InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Inexcusable Nature ❯ Identities and Personalities ( Chapter 4 )

Inexcusable Nature

Just A Starving Writer

Disclaimer: nope, not mine.

Part 4: Identities and Personalities

"Well, doctor, am I free to leave?" Kagome asked comically of the smiling Rin.

"Yes, all good now!"

"Great! Then I'll be taking my leave. Thank you all for your splendid hospitality."

Of course, that comment was spoken only at Rin. Who else in the group had done a damn thing? The demon lord seemed to take note of her pointed statement and his glare hardened.

Trying her best to ignore him, she slung the quiver over her shoulder, folded her precious few belongings into the tatters of cloth that still served as her bag while basking in the memory of her splendid little yellow backpack, and picked up her bow.

"Thank you Rin! Take care!" she yelled lightly while walking away, silently ecstatic that her life had been spared by her questionable company. Thank goodness for small favors, such as demon lords with no memories of annoying young mikos.

"Bye Kagome! Good luck with your quest!"

`Shit! My name!' Kagome thought as she winced and glanced quickly at the statuesquely standing demon lord. Something flickered across his eyes, but otherwise he still seemed pretty ignorant of her identity.

Thanking every deity in existence, she fumbled as quickly as she could out of the area and away from his prying eyes.

Unfortunately, her fumbling passage didn't take into consideration the terrain. Before she had even gotten out of hearing range of even the little girl, her adventure once again took a turn for the worst. For not the first time, she cursed herself for not having brought her trusty medical kit. After falling suddenly down a decently high cliff, there was no doubting that something was very wrong with her left foot.

"SHIT! Shit shit shit shit SHIT!!! For the last two years, not a thing goes right! Why is fate so content to mess with me????" Her tirade was cut short when she felt several eyes staring at her from above. There on the edge of the cliff was the group she had so recently departed: Rin who was eyeing her with childish concern, Jaken who was mumbling about stupid humans, and, she swore, a pale demon lord with a demented twinkle of amusement in his hard eyes.

*

"What's taking her so long? She's been back for a few days!" Shippou whined suddenly.

"Are you forgetting who you are talking about?" Inuyasha said grumpily. "Knowing Kagome, she's doing every stupid thing she can think of."

*

"You know me, wench." The cold statement shocked Kagome out of the thoughtful stupor she had fallen into after Rin had helped her bandage her swollen ankle.

"Well," Kagome began hesitantly, frantically searching her tired mind for an answer that would not give away her identity. She had the sneaking suspicion he would drop his honorable routine in a second if she lost her appeal as a mystery. In the end, she decided appealing to his vanity had the highest probability of success.

"You are a lord. Of course I recognize you." Ah! What a splendidly crafted lie!

"Cease your prattling, woman. Tell me or I will not hesitate to kill you."

Her pride was instantly squashed and her shoulders drooped in defeat.

"You really don't remember me?" she asked with a sigh. It was kind of disappointing really. She had at least hoped that she had made more of an impression on the demon. How often did he have girls shoot him?

"I do not waste time with humans."

"Hmph," she grunted in a mix of agreement and disagreement. He was such a hypocrite. How else could one explain Rin? His glare immediately squelched her observation.

"Fine," she groaned as she rose to her feet with bow in hand. Quickly stringing an arrow, she pointed adamantly at his cold face. "Do you remember now?"

His blank but somehow annoyed face answered her question negatively.

"Gah!" she moaned as she fell once more to the ground, straining her injured ankle in the process.

His pointed glare told her in no words to cease her fussing over the pain and answer his query quickly.

"If you can't figure it out, why should I tell you?" she asked with a sudden burst of confidence that seemed to come from out of nowhere. In the end, she blamed the sword. Perhaps a lot of Inuyasha's problems with overconfidence resided in the big sword he carried. Having a powerful weapon surely granted her some borrowed power.

"You will tell me." Such a powerfully annoyed command in that unfailingly calm voice yet again. She looked at him in awe of his amazing vocal talent.

"You want to know? Fine, but you have to answer a question of my own." An angry twitch in his otherwise still face told her to get to her point quickly. "Do you know where your half-brother is?"

That certainly threw him for a few seconds. His invisible anger diminished under his invisible confusion. Finally he looked on her again with a speculative glare.

"Gah! You surely can't mean you still don't remember me!"

A pointed look once again answered her.

"No," she refused adamantly. "I've given you enough clues." Yes, this outburst surely had to be the fault of the white hilted sword at her side that seemed to be thrumming with power.

"Wench." How strange that one word could be so many things: threat, comment, command.

"No. I thought you were smarter than this. It's really disappointing."

Before she had even realized the words had been said, she was in the air, dangling at least a good foot off the ground by the strong insistent hand crushing her throat. Though she was certain he would not kill her til his curiosity had been sated, there was no denying her fright at the display of power. Perhaps that was why she reacted as she did, on instinct with no recollection of how or why.

The sword had found its way into her hand and even as he tightened his grip on her tiny neck, the elegant blade rested at the base of his throat, her trembling hand causing the sharp point to draw blood in a tiny wavering scratch. He dropped her without a word and walked away.

"Kagome?" The child's voice brought her back to the moment as she uncrumpled herself and sat in a slightly more dignified manner that rested her throbbing ankle.

"Yes Rin?" she asked, wiping the incident with the demon lord from her countenance.

"What were you and Lord Sesshoumaru doing?" Ah, the innocence of children! How she dearly missed Shippou…

"We were just talking Rin."

*

"I have a bad feeling about this…" a tired hanyou began again.

"Oh shut up, Inuyasha," an angry fox child retorted. "You always have bad feelings."

"And yet you failed to see the trap that put us here…" a monk added thoughtfully.

"SHUT UP!"

*

Kagome took no pride in wiping the tiny speck of demon blood from the point of her sword. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to dip the entire damn thing in disinfectant so she could expunge it from her memory. True, the blade had spilled blood before, but this was different. There was most certainly something wrong with this.

"I think the sword is clean," Rin said, obviously bored with the miko's preoccupation.

"Not clean enough," Kagome mumbled as she continued buffing the edge in a desperate attempt to polish off some speck of imaginary blood. She was concentrating so hard on her task that she failed to notice the approach of her `doctor's' protector.

All at once she felt her miko senses kicking in as her hand suddenly grasped the sword hilt and she spun around. She was in such awe over the tiny scrape she had inflicted on the arm of a slightly surprised demon lord, that she almost failed to notice a very important fact.

"Kagome! You're glowing!" Rin's exclamation brought her attention to the fact that not only was her body indeed surrounded by a pink light but her katana as well. The victim of her surprise attack lifted his slight wound to his eyes and watched in poorly concealed amazement and irritation as blood poured from a cut that should have healed as soon as it was made.

Kagome's eyes miraculously widened even more right before she fainted dead away, half from the sheer excitement of the event and half from the realization that she had stood heavily on her injured ankle that was very angry at her concerning her continued abuse.

When she returned to reality a few short moments later, Rin was leaning over her.

"Are you okay Kagome?"

"Yeah," she grumbled as she sat up rubbing her aching head. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"What happened?"

"I fainted, honey. I was surprised, that's all." Really, she was trying to convince herself of this fact more than the child.

Still trembling with fear and excitement, she chanced a look at the silent demon lord. As usual, he was relentlessly staring at her. However, even her untrained eyes could pick up the subtle difference. Something had changed. She still didn't think he suspected her identity, but his impression of her had certainly changed. No longer was he looking on her with curiosity bordering his cool indifference and dislike.

Nope. Now the regal lord was caught in between awe, respect, and pure contempt. She gulped nervously.

"Sorry!" she squeaked.

"You will tell me who you are now." There was no chance she could deny his command now. Not when he used this completely overpowering tone.

"Kagome. I'm the protector of the Shikon no Tama. Until two years ago, I traveled with your half brother."

*

"Oh shit!" Inuyasha fumed.

"It can't be that bad," Sango said though she was blatantly lying for everyone's benefit.

"You can feel it! It's bad. Very bad. That bad."

Miroku only sighed as Shippou whimpered in fright.

*

Taking information in stride was apparently very important for this particular demon lord. After a good few minutes to digest this information, he took his damn sweet time to stare at her with renewed vigor.

"Impossible," he finally commented.

"What?"

"The wench is dead."

"But I'm not!"

"You are not her."

"But I am!"

"She is dead."

"I am NOT dead!"

"Unfortunately, thus you cannot be her."

"ARGH!!!"

A blankly livid demon lord suddenly towered over her, effectively stopping her angry tirade.

"Wench, you will cease your stupid insistence that you are the dead."

She could only nod in frightful agreement. Thinking about it later, she realized that she never disobeyed the command to begin with. After all, she never insisted that she was dead.

Once the situation had cooled significantly, a thought occurred to Kagome. It was just too much to sit on and it took no time at all before the question popped out of her unsuspecting mouth.

"How do you know she died? I mean, why does it matter to you if one silly miko died?"

The quiet spread out for so long, she assumed it was the extent of her answer.

"That miko was the only one who could have stopped Naraku."

Stunned silence followed the declaration for hours.

*

"I'm so confused," Shippou moaned.

The other prisoners nodded in mute agreement.

*