and bring it to her face, inspecting the damage. Of course, there wasn't any damage, because he could no longer be wounded. Immortal, invincible, and not bound by laws or science or what she had always been told was reality. He was eternal, and she was just a human thing, simply smoke on the wind; she was in the arms of a god, a spirit, a demon, and it wasn't romantic or beautiful or thrilling.

It was painful.

In thought, in action, in knowledge, in memory, in a thousand tiny ways, she was suddenly in agony knowing what he was, and what she was. The miko and the youkai, and she had welcomed him in, needed him, desired him for whatever reason, even though he wasn't human. She'd thought such a thing didn't matter to her, but suddenly it did. It mattered a lot.

Because inside his skin, inside that face, was a dog. A white dog, with red eyes, and a heart that beat differently from her own. Can youkai feel joy, or pain? she wondered distantly. Can they be wise, and good? Merciful? Was everything I saw from Kouga, or Shippou, or Myouga just a whim, a fancy, self preservation, or did they really care about me, or anyone besides themselves?

She was beginning to shake. Youkai, she thought.

I am human, and he is youkai.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that this revelation didn't change a thing. Even now a lance of desire was cutting a swathe through her suffering. Even now, he elicited a reaction from her, just by being near. Even now, she still didn't want him to leave her.

Kagome thought of the hanyou boy, the not-quite-human boy she'd loved and lost, and the friends she'd loved and lost, and the adventures she'd hated and loved and cursed and lost that left her a cripple in the world, more alone than if she were the only person in the universe, and her fingers tightened on the taught cords of muscle in the forearm of the demon that held her to him.

She only remembered the sting of her own flesh when the metallic scent of blood hit her nose, but Sesshoumaru seemed to not smell it, or not care that he did; he made no move to help her, or staunch the trickle that flowed over the pale skin of her forearm.

He was still looking at his undamaged hand.

"Fascinating," he said, calmly.

Kagome did not know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

They didn't go out to dinner and a movie that night.

Instead, Kagome locked herself in the bathroom and drank so much whiskey she almost killed herself.



There once was a hanyou.

He was giving her a look again, that nothing to see here look that she hated. It made him appear suspicious and unhappy, angry, just like he'd been for the first few months of their acquaintance, even though now she loved him and he cared for her and they were so close to the end. Everyone could taste it, and it was sour. They had one fragment, and it was almost time for the curtain to go down, although no one knew whether or not they were starring in a tragedy or a comedy.

"I like it," she said, out of the blue. "So don't look at me like that."

Inuyasha looked startled. "What? I didn't say anything!" he snapped. He was always extra peevish when he was human, that one night of the month.

"I could hear you thinking it," she told him. "And I think you look just fine as a human."

He made a half-growl in his throat that wasn't anything but a long, angry scratch across his vocal chords. He always sounded slightly silly when he tried to growl in his human form, and Kagome had to stifle the unkind giggle that still tickled her when she heard it. She couldn't help it - it was just so incongruous coming from him when he was human. "That's not what I was thinking," he told her huffily, turning away.

My, we're feisty tonight, she thought. "That doesn't make it untrue," she replied, and then lifted her gaze to the stars.

"Keh!" she heard him say.

High above her, the cosmos twinkled like a field of white flowers tossed in a late summer breeze, as though the sky had leaned down and kissed the earth and stolen away some of her marvels. Kagome wished for a falling star to wish upon, so that she could do her own small part in keeping her friends safe. Even if she wasn't the best fighter, she could still wish them all well. She could do that much at least.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes while the sky slowly filled up with stars, until it was brimming over, the band of the galaxy shining like a faceted crystal ribbon.

Kagome was the first to break the silence. "Say, Inuyasha..." she said, just to grab his attention.

"What now?" he said.

"What were you thinking of?"

"Keh!" he snorted again. "None of your business!"

The ghost of a smile flitted across her face. Even now, so many months after they had first met, he was sometimes reluctant to open up. It was just part of his nature, she supposed, but someday she'd crack him.

She continued to stare up at the sky.

"Kagome?"

"Mm?" she said, tone noncommittal despite the sudden pause in her breath at an overture from him. "What is it, Inuyasha?" she asked when he didn't continue, hoping he hadn't reconsidered his impulse to speak.

"Were you really thinking that I look okay?"

She did smile then. "Mm-hm," she answered.

She heard him give a half-sigh, half-snort. "I was thinking..." he said, trailing off.

Kagome waited patiently, willing her heart to slow. There was always that foolish hope, that little schoolgirl hope at the edge of her mind, that he was thinking of how much he loved her. On the other hand, he had looked so grouchy earlier that perhaps that wish was not the best one to be wishing for at that particular moment. You should just wish that he is happy. You should just want him to think content thoughts, she said to herself, her own chastisement, aimed at keeping her expectations low. Even if she wished upon a star, all the love and impossible hope in the world would not erase the past.

She could still hope, though. She always had that.

"I was thinking..." he said again.

Kagome turned to him. "You don't have to tell me," she told him. "It's okay." And then she smiled the most reassuring smile she could muster.

He blinked back at her, confused, and then shadowed again. He always looked full of shades and phantoms when he was thinking of Naraku, and how weak he was when he was a human, how he was unable to protect his friends. Inuyasha was, in many ways, a very uncomplicated boy. He didn't like his weakness to be on display, but then again, who did?

Kagome sighed and turned back to the stars before gasping and grabbing his hand. "Look!" she cried, pointing. "A shooting star!"

"Huh?" he responded, slow on the uptake.

"Make a wish!" she demanded before closing her eyes and wishing, with all her might, that she and her friends would make it safely to the end of the story.

When she opened her eyes she glanced over at the boy, the human boy, at her side. "Did you make one?" she asked him eagerly.

Inuyasha shook his head.

"You're no fun," she pouted, releasing his hand and propping her chin on her hand in a peevish posture.

Inuyasha didn't respond. Instead, he brought his hand to his face, inspecting it, and Kagome suddenly realized what she had asked him, what she had told him to do.

Make a wish, she'd demanded, just like Kikyou had told him to do, just like everyone was expecting him to do. Would he use the Shikon no Tama to make himself into a full demon, or would he use it to become human, a pure wish that would cause it to vanish from the realms of men and youkai?

Suddenly Kagome was impressed with the awesome burden she possessed. She could not allow him to become a full demon, but how could she ask him to become human? How could she stop him, when he had suffered so much for it?

The unfairness of it all suddenly weighed her down, looped through her heart like an iron chain and anchored her to the depths, and Inuyasha never breathed a word to her of the turmoil inside him. He just studied his human hand in the shimmering light of the stars, and said nothing.

And Kagome wished it would all go away.



She woke up in the early morning hours to find Sesshoumaru laying next to her in bed and staring at her, one hand propping his head up, his silver hair dripping through his clawed fingers and his golden eyes almost glowing in the darkness. It wasn't the most comforting of sights she'd seen upon waking, and she landed hard in consciousness, as though the dreaming had kicked her out of the car and the painful street outside had jolted her back into reality.

"Holy god," she gasped, jerking away from him. "Do you always stare at people when they're sleeping?"

Despite the fact that the room was in shadow, she could see quite clearly that Sesshoumaru gave her a sardonic look, as though he had found some black amusement in her words. "Only," he replied, "when I wish to ascertain that they are not, in fact, dead."

Kagome blinked. "What?" she asked. She blinked again, trying to figure out why Sesshoumaru would be watching her sleep in order to make sure she hadn't kicked off in the night.

He was giving her what could only be described as a disappointed glare. "You did a foolish thing," he told her. "I was keeping it from becoming a fatal thing."

She was so confused, couldn't think straight. She felt fine, though a little tired and definitely a little warm. She kicked the covers off. "What are you talking about? I'm fine," she told him, and then yawned mightily. Suddenly it was a struggle to keep her eyes open.

He didn't elucidate. "Yes," he said finally after a critical silence, "you are probably well enough now. I will let you sleep."

"You'd better," Kagome mumbled and turned over, away from him. She didn't even feel him shift as he settled in, as she was asleep again the second her eyes closed.

The next thing she knew the door closed in her ear and she was cheek to porcelain on the toilet, staring straight at the contents of her stomach, which as far as she could tell had been whiskey, whiskey, and a side order of whiskey.

She didn't blame Sesshoumaru for closing the door. It reeked in the bathroom, an acrid, sour stench that made her stomach heave again. Coughing, eyes streaming, Kagome opened her mouth and let a thin stream of bile trickle down the pristine white porcelain. This went on for a while.

After about thirty minutes she thought she felt well enough to flush and sit up. Her belly lurched a little, but seemed to have settled down just enough for her to lean against the wall. Wiping dried vomit from her crusted nostrils, Kagome tried to assess the situation through the strange cobwebs that obscured her memory.

It felt like someone had rammed a wire brush down her throat and scrubbed it raw, and the muscles in her abdomen were so sore she wondered if she hadn't done a sit-up regimen in the past 12 hours. It wouldn't surprise her, as she could not, in fact, remember anything that had happened since... yesterday?

A little rope of fear coiled around her throat. There was a hole in her memory; she'd wiped it clean with alcohol, and she couldn't remember anything beyond standing in the living room with blood trickling down her wrist.

Moving slowly, Kagome brought her hand to her face in order to inspect the tiny wounds that Sesshoumaru had made, only to find that someone - probably herself - had cleaned and bandaged them. She just hoped she'd done it before she'd started drinking. Who knew what she could have forgotten to do while under the influence. Which brought something else to mind.

Why did I do that? The questioned hovered in front of her eyes, at the forefront of everything. Shame and regret crowded in. Why did I do that?

Youkai, her mind answered, and she remembered that she was alone, and no amount of wishing or pretending would change that.

With a tired effort, Kagome pulled herself to her feet and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked terrible; her eyes were crusted, there was snot on her face, bile hanging at the corner of her lips, oil all over her skin and straw in the place of her once passable hair. She looked thinner, too, unhealthy like a cancer patient. She was a jumble of pieces that didn't quite fit, too much and too little for the body she was in.

"I'm falling apart," Kagome whispered, and her reflection echoed the words back to her. No one in his right mind would mistake her for Kikyou now; the priestess had been beautiful, and she looked like something the cat dragged in.

Cat, her mind whispered.

"Oh, shit, I hope I didn't forget to feed Kirara," she said to herself, guilt compounding and weighing, if possible, more heavily than before. "Shit, shit, shit."

Balancing was hard, and she made it as far as the door of her bedroom before she paused to catch her breath and wait for the world - and her stomach - to slosh back into some semblance of steadiness. Shit, shit, shit, she chanted miserably to herself. She wondered if Sesshoumaru was in the habit of mercy killings.

She placed a hand on the door and let it swing open, into the living room. Kagome kept her eyes averted from the room. "Um, excuse me," she said. Her mouth was dry and her tongue was swollen and sticky in her mouth. Dehydrated, her mind supplied. She heard a shifting in the spaces in front of her and knew that Sesshoumaru was turning his attention toward the door, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him. She just wanted her skin to melt and her bones to turn to ashes, and to seep down into the carpet, never to be seen again. "Did I feed Kirara last night?" she asked, mouth running on automatic.

"Yes," he answered.

She nodded. The silence descended again, and outside she heard a police siren wail. Licking her lips, she swallowed hard and tried to fill up the gap that refused to be closed. "Good. I'm, um... going to take a shower."

There was a pause. "Good," he replied.

Burning with humiliation, Kagome retreated into the bathroom and shut the door. Bending, she turned on the water in the sink and swirled water over her face, feeling a sense of déjà vu before turning to the tub and drawing a bath of lukewarm water.

Gingerly she lowered herself into the water, but her nausea seemed to have dissipated for the time being, and she was able to clean herself without much trouble. It felt good to scrub off the sticky sweat and rank oil that clung to her skin, and she fancied that her body had hated the toxins she had put into it so much that it had expelled them in any way possible. Together, the water on her body and the fragrance of the soap in her nose combined to make her feel refreshed enough to rise from the tub with dripping hair and wrap herself in one of her threadbare towels. With care, she squeezed the excess dampness from the thick tresses that hung down her back before she slowly and gently ran a comb through them.

What I need now, she thought, is some time. Time to rest, and sleep, and just shut up for a while.

Had she always been this sick? Had she always been so tired and sad? Why didn't someone say something? Why didn't they take her to the hospital, or try to save her? Did she hide it too well, or did they just assume she was normal?

She dried her hair and dressed herself in a shirt and dark skirt. Then she stripped the bed, gathered her laundry and all of Sesshoumaru's clothes and went down to her car, not even bothering to speak to the silent youkai who sat in her kitchen, staring out the window at the brick wall, uninterested in her or in anything she did.

It was probably just as well. At least Sesshoumaru didn't pretend to care. At least he wasn't a liar, like everyone else.



A warm, gentle hand on her shoulder, and the scent of lavender woke her from her nap on the kitchen table at the shrine. "Mama?" she mumbled, cracking open one eye. The soft face of her mother looked down at her with an ignorant compassion that made Kagome's brain hurt to look at it.

"Kagome," her mother said, "why didn't you call? I would have come home early from my shopping trip to see you."

See me? her mind asked. It was such a bitter thing, and Kagome refused to dwell on it.

She had been dreaming, but she'd forgotten upon waking. Pushing herself into a sitting position, Kagome passed a hand over her forehead and across her eyes, trying to wipe away the confused visions that faded with each passing moment: silver hair, the white flash of a throat, blue eyes and brown eyes and grey skies and a man that she could only remember in silhouettes and silly songs.

Her mother was still speaking. "...Souta's not here, and your grandfather went straight to his room. If you want to go say hello to him before he falls asleep, I suggest you hurry." She was bustling about the kitchen, putting away packages of noodles and putting milk in the refrigerator. "He falls asleep the second his head hits a pillow these days, the poor man."

Poor man, her head repeated softly.

"...and I know I said you don't have to call to come over and do the laundry, but I wish you would. We hardly ever see you these days."

These days. "Sorry," she mumbled. Her stomach was upset again, though she couldn't tell if it was because she was hungry or nauseous. Maybe a bit of cold rice would do her good.

Groggily, Kagome reasserted herself, tried to ascertain where she was and when she was. Her last load of laundry was in the dryer - she could hear the clunking of clothes and sheets tumbling over each other in the machine - and she felt an exhausted gratitude that she would be able to leave soon, and a flash of tired frustration that she couldn't just tell her mother that she wanted to be alone. That would be rude, and the only thing she knew about herself at that moment was that she was a polite girl, who always minded her manners and her elders. Long ago, her mother had told her that she was a girl who did the right thing, but that girl had disappeared with dreams deferred and loves lost, and she didn't know how to go back.

She didn't know if she would go back to being that girl, even if she could.

Her mother was still puttering. Weirdly, she noted that her mother had gained weight and was aging into a matronly woman who would make a good grandmother, even though it was highly unlikely that either she or Souta would have children any time soon. But in the meantime, she would continue on being her mother. Kagome's head ached to think of all the times her mother had gone through those exact same motions, over and over again, like a robot on a broken record. Pick up sauce, put in cupboard, bandage skinned knee, pat daughter on head, placate father, do laundry, do cleaning go, to store, pick up rice, put in cupboard - lather, rinse, repeat. Record, play, rewind, record, play, rewind, for years and years and years.

"Mama?" she said suddenly, startling herself with the words. Something had removed the filter from her brain to her mouth, and Kagome listened to the things that tumbled out as her mother turned away from the sink, an expression of surprise on her face.

"Mama," Kagome repeated, "what do you remember most about Papa?"

Surprise! she thought. Didn't know you were going to say that, did you?

No, she replied to herself, in the weary calm of her mind. No, I didn't.

Across from her, her mother pulled out a chair and sat down, folding her hands in front of her on the table. "Well," she said quietly, "I'm not quite sure."

Kagome waited patiently, because it was too much effort to open her mouth and ask again, while her mother put one clear lacquered fingernail against her powdered chin, and thought to herself.

"I suppose," she said, after a while, "I remember his voice the most."

"His voice?" Her mouth formed the words without her go-ahead.

Her mother, ignorant of Kagome's newfound lack of control, smiled and nodded. "He had a wonderful voice, and he loved to sing. Did you know he used to be in the choir at his high school, just like you? And he starred in plays and sang so sweetly that I always felt just a little superior, knowing how lovely his voice was and how attractive it made him to everyone else. But he chose me, and I chose him, so I had that voice all to myself, and then I shared it with you two." Her mother refolded her hands and twiddled her thumbs. Kagome watched as she focused on her restless fingers, but knew that her eyes gazed far away. Perhaps her mother was remembering how her father's hands had felt on her own, or how his voice had sung to her so gently when they were together.

These are things the world never needs to know.

"Do you have a recording of it?" Kagome said, suddenly.

Her mother shook her head, and a glossy lock of black hair, now streaked with a little gray, fell into her eye. "No. But that's all right. I loved his voice so much that it was almost separate from him; I remember it the most because of all the things about him, I loved it the most."

The most. The thought drifted across her mind. What did I love the most? Why can't I remember? At the edge of her hearing, the buzzer on the dryer snarled, signaling the end of a cycle.

"By the way, Kagome," her mother said, leaning in, the lavender scent now florid and sickly-sweet, heavy and nauseating, caught in her throat and nose. "Whatever happened to that young man you were interested in? Did he ask you out? Did you go on a date with him?" She was leaning heavily on her elbows, her forearms pushing her breasts together in fleshy mounds, and the little conspiratorial smile she had plastered on her face looked obscene, as though she were leering, in anticipation of something carnal.

It took a long moment for Kagome to remember that she had told her mother she was having boy problems. Boy problems! As if that was all they were! She had more problems than that. So many more problems. Why do you want me to find someone new, Mama? she wanted to say. Why do you think that would do me any good? Didn't you see how desperate and needy I was with Yoshi? Didn't you see how sad it made me to move on? Why couldn't you have remembered with me, instead of telling me to forget?

A memory passed across her mind then, ephemeral and pale, of herself at seventeen years old, staring at the scarred wood of Goshinboku while her mother chastised her for being so self-centered, so obsessed with the things she couldn't change. And her mother had been so gentle in her admonishments, had scolded her daughter with such tender care that it hurt just that much more. Kagome could feel the breeze and the smell of springtime wafting across her face. I met Inuyasha in springtime, she almost told her mother, but that was something that had to be locked away, only drawn out in private now. She couldn't be a slave to the past, her mother said, but how could it be any other way?

Remember only the beginning, not the end, Sesshoumaru had told her.

But where do memories end? she wanted to know. Where do they stop?

"Kagome?" her mother said, and she was reminded of where she was.

Kagome looked away as she rose from the table to gather her laundry and flee the shrine. "What happened with him?" she repeated, so drained that it was a chore to even breathe. Out of the corner of her mind, her mother's concerned face suddenly frowned, twisted in worry, but it was too late, too late.

"Nothing happened with him," she told her mother. "Nothing at all."



Her laundry was still in her car, getting wrinkled, but Kagome didn't really care. She'd driven back to her flat and parked, but she'd left the car there, instead grabbing her purse from the passenger seat and climbing out to go to the grocery store. The walk was a short one, not at all arduous, and she was now walking among the aisles, basket in hand filling up with so many packages of instant soup she might as well have been fifteen again and preparing to leave for more rustic times.

She stocked up on condensed juice as well, and vitamins to supplement her diet. She bought a few bottles of water to be filled and refilled, and on a whim she grabbed a tube of strawberry lip gloss. It had been so long since she'd painted her face and tried to make herself pretty that the smell of the cosmetics turned her stomach a little all over again, although that might have been an aftereffect of the whiskey.

Kagome paid for her purchases and walked out of the store, and into the Tokyo afternoon. It was a nice day, but for some reason she was finding it difficult to appreciate the warmth of the sun or the smell of summer. It was as though she were tied to the world with the thinnest of tethers, as if she were bound to the earth through only the slightest of chains.

This is me, Kagome thought as she waited for the light to change so she could cross the street. This is me being normal. This is me at an intersection, waiting for a light to turn green so I can walk.

She'd never had to wait for a stupid light to change when she had been younger. When I was young... but I'm to young to think, 'when I was young,' aren't I? Maybe I should amend that to, 'when I was happy.' This is me, thinking of when I was happy.

It had been almost a month since she'd last put foot to unpaved ground, on a mountainside. School was going to start again, soon.

This is me, in modern Japan, thinking of the countryside.

All this had been so empty when she was younger and happier, and it had been so clear and fresh and new then as well. Now, someone jostled her elbow. Kagome heard them mutter an apology, but it seemed too much effort to acknowledge it, so she pretended not to notice. A car passed in front of her, and she noticed the occupant inside, a reasonably good-looking young man, checking her out.

You don't know me, she fancied sending him a message, telepathically. You don't want me. This is me, an island in the ocean. This is me, alone in a crowd.

Kagome stared at the pavement under her toes and noticed, beneath the sun, that it glittered slightly, as though there were pieces of some kind of crystal trapped in the concrete. She let her eyes unfocus, noticing how the world blurred around her. Someone jostled her again, and she thought, This is me, invisible.

"Miss? Miss?" A hand touched her elbow, and Kagome moved away and looked up. A teenage boy was looking at her with concern. "Miss, are you all right?" he asked, taking a step forward.

"What? Oh, yes," she answered blinking as her vision cleared and noticing that she was all alone on the corner.

"Only, the light changed, and you didn't move," the boy said, then cocked his head and frowned. "Are you sure you're okay? Are you crying?"

Startled, Kagome's hand flew to her face, and her fingers brushed against a wetness on her cheek.

"I have been crying," she said in wonderment, as though she hadn't shed a tear in her life. "I have been crying." The boy took another step toward her, and she panicked. Don't touch me, she thought. Escape. And she turned away, not even thanking him, and hurried across the street as the light turned red.

This is me, going home, she thought, and she went home. Sesshoumaru sat on the sofa again, where he always did, reading a book, and she puttered around, just like her mother, putting away the excess of groceries, placing bottles in the refrigerator, stowing things in cupboards. I won't have to leave this flat for a long time, she thought.

She went down to the car and got her laundry, hauled it up the stairs. Once inside, she locked the door behind her before dragging the clothes into the closet and folding them up, draping them over hangers. She put the sheets on the bed as well, but declined to pull the comforter up and cover the clean linens. There wasn't anyone she needed to impress anyway.

When she was done, Kagome went into the living room and found her cell phone. The battery was only half-charged, and she turned it off completely. As almost an afterthought, she hid it in the teakettle. Then she walked over and stood in front of Sesshoumaru.

He didn't acknowledge her immediately. Kagome didn't really care - it wasn't as if she was going anywhere - and took the opportunity to study him. She imagined him with his hair pulled back elegantly, with gold-rimmed reading glasses perched on his nose. In her mind, he looked good; he looked good no matter what.

Sesshoumaru seemed to finish the paragraph he had been reading, and let the book fall gracefully into his lap, the pages closing on one long, elegant finger.

"Yes?" he asked.

If Inuyasha were still alive, she said to herself, the answer to this question would be 'no.'

"Do you think I am weak now?" she asked him. It wasn't an urgent question, more out of idle curiosity than anything, and his answer wouldn't have any impact on how she felt. Yes, no, maybe, you've always thought I was weak, none of that matters. Just answer me.

He gazed up at her, and she thought she saw something glitter in his eyes. "Why do you ask?" he finally said.

Kagome laughed. She couldn't help herself.

She was so past caring, it didn't matter anyway. Without hesitation, she reached out and ran a finger along his cheek, tracing one of the stripes that graced his skin. "I really love your markings," she told him. I really love your markings, and your hair. I love your eyes, and your voice. And that is all I will allow myself to love about you.

But I do love them.

Sesshoumaru looked at her for the endless moment it took for her to run down the length of one stripe.

Then he smiled, and it was small, but real and utterly breathtaking. Turning his head toward her hand, he caught her finger between his teeth, and swirled his tongue over it, sucking gently, pulling at her skin, tugging at her. Kagome felt the sensation all the way down to her toes.

Throwing caution to the wind, she knelt in front of him, and he followed with his eyes, still sucking on her fingertip, the book on his lap forgotten.

Gently, she tugged her hand away from him and began to unbutton his shirt, revealing the flesh beneath. She was so hungry, so empty, and he looked so good that she placed her hands on his knees and parted his thighs, relishing the warm sigh that slipped from between his teeth as her fingers traced upwards, toward his waist. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his chest, to the shining white marble skin there. She let her tongue escape and taste him.

He tasted like rainwater. He smelled like lightning.

Beneath her spread hands, his hips flexed upwards, stroking against her stomach.

"Ssh," she whispered. She thought he gave a small laugh, but it was quickly strangled by the groan in his throat when she brushed her knuckles against his erection before moving to his waist and unbuttoning his trousers.

His hands were on her upper arms, clenching convulsively in time with the slight movements of his pelvis.

He was needy beneath her, his glassy eyes drifting closed, head lolling on his suddenly limp neck, little sounds of desire escaping his throat.

Kagome felt powerful. I love the way you look when I do this, she thought. Slowly she parted the teeth of his zipper, one by one, as she leaned in and slid the tip of her tongue over one cheekbone, chasing the tiger-stripe into his hair, fingers chasing the seam of his trousers down between his legs.

When she took him into her mouth, she felt him jump against her tongue, felt him tangle his hands in her hair, and she wrapped a hand around the base of his shaft and moved in time with his helpless thrusts. When she whimpered, he jerked and came, hot and salty and sickly sweet, and she lapped it all up. I love that I can do this to you. I don't know why I can, but I love it anyway. This is what I will remember.

He was collapsed backwards, clothing askew and eyes closed, and Kagome kissed a trail up his body to his ear. She took his hands in her own and pulled him off the couch. Sesshoumaru followed her into the bedroom, and Kagome locked the door behind them.



There once was a resurrected girl.

Rin was bright and golden and her soul shone through her eyes like the sun shining down through the boughs of orange and red leaves in the forest where they hid from the horde of base youkai Naraku had spat forth.

Kagome was breathing hard, her heart pounding a staccato rhythm behind her sternum, and her fingers were numb and cold despite the warmth of the autumn day. Not even the sun could warm her now, because today was the end, and she was so nervous she thought she would faint. She probably would faint if she didn't stop gulping in huge drafts of air. Through sheer willpower, she slowed her breathing and smiled at the little girl next to her. She had to be strong for Rin-chan at least, if not for herself. The bow she carried felt awkward against her back, so she unslung it and pulled an arrow from her quiver as she tried to give the little girl a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry," she said. "We'll be safe here."

Rin just looked up at her and smiled hugely. "Mm-hm," she answered. "Sesshoumaru-sama won't let those monsters come after us!"

There was that weird faith again. From the first dumbfounding moment when the little girl had cried out the name of Inuyasha's brother and followed him into the forest, all glimpses of her had been incidental and fleeting, but she'd always been at Sesshoumaru's side, or in the presence of Jaken, or on the dragon that Sesshoumaru sometimes rode. For his part, Sesshoumaru never seemed to acknowledge her at all, but she acted as though he hung the stars in the sky, or made the sun rise every day.

Kagome couldn't understand it. Had the child just started following him one day, and he had allowed it? Had he thought she would make a good pet? Why was she with him? Perhaps, she thought, slightly uncharitably, she's a little daft. I wonder if you can smell crazy when you're an inuyoukai. Maybe he took pity on her crazy little brain. Kagome shook her head at the thought. Rin didn't seem crazy, and besides, pity and Sesshoumaru simply did not dwell on the same plane of existence. She'd never seen an ounce of mercy from him that he didn't pass off as something else - duty, or expediency, or anything but compassion.

Behind them, something rustled. Kagome decided to move on. She grabbed Rin's hand and they forged on ahead, Rin jumping nimbly alongside her despite her long yukata, and branches whipping against Kagome's bare legs, slowing her down. God, I would kill for a pair of jeans right now, Kagome thought.

"Don't worry!" Rin panted next to her as they cleared a particularly upstanding root, "Sesshoumaru-sama will save us!"

"I don't think... we should count on that!" Kagome huffed. She had no idea where they were, but as long as it was away, she was happy.

"Take the girl," Inuyasha screamed, "and get out of here!" Thick miasma oozed across the ground, toward them. Inuyasha was already coughing, Sesshoumaru and Jaken had leapt away, and Miroku and Sango stood inside a barrier - Kagome didn't need to be told twice. She grabbed Rin and fled.

Please, let them be safe, Kagome prayed. Gradually she let herself come to a stop, and strained to hear any movement around them over the sound of their breathing. After a minute, no noise had met her ear. She collapsed, arms bracing her against the ground.

"Kagome-sama!" Rin cried. "Are you all right?"

Kagome nodded as well as she could between panting breaths. "I'm okay," she gasped. "I'm just so tired."

"It's okay!" the little girl said. "We'll be all right. I promise."

Her faith was so touching. Kagome had to know.

"Rin," she said a moment later, after she had regained her breath. "Why do you follow Sesshoumaru?"

The little girl blinked, as though confused by the question. Kagome tried to rephrase it. "I mean, how did you meet?"

Rin giggled. "We met in a forest. I took care of him when he was sick," she said, guilelessly.

"And he let you take care of him?"

The little girl shook her head. "He didn't like it, but he couldn't move. He was really sick."

"And then...?"

The bright eyes suddenly became shadowed, and Rin squatted down next to Kagome, grasping her knees. Very gently, she began to rock back and forth. "Then he took care of me," she whispered.

There was something there, something dark and horror-filled that she remembered, but Kagome had to know. She was feeling the edge of the story, a piece of the puzzle snapping into place. "You were sick, too?" Kagome asked gently.

Rin shook her head, still rocking.

"You were alone?"

She nodded. "But that wasn't it," she whispered.

Back and forth, back and forth, and it seemed to Kagome that someone had turned off a light, and she knew.

She died, and he brought her back to life, she thought.

Back and forth, back and forth the little girl rocked, and it was a pitiful thing to see.

"But now you live with him, after he took care of you?" she said, desperate to stop the rocking, desperate to wipe away the look of quiet terror on the little face.

"Yes," she answered. "Yes, yes, yes, yes - "

Gently, Kagome laid her hands on Rin's thin shoulders. "It's okay now," she crooned. "It's okay, I promise."

There was a rustling in the trees, and Kagome felt a curl of panic again. "Rin-chan," she said firmly, "we have to move on."

The little girl squeezed her eyes shut.

"Rin-chan? Rin-chan! We have to go!"

Then Rin opened her eyes and Kagome peered into them, and it was like looking through a hole in the universe - dark, and empty, and deep.

"I wish Sesshoumaru-sama were here," the little girl whispered, and then something was rustling right over Kagome's shoulder and she didn't even hesitate. She scooped up the child and ran, and over and over Rin whimpered in her ear, like a mantra, like a cry to heaven, "Sesshoumaru-sama, Sesshoumaru-sama, Sesshoumaru-sama, I wish Sesshoumaru-sama were here - "

Me, too, Kagome thought, listening to the sounds of pursuit closing in behind them. Me, too.

She ran on into the forest.



The next morning Kagome gazed, sleepily, half-satiated and half-aroused, at Sesshoumaru's elegant, delicate fingers. She was sleepy and satiated because she hadn't slept a wink, too busy with the business of tangled limbs and twisted sheets to dip into slumber, and she was aroused because that elegant hand - with its elegant claws, rotating on its elegant, striped wrist - that hand she was watching was stroking her breast in small, skimming circles.

Those circles were making her mouth water, slowly driving her crazy, but she was so relaxed she couldn't bring herself to make a move. Long, bright yellow squares of beautiful morning sunshine splashed across the bed, making the whole room glow with the dawn. Kagome especially liked the halo of reflected light from Sesshoumaru's hand moving across her skin. It was a nice side effect of his extremely pleasurable diversion.

Sesshoumaru was also watching, with sleepy eyes, his own fingers, as though he had no control over them as they traced those slow, sexy circles. Kagome noted with a strangely clinical observation that while Sesshoumaru's true form might be that of a giant white dog, he still held that same bizarre fascination with the female breast that all men seemed to possess. She, herself, could not see what was so great about them - they bounced, they flopped, they got in the way when one wished to sleep on one's stomach - but if he kept doing that, then oh, she might be convinced they were the greatest thing since... ever.

The hand he was using was his left. It was the one that Inuyasha had so cruelly chopped off with Tessaiga. Granted, Sesshoumaru was trying to kill them at that point, but Kagome felt, now, with those warm, enchanting fingers dancing across her skin, that it was terribly cruel of Inuyasha to do such a thing. Chopping off this hand had been a crime.

I love this hand, Kagome thought.

A fingertip caught her nipple, sending a jolt of languid electricity straight down to the apex of her thighs.

I really love this hand, she thought.

Sesshoumaru licked his lips, and she would have leaned in and kissed them, but something still held her back. He hadn't kissed her on the lips since that first time in the kitchen, and she somehow felt like it would be a violation of his personal space to do so. She settled, instead, for squirming a little, bringing her legs together in a bit of delightful friction.

That hand traveled down to her hip and began to trace lazy circles there as well. Kagome gave a happy sigh.

Sesshoumaru just looked at her with his sleepy, sex-drugged golden eyes, and quirked a corner of his mouth.

She quirked her own in return before turning back to that arm that she had decided she loved so much.

She watched as, beneath his shining skin, his muscles bunched and moved and slid over each other, rhythmically and steadily. From the swell of his biceps to the falling slope of the supinator - hmm, she thought distantly, all that studying did pay off - each muscle was perfectly formed, and worked so beautifully that she found herself falling into almost a trance. She couldn't believe that this arm had once been nothing but a stump.

"How long did it take for that arm to grow back?" she asked abruptly. A superficial flexor jumped at the words, but he didn't stop his slow, languid ministrations. He didn't answer for a long while, and she thought he wasn't going to answer at all, until he opened his mouth.

"I am uncertain," he said. "I was sealed away before it had grown back completely."

Kagome just nodded, her hair sliding across the pillow. It had only been idle curiosity at any rate, and was supremely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Next to her, Sesshoumaru rolled fractionally nearer, moving his hand up to the curve of her waist, and then down to the small of her back. Then he surprised her by speaking again.

"I think, perhaps," he said slowly, "that it was a good thing I sealed myself away before it was finished regenerating."

Kagome's eyelids drifted shut, and she waited while he drew shivery spirals on her skin. When no other explanation seemed forthcoming, she opened her eyes and tried to pin him with a look, but the effect was spoiled by the insistence of her eyeballs in rolling back in mouth-watering pleasure. That hand really is quite nice, she thought. It took her a moment to get back on track.

"Why is that?" she finally asked as he let his hand wander back upwards again to her breast.

Mmm.

Sesshoumaru looked her in the eye. "Oh," he said, as though it had been inconsequential. "It itched."

Kagome gave an unladylike snort, covering her mouth too late to stifle it. "Itched?" she asked.

"Indeed," he replied, and if she hadn't known better, she would have sworn that he sounded almost rueful.

"I'm sorry," she said, "it's rude of me to laugh, but... it just seems funny."

Sesshoumaru didn't seem to deem that worthy of a response. Gently, he flattened his palm against the soft mound of her bosom, causing a warmth to spread tendrils through her chest and down her belly, drawing out a little noise from somewhere high in her throat. One gentle, smooth claw made the journey from the valley of her breasts to the hollow of her throat, where it stayed, lightly tickling her.

"Ooh," she murmured, and then, to wrap up the conversation so they could move on to more important things, "Well, I'm glad you have it ba-ack..."

On the last word her voice suddenly shot up in pitch, for Sesshoumaru had leaned in and nipped her, very lightly, on the neck.

Her hands were on his arm now, smoothing over the muscles that were so perfectly formed.

"Mm," he replied before moving down and hungrily sucking her nipple into his hot mouth. Kagome could feel the delightful points of his fangs resting against the curve of her flesh, and then he flicked his tongue, driving the tip of her breast gently into his teeth, and Kagome forgot all about talking.



Kagome loved the small of his back. Where the curve of his muscles - well-formed from swordplay and carrying seventy-five pounds of armor - met the swell of his buttocks was a little hollow, and the moment he acquiesced to a back rub and rolled onto his stomach, Kagome decided that it was the most beautiful part of him. She decided that she could spend hours tracing her fingers over that beautiful shallow spot. She decided that she could live there, forever, in that beautiful valley, and as long as she never had to move she could be blissfully happy. She planted a kiss on that beautiful, perfect curve of his spine.

"I," Sesshoumaru said, from the cradle of his crossed wrists where he had rested his brow, "was led to believe I was to be receiving a massage."

Kagome felt vaguely disappointed. "Sorry," she said, suddenly contrite and guilty again, suddenly drawn out of that beautiful valley, into a person and a place where she didn't want to be. "I didn't know you didn't like that." She moved toward him, made a move to lift her leg and straddle his hips from behind when Sesshoumaru lifted himself away from her, ever so slightly. She stopped and looked at his face.

He was giving her that sleepy, needy look again, the one that seemed to hot-wire her brain and take her from complacent to delirious with the speed and subtlety of a jolt of electricity. "It is not unpleasant," he said, and Kagome could see, in the shadowy cave beneath his hips, that he was semi-erect again, and understood.

"I see," she replied, suppressing the impulse, with some difficulty, to push him onto his back and roll him around in her mouth until he was urgent and ready again. She licked her lips. "I'll just get on with it, shall I?"

"Do," he said, and rolled back.

Kagome moved into position, though a small, residual modesty kept her unclothed body from touching him too much. Her thighs grazed the outside of his hips, but that was all. Gingerly, she leaned down and placed her palms flat on his back, and with care she pressed down and up, traveling over the terrain of his body.

He was cool beneath her hands. It was so difficult to tell how he would feel beneath her fingers from one minute to the next - he could go from untouchably chilly to furnace-hot in a matter of seconds - that she was startled to find him cool when he had responded to her so favorably only moments before. Kagome bit her lip and let her fingers slide up beneath the lovely waterfall of his hair where it parted and flowed over his arms at his shoulders.

His head was turned to the side, pillowed on his forearms, and his eyes were closed. Kagome wanted to place a fingertip on the edges of his long lashes and relish their softness, to follow the curve of that fringe where it lay.

I'm going crazy, she thought, jerking her eyes away from his face and concentrating on the semi-circles her thumbs were etching into his back. He's like a drug. I'll have to go to rehabilitation. Everyone will laugh at me.

For ten minutes, Kagome tried to think only of the directions muscles went, remembering the grain and placement from too many anatomy labs, and she pulled them apart, forced them to relax beneath her touch. He didn't seem very tense - of course, she thought wryly, recent activities are not known for raising one's stress level - but she enjoyed the feel of all his strength and power rolling beneath her fingertips. She liked to think about the barely leashed intensity that he possessed, and studiously avoided thinking about how she wished that energy would be put to use. Shifting on her knees, Kagome bit her lip and tried to think about something else.

When her fingers were tired, she sighed and leaned back, finally allowing herself to rest fully on him. He appeared to be asleep, so it didn't matter that she was flush against him; he couldn't feel the wetness of her if he was unconscious, could he?

And she was wet. Thinking about something else didn't work very well when he smelled amazing, and he looked even better than he smelled, and he felt better than he looked, and all in all it was suddenly very unfair that he appeared to be dreaming.

Well, she reasoned, if he's asleep, he won't mind if I do this. Kagome leaned forward and placed a kiss between his shoulder blades before sitting up again. She glanced once more at his sleeping face.

Or not.

Sesshoumaru was looking at her from the corner of one eye.

"Did I wake you up?" she asked.

"No," he replied, though his voice was somewhat muffled by the curve of his shoulder.

"Oh," she said. "Um."

"Do that again."

So Kagome did it again, and then again, following the gentle trench of his spine up and into his hair, and then he was turning over, pressing into the dark space between her legs, and they were both hot and greedy again. One hand fisted in her hair and pulled her head back, and she gasped for air as he flattened his palm against her stomach, roughly catching the tender skin there in its quest toward the swell of her breast. He wasn't gentle this time; now he was insatiable, his hands hungry and demanding and she was trapped by him, a willing captive. She couldn't see what he was doing - all she could see was the fading afternoon light on the ceiling - but she could feel him, all over, in her toes and her quivering thighs, in her shallow breaths and her aching bones, in her thrumming veins and the lightning that ricocheted inside the cage of her skin.

She was falling, and her fingers scrabbled to find purchase on his thighs, against his forearm and then he was pulling her down, ravenous mouth open to catch her fluttering pulse between his teeth.

She whimpered, hips bucking against his, and he growled, harsh and angry and feral. Her fingers fumbled around him, pushing him into her, and they tumbled over and around and against each other in the fading light of day.



Kagome woke up to hear Sesshoumaru sloshing around in the bathtub, and her sleep-addled mind was visited with the most incongruous vision of a younger version of him, about seven years old or so, splashing around in a tin basin and chasing a little rubber ducky. Seemingly in deference to her impression of Sesshoumaru, the rubber ducky looked suitably demonic. After all, it simply wouldn't do to have a mortal rubber ducky to play with, would it?

The little dream-vision was so startlingly bizarre and inexplicable that her eyes flew open and she sat straight up in bed as though waking from a nightmare.

I am never going to sleep on an empty stomach again, she thought. Never, ever.

One major decision out of the way - Kagome already felt productive - she stretched and yawned before leaning back on her hands and looking over at the empty space where Sesshoumaru had spent the night. The sheets looked comfortably rumpled and well-used, but one thing stuck out at her, and it was so strange that it broke through the fog of her tired brain. Frowning, Kagome cocked her head to the side and looked closer at the anomaly.

In the middle of his side of the bed was one of her dog-eared romance novels, a place somewhere in the latter half of the book meticulously marked with a pencil he'd probably found perched atop the dresser.

Kagome blinked and decided she couldn't handle the thought of Sesshoumaru reading Blue Moon Passions. He had probably been bored when he woke up, and grabbed the book from the little pile next to the bed, but it was unsettling just the same. Kagome sighed, clambered out of bed, unlocked the door, and padded into the kitchen in search of a dose of coffee to wake her up.

Coffee, lots of cream, lots of sugar, she thought to herself. That's what I need. And no demonic rubber duckies.

Smoothly, Kagome went through the motions required to bring her a daily dose of legal stimulant. She took a deep breath as the coffee finished percolating before grabbing a mug and pouring herself a cup, then adding enough cream and sugar to the concoction that she was fairly certain her spoon would be able to stand up in the middle of the mug without any support. She didn't try it, though. Instead she padded back to her room and settled in on her side of the bed, slowly sipping the brew as she waited for Sesshoumaru to get out of the bathroom.

Ten minutes later the door swung open and Sesshoumaru looked into the room to find Kagome reading the novel he had left behind with a little smirk on her face.

"I didn't know you liked such diversions," she said to him, casting a coy little glance in his direction. Impressively, Sesshoumaru kept his dignity as he smirked back and raised an arm to prop himself on the doorframe.

"All diversions are worth the time," he said to her evenly, "when one possesses the time to do them."

"Even diversions such as these?" she asked him. "This isn't really your style."

Sesshoumaru tilted his head in that elegant version of a shrug he liked to employ, as though to say, Perhaps not, perhaps so.

Kagome huffed in amused annoyance. "Well," she said, "what made you think Blue Moon Passions would be a good diversion, rather than, say - " she glanced down at the pile at the side of the bed " - Heavenly Nights or A Samurai's Wife?" She would have thought the samurai book might have caught his attention, if only for the sheer amusement he would have found in the historical inaccuracies. Passions was about a hime and her suitor - not the manliest of subjects, to say the least.

He gave her a look. He really appeared magnificent in the early morning light, backlit by the yellow glow from the bathroom, pale skin shining and fresh from his bath. He had one clawed hand hooked into the towel he wore at his waist, and he wore nothing else. Damp hair hung heavily down his back, and his lip quirked just enough that she could see the pointed gleam of one fang peeking from the darkness of his mouth.

"I knew someone once who would have enjoyed that story. She read many like it," he told her.

"Oh," Kagome said, suddenly feeling awkward. Rin, she thought. Rin was forever frozen in her mind as a little girl, but Kagome knew that she must have grown up at some point, must have liked romance stories and tales of love like any young woman. Did she dream of a knight in shining armor? Kagome thought, Did she dream of that like everyone does?

But of course, Rin wouldn't have to dream. She'd already been saved by a lord in shining armor, who protected her and let her live when she otherwise would have died.

With care, Kagome set the book aside. "It was Rin, wasn't it?" she asked. "Who liked those stories."

Sesshoumaru was looking at her, and it seemed as if he held a queer sort of compassion in his eyes. "Yes, it was Rin," he murmured gently.

Kagome nodded. Of course it was. Of course. "May I... may I ask you a question?" she said, casting her eyes downwards. She studied his toes, where they left little damp indentations on the carpet.

Sesshoumaru didn't seem inclined to either grant or withhold permission, so Kagome looked up at his face. "Did you love her?" she asked.

The question hung in the air between them, and for a long time neither of them said anything at all, and Kagome's thoughts drifted in her head, wondering what she would do if he said yes, or if he said no.

Finally, he replied.

"I am not certain I know what love is," he said to her, and then grinned his odd, feral grin that held no humor.

Kagome thought of Inuyasha.

"How strange," she said, after a moment. "Me, either."

The room was quiet again, and then Sesshoumaru gave that sharp, humorless snort of amusement. "How strange," he agreed, and then crossed the room and took her into his arms as the morning sun broke through the blinds.



After two days of couplings, Kagome threw the sheets off the bed and groaned. "Do you realize," she announced peevishly, "that I have to go back to school in a week? I can't believe I almost forgot that classes start soon."

Sesshoumaru gave her a bored glance that clearly said, So?

"So it's probably going to be really boring for you around here," Kagome told him. "I'll be gone all day at class, learning how to stitch people up and stuff drugs in their mouth and you'll be here reading old romance novels."

The demon merely tilted his head.

Kagome sighed. "Aren't you going to be bored?" she asked. "I can only read so many of those things myself before I get tired of them."

"Many things are boring," he told her cryptically.

Shifting uncomfortably, lest he decide to enlighten her as to what, precisely, he found boring and possibly pinning her on the list, Kagome tried switching her approach.

"Have you thought about getting a job?" she asked.

Sesshoumaru blinked. "What would purpose would such a thing serve?" he asked her. "I am not a laborer."

That much, at least, was true. Sesshoumaru was not meant for menial things. However... "Well," she said, "a job gives you money - "

"For what purpose would I require money?" he asked, interrupting her.

Kagome was drawn up short. Food, water, shelter... she thought, and then she realized how ridiculous that sounded. The demon required none of those things. Meeting new people was likewise a stupid reason for acquiring a job, as he didn't like people and required little company.

"Something to do?" she supplied lamely.

He didn't reply.

Kagome cast about for the things he could do, and found that there weren't many. He could teach kenjutsu, but he would be stronger and more powerful than any human being, so that was probably out of the question, and the same things precluded him from becoming a professional fighter. Such things would attract unwanted attention to himself. He had the ability to protect, but not the will, so bodyguard was also a bad career choice, and Japan no longer had any army worth speaking of, so his abilities could not be put to use in that way. He could, she supposed, settle any outstanding wars that were still being waged, but human beings tended to fight each other no matter what, so that meant he would have to kill everyone. That was not the most attractive of options.

What else? she thought. What else? Then she hit on something.

"I've got it!" she cried. "You can be a healer!"

Sesshoumaru didn't reply, but the vague widening of his eyes suggested that he thought she had taken a flying plunge off the deep end while he wasn't looking.

Kagome clapped, unsure herself if she was joking or serious. "You have Tenseiga," she said. "You can go around and save lives."

"That is an idea," he said slowly, though the expression in his eyes added, A bad idea.

"I know," she said. "But it was nice to think of, just for a moment. Think of all the people you could save."

"Think," he said, "of all the people I couldn't."

Kagome didn't want to think of that. "Well," she said, "could you teach me how to use it? It might come in handy some day."

Sesshoumaru snorted. "As if a human could wield such a blade."

"Well it was just a thought," she said huffily. "I won't try to help you out ever again if you're going to be that way."

"What a stroke of luck for me," he replied.

Kagome tackled him, and pushed thoughts of the future from her mind.



After three days, in which neither she nor he wore any sort of clothing, events began to run together in her mind. She snatched sleep where she could, only to awaken to find herself getting laid, or with a hungry youkai stroking claws down her belly, nibbling on the protruding bone of her hip, sniffing the sensitive crook of her elbow as though he could discover the scent of her blood through persistence alone.

Sometimes, she would suckle on him, as though she were starving, until he would push her away and return the favor, lapping his tongue against the tender flesh that quivered between her thighs, drinking all he could.

She liked the soft skin of the inside of his thigh, the jumping tendon that tensed and relaxed in time with her bobbing head. She loved his sharp claws running through her hair. She loved waking up and finding him cradling her with his body, rocking sleepily against her, neither of them in any hurry to get anywhere, and she drifted from orgasm to orgasm as he nuzzled her throat.

Kagome found it easier and easier to talk to him, in that dreamy time between when she had sealed them in, and when she would have to unseal them again.

One day, she was straddling his hips and he was propped against the headboard. He pulled her head back using the gentle tether of her hair, allowing himself access to her breasts. He loved nipping at them while she made little cries in her throat. And then he bit just a little too hard and she jerked away, shocking him with her powers.

She was frightened, but so aroused she couldn't stop moving against him, wondering what he was going to do to her.

And then he did something astonishing: he laughed, and did it again.

He clearly enjoyed it, the pain and pleasure mingling on his tongue, and Kagome cried out and clenched around him as he nipped her raw, crashing in to meet her only when she came a second time.

One day, she asked him if he didn't worry about siring a hanyou with her, just like his father had done.

Sesshoumaru shrugged, twining a lock of her hair around his fingers. "No," he told her.

"Why?" she asked, curiosity burning. The drugs she had injected into her arm simulated pregnancy, not sterility. If he could detect fertility, he would have stayed far, far away from her.

Sesshoumaru merely quirked an eyebrow. "And thus we find the advantage of laying with a miko," he informed her. "Your powers will kill any child before it is more than a week grown."

"Oh," she said. She expected to feel ill, but instead, Kagome felt only empty, and curiously disappointed.

Sesshoumaru leaned in and kissed the lock of hair he held, and heat crowded in again, banishing the emptiness.

One day, he asked her about her travels through time.

"Tell me again," he murmured between hot licks down the curve of her stomach, "how you managed to go back in time, hundreds of years, and neither die nor age?"

"I, um," she said muzzily. He was stroking some very interesting things with the safe curves of his knuckles, and all the blood in her body was clamoring to go where the action was.

"Yes?" he prompted after a moment, then planted a kiss on the inside of her thigh.

"I jumped into a well!" she cried.

"Mm," he said. The vibrations of his voice shuddered through her.

"There was a well in the shrine I lived at," she said, trying to keep her trembling voice steady, "and one day a mononoke pulled me through, and that was that."

"I see," he said. Sesshoumaru then flicked a tongue over her burning flesh, and Kagome let her brain short out.

"Do that again," she breathed, and Sesshoumaru obliged.

And the days blurred, so that she couldn't tell if it all happened in the span of a few hours, or the stretch of a century.

One day, she discovered that rubbing the skin behind his ear made him melt like butter in her hands.

One day, he nibbled on a toe, and Kagome exploded with delight.

One day, he tied her up, and had his way with her.

One day, they did nothing but tease each other into a frenzy.

One day, they fucked gently, and the next they both bled.



And then, one day, about a week after Kagome had locked them inside her apartment and pretended the outside world did not exist, Sesshoumaru casually made her want to die.

"I really wish you still had that big fluffy thing," she said, feeling almost playful in the post-coital glow. "It looked great on you, and would have been nice and soft." She was sitting up in bed and idly studying the light of the nighttime city as it flowed through her blinds and cast against her wall. If she concentrated, she could hear the dull roar of tires on pavement.

Sesshoumaru shifted next to her. "Are you suggesting I would have allowed you to use my father's heirloom pelt as a pillow?"

"Not just a pillow," she said. "I bet it felt good against skin."

"Hm," he replied. "That is not the most respectful of uses."

"You should get another one," she suggested.

"Because heirloom pelts are so plentiful."

"Any soft pelt would be good," she told him, eyeing him mischievously. "I'm not picky at all."

Sesshoumaru looked slightly disconcerted. "Hm," he said again.

"So... yes?"

The barest of creases formed between his brows. "I think not," he finally intoned, voice grave.

"Gah!" she cried, doing her best to suppress a happily astonished giggle. It wasn't often that she caused him to wobble on his axis. "Well if you aren't going to satisfy my needs for a large pelt of fur, I don't even know why I'm with you!" Flashing him a huge grin, Kagome flopped onto her back and stared contentedly at the ceiling. Mmm, she thought, laying down feels good. There was a pause in which there was the squeal of tires in the distance before Sesshoumaru spoke suddenly.

"I know why," the youkai said.

Yeah, except that was the truth. Not even I know why, except the sex is great, Kagome thought. "Oh really?" She was sleepily amused. "Enlighten me, then."

She thought he would say she was weak, or dependent. She thought he would tell her he was irresistible, or she was easily manipulated. She thought he would announce that she was just another human, becoming attached to things she couldn't hope to own. None of those explanations would have hurt her, because they were plausible, and might have even been true, and she had named each of them a thousand times in the middle of the night, after he had drifted off, and she had lain awake, watching his chest rise and fall.

So what he said was unexpected.

"You are waiting."

It took a moment for her to process those words, so unscripted were they, and then Kagome frowned, exasperation plucking at her. You really are impossible, she told him from the safety of her mind. "I'm waiting? For what? A train? The bus?"

She turned her head toward him, about to name more things she could be waiting for - the right guy, a miracle, Godot - but the words ran dry in her mouth, because he was staring at her as though judging something. Gauging her.

He looked deadly serious.

Kagome sat up, apprehension dawning. "For what? What do you mean, waiting?" she demanded.

I don't want to know, do I? I don't want to know. "What do you mean?" she insisted.

Sesshoumaru didn't move. He was utterly still, unwavering in his gaze, like a predator watching his prey. And then he opened his mouth and, with careless ease, tore her into tiny little pieces.

"You are waiting for someone to forgive you," he told her, "for Inuyasha's death."

The blood dried in her veins. She was no longer dreamy, but painfully, irrevocably awake.

"What?" she said, ridiculously, inanely. "What?"

"He died," Sesshoumaru told her, "because he became human. And why did he do that?"

Something was squeezing her chest, wringing the air from her lungs. She couldn't breathe, and everything had gone totally, horribly wrong.

No, no, no, she thought.

"Because... it was the right thing to do?" she said, voice hoarse.

The eyes locked on hers were almost pitying.

"No," he said. "That is not why."

And Kagome looked at him, really looked at him, at the inhuman points of his ears, the alien colors of his face and skin and hair, and heard the beat of his inhuman heart beneath it all, the one that spent centuries without succor, the one that endured with inhuman strength. She heard the words beneath the words, the ones to which she'd grown so good at listening for over the past month.

He died because of you, Sesshoumaru was saying.

You are the reason I am alone.

"Is that what you think of me?" she asked finally. It was funny - she would have thought she would be weeping, but there was nothing.

"It is what I know of you," he replied.

It is your fault, and I will not tell you differently.

And it was true.

As though he had disjointed her bones, opened her veins and drained her blood, peeled her muscles apart, sliced open her throat and loosed her breath, Kagome felt herself dying, and dying hurt so much she couldn't feel her brain. She couldn't feel her heart as it struggled uselessly. She couldn't feel anything, and yet was in agony.

And Sesshoumaru watched her suffer.

Then Kagome was on her feet - when had she risen? - the sheet wrapped around her, and she moved with bloodless limbs on bloodless feet, out of the room and closed the door behind her, away from the man who had just peeled off her skin and dismantled her with such thoughtless grace.

She moved to the couch and curled up, empty and raging inside, filled with the howling torment of limbo.

You are with me because you are waiting for someone to forgive you, and you hope it will be me.

It is your fault I am alone.

I do not forgive you.

Listless, restless, aching despair crept over her feet, oozed through her core, paralyzing her.

For the rest of my life, she thought dully, I will remember this moment. This is what it feels like to die and keep living. Her heart had broken before, but this was different. Everything was breaking. Everywhere inside her she cracked along fragile fault lines with the crystalline sound of shattering glass.

Curled into the fetal position, she waited for him to open the door, waited for him to come to her and take it back, waited for the end of the world, and she wept silent tears.

He never came, and she kept on weeping.

Some time during the night, she fell asleep and dreamed herself into a web of silver hair, into the middle of the ocean, in the cold, disturbing stillness beneath the ravenous waves, and Sesshoumaru floated in front of her, neither demonic nor angelic, but inhuman all the same, as luminous as any ghost seen drifting through the worlds.

Between them, he extended a hand, and Kagome saw he held within it pieces of a heart.

"Open your mouth," he instructed.

And when she obeyed, he drifted closer and placed the pieces on her tongue, like a profane sacrament, and the pieces were so bitter she couldn't tell if it was his heart, or her own.

The next day, the day before classes were set to start, Kagome woke up to find that Sesshoumaru was gone, and she was alone in the world once more.



There once was a fallen man.

Kagome was a girl who had never known fear, or hunger, or cold. She had never known toil, or drudgery, or slavery. Even Kikyou, dead now for good, her faithful, false body shattered a few feet away, had known some of these things, but Kagome was pure and beautiful, untouched by the ugliness of the world.

Looking into the eyes of Naraku, though, Kagome felt the creeping cold of the vile earth, knew the foul feelings of humanity, because Naraku, when he had been human, when he had been Onigumo, had known all those things, and more. Fear, hunger, cold, toil, drudgery, slavery, agony, desperation, hatred, envy...

He could never return to the pure child he had been, and because of that he wanted to destroy purity wherever he found it.

"Look around you," he was whispering in her ear, soft and seductive like a sick parody of a lover, and Kagome shuddered at the feel of his breath on her neck. Her power was burning him - she could smell the sick scent of burned flesh where he held her arms fast behind her back - but he was so powerful now, the completed Shikon no Tama around his neck, that his skin healed as quickly as she could sear it. Her struggles were fruitless, and she struggled hard, mad with grief.

"Look," he insisted, and she couldn't help but look, her eyes burning with dry tears, sobs shaking her whole body.

Miroku and Sango had died together. He had died of poison, and she had died of a razor sharp claw through her chest. Her heart had probably burst, killing her instantly. Kirara, faithful to her mistress to the last, lay crumpled only a few feet away. She had been disembowled.

Kouga had probably bled to death. His legs had been shattered and ripped to shreds for the last two shards, and only a few feet away from him Kohaku lay, limbs akimbo, like a rag doll.

The bodies of two children and a toad - Rin, Shippou, and Jaken - were battered and bloody at the edge of the forest.

And Kikyou - her rival and herself - in little pieces on the ground, pierced by so many angry tentacles that she had shattered. She had been aiming her bow straight at Naraku, threatening to pierce through Kagome to get to him when it had happened. Somehow, Kagome felt like she had lost her last ally.

It was the brothers that made her heart hurt the most, though. Sesshoumaru, white and pristine, his hair splayed around him like silver tendrils, was sprawled upon the ground, beautifully, deathly still, but it was what lay only a few feet away from him that made Kagome want to scream.

Far from her, in the middle of the battlefield, lay Inuyasha's body. A few feet further away was his head.

With the curious observance of grief, Kagome noted that the body still clutched the Tessaiga in its hand, as though that sword could save him now.

"You see what you have come to?" Naraku sighed in her ear.

Kagome couldn't speak. She never wanted to speak again, but yes, yes, she could see. That she could rip her eyes from her head, so she wouldn't have to see anything ever again, but her hands were still held in a viselike grip behind her.

"You see?" he said again, giving her a little shake.

She nodded, though the lump in her throat made it difficult.

"Beautiful," he whispered. "You see? You were unable to save them. How beautiful."

She was crying then, and he was licking her tears away, as though they were the finest wine dropping from her lashes.

She was the substitute Kikyou, purer and younger and just as pretty, and he was going to take her body as if he owned it, as if he owned everything the world.

In the back of her frantic mind, she wondered if she would be able to snatch the Shikon jewel away from him as he raped her.

"Ka - go - meeeeee," he crooned in her ear, and she could barely hear him over the sobs...

Something was stirring at the edge of her vision.

Movement meant life. Forcing her eyes open she looked straight at Sesshoumaru, climbing to his feet, not dead, just injured, and eyes glowing red. She offered up a silent prayer, don't let Naraku see him, save me, save us, don't let Naraku know until too late.

"Ah, Sesshoumaru," Naraku purred, in that horrible, taunting voice. "I see you are not as dead as I thought."

It was pain for him to stand, that much she could see. Even from thirty meters away she could hear the ragged edge of his breath, and in his chest there was something bubbling and rattling. It hurt to listen to it.

It seemed so unfair that Sesshoumaru was alive and Inuyasha wasn't. It wasn't fair.

Kagome sobbed brokenly, her powers flaring again, sizzling against her captor, but it was no use.

And Sesshoumaru wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there, looking at his brother's broken body, and the ragged, empty vessels of her comrades, at the sad little messes of the children, the dead little girl who followed him. But his gaze always returned to Inuyasha. There was no emotion on his face, save the red anger of his eyes, the void of his heart in his expressionless features.

Do something, she begged. Do something.

Slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, Sesshoumaru took Toukijin from the sash at his waist and drove it into the ground.

Naraku laughed. "Giving up?" he asked, but Sesshoumaru was already moving again, already smoothly removing the other sword, the sword she'd seen him use only once, from where it nestled at his hip, and drawing it out to rest in his hand.

"Naraku," he said. "I will never forgive you for forcing me to do this."

Oh, sweet mercy - Kagome thought, and then Sesshoumaru swung the blade of heaven, opened the gates between this world and the next, and there was a soft, silent explosion of blue light, spreading outwards.

"Oh," she exclaimed when it washed over her, warming her to the tips of her toes, and her purifying powers sparked and flamed, and behind her Naraku made a sound of pure agony.

He was still holding onto her, and she turned in his grasp to see his form dissolving, struggling to keep shape as all the youkai he had absorbed suddenly seemed to awaken from wherever they slept with in him, and now they were bubbling and frothing beneath the surface of his skin.

Kagome's stomach turned and turned but she wrenched a hand out of his grip, grasped the horrible black Shikon from where it lay against his undulating chest, and ripped it away.

Pain, pain, pain, clouding her mind as she fell away from him, as she fought the battle against the evil in the jewel, as she heard Inuyasha shout, and that horrible writhing thing was upon her, screaming with a thousand mouths. Kagome held fast to the jewel and spread her hand against the monster that was Naraku and burned him to the bone as her eyes rolled back in her head.

Hurry, Inuyasha. Kill him, she thought through the pain.

Beneath her fingers, the world caught on fire.



Kagome didn't cry over him, much.

She kept her eyes dry as she wandered aimlessly through her little, empty flat, picking up the things they'd both left strewn all over the place: books, pieces of clothing - only her own, he had taken the clothes she had bought for him with him - a scrap of paper here and there. Little things. She picked them up and put them away, in the nooks and crannies where they belonged, before he'd come into her life and meticulously torn it all apart. But that was over now, and she had to put things back the way they had been, and there should be no crying about it.

The little pile of library books made her feel a bit of a sting, high in her nose, but she picked them up and bundled them into the passenger seat of her little car, drove the few short miles to the library, and dropped them off. They were overdue about a week anyway. She'd have to pay that money later. Her savings was drying up, and Sesshoumaru had only hastened its end.

"Looks like I'll have to go back to working," she muttered under her breath as she sat in traffic. Kagome said those exact same words every year as summer came to a close. She worked for the times she went to school, and used summer to recuperate, with trashy novels and nights spent out with her friends, politely refusing drinks and then shooting a bit of bad whiskey when she went home alone.

She didn't feel rested this summer. She felt weary.

The funny thing was that, as sad and empty and lost as she felt, Kagome didn't really feel like drinking that first day. Like morphine, it was only a painkiller. It wouldn't heal the wounds, only dull the pain of them. That much she knew.

She didn't even feel like drinking the second day, when she went back to class, either, until she was humiliated for the third time for not having the correct books with her - too much time spent in the bedroom had kept her from tending to those duties - and none of her friends, angry with her for not returning their calls, would let her look over their shoulders.

Then she wished for nothing more than a pint of something very strong. Kagome went home and fed her cat, and then filled up her bathtub with warm water and climbed in.

The water was sweet, though unfragranced, and Kagome found herself slumped against the back of the tub, staring listlessly at the white tiled walls and blaming herself for the things she did and didn't do.

I did this, and I didn't do this.

One of the things she did do was put the idea into Inuyasha's head that if he were to become human, they would be together, without the burden of the jewel to protect. One of the things she didn't do was take on the responsibility for protecting the completed Shikon jewel herself. If she had not done the first thing, and instead chosen to do the second thing, the outcome would have been completely different, though it was impossible to know whether or not she would be happy now.

Idly, she wondered if it was possible to become a creature made entirely from regret, and then she sighed, and sunk further into the warm water. She floated there, watching the tendrils of her hair weave against the tiny currents, and tried not to feel anything at all.

After a moment, the thought, if Inuyasha were alive, drifted unbidden across her mind, and she turned toward it.

If Inuyasha were alive. It didn't feel much like a little game any more; it felt like an accusation, or a sentence. Nevertheless, she was already thinking it.

If Inuyasha were alive, she mused, I wouldn't be alone. He would be here with me.

And then, Inuyasha wouldn't have left.

One small tear formed at the corner of her eye, and Kagome angrily dashed it away with a wet hand, leaving behind more water than before.

If Inuyasha were alive, I would never have known Sesshoumaru the way I did, she said to herself, defiantly, and that certainly was true. It was true as true could be.

Kagome tried not to think the thought that came after that, but her brain was so frazzled, so frayed at the edges that it was too much effort to keep that thought from completing itself.

Maybe it would have been better that way.

It hurt her heart to think that. Kagome resolved to never let it whisper to her again, and slumped further into the water, so that only the top part of her head was visible, and the only way she could breathe was through her nose, and thought about Sesshoumaru.

She thought about his long, beautiful hair, and the lovely arch of his cheeks. She thought of that little valley at the small of his back, and his luminous skin and eyes, and of all the things she loved about his body, the things she'd deemed harmless to love because they were just things, and then she thought about how they weren't there any longer, because he wasn't there any longer.

From the back of her throat, a noise escaped her, one that she hadn't meant to make and barely recognized as her own voice, and it startled her so badly that she sat up, splashing water over the sides of the bathtub and to the floor. Weirdly, it didn't stop.

High, keening, and sad, Kagome sat in the bathtub and listened with wonder to the sound she made with her grief.

This is the sound a dead person makes when they are still alive, she thought, and in her chest, her heart gave a painful lurch. Angrily, Kagome clapped a hand over her mouth, lest she continue to make such horrible music.

Shut up. Shut UP.

Her fingernails were biting into her cheeks, and she dug in and concentrated on that superficial pain.

Finally, after a few tense moments, she decided that it was safe again - the keening had stopped. Slowly, Kagome rose from the water, dried her body, dressed herself in a pair of pink pajamas, and tucked herself into the empty bed that still smelled like him.

Kagome closed her eyes and didn't cry over him, much.



Kayoko was the first of her friends to speak to her again, because she was the one who had heard Sesshoumaru's beautiful voice, and she was the one who suspected that things were far more than what they appeared on the surface. It was odd and funny to Kagome to be reminded of this fact, as though the universe was nudging her and saying, yes, he was real, he wasn't a phantom or a memory come to haunt you, and so when Kayoko pressed her about Sesshoumaru - who was he? what did he do for a living? where did they meet? were they really just friends, or something else? - Kagome found herself giggling maniacally and making up Sesshoumaru's inane history. It didn't matter if it was true or not, of course, because he was no longer around to confirm or refute it.

For one thing, his name was shortened, from Sesshoumaru to Sesshou, which, Kagome agreed under questioning, was a terrible name. She made up for it by stating that his father was a bit peculiar with the names he gave his children, and poor Sesshou's wasn't even the worst of the bunch.

"His little brother - the one I knew when I was in high school - "

"Half brother," Kayoko corrected her. They were sitting across from each other in the student center and sipping bottles of chilled water a week into the semester.

"- yeah," Kagome mumbled, chagrined. "Anyway, his name was Inuyasha."

"Urk," Kayoko said, sympathetically. "That is pretty bad."

Kagome nodded in sage agreement and sipped some water.

"So are you guys dating or what?" Kayoko said.

Kagome looked off to the side. "Or what," she replied, studying the ceramic tiles on the floor.

"Kagome-chan!" Kayoko huffed. "What does that mean?"

"It means that we were in a relationship, but I wouldn't call it dating," Kagome said, looking back at the eager, prying, earnest face of her friend. "And I don't think it would be polite to expand on that."

But Kayoko didn't seem to care about the depth of her relationship with Sesshou, with that false Sesshoumaru. "Were?" she said pointedly. "You were in a relationship?"

Humiliating. Like Inuyasha choosing Kikyou all over again. Except Sesshoumaru hadn't left her for someone else. Instead he'd just... left. Took her apart, and left her for dead. She couldn't decide which was worse, actually. Kagome bit her lip and nodded.

"The day before classes started, I woke up and he had left," she found herself saying, and oh, how it hurt.

"He didn't say why?" Kayoko said, aghast. "That jerk."

That much is also true, Kagome thought miserably. But I'm finding it harder and harder to blame him.

But Kayoko didn't know that part, the part where she was responsible for the death of his half-brother, the part where he had cruelly reminded her of that fact. Kayoko was digging in her purse, about to pull out the damage control.

"I know what you need," she announced to Kagome, and a tiny, silver cell phone appeared in her perfectly manicured hand. "A girl's night out."

"Oh, no," Kagome pleaded, "that's not necessary, I just want to go home and maybe read a book - "

"Nonsense!" Kayoko cried, and already she was punching in the numbers needed to call in the others.

For the first time in the entire summer, Kagome felt loved, and it was wonderful and frightening.

They took her out to a well-heeled sushi bar, slapped her hands away from her wallet, and cooed and petted and coddled her, asked her questions, and picked Sesshou, this fictional man, apart.

"So what did he do?" Arisu asked, gesturing grandly with her third glass of wine. "Like, careerwise."

Kagome, only drinking a soft drink, frowned, wracked her brains, and came up with a fairly plausible answer. "He was a kenjutsu instructor," she replied.

"What was he doing living with you?" Miyu demanded. "Didn't he have a place of his own?"

"Er... he was unemployed," Kagome amended quickly. She took a sip of her drink and stared down at her empty plate.

The waitress came around, and Kayoko ordered ice cream for everyone, over Kagome's protests.

"Well!" Miyu said when the waitress had gone away again, "He sounds like a no-good jerk. He sounds like he was just using you. Good thing you got rid of him."

"Damn straight," Arisu agreed, slamming back the rest of her wine. "You don't need a man like that anyway."

"Plus," Miyu put in, "he sounded like kind of a freak. White hair? Misako-san said he looked scary."

"Well he would look scary," Arisu reasoned, "if he was a master of kenjutsu."

"Hmmph," said Miyu.

"He sounded really cute," Kayoko interjected. "I wish I could have seen him." Turning to Kagome, she put a kind hand on her forearm. "Tell me," she said, "did he look as good as he sounded?"

Kagome sighed wistfully. "Ten times better," she said, staring into space. "He was beautiful."

The waitress returned and placed plates of ice cream in front of them as her friends gave a collective sigh of disappointment that they hadn't been able to lay eyes on this fine specimen of a man. Arisu shook herself out of it first. "Well," she said, clearing her throat, "this guy clearly wasn't worth your time, no matter how good he looked, or how nice he felt."

"Ari-chan!" Kagome exclaimed, slightly scandalized.

"It's true, it's true," Miyu chanted. "He was no good for you, Kagome-chan, no matter how good he was in the sack."

"He'd better have been damn good for you to have put up with him," Kayoko muttered. "Unemployed punk who doesn't even say goodbye."

She was blushing scarlet, and she supposed that her friends spoke the truth. Sesshoumaru was not someone one should bring home to one's family, but that still didn't stop the horrible ache, the crushing guilt she felt when she thought of him, and even when she didn't think of him.

"You know what you need?" Miyu was saying, waving her spoonful of ice cream around in perilous circles to prove her point. "You need a new boyfriend. A rebound boy. And I know just the guy."

"Oh, Miyu-chan," Kayoko said, burying her face in her hand. Kagome was struck with the distinct impression that this subject had been discussed at length without her knowledge.

She sighed. "You might as well tell me," she said, spooning a bite into her mouth.

"Yoshi, of course," Miyu replied.

Kagome was confused for a moment. "Wait, I thought you two were together?"

Miyu shrugged, as though it was of no consequence. "We broke up. He's still obviously all about you," she said, matter-of-fact. "Like I need that in my life! As if I can compete with you in another area!"

"Oh," Kagome said.

Arisu leaned in and patted her arm. "Just give it a shot," she said. "It can't hurt."



Arisu was wrong - it did hurt, a lot, but like so many other things in her life, Kagome found herself slipping into the sadness and the routine of it with little protest or problem, pushing all thoughts of Sesshoumaru from her mind as she did so. If she did slip up and remember him, the pain of it quickly corrected her, and she forgot him again. She couldn't even take his advice to remember the beginning of him, rather than the end - not because the advice was bad, but because it just hurt too damn much.

Her first re-date with Yoshi, three weeks later at the beginning of the fall, didn't go well. It was a horrible disaster, actually.

He took her out to dinner and a movie, the date Kagome had wanted Sesshoumaru to go on with her, the one they didn't do because he was a demon and she was a priestess, and she was completely wasted within an hour after she'd announced that dinner and a movie was their evening activity.

So Kagome sat across from Yoshi and listened to him make awkward small talk with himself, and the food they ate was flavorless in her mouth.

The movie was no better - it was a beautifully done film, but Kagome couldn't concentrate on the story or the characters, didn't care about anything in it. Across the screen a beautiful girl and a handsome man danced around each other, in love and never voicing it. He had killed her father, but it was an accident. She was pregnant with another man's baby. It was all very dramatic and operatic, and the entire time, Kagome could help but think, over and over, I know a better story. I know a better one.

In her head, she played the first act, where a girl fell through a well and met her destiny on the other side. She met a huntress, and a kitsune, and a monk, and a hanyou who had loved her in another life. They fought, and struggled, and finally conquered, and then, when they were most happy, the curse of that horrible jewel reached out and ripped it all away.

It was a good act. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Kagome couldn't bring herself to play the second act, though, where that girl, now a woman, whom destiny had chewed up and spit out, met a beautiful youkai, who had been chewed up and spit out as well. In that act, they danced together, picked up the pieces of each other, and... then he left, the pieces of her still in his hand.

In the darkness of the theater, Kagome blinked away tears. That's not the ending, she thought. That's not any sort of proper ending at all.

She felt cheated.

How cruel, she thought, that it should end this way.

The lights came up in the theater and Yoshi, like a gentleman, assisted her to her feet, despite the fact that she was a girl who once shot demons out of the sky.

"What did you think of the movie?" he asked.

She smiled and nodded. "I liked it!" she said. "Thank you for taking me!"

Then Yoshi took her home, invited himself in, and kissed her, very gently, the way Sesshoumaru never did.

Kagome pushed him away, shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, "It's too soon."

"What do you mean?" he insisted. "We've made love before!"

And Kagome was shocked to remember that was true. "That's - that's not it - " she stammered, trying to explain.

"If it's about that punk, he wasn't worth your time," Yoshi said firmly. "You're good, and kind, and sweet. He's nothing next to you."

Kagome stared at him with wide eyes, and then burst into horrified tears.

Yoshi was mortified, of course, and bustled around her, getting her water, and tissues, and just being so sweet and solicitous, so unlike the boy she remembered him being - why had she always had a thing for jerks? - that she cried that much harder. When she'd finally calmed down half an hour later, Yoshi looked scared and unhappy, and Kagome had given him a peck on the cheek and promised that she would go out with him again, because she had been a terrible date, and she was sorry.

He'd just nodded and ducked out, and hadn't called her again until three weeks later.

They'd gone out again - just to dinner this time - and he kissed her outside her door and fumbled inexpertly at her breast before she gently disengaged him, despairing in her mind. That was just another thing that was too different, too sudden, too marked. She wished him good night and went inside. They didn't have a third date.

During this time, Kagome studied and worked hard at her classes and the part time job she'd picked up for housekeeping services at a local hotel, and her friends were always dropping by, insisting she come with them to get coffee and study, or go browsing in a book store, or just window shopping. She tried to decline, but they were so well-meaning that she found it difficult. That was how she found herself, in mid-October, with three bottles of red wine, three giggling and slightly drunk friends, and that horrible blanket that she had wanted to burn after Sesshoumaru had walked out of her life.

"Kagome," Arisu was saying, "you don't have to date Yoshi-kun again! It's not like it was an order or anything like that."

Kagome shrugged. She'd had one glass of wine and it hadn't agreed with her, and as a consequence was not feeling as ebullient as her friends. The night was beautiful, but too reminiscent. The moon was waxing in the sky.

"And it's not like you can go back to Yoshi after having someone good," Miyu stated uncharitably, and Kagome, for once, was inclined to agree with her. She still dreamed about Sesshoumaru, nestled between her thighs, lavishing attention on her breast, on her throat, on the curve of her shoulder, his thumbs stroking down the muscles of her belly, squeezing her hips, and she always woke up, burning with desire and filled with a loneliness so horrible she couldn't begin to climb out of it.

In comparison, Yoshi had the moves of a wallaby.

Kagome found this amusing, and said so.

"I kno-ow!" Miyu groaned, placing a dramatic hand on her forehead. "Kagome-chan, why didn't you warn me? That wasn't nice to do to a friend."

Kagome shrugged, too embarrassed to admit that before Yoshi she'd never been kissed.

"Miyu-chan," Kayoko scolded mildly.

"Well, it's true," Miyu said. "That was just so... unexpected!"

"The point... the point," Arisu said, "is that... maybe you don't need a boyfriend. Just take it one day at a time, Kagome-chan. Soon, you'll forget all about old what's-his-face."

"Sesshoumaru," she said, forgetting to call him Sesshou, but her friends were too tipsy to notice.

"Yeah, forget about him," Kayoko said. "Move on with your life."

Kagome said she would, and an hour later she bundled them all into taxicabs to take them home before returning to the roof and wishing she had the stomach for more wine. She could have used the painkillers right then.

I should gather up all my stuff, and take it inside. It would be the responsible thing. It was autumn, after all, the time when she needed to be taking care of her health rather than hanging around on chilly rooftops and mooning over things she couldn't change.

There's been no word from him for over two months, she thought. Her friends were right - it was time to move on. Sesshoumaru wasn't like Inuyasha in that he loved her, and would come to her if he were alive.

Kagome moved to the edge of the roof and placed her hands on the ledge, looking out over the city. Once, I lay with a youkai lord beneath the Tokyo moon, she thought, but it was no good. It still hurt.

She let her eyes drift closed, and let her mind become blank.

She was so tired, so tired of missing him, of waking up in the middle of the night, so tired of knowing how much of the burden she shared. Just like when she had finally landed in the modern era for the last time, she had to accept that he wasn't coming back. Only this time, it was because of her, and not because of the jewel.

Casting her eyes downwards, Kagome studied the little pebbles in the concrete, and, peeking at the edge of her vision, the little alley below.

Wow, she thought, breathless against the warm back, clad in fire-rat fur. So this is flying! Around her his white hair whipped, stinging her cheeks, and his warm arms wrapped around the crook of her knee made her squirmy in weird places. But none of that mattered, on the back of this strange boy, as he flew through the air like it was nothing.

Beneath her, the alley dipped and plunged, and Kagome felt a brief moment of vertigo, as though the world had picked her up and swung her about, and then set her back down again.

She drew back.

Tired of missing Inuyasha, tired of needing Sesshoumaru, Kagome looked out on the city, from the rooftop where she had sought an end to sorrow and found a font of it instead, and made a decision.

No more. No more. This is me, moving on.

It felt okay. Decent. Sucking a draft of air through her teeth, Kagome exhaled and felt lighter, lighter than she had in weeks. It would be hard, but she would let go, and she would make herself happy, in the here and now, and not in the past. The first thing I'm going to do, she thought, is call Yoshi.

Resolved, rejuvenated, Kagome turned around to pick up her things, and saw Sesshoumaru standing not ten feet away, beautiful and white and pure in the light of the moon.

Oh, she thought.

Oh...

Time lay down, and was still.

Before she could open her mouth, or react in any way, he crossed the asphalt, brushed his knuckles across her cheek to catch a tear she hadn't even known was shed, ran a warm, smooth thumb over her lips, and rendered her speechless.

She looked up at him with wide eyes.

Sesshoumaru, luminous in the silvery moonlight, leaned down and caught an earlobe between his teeth, swirling his tongue over the shell of her ear, warm breath curling down through her body and coming to rest in her toes. And then he spoke.

"Take me," he murmured, "to the well."



There once was a hanyou.

This is it, she thought. This is the moment of truth. I can't believe we made it! It was so strange to know how close they had come to losing it all - if it hadn't been for the legacy of Inuyasha's father, none of them would be alive right now except for her, and she would probably be wishing she was dead. Kagome pushed those horrible thoughts from her mind, because they made her feel helpless and paralyzed again, when in reality she had done just as much to erase Naraku from the face of the earth as Inuyasha had, and it had been she who had purified the jewel, had made it unrecognizable from the poisonous black pearl it had become.

They stood beneath the leaves of Goshiboku, in the early autumn light. It was a golden light, rich and warm like honey, rather than the flat yellow stuff that had followed them through their journey, chasing them in and out of summer like a plague or a sickness. Strange, now that the jewel was pure again, how much everything seemed to change. Strange how suddenly Miroku was free, and Sango had her brother, and they were so happily awkward around each other now, courting each other with fumbling shyness and an earnest spirit. Strange how Shippou clung to them, giving Kagome her space. Strange how everything seemed just right, and it was just so.

She wasn't about to begin questioning it. Just go with it, she thought. There's no such thing as too good to last when you've gone through so much. Someone had to be watching. Something has to go right.

High above, Kagome heard the scratchy rustle of leaves losing their moisture, letting loose their green beauty, melting into golden and orange. In a month, they would be dry and flaky, just little bones, brown, burned skeletons of their former selves, dead on the ground. And then they would sleep, and dream, and then be reborn in the spring.

Did it really only take one season? she wondered. Did it really only take a summer?

Inuyasha stood, gazing up at the scar he had left on the tree, and Kagome thought he had never looked so nostalgic, or so grown-up, in that moment. She wondered if he was thinking of Kikyou. Funny how she didn't feel threatened or sad considering Kikyou - she wondered if that happened with all one's enemies when they crossed the border between the living and the dead.

Or maybe that just happened with one's predecessors. In a way, she would miss the other miko. They hadn't spoken in any truly meaningful way, but she had still been a part of her, even when they were at odds.

"Kagome."

She looked up, startled out of her reverie. "Eh?" she said, taking a step toward him. "Yes, Inuyasha?"

He turned his head in her direction, and stared at her with his pretty yellow eyes. Kagome thought she could be lost in them, if he gave her the opportunity.

Then he took another step, turning himself fully toward her, and looked - really looked - her straight in the eye.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

And she thought of all the times he'd saved her life, all the little kindnesses he'd done for her and the others, all the compassion he held behind that angry face, and she nodded.

With care and reverence, mindful of all the people who had died so that she could stand, here and now, beneath the sacred tree with him, Kagome reached out and removed the rosary, wrapping it around her hand. Then she untucked the Shikon no Tama from where it hid beneath her green and white uniform, unlooped it from around her neck, and held it out to him.

Clawed fingers grasped the glass ball, and Inuyasha brought it to his face, to study it.

"All those people," he murmured after a moment, and shook his head. Kagome knew exactly how he felt.

And then he looked at her again.

"Kagome," he said, and he was more serious than she'd ever heard him be, "you have to tell me: is this what you really want?"

The enormity of the question should have made her tremble, should have made her quake with fear and awe, but she felt nothing except joy, and a little bit of regret. She loved him, here and now, the way he was, ears and hair and claws and eyes and all, and yet how could the world know peace if the jewel was allowed to exist? He could erase it all, and she would be there to hold him up, soothe him, reward him for his sacrifice.

"It is," she told him, feeling as though her heart would burst in her chest. "It's the right decision."

Whether or not Inuyasha agreed that it was the right decision, Kagome would never know. Silently, he closed his fist around the Shikon no Tama, that little thing that looked so innocuous and that had caused so much pain, and shut his eyes.

Kagome saw him make a wish, in the breathless eternity of the moment.

Then he opened his hand, and the Shikon no Tama was gone.

And then he opened his eyes, and they were already fading, becoming muddy with grey, and his hair was turning from white to black.

Human, she thought. I think I will miss the ears the most.

And in the space of a moment, the transformation was complete, and Inuyasha saw, for the first time as a human being, the world in the light of day.

"Wow," he said.

"Mmhm," she replied, looking around.

"Beautiful," he said.

She was about to agree when she looked back at him, and found him staring at her with happily astonished eyes, like a boy - or a man, he looked so much older now - who had suddenly discovered a secret, sacred thing, and was grateful for the honor.

"Inuyasha - " He looked so handsome and sweet. She itched to hold him.

"Beautiful," he repeated.

And then Kagome broke and ran to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and tilted her face up to kiss him on his sweetly astonished lips -

- only to find herself stumbling, suddenly off balance, and to her endless, utter horror, she passed right through him, as though he were nothing more than an illusion.

"What?" she said, suddenly shocked, afraid as she regained her footing behind him. "What's happening?"

"Kagome?" he said.

"Inuyasha!" she cried, and saw him turn, and he was fading now, transparent, like smoke in the wind. He was disappearing before her very eyes.

"Oh, no," she whispered. "Please, oh, no."

His lips were moving now, but no sound was coming out, and all around her the forest was suddenly gilded in concrete, was suddenly a shrine and not a forest after all, and she ran to the almost invisible figure.

"I love you," she said, hands passing through his face, through his chest, through his hands, needing to touch him, needing to hold him more than anything else in the world, and knowing that it was now impossible. "I love you."

He couldn't hear her, and she landed in the modern day, never to see him again. It wasn't all for nothing, but it was so little of something that it felt like nothing, and her skin tingled where she had passed through him.

Hours later it was her brother who found her, curled under Goshinboku in the rain and soaked through to the bone.



There once was a girl named Kagome, and there once was a demon king.

Strangely enough, it didn't dawn on her to be angry until they reached the alabaster steps that led to the shrine, and she didn't have hold enough of her wits to express that anger until Sesshoumaru was already halfway up. But when her body did catch up with her mind, it was ready.

Kagome stamped her foot. "Hey," she hissed up at him, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "What the hell is going on? Who the hell do you think you are?" The effect of her anger was marred by the fact that she spoke in a whisper so as to not attract the attention of her family or any curious passers-by.

Sesshoumaru stopped and pivoted in place, the hakama he had chosen to wear flaring slightly dramatically around his legs. He looked like an upperclassman, startled by an uppity servant. He opened his mouth.

"What?" he said. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

"You," she said, very emphatically and very quietly, "can't disappear for almost three months, and then turn up, stick your tongue in my ear, and demand that I take you to the shrine. Where's my damn apology?"

The youkai blinked, and then, very gracefully, leapt down the flight of stairs to come to a rest in front of her.

"You didn't like my tongue in your ear?" he said.

Kagome barely repressed the urge to scream.

"That is not the point," she seethed. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Out," he answered, still looking puzzled. Something seemed to dawn on him. "Were you worried about me?" he asked.

And hurt, and depressed, and every horrible thing in between, she thought, but, for the sake of a quiet life, she just crossed her arms. "Yes. I was," she told him as coolly as possible.

"Oh," he said.

Then he turned and began to leap up the stairs again.

"Wait!" Kagome said shrilly. "Aren't you even going to say sorry?"

A slight exasperation showing on his face, Sesshoumaru turned and looked at her again. "I give you my apology," he said, a little sharply, and then continued up the stairs.

Kagome passed a hand across her eyes, trying to wipe away the anger and frustration, and followed him.

They had walked to the shrine. Or rather, Sesshoumaru had leapt, and she had ridden on his back, too shocked that he was suddenly there again, and too thrilled at the feel of him against her body to say anything as they flew towards her childhood home. He had declined to answer questions, merely looked straight ahead and ignored her. It would have hurt if she hadn't been so ridiculously, pathetically happy to see him.

She was so pitiful. Don't leave me again, was what she wanted to say to him now, as she trudged after him, up the steps. Stay with me.

He met her at the top of the stairs, arms folded into his sleeves, and long, silver hair tossing gently on the cool breeze.

She wanted to crawl inside his clothes and curl up against him. She wanted to sleep for days.

"It's over here," she said quietly, suddenly drained and no longer angry, but just tired.

Sesshoumaru followed her as she crossed the courtyard, his footsteps matching hers as she paced across the stones, as steadily as possible, to the well house.

Kagome had not been inside the well house for years. She'd last tried jumping into the past when she was eighteen years old, and had earned a broken ankle for her folly. She'd said farewell to it, and to all the things it represented, only three weeks later, and then she'd left it behind. If she were to be true, though, she had never really bid it adieu; she was always hoping and wishing that one fine day a dark head with stormy grey eyes would peek over the side, and take her hand, and kiss her back to life again.

That never happened though.

Gingerly, Kagome placed her hands on the doors and slid them open.

"Here," she said.

Sesshoumaru walked forward, and descended the stairs. Outside, the moon was bright enough to cast an eerie light inside the old structure, and Kagome found herself slightly apprehensive, as though something was about to happen. The light and the shadows and the shining demon who had come to a rest in front of the enchanted well all conspired to take her breath away.

Quietly, Kagome stepped down the rickety wooden steps, and moved to his side.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye, and wondered what he was thinking.

He was so still and stoic, his face in shadow, his shining hair almost glowing in the light. He could have been thinking about anything in that moment - about the little girl he raised from the dead, or the toad who served him faithfully, or the brother he loved and hated - or nothing. He could be drifting in a sea of fog, loving nothing, needing nothing, wanting nothing - just a youkai who shunned memory.

"You say," he broke the silence, "that you just jump in, and it takes you to the past?"

Kagome nodded, heart twisting painfully. "Only Inu - Inuyasha and I could go through it, but that's all we had to do. It doesn't work any more, though."

In the moonlight, he turned his face slightly toward her, so she could see his golden eyes glowing, and feel the shadow of his smirk. Or perhaps he was merely looking at her, calm and collected as always, and she was imagining his mocking look. Either way, it didn't seem to matter.

"Hmm," he said. "Tell me, miko - what is your memory of this place?"

Kagome closed her eyes.

"Once," she said, searching for the words, and finding them wanting. How could she describe this? "Once, I was pulled down a well by a mononoke, and I met my fate on the other side."

Next to her, she heard him breathe out, very quietly.

"Ah..." he whispered.

Kagome thought of a fading boy, and a monk and a huntress, now a nation of only two, and a little kitsune, growing up.

What would they think of me? she wondered. Would they even recognize me now?

She ached, with every bone in her body, to forget the girl she had been, and to forget the people who had loved her.

Too much love stifled. Too little starved.

And then there were strong hands on her waist, and her stomach dropped down between her toes as Sesshoumaru took her in his arms - pressed against her, warm and sweet and hard and please - and leapt into the well.

There was no magic, so Kagome knew that they were still in the present time, but there was no way for Sesshoumaru to know that. Next to her, he turned and looked up, up the long dark tunnel to the moonlight, up the long, empty years to where he had ended, and Kagome, gazing at his face, recognized the expression there.

In profile, in softly illuminated shadows, she saw his brow crease ever so slightly, as if in worry. His eyes were wide, searching; his lips were parted, as if to allow a sharp intake of breath, in fear or surprise. He looked afraid, troubled, and overlaying it all was a look of such heartbreaking hope that she felt her own heart stop in sympathy.

She recognized it, because she had felt it so many times before.

Sesshoumaru gazed up the tunnel of the well, gazed down the years, and longed.

Kagome was reborn.

As if she'd risen from ashes, as if she'd passed over a boundary she'd never known was there, she was renewed, resurrected. All the need and sadness in her soul, all the long-cherished desire and despair suddenly dissipated, suddenly drew her heart out into the moonlight, and gave it new life.

It wasn't a dream, she thought. He remembers, too.

He remembers.

Then he lowered his face and looked at nothing, and the moment had passed; the strange bubbling laughter and brimming tears seemed out of place next to his stoic facade, so she just took a deep breath and sighed.

"I know you don't believe me," she said, graciously ignoring the moment of his greatest weakness, the moment in which she found herself again, "but it really did used to lead to the past."

He turned and gazed at her, and she thought he had never looked so breathtaking as right then.

"I know," he said softly. "I believe you."

Kagome nodded, and then he took her in his arms again. The world dipped and turned again, and then they were back inside the well house.

Sesshoumaru didn't even look at the well. Instead he spoke. "Take me to the tree," he said. "The one where Inuyasha slept."

So Kagome took him to Goshinboku.

They stood there for a long time in silence, Sesshoumaru as opaque and silent as ever, and Kagome thinking of things past.

Quietly, she stood, and found that revelation didn't last very long, for she was sad again, and there was a question, haunting her, to which she had to know the answer.

"Tell me," she said, her voice sounding flat and strange in the quiet, "why you told Naraku you would never forgive him for making you use Tenseiga."

Next to her, Sesshoumaru shifted, very slightly.

"Naraku," he said, "forced me to revive him."

Kagome didn't have to ask to know to whom he was referring. And she knew, without being told, the secret he had kept from her.

"You..." she said, trailing off, unsure of what to do, or how to proceed. "You... could have brought him back."

He said nothing,

"You could have revived him. It wasn't too late. You could have brought him back." Her tone wasn't accusing, only surprised.

High above, the leaves rustled.

"Yes," he said finally, softly. "Do you hate me now?"

Was it a kindness, or a cruelty? she wondered. Was it the right thing to do?

Was there any way to know?

And she imagined him, standing over the corpse of the boy who was his blood brother, the favored son who was given the gift of mortality. She imagined him standing with the blade of life, his own poor substitute for dying, clutched in his hand. She imagined him smelling disease, and decay, knowing that even should he raise him, there was nothing left for his brother in this world. She imagined him glancing around at the thing his brother had become, the humans old and young, bent and broken, toothless and haggard, toiling and trudging beneath the sun.

She imagined him resheathing his blade, and walking away.

She wondered how much it had hurt.

"No," she said, finally. "No, I don't hate you."

She thought she heard him sigh, very slightly, and then it was lost in the autumn breeze.

There was a lump in her throat. Do you need forgiveness, like me? she wondered. Are you bent beneath the weight of it?

But she didn't ask those questions. "Is this really how it was meant to be?" she asked instead, staring at the leaves.

She'd meant it as a rhetorical question, but he answered her anyway.

"It doesn't matter," he replied. "This is the way it is."

Kagome nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it is."

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.

"So," she said finally. "Where did you go?"

"Out," he said.

"What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to go home," he replied.

"With me?"

"Yes."

Kagome sighed, despairing, joyful. There was one more thing she needed to know before she could leave this tree, leave this behind her, and it was the hardest question she had ever asked.

"Are you going to leave me?" she said, very softly, knowing he would hear her.

There was a long pause, before he finally answered. "Yes."

In his voice, there was regret, and hope.

"But not right now," she added for him, since there were some things to which he would never admit first.

He laughed softly. "No," he replied, tone low and quiet. "Not right now."

A long time ago, the Kagome of the past would have wanted to know into how many pieces he would shatter her life. She would have wondered how badly she would miss him when he was gone, how many tears she would have cried because of it, how much she would wish to die. The Kagome of the past would have wondered how thoroughly he was going to break her heart.

But that Kagome was gone, and this Kagome stared up at the branches of Goshinboku, barely visible against the night sky. This Kagome placed a hand against her own fluttering breast, and wondered how thoroughly she would break his.

"I guess you should have picked a youkai," she told him at last.

She expected him to point out that there weren't any, that she was barely a choice at all, but he didn't. Instead, he sighed a little. "The end result would be the same," he said softly. "She would die, and I would go on."

And Kagome thought of him, alone and lonely, at the end of the world.

She had her answer. Carefully, deliberately, she turned toward him, grasped his shoulders, and pinned him to the sacred tree.

Then she kissed him.

He stood very still, as though shocked into silence, and she poured into him all the things she'd found because of him. She pulled him with her, into the light, into a sunlit country, where she had become herself again, and it didn't matter that he didn't return it, because she was bestowing a benediction.

I forgive you, she thought as she kissed him. I forgive you.

And then, just as she was about to pull away, he kissed her back, sliding his warm hands over her back and into her hair, pulling her flush against him, mouth open and seeking, blindly fumbling toward her, finding her, setting her aflame, and together they rose out of the fire.

After eternity, they pulled back, and Kagome gazed up at him.

He was looking down at her, golden eyes shining in the darkness, beneath the shedding branches of Goshinboku, beneath the dying, chilling autumn sky, beneath the grey clouds of the coming winter.

"I am not Inuyasha," he said quietly.

Kagome laughed, and kissed him again.

"Good," she told him when she broke away, thrilled and fluttery, giddy and sad, lost and found again. "Good."

He smiled.

And then she took his hand in hers, and together they went home.