InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ My Hatred, My Obsession ❯ The Woman ( Chapter 8 )

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

By: raven91

Forgive me for not updating for so long. Life has been difficult with balancing school, a musical, painting, and running a website all in some pathetic 24 hours.

I'm glad I could finally get this out, although I'm suffering from a bit of writer's block at the moment. Forgive me for several things before you read:

1. if this chapter is short…but the next one will be much much longer! Promise!

2. if this chapter is terrible and boring…

3. if this chapter is OOC

I'm sorry about this. I guess you could call this a “bonding” chapter, if you will, between the plot holes and characters.

My Hatred, My Obsession

Chapter 8 - The Woman

He had never been one to think of others above his affairs. To be more exact, he had never been one to think of anyone at all. Thus, it could be said with confidence that the situation at hand really wasn't his fault. Anyone with a simple mind could have called him “uncaring”, but those who knew him best understood that there was nothing in the world more important to him than what he considered business. Business was what fueled him; it drove him step by step, day by day to his ultimate goal; and there was nothing more complicated than his mind during those long treks.

However, when his attention was caught, it was caught, and it could not be shaken easily. Unless, of course, what had caught his attention displeased him; in that case, it would be gone before too much time was spent on what he believed to be a “pointless” task. Things that “moved him” into some form of response could usually be classified into two categories: alive and powerful or alive, dangerous - something he called boring - and about to be dead.

The woman trailing behind him, in this case, could not be shelved into either of these organized files in Sesshoumaru's complex mind. She ruled a category all her own - one simply referred to as “the woman”. Into it poured all sorts of information that he stashed away for later, for he was hesitant to spend more than a few moments at a time pondering her existence and why such a clumsy, helpless, stupid, and annoying human creature had not been killed yet in a world that he had learned favored only the strong.

But then he had to remind himself that not only was she not as stupid as she looked, but also that she was more powerful than he gave her credit for. Still, her appearance completely contradicted every solid fact he knew about her. Her gate was not graceful, for she tripped over things much too often, and she was dull in the sensory department to an almost painfully pathetic point for her brain seemed to be full of air rather than brains. But despite these negatives, she had a keen sense of direction - something at which he had to marvel for this was not a common characteristic of a woman. She started her own fire, cooked her own sustenance, and rose earlier than the sun to make sure that everything was ready to go. She was sturdy too; not a single complaint ever rushed from her mouth to victimize his sensitive ears. Overall, she seemed “unnatural”, almost as if she was some crazy mistake of mother nature that had lived against all odds.

But perhaps the strangest of all her conglomerate of qualities was how much peace she brought with her. She was quiet, to his shock - for he always imagined her as a featherbrained woman who spent much of her time wasting air on words. During their walks now, she hardly spoke a word, unless she asked - often rudely - for a brief stop. And despite his hesitation, he often obliged for those times were rare. To be honest, he sometimes forgot that she was there, so quiet and natural her presence. And it was with a start that he found her reading a book under the guidance of the fire's light one night. He hadn't dared to come inspect until he was certain that she was asleep, for doing so would prove to his embarrassment that he held within himself the sinful thing called curiosity.

Not words, nor blank pages he suspected might have been looked at in an attempt to impress him, met his eyes. Not plain letters, nor meaningless numbers greeted him, but higher mathematics jumped out from their home of numerous pages of what looked like a half-drowned, ugly thing that looked to be some barely recognizable scroll in the form of a square. It was thick, and as he took it into his hands out of her sleep-numbed fingers, he raised a brow for it was heavier - in human standards - than he had thought. He listed through the pages well into the night, wondering how such a person - much less a woman - was intelligent enough to understand it. What use could she have for mathematics in this time when women were allowed nowhere near places of knowledge? He briefly entertained the image of her stealing it from some merchant, but quickly dismissed it for he could not see her as a thief.

But he should have known that she could not be completely independent. They were only a few days from his brother's village when she ran out of food. As mentioned before to our reader, he was not well versed in the exercise of caring, and thus, he did not notice that she didn't eat. He merely assumed that she knew what she was doing. And after that, his mind did not stray to her that morning, or that evening either. He had other things to think of; other problems that his absence must be causing within the walls of his home; and still other problems that had to be faced now with the possibility of a new enemy. In fact, it was this that was on his mind in the hot afternoon of the next day when she collapsed behind him.

He continued to walk, for a moment thinking that he should leave her there. But something beckoned to him, and he found himself turning to look at her…

(……………………R 30;..)

After the incident with the invisible beasts, Sesshoumaru had been on his guard. The woman's collapse was a sign for caution. His wary, sharp eyes scanned the area around them for any danger, and he tensed the claws of his hand in case of attack. When he sensed nothing but a passing breeze he focused his attention on the girl. Kneeling down, he put a hand on her forehead and moved her hair away from her face. There was once again that feeling that he was unfamiliar with; the same feeling of “confusion” when he looked at her that he only felt sometimes with Rin. But it was different with her - because Rin was a child, and this was more of a woman. He himself wasn't sure how she had shed the image of a girl in his eyes, but she had, and the realization was powerful. His clawed thumb ran over her bottom lip in a caress that felt more sensual than curious, her lips feeling as soft as they looked. He barely remembered tasting them in his frenzy of rage that night, and in truth, preferred to forget it.

Coming back to reality from foggy memories, he searched her body for any sign of injury. Remembering the incident in the Oasis, he moved her hair away from her ears to check for any more bleeding. There was none. He knew that she could not have dropped down in exhaustion for their pace had been slow. His hand traveled down her chest to her ribs and he attempted to feel for any damage to her bones. Once again, his search yielded nothing. He tried to think back to the past several days to pinpoint the source of her illness, absentmindedly running his hand through her hair. Then he remembered that there had been the absence of the smell of what she told him was called “ramen”. Everything clicked and he felt annoyance at her for not mentioning the fact that she had run out of food.

She had probably thought that he would not care.

That - for reasons unknown - angered him. He turned her face and inspected the shadows beneath her eyes, the sunburned nose, and the face that was thinner than it had been when he had first found her lying feverish upon the shore. It perturbed him to think that he hadn't taken measures to prevent the deterioration of her health. It felt somehow dishonorable that she had fallen ill within his care - if being in his company could be known by such a term. He told himself that such a thing would not be allowed to pass again, this time not because he was pestered at having to carry her, but because she had somehow fallen under the temporary title of his charge.

His claw ran along her ear gently, its owner reveling in the softness and fragileness of the appendage. He wondered why he had never felt such an engrossment in Rin as he did in this woman. But he hadn't nearly killed Rin, and he had certainly never felt the pleasure of kissing her. It occurred to him that he had never referred to her by name. He vaguely remembered it…

Kagome…

It was a pleasant name, and he felt the desire to taste it like he'd tasted her lips.

“Kagome…”

(……………………R 30;………..)

Once again! So sorry for not updating in a long while!

I'm sorry this chapter was a bit uneventful but this story was mainly written in an attempt to try to analyze Sesshoumaru and to try to gain a deeper understanding of his character and how he could possibly find Kagome attractive.

So sorry if I bored you with my philosophy, I'll try to put less of that in there for you guys, but I promise that the next chapter will have more action.