InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strange Wishes ❯ Fate and Fortune ( Chapter 8 )

In the Sengoku Jidai, the fox kit and his two human companions crawled out of the Bone Eater’s Well, all three of them so drenched with rain that had the well not been dry it would surmise it to say they had just gone for a swim in it.

“I sense a jewel fragment--a huge one!” Kagome exclaimed as she hoisted herself over the wooden lip after the hanyou.

Her words tossed InuYasha’s memory hours back to his and Kikyou’s conversation, and his brow furrowed as the flashes of wind blades illuminated the moonless sky over the village, So Kagura did steal Naraku’s shard. But why is she here?

“Hurry up you guys! We have to help the others!” Shippou squeaked, bounding off toward the source of the commotion, InuYasha sprinting after him on the tender soles of his human feet.

A strangled yelp from behind made them both stop, and InuYasha saw Kagome fall to the ground. He ran back to her as the kitsune looked between them with a stricken expression.

“Kagome?” The black-haired InuYasha knelt beside her, alarmed.

The miko seemed angry with herself, “I hurt my ankle earlier and I--I can’t move very quickly.”

Before Shippou or Kagome could say or do anything else, InuYasha pulled her into his arms with a single swift movement. Human though he was, he was anything but average in his strength even then. Shippou glanced at them only once to reassure himself before he was racing off in the direction of the village, InuYasha hot on his furry heels.

Its inhabitants having fled long ago, the village was a wreck, and InuYasha cursed the moonless night again and again as they passed one destroyed hut after another. The brightness of the wind blades intensified as they drew nearer Kaede’s hut until one flew right past them. InuYasha ducked behind the side of a roofless hut, two of its walls already having been hacked to pieces. Shippou was shivering, his back pressed flat against the side of the hut as InuYasha set Kagome on her feet so she could peer around the corner.

Poking his head out above hers, the scene was illuminated before his eyes by the light of the wind blades. Kagura was hovering in the midst of a cloud of Saimyoushou, her bloody eyes blazing with a power enhanced by the jewel shard Kagome had sensed Kagura possessed. He narrowed his eyes: he didn’t need his youkai-half’s powers to see that the wind sorceress had Naraku’s Hell Wasps under the same spell she had imposed upon Kouga’s comrades so long ago, their lifeless bodies being controlled by her demon fan as she bent them to her every whim.

The wind demoness smiled wickedly, and with a sweep of her sorcerous fan crescent-shaped knives rived the air, glancing off the spirit-barrier that encased Kaede’s hut and spinning off into the night. InuYasha started when Kagome pushed him aside, about to charge out into the battle.

“Are you that stupid? Your leg’s hurt!” InuYasha hissed as he pinned her against the hut wall, endeavoring not to lower his eyes to her soaking wet and white dress. “I’m human and we don’t have any weapons!”

Kagome gave him her angry face, and if the simple wrath of a schoolgirl was enough to inspire fear in the heart of a hanyou, it certainly worked on InuYasha in his human form, “We have to help our friends! And my weapon is in Kaede’s hut!”

InuYasha glanced around the corner as he held her down, and sure enough, evading Kagura’s wind blades as they stood like sentries to the fore of the hut were Miroku and Kaede, Kirara scorching the air above them as she took out as many Saimyoushou as she could whilst dodging the wind sorceress’ desultory attacks. The monk and the ancient miko had almost no opportunities to reciprocate in kind because of the constant threat of wind blades.

“I’ll go get your bow,” InuYasha told Kagome firmly, making to head out from behind the wall, but his haori got caught on something....

“No! I can’t lose you!” Kagome screeched at him as she pulled him back, her grip on his arm nearly painful, but before he could respond to such a declaration Shippou made himself heard by hopping onto his shoulder.

“No one can get inside the hut because of the shield Kaede and Miroku put around it to keep Sango safe!”

Fear sparkled in the brown depths of Kagome’s eyes, “We have to do something! Did Kagura just come here to kill us? How can we get her to leave?”

InuYasha said nothing as Kikyou’s voice sounded in his head, somehow louder than the din of the battle, ‘A great conspiracy has arisen among Naraku’s reincarnations, and he has fled with the help of the few still loyal to him. No one knows where he has taken refuge.’

InuYasha had to admit that Kagura had picked a bad night to attack the whereabouts of Naraku out of them, and what made it even worse was that they had no idea where the bastard was. But even as the three of them stood huddled together indecisively, concealed by the hut wall, Kaede’s scream punctuated the sounds of the wind blades’ destruction. They all peered around the hut wall once more, watching in horror as one of Kagura’s wind blades caught Kaede’s shoulder, fresh blood tainting her chihaya as she fell to the ground.

Shippou and Kagome gasped; it wasn’t immediately apparent whether she was still alive or not. InuYasha growled all the same (though it sounded rather pitiful in his human form). Already provoked by what Kagura had done to Kikyou, he now tried desperately to escape Kagome’s grasp.

“InuYasha, I’ll subdue you!” She shouted angrily, trying to wrestle him back behind the hut wall even as tears shimmered in her eyes.

His retort, whatever it may have been, was cut off by something nudging his shoulder, and he, Kagome, and Shippou looked over to see Kirara standing beside them, her huge fangs gleaming.

“I think she wants us to ride her,” Kagome said, grasping Kirara’s fur.

As soon as Kagome’s hand had tangled itself in Kirara’s butter-complexioned coat, the fire-cat was airborne. Luckily, Kagome’s shriek went unheard in the midst of the ruction, and just as Kirara was leaving the ground, InuYasha took hold of one of her tails, Shippou clinging to his haori for dear life.

InuYasha closed his eyes against the heat of Kirara’s flaming paws as she glided over air, touching down in front of the hut. Its shield had begun to flicker after Kaede had become incapacitated.

The fire-cat skidded to a halt beside Kaede’s limp body, and InuYasha immediately let go whereas Kagome continued to use Kirara as a means of support.

“InuYasha!”

At the calling of his name the hanyou looked up at the wind demoness, hatred stirring his heart at the sight of her. He could feel Shippou shaking as he clung to his back. Before InuYasha could tap into the cornucopia of insults he had been saving up however, Kagura was speaking to him.

“How fortunate that the day I should need my threats to penetrate that dense head of yours you are at your weakest,” She derided, her fan poised at the ready. “Tell me where Naraku is!”

Out of the corner of his eye InuYasha glimpsed Miroku trying to telegraph something to him, but he paid no heed, and answered, “We don’t know where the hell is he, Kagura, but what I do know is--”

“InuYasha you idiot!” Miroku hissed, slapping a hand to his sweaty forehead. “You should have just told her a random location so we could be rid of her!”

“Take that!”

InuYasha started at the sound of Kagome’s yell, and he turned just in time to see her loose an arrow from Kaede’s bow. InuYasha’s heart missed a beat at the vim in her eyes as she filled the arrow with her miko aura a split second before she let it fly.

Kagura’s pupils shrank in fear as the arrow burned its path toward her, the bright pink fire surrounding it frying anything that got too close. In a flash of fan blades however, the Saimyoushou puppets flew in front of her to shield her from Kagome’s power, and Naraku’s former insects exploded in a violent shower of molten magic.

Kagome didn’t even have time to draw breath much less take up another one of Kaede’s arrows before the enraged wind sorceress had sent her retaliatory volley of wind blades hurling her way. InuYasha didn’t need to think before he did what he had to do. He pushed Kagome out of the way, his chest splitting open as the wind blade hit it, Kagome’s scream ringing in his ears as his own blood spurted in front of his fading vision. - * - * - *-

Kouga had been running for so long that he could no longer feel the earth beneath his feet as his legs pumped, his blood running hot with the energy of the two Shikon no Kakera embedded in his calves. He was flying, truly flying....

It was then that his nose construed the messages of the wind, and his lips curled in a vindictive snarl as the ghastly image of Kagura swam in his mind’s eye. He altered his course in the blink of an eye, riding on the wings of the wind toward where he knew the vile demoness who murdered his comrades was, obviously not concerned with such trivial matters such as camouflaging her scent this night.

Kouga barely noticed a thing beyond the bloodthirsty haze that had settled in his brain, not even the redolence of his human inamorata. He heard a girl scream just before he burst out of the trees, not slowing down until he hit his target from behind.

He knew that he’d struck true when the priceless scent of Kagura’s blood filled his nostrils, and he savored the feel of his claws in her intestines until she pivoted in midair, swinging her fan. She was fast--faster than he remembered--but not fast enough. Kouga breezed out of harm’s way, weaving in and out of the hoards of insects, his own wind battling with hers as he launched himself at her blind spot, his foot connecting with her head.

Kagura was thrown forward, her body slamming into a strange blue barrier that encircled a house. The barrier repelled her in an igneous cloud of sparks, jolting her back and forth before finally evanescing as Kagura fell to the ground.

Kouga was breathing hard, entertaining only a single gruesome thought at the moment, “This is the night you die, sorcerous witch! This is the night I receive blood payment for the deaths of my men!”

The terrified luster in Kagura’s crimson orbs only made his charge fiercer, and she pulled one of her feathers from her hair, the giant white obstruction giving Kagura a chance to regain her ground in the time it took Kouga to shred the plume. The wolf youkai gave chase as she eluded his hungry claws, and he danced around her wind blades that she tossed at him with increasing desperation. Even when her blades nicked him on his legs he hardly registered pain; his blood was running as fast as he was, he could smell her death, her heart was inches away.

Her mouth opened in a silent cry as his arm lanced through her chest, piercing her heart as he had done so many times before in the realm of dreams. Extracting his hand from the fatal wound he had inflicted, he reveled in the carmine rivers that gushed down his arm. Kagura descended, falling to her knees as soon as she reached the ground, each breath rattling in her chest like the bell tolls of the afterlife.

Her question was barely audible, “Why?”

He met her tortured eyes, a reluctant feeling of pity creeping through him as she spoke again, “Why do you kill me? We have the same enemy. Shouldn’t we fight on the same side?”

Pondering her words, Kouga stepped closer to her, realizing her time was limited. He stopped feet from her, peering down at her afflicted visage. “What does it matter if we share an enemy? It wouldn’t even matter if we shared blood; nothing can erase the past. No common goal will make me forget what you did to my pack,” He spat.

Kagura swallowed a great lungful of air with difficultly, and he flinched when she reached out for his bloody hand, grasping it with both of hers. Her fingers slipping in her own hot blood, she held her killer’s hand, looking up into his eyes.

“Kouga,” Her voice was scarcely a whisper above the wind, “You want vengeance. I slaughtered your pack. Would you...would you not slay mine as well?”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, and it seemed the only other presence with them was an impatient death, though in actuality Kagome had her eyes glued on the sorceress and the ookami. Miroku had brought Kaede into the hut when the barrier had failed, and Shippou had followed.

Finally Kouga nodded to her, and she let her hand fall away from his as her body slumped over, and she ceased to draw another breath. Her fan closed of its own volition as the carnage that was Naraku’s Hell Wasps lost all animation, becoming earthbound at gravity’s mercy. Wiping his hand on his pelt, Kouga gasped when Kagura’s body evaporated, leaving only two things in its bloody wake: her fan, and a nearly whole fragment of the Shikon no Tama.

“Kouga!” At the sound of her voice, Kagome instantly won priority inside him, and he turned away from the malignant pearl to face her.

A thousand lifetimes could not have prepared him to see Kagome like this. All else ceased to exist when he laid eyes on her where she sat crouched on the ground. She was an angel, her white gown swirling about her bodice, the likes of which the earth would never again be graced with. Not that he hadn’t seen better looking women before (he had), but his feelings for Kagome made her beauty that much more valuable to him, and at that moment he could see every angle, contour, and curve of her beauty.

Kagome must have picked up on this, because next thing she was attempting to hide herself from him, “Th--Thank you, Kouga, for saving us. I don’t know what we would’ve done.... ”

He ran to her side and bent to clasp her hand in his clean one, “It was no sweat.”

He then heard what sounded like a weak groan, and for the first time he saw what exactly it was that Kagome was crouching over, and his eyes widened when he saw the familiar red hinezumi splattered in blood, though the person in it was not directly discernable.

Kagome looked up at the wolf prince nervously as he took a whiff. He gawked at the black-haired, human-eared figure that was most definitely InuKuro, who seemed to sense the presence of his rival, because he made a sound that could’ve been a growl, his clawless hands twitching.

“I’ll be damned,” Kouga said as InuYasha opened his eyes. “Well hanyou, sorry to drop in at such an inconvenient time, namely your human night. The new moon, huh?” He glanced between InuYasha and the sky with a vicious smirk. A wolf’s appetite for blood was never completely slaked, after all.

InuYasha glared at Kouga, but the action seemed to sap him of the last of his strength; the human went limp with a sigh.

“Kouga....,” Kagome said warningly, correctly interpreting the glint in his azure eyes.

“Don’t worry Kagome, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of this,” And with that the wolf lifted his clean hand, not expecting it to be clean for much longer, but just as he made to thrust his claws through Muttface’s heart, InuYasha’s angel picked that moment to answer his unuttered prayers.

“NO!” Kagome cried, throwing her body across the unconscious form of the inuhanyou, who remained blissfully ignorant of the goings on around him as a quiet snore escaped him.

“What do you think you’re doing Kagome? Move!” Kouga bellowed, not daring to move his hand any closer lest he injure Kagome.

“Don’t, Kouga! You can’t kill him!” She pleaded, her eyes filling with tears.

Her anguish doused his bloodlust like a bucket of cold water. Even so, he wasn’t about to surrender to a mutt, and a sleeping one at that, “He doesn’t deserve you Kagome.”

“Please, just go!” There was the faintest hint of a threat in her tone, and her grip on InuYasha tightened.

Kouga clenched his teeth, preparing to shove her aside, but as if she had read his mind, Kagome pulled a maneuver that he had not anticipated. She reached for something at InuYasha’s waist, and no sooner was there a sound of scraping metal than InuYasha’s sword, untransformed, was being brandished at the wolf youkai by the very girl he had spent so many moons pining for.

The fang barely shook in her grasp, “Leave InuYasha alone, Kouga! I won’t go with you now and I never will! I swear to God that I’ll slice you if you come any closer!”

The ferocity in her eyes as she defended the hanyou stole his breath away. He stared at her speechlessly, unsure if it was her words or her actions or the fact that InuYasha was watching them through bleary eyes that hurt him more.

She dared a step closer to him, and he stiffened as the blade stayed true to Kagome’s word. She was truly prepared to fight him, but Kouga knew he could never live with himself if he allowed that to happen.

“I see,” Was all he said, and he was surprised at the tenebrosity in his tone of voice. Kagome wore a pained expression, but she did not relent until Kouga began backing away.

Eyes still trained on Kagome, his foot connected with something hard. There lay Kagura’s fragment of the Shikon no Tama along with the two tiny slivers that had once been in his legs. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he had lost them, but he supposed it must have happened in the heat of battle. He looked up at Kagome, whose resolve was fast abandoning her, and he knew he couldn’t put her through another ordeal.

“Keep them, they’re better off with you. Anyway, I don’t really need them anymore.”

And with one last look at his angel, he turned, dashing into the forest as he had done so often in his childhood, running on the feet nature had blessed him with, Kagura’s last request haunting him as he hotfooted away from the ruined village. - * - *- * -

InuYasha came out of his sopor with much difficulty, and though he still hurt like hell, he knew in the back of his mind that he wasn’t in anymore danger. His hand closed around the reassuring weight of the sword that lay sheathed across his bare and bandaged chest. He was somewhere warm and light and safe, and he slowly cracked open his eyelids, oscillating in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness.

There were voices nearby, and he struggled to make the words out as the image of Sango and Miroku sitting together beside Kaede’s unconscious form near the fire came into focus.

“Sango...please,” Miroku was saying to the taijiya, whose legs were folded under her as she stared into the flames, “I’m sorry. You should know how sorry I am for--for my lack of control.”

Sango turned her chin up to look at him, and for once it wasn’t to get a better aim at his face, “Miroku, do you think I ever expected control from you?”

Miroku did not reply, but merely stared back at her warily, chewing his lip. He looked truly haggard, and InuYasha supposed it must have been the effort involved in maintaining the protective barrier around the hut that had exhausted him so. The hanyou also noted that it was the first time he’d ever heard the demon-slayer call the monk by his given name.

Sango sighed, and a single tear slid down her face, splashing onto the wooden floorboards of Kaede’s hut. Miroku reached out for her with his less-cursed hand, pushing her hair back behind her ear and wiping the tear away tenderly.

“Have I not proven myself worthy of you?” He asked quietly, his hand still cradling her moist cheek. “I have provided for you, prayed for you, protected you. How much more will it take for you to realize that I love you?”

Sango was staring at him with wide eyes, and then ever so slowly she leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. Then the tears stared flowing, and she buried her face in the satin robes of his shoulder and cried, hanging onto his neck as he held her to him in a tight embrace. Perhaps it was a trick of the firelight, but InuYasha imagined he saw a tears shimmering beneath Miroku’s eyes as well.

Still sobbing and gasping, Sango managed to pull herself together enough to speak, “I know, and I love you too. But--my father would never have accepted this. I’m going to have a child and I’m not even married and--and we can’t be married and hunting down Naraku at the same time.”

She went back to weeping into his shoulder, and he stroked her hair in a soothing manner, and after a while he said, “Whose says we can’t be married yet? I’ll do what I can to make things work, Sango. I will not abandon you or my child.”

At those words Sango cried harder, though whether it was with happiness or grief InuYasha could not tell, but by now the Houshi’s robes were almost as soaked as InuYasha’s hakama was (he’d spotted his haori and undershirt getting toasty over by the fire).

“Do...do you want it to be a boy or a girl?” Sango asked his shoulder.

He sighed, his face buried in her neck, “It is ultimately Kami’s choice but--a girl would be nice, if she grew up to be like her mother.”

She gave a laugh that turned out to be more of a snort, and smiled up at him. She started when she felt Shippou tug at the hem of her shirt.

He was blinking up at her hopefully, “Sango, can I, um, be the big brother?”

She eyed the kit fondly, then looked back up at Miroku, “I think that would be fine.”

After gazing into the monk’s eyes for a minute Sango seemed to come to herself, and she looked around at the sleeping Kaede and the wounded InuYasha.

“Come on, you two,” She said to Shippou and Miroku, taking the latter by the hand and getting to her feet. Shippou hopped after the couple as they swept past the bamboo door flap, InuYasha following their progress, feeling oddly equivocal about their patching up.

InuYasha nearly jumped out of his torn up skin when he heard a great sniff to his side, and he jerked his head around to see Kagome sitting there, tears falling freely as she stared after Miroku and Sango.

“Why the hell are you crying?” InuYasha said hoarsely. All he knew was that it was still the night of the new moon; he had no idea how long he’d been resting. At least he could look at Kagome safely again. Her dress was significantly drier than it had been.

She flashed him a watery smile, “I’m just so glad...they made up.”

“Keh. It’s about fucking time,” I can’t believe everything worked out for that damned lecher.

It was then that InuYasha recalled the events that had transpired earlier that night, “Damn that bastard Kouga! I was going to kill Kagura!” It made him angry that he hadn’t been able to properly exact revenge on the wind sorceress for hurting Kikyou and Kaede, not to mention everything else she’d done. Not only that, but he was extremely averse to admitting that the stinking wolf had saved them all.

“Baka, you couldn’t have killed Kagura. You were nearly killed yourself,” Kagome said, tears running afresh, and InuYasha had the distinct feeling that these weren’t tears of relief. She moved closer to him, and she seemed to become even further distressed as she looked over the wounds she had bandaged herself.

She reached out for his chest, taking up the Tessaiga and placing it on the floor so she could better examine him. As she did this, the vision of Kagome holding his fang against Kouga popped into his head.

His voice was peppered with ill-disguised awe, “Kagome...you sent Kouga away.”

She hastily averted her eyes, blinking at the crackling fire tearfully, “I--I’d never let Kouga kill you. I feel bad about what I said to him though.”

InuYasha noticed she was touching something at her neck, and he registered the pure pink glow of the nearly whole Shikon no Tama. Seeing what he was staring at, she removed her necklace and held the jewel out to him on the flat of her palm.

“Kagura had Naraku’s shard, and Kouga left his shards behind.”

InuYasha nodded at the girl who was kneeling so close to his supine form, his memory flooding back to him. Miroku and Sango hadn’t been the only ones who needed to talk things out. Before Shippou had miraculously come across the well to warn them about Kagura, InuYasha had been about to go to Kagome’s dance--about to ask her why she pushed away from their kiss. And now they were out of danger, alone, in possession of the largest fragment of the Jewel of Four Souls.

The soul of the greatest miko of all time trapped in an amaranthine battle with the demons she spent her mortal life fighting. The efflux of energy reached out to the hanyou alluringly, and he ran one of his human fingers over its iridescent surface. Kagome pushed it closer to him, offering it, and he picked it up between his thumb and forefinger.

Half a century ago this jewel was the pathway to power, the one thing that he’d always believed would make him happy. That was, until he and Kikyou met. At the realization that there were things he wanted even more than power, the Shikon no Tama assumed a very different connotation in his eyes, and he decided for himself that he would rather be loved by one woman than be accepted by the world of youkai. Now, even if the times and the woman had changed, his decision was just the same as the one he’d made all those years ago. Kikyou’s voice from earlier that day played through his mind as he rotated the jewel above his face, the niche where the last shards should have been gaping down at him as he tried to think of the right way to pose his question to Kagome.

‘You wish to know whether I think Kagome will only love you as a human.’

“We still need the shards Takakuri took from me, as well as Miroku and Kohaku’s shards,” She said, sounding anxious, and InuYasha didn’t really want to think about why.

“And then the jewel will be complete,” InuYasha finished.

The miko averted her gaze once more, staring down at her lap desolately.

He took a deep breath, finding out a bit too late that that particular enterprise made his chest sear white hot, and he rubbed his wound as he spoke, “I know what I’m going to wish for.”

Kagome’s body tautened in trepidation, “Please don’t say you want to become a full demon.”

“I wasn’t gonna say that!” He contravened, “I mean...I was going to say--uh....”

How do I tell her--ask her? What if she says yes? But...what if she says no...?

He swallowed, “I mean...we know the only way to get rid of the Shikon no Tama is to make a pure wish, right? So....uh....”

She was looking at him confusedly, and InuYasha began to shift uncomfortably where he lay, growing nervous. He was suddenly unsure if he could really ask her what he wanted to know. He felt his resolve waver. “Maybe...maybe we’ve been going about trying to destroy Naraku the wrong way. Even without the jewel he’s pretty powerful, but now we’ve cloistered a fragment of that power beyond his grasp. So what if we use the Shikon no Tama to wish--to wish Naraku human?” He propounded, watching her intently.

She sat in pensive silence for a minute, “I don’t know if that would work; it’s pretty far-out. But Naraku is a hanyou...he’d probably become Onigumo again.”

InuYasha sighed, once again recalling his conversation with Kikyou, ‘She is a miko however, and such a pure maiden and one such as you, tainted with the blood of a youkai, can never be together.’

Silence fell, allowing him to ponder the meaning behind her words. He extended the jewel toward her, his eyes remaining fixedly on the ceiling as he signaled for her to take it. She obliged him, taking his hand in hers, but she didn’t let go. He looked up at her cautiously, only to see that her eyes were shining with tears as she they held the jewel between their palms.

“I was so afraid that you would die, InuYasha,” She said, squeezing his hand. “I don’t know if--” She cut herself off with a choked sob.

“What are you talking about?” InuYasha said softly. “It would take more than Kagura or that wolf to kill me.”

“Don’t tell me that, InuYasha. You’re human tonight.” She sniffled, “This has happened before. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

Of course I remember. It could’ve happened yesterday, the first time you saw me in my human form. You told me you wished that I could trust you, were the thoughts that went through his mind as he blinked up at her, but he said nothing.

She was weeping freely now, rivers of tears flowing down her face, making InuYasha uncomfortable. Not as uncomfortable as he would become however, when she bent closer to him, positioning herself on top of him with her arms on either side of his torso, one leg between his. He was helpless to stop her in his weakened state, his wide eyes staying on her tear-streaked face that gradually came to rest itself on his shoulder.

“Do you remember what you told me? That I smelled nice,” Her lips moved against his ear as she whispered, and he didn’t dare to move a muscle. Her weight was sufficiently poised to elicit warm, tingling sensations within him, but suspended far enough above him so as not to exacerbate his injuries. “I never told you--I like your scent too.”

He tried to quell the feelings within him as she sighed into his ear, clamping his eyes shut and chanting a mantra inside his head that it wasn’t his place, that it was wrong, but to no avail.

His lungs burned from lack of air that he seemed to have forgotten the importance of as she spoke again, “It makes me feel safe...and at home, your scent. So...now you know.”

He didn’t quite understand what she meant, but he got no more time to think of that when he felt the soft pressure of her lips on his cheek. His brain slowed down as the palpitations in his chest picked up, his pain and discomfort obsolescing as her kisses crawled up his face, one after another, as if she were trying to convey to him a message coded in shockingly gentle touches.

Is she only kissing me because of the new moon? He asked himself in his final moments of sanity, before one of her kisses reached his mouth.

Abandoning all pretense, his arms came willingly around her as he returned the pressure of her lips. It was the polar opposite of their first kiss; he was in a much less muddled state of mind, he was in his human form, and she wasn’t pushing him away. But unlike Kikyou’s kiss, the sensation of Kagome against him and with her lips against his felt right, no matter how many times he’d told himself it wasn’t.

He buried his hand in the silk of her dress, unafraid of hurting her with his claws on the moonless night as he dauntlessly meted out feather-light nips to her mouth, using his teeth as tools of pleasure instead of another one of his demon defenses. His olfaction may not have been as keen as usual, but her scent still routed out moans from deep within him. In fact, his dull human senses seemed to be feeling a lot more than he could ever remember feeling....

He heard Kagome gasp, and fear spiked his heart as his clouded mind searched frantically for what had caused the interruption, but it wasn’t illusive. The answer hit him in the form of an incalescent swell bang below his waist, right where Kagome’s leg lay, and he was sure she must’ve felt his face heat up just before he jerked it away from hers.

She’s going to run away from me. She’ll scream and then run away.

He waited, and her soft exhale warmed his face for what seemed like an eternity, when she surprised him. Bringing her hand to his chin, she tilted it so that his nose grazed hers. She may have forced him to face her, but he still couldn’t meet her eyes, choosing instead to look off at Kaede’s dozing form on the other side of the hearth.

“InuYasha...you don’t have to be ashamed,” She said quietly, the merest trace of a smile in her voice.

As if by magnetic pull, his eyes flew back to hers, his heart beating so fast he had no doubts that it would cease to beat altogether. A feeling that he had long ago forgotten was bubbling up inside of him, so strong that it nearly blinded him, setting fire to his blood as he brought his lips to hers, breathing her in as his hands tangled themselves in her piceous hair.

All traces of her usual timidity were gone, replaced by a side of Kagome he’d only dreamed of experiencing. A devastating heat engulfed him in a cage of limbs and lips, refusing to let him escape. Vaguely he wondered about this; he wouldn’t have left even if he could. Kagome was closer to him than she’d ever been, and he returned each of her kisses with his own, letting her taste his hunger, his desire that had been kept in check for so long.

Dazedly, he registered pricks of pain igniting in his chest, the feel of his own blood soaking through his clothes that was undetectable with his human nose, and he tried to gain Kagome’s attention by speaking against her mouth, “Kagome...my wounds...y-your dress....”

She sat up slightly, her eyes half-open as she surveyed his bandages, the blood having leaked through them and soaked the front of her dress, “Oh, here--I’ll redo the dressings.”

With great reluctance he let her retreat from the security of his arms to fetch the bandages from Kaede’s medicine pile and redress his wounds.

He watched her as she came back to his side, faithfully prepping his injuries to be swathed again. Even after their shared moment of passion there dwelled within him a small fear that she would run away, bolt past the bamboo flap as soon as she had assured herself that he would live. That part of him grew greater alongside an increased feeling of vulnerability as she continued to treat him, until he was once more avoiding her gaze.

She tied off the final bandage, and he felt Kagome’s hand lightly caress the hair that fell about his face. Before he could do anything but stare with wide eyes she had laid down beside him, her body curling up against his, her head in the crook of his shoulder. In the wake of such a simple yet meaningful action, all of his misgivings were extinguished beneath the wonderful feel of Kagome sleeping beside him as they drifted off into peaceful slumber, still wrapped in each other’s arms even when the fire died out hours later.