InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ To Catch a Falling Star ❯ no lady loves a scene ( Chapter 7 )

Chapter Seven

She hadn't realized what was going on until the day she had finally succeeded in removing Inuyasha's rosary. Learning how to break the rosary spell had taken her much longer than Kagome had anticipated, preoccupying her even when not working on it. Kaede-baachan had been tremendously generous with her own time, as had Shippou. Throughout the winter, Shippou had allowed Kaede to cast a rosary on him. Kagome then spent the next couple of hours attempting to remove it. Since the spell was cast by another, Kagome's own miko abilities were insufficient to remove it without some knowledge of where the spell's weak points were: she couldn't just lift it off. While Kaede could, and would, have removed the rosary at Kagome's asking, Kagome had wanted to do it for Inuyasha herself, as a way of thanking him for all the help he'd been giving her.

But Kaede was a practiced miko, although not as strong as her sister--nor as strong as Kagome, even with her powers so unreliable that Inuyasha had noticed--so Kaede's rosary spells were difficult to get hold of. Every time Kagome concentrated, shoving aside her irritation at the spell's intractability and forcing herself into calmness, the spell seemed to get ever more slippery, eluding the pointed thrust of Kagome's powers.

Each morning before leaving to relieve Miroku in teaching some of the village children how to read and write--Kagome was trying to teach them math--Shippou would sit in Kaede's hut, flip through the pages of his bribe (a lavishly illustrated children's guide to dinosaurs which Kagome had originally intended to be a gift for the kit), demand she pronounce the names for him, and allow her to poke at the rosary spell. As long as Kaede didn't say the spell word, Shippou was happy. Kagome, however, was not.

By the sixth week after Tenichi's birth, Kagome struggled with a foul mood that wouldn't go away. It seemed like the baby awakened at least five times each night, every night, and for almost all the past two weeks Kagome hadn't been able to do anything right as far as Inuyasha had been concerned. He'd started out just snapping at her a little more quickly than was his wont, but for days and days now anything she tried to do brought a sea of insults from the hanyou. The morning she finally had some success with the rosary had been a case in point.

Awakening not long after dawn, bleary from lack of sleep, she had found herself using Inuyasha's stomach as a pillow once more. And drooling on him yet again, as a damp spot on his haori attested. As soon as she had pushed herself up, red-faced and muttering an apology, Inuyasha had sprung to his feet and snatched Tetsusaiga from its leaning post against one wall. "I was beginning to think you as lazy as Miroku," he'd snarled ungenerously over his shoulder. Sliding aside their room's door, he stomped down the hallway, ignoring the protesting grumble and aggravated curse arising from Miroku's and Sango's room.

Hastily, Kagome scrambled upright and stumbled after him, scrubbing her eyes awake. "Wait, Inuyasha," she said, pulling the tie loose from her braid and raking her fingers through it to make it unravel. When he slid the door to the house aside with unnecessary force and stalked onto the porch, she followed him, already irritated. "It's not like I was doing it intentionally. None of us have been sleeping well, and if you aren't quieter, you'll wake the baby," she added, dropping her voice to a rather strident whisper.

Inuyasha's stride faltered for a moment at the sharpness of her tone before he snorted. "Yeah, right. You'd rather sit around and have us do everything for you." He stepped off the porch, ignoring the snow as he headed towards the well. Without turning back, he growled. "Well? Hurry up!" Clouds of his breath rose in the pale dawn light before thinning and dissipating.

Indignant, Kagome slid the door closed and hurried after him, her ears flattening at the tension already rising between them. "That's not fair, Inuyasha! I've never done anything like that!" After the first few steps of cool wetness seeped between her toes and coated her feet with snow, the temperature was something she could ignore, like the chill air.

"Then who was it trying to talk everyone into carrying tubs of snow inside so that she could heat it for a bath? A bath," Inuyasha spat, taking a swipe at a tree branch as he passed. The branch shook, sending its snow cascading onto Kagome as she walked behind him.

Kagome's hands clenched into fists as she shook her head to dislodge the snow, jerking as a bit almost fell in one ear. "That was once! And it was a month ago, Inuyasha. You know I've been using the stream ever since then. When it's unfrozen enough that I can break the ice." Irritation boiled within her; the last of her embarrassment at having been caught sleeping on him vanished like their breath into the air. The bathhouse owner was one of those who didn't hold Kagome in high esteem ever since the summer: when his wife or his children were there, or if Kagome were accompanied by Sango or Kaede, gaining entrance wasn't a problem; but not only could they not afford to go there every day, when the owner himself was present, Kagome was more likely to get a "Sorry, baths are full," than easy entrance.

"And you stink, bitch!"

Kagome wanted to kill him. Her heart tightened and she breathed through her mouth in short pants, so angry that she didn't even want to take in his scent. Her arms trembled with the tautness of her muscles, and the knots in her back that had gotten tighter and tighter over the past few days seized up and turned her shoulders and back into an aching tangle. She wanted to "sit" him like she'd not wanted to "sit" him in years. She wanted to "sit" him so hard, so fast, that the crash of his landing would dig a hole to the molten core of the earth. Only the fact that she was growling so deeply that she couldn't get a word out kept her from breaking the pledge she had made to herself almost two years ago to stop using the rosary like that.

A couple hours later, the angry growl that snagged her words in her throat was still throbbing there when Inuyasha finished deriding her speed, her aim, her intelligence, and her parentage. The village idiot would have made a better hanyou than she. After his comment that her open mouth resembled a fish's, she brushed rudely past him to head to Kaede's, her fist trembling with the urge to plant itself in his gut as she passed. The fact that a stalk was impossible as a badly-judged landing had strained one ankle simply infuriated her all the more.

It made her late to Kaede's, too. The fresh scent of the old miko, leading off towards the shrine, indicated that Kaede had already left her hut. When Kagome knocked the bamboo door-covering aside, Shippou blinked up at her from the pages of his book, the too-large rosary already draped around his neck and spilling into his lap. "K-Kagome?" the kit stuttered nervously, looking at her uncertainly.

"Just don't talk to me this morning, Shippou-kun," Kagome snarled, dropping down angrily to sit in front of him. A small voice whispered to her, He doesn't deserve your anger; he didn't do anything. Contrarily, this only spiked her fury until her fingers trembled with it as she reached out to touch the rosary. "And don't move."

Shippou leaned away from her, eyes wide. "Um--um, Kagome. . . . "

"I said, don't move." Kagome bared her teeth, then summoned her miko powers to make yet another stupid attempt at removing the rosary.

Shippou refused to listen, his book falling off his lap as he scooted away from her. "K-k-kagome, don't," he stuttered.

She touched the rosary just as he scrambled to his feet. The rosary fell apart, ebony beads and ivory youkai teeth spattering across the floor of the hut. Shippou fled, wailing as if having seen Emma-O rising from the Yellow Springs along with a pot of molten metal especially for cooking him.

Kagome sat there, dumbly watching the beads bounce and rattle across the wooden floor. One bumped into her foot and stopped. Another landed in a crack between the slats of wood and rolled and rolled, like a bowling ball, until it dropped off the edge of the wood and landed quietly on the ground.

She was still watching them when Kaede arrived moments later, a sullen-looking Shippou clutching handfuls of her red trousers in his fists. The old woman drew in a breath as she entered her home. "You broke the spell, Kagome."

Clawed hands tight on her knees, Kagome turned her eyes up to see the elderly miko's wrinkles deepen as she smiled at Kagome. Her glanced dropped to Shippou when he made a noise: he was glaring at her, but his eyelashes looked suspiciously dark. Kagome's own eyes filled, a breath hitching in her throat as she swiftly gathered up the kitsune and tucked him to her. She could smell the miserable unhappiness she'd caused him. Her breath hitched again, and then again. "I'm sorry, Shippou-kun," she whispered, rocking him gently. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

"That was mean," he said into her shoulder, voice muffled. "And your eyes looked almost red, Kagome, you were scary."

Kagome could hear the quiet sounds Kaede made as the old miko moved about her hut, giving the two of them time to wind down. "I wasn't mad at you, truly I wasn't. I'd never hurt you. Will you forgive me?"

Shippou pushed away from her, studying her face with a plumped lower lip. "Maybe," he said, his tone bordering on touchy.

Brushing her bangs back, Kagome said seriously, "Would you like to play a game later? Just the two of us." She reached out to finger-comb his bangs, relieved when he didn't try to swat her away, just jerked back with his usual gesture before submitting to it.

"Maybe," Shippou repeated. "Can I pick which one?"

"Yes."

"Then I will," he said, with the air of someone granting a favor. He moved off her lap and stood. "You should tell Inuyasha what you did. I won't," he announced condescendingly.

"Thank you, Shippou-kun," Kagome said, mouth curving in a small smile for him.

Shippou headed toward the door. He stepped out, then shoved aside the reed door-mat to peek back in at her. "I told Kaede you got mad," he added, and ducked out of sight.

Kagome tried not to blush, folding her hands together and resting them in her lap. She looked up as the miko set a mug in front of her, then sat, kneeling. "What is the problem, Kagome?" the miko asked quietly.

"I--I don't--" Kagome glanced away. In a low voice, she said, "Inuyasha's been angry all the time lately. And I have, too." She kept her eyes on her hands as she spoke.

Taking a sip from her mug, Kaede said, "We have all noticed how irate he has been towards you. You said you had told him your intentions regarding the rosary. Your progress with that has upset you; do you think it has likewise bothered Inuyasha? After all, it's often with him that he masks what he feels with anger."

Kaede must have been studying her face, for just as Kagome felt ready to snarl at the thought of bearing the brunt of Inuyasha's worry, the miko said with a lack of censure that spoke to the young woman as much as her words, "Perhaps you should ask him about it. It is hard to solve a problem without talking about it. But you did break the rosary spell, Kagome. Do you remember how you did it?"

Kagome abruptly turned to the elderly woman, glancing at some of the beads scattered nearby. "I just touched it."

Nodding, Kaede leaned forward encouragingly. "And do you remember sensing the spell's weak point?"

After a pause, Kagome sighed and shook her head, hair sliding forward over her shoulders when she looked down again. "No." She shifted her hands to her knees, saying, "I touched it and it fell apart."

"Were you thinking something specific when you did so? Perhaps something like `break'?"

"No. . . . I was just thinking about being angry with Shippou," Kagome said in a low voice, shamefaced.

Kaede leaned back, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea. "Hm." Getting up heavily, knees popping, she stepped over to a small chest against one wall, pulling out a string of beads: another rosary. She slipped it around her own neck, muttering a word as she straightened. "Try it again," she said.

With a sigh, Kagome closed her eyes, concentrating, then opened them and touched the rosary, her forefinger's claw tapping a black bead.

Nothing happened.

Kagome's mouth drooped, her ears dropping dispiritedly. Frustrated, she said, "I thought this was supposed to be a simple spell. I should be able to do it."

"To address your last comment first, Kagome, there is no should to it. That you have retained any of your miko abilities as a hanyou is surprising; that making use of them is troublesome is not," Kaede replied, taking hold of the rosary and lifting it off her neck as smoothly as put it on minutes earlier. "My regret is that I did not consider saying so to you when you began; I am sorry that my oversight has caused you frustration."

At Kagome's hasty gesture of denial, the miko replied, "It's the responsibility of elders to share the wisdom of their experience with the younger generation, Kagome--and you are most certainly younger," Kaede said, her wrinkles deepening with a small smile

"I--thank you," Kagome stood. She tried for a smile for Kaede. "Thank you, also, for your time. I'm sorry to have caused such a fuss."

Kaede shook her head. "Think nothing of it. Kagome, everyone has difficult days, and yours have not been easy to begin with for some time."

"Thank you," Kagome said once more, then nudged the bamboo curtain aside with one shoulder to step out of the hut.

Shippou was nowhere in sight. Not yet feeling up to talking to anyone at the house, Kagome made her way to the God Tree, so intent on her own thoughts that she failed to take note of the other footprints in the snow leading to the same destination. Once within reach of the tree, though, the scent was something she couldn't ignore. She looked up into the winter-bare branches to find Inuyasha on a low limb, staring down at her with a taut expression on his face. His red haori and hakama were dark with moisture from where they made contact with the branch, as if he'd sat there in disregard for the snow and it had melted and wet the cloth. When he gave an audible sniff in her direction, Kagome flexed her fingers. He had better not say a single thing about her scent.

"What the hell do you want," Inuyasha said, the low growl in his tone turning the question leaden.

Stung, Kagome hunched her shoulders, already tense muscles protesting. "I didn't want anything," she snapped in reply. "I didn't know you were here. I was just coming by because I felt like it."

Inuyasha settled back against the tree trunk, closing his eyes. "Yeah, so now you've come, you can go."

Kagome's ears flattened. Goaded, losing the last of her hold on her temper, she yelled up at him, "Baka! Don't tell me to leave. I'll leave when I want to!"

Inuyasha turned his face back towards her with a scowl. "Bitch, don't push me. I'm not in the mood for it."

Incensed, she raged up at him, "You're not in the mood? You? What about me? You've done nothing but complain and insult and ridicule me for weeks and you are the one who's tired? Fuck you, Inuyasha!"

The hanyou's eyes flew wide as he stared at her. "The hell? What did you just say to me, bitch?"

Louder, Kagome yelled, "I said: Fuck. You!" She stared up at him with narrowed eyes, Kaede's comments coming to her mind. More quietly, she said, "If you'd keep your sword of a tongue sheathed for two consecutive minutes, though, maybe I could tell you about the rosary!"

"What?" He abruptly leaned over the branch to give her a closer look, eyebrows tense with a looming frown. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The rosary," Kagome said with gritted-teeth patience, borrowing Inuyasha's own you-must-be-an-idiot tone as she crossed her arms and glared at him. "The thing you've got around your neck." A smile twisted her lips as she added, "The thing that makes you crash to the ground if I say--"

"Bitch!" Inuyasha kicked a leg over the tree branch and sprang to the ground before she could say the word, coming up to her so swiftly that she stumbled back a step as he crowded her. That he moved with such alacrity calmed her a little; he knew how angry she had to be, if he took that seriously the possibility she would say it. "What about it."

Piqued, Kagome looked up at the God Tree, averting her face from Inuyasha. "Nothing at--" she began, only to be interrupted for a second time by his low growl.

"Bitch, you've been crying, haven't you?" Kagome hesitated--had he sounded uncomfortable?--and turned back to the hanyou. He must be smelling Shippou's tears on her. His expression changed quickly as she looked at him, but for a moment, had he been looking relieved? Then he said, "You stink with it."

Inuyasha barely jerked back in time to avoid her clawed swipe, the Kagome's restraint gone as she made another lunge at him. Twice now, comments about her scent, and, damn it, she had to be the only person in all the Warring States who bathed more than once a week.

A sardonic smile lit Inuyasha's face. "So now you feel like practicing, bitch? It took you long enough." He moved just beyond her range, teasing her with his proximity. "What's this about the rosary? Or can't you talk and fight at the same time?"

Shifting her balance onto her toes, Kagome dug her claws into the snow and earth to rush forward, fingers arching; he stepped swiftly to the side, a few strands of his hair brushing over her hand as he avoided her once more. "Baka," she snarled. Taking a breath, she ground out, "Baka, baka, baka!" each word punctuated with another strike. Rather than just moving away, Inuyasha ducked the last one, sweeping her feet out from beneath her. Lessons he had manage to ingrain in her reactions helped her to land softly, however; as she easily picked herself up, she gave him a glare. "I broke the spell. And then I couldn't do it again."

Kagome flung herself at him; easily, he caught one extended wrist and jerked, sending her stumbling past. "Got angry, did you? You can't concentrate worth shit when you're like this," Inuyasha said.

She caught her balance, standing with her back to him. "It wasn't like that," she said in a growl, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes.

Behind her, she could hear him shift his weight then approach her with a hesitant step. "You aren't crying, are you? You better not be. Real me--only pups let others see them cry." His steps coming around to her front, cloth rustled as he hunkered down to get a look at her lowered face. The next words came out slowly, more reluctantly than was typical even on the rare occasions when he proffered a compliment, as if he might regret saying them. "You'll be able to break the spell whenever you want, one day."

Even though bristling at the pup comment, his faith in her abilities blunted the edge of her temper. Kagome let out a jerking breath. "No. It wasn't that. I was angry before. What you said earlier. . . . For the past couple weeks. . . . You might be insulting, but you've never been mean." Inuyasha drew back at the renewal of her glare and looked aside to stare at the God Tree, his eyes hooded; she couldn't read his expression. She continued anyway, bitter. "Then when I broke the spell, I scared Shippou, and he ran away from me."

"You were angry when you broke the spell," he repeated. On the rare occasions in the past when she'd implied that his actions stressed her, his response had been immediate discomfort to the point of being stricken by it; but he wasn't acting like that now. Kagome wasn't sure if she wanted to scream or bite him; she had done everything but spell out how tense and miserable he had been making her, and he wouldn't pay attention?

Inuyasha let out a sigh; she could hear him shift and--move away from her? Damn it, was that all he was going to say? Kagome's curled fingers clenched, her hands fisting until her claws pricked skin as she dropped them away from her eyes. "I've been doing it on purpose," Inuyasha said.

"What?" Kagome squawked in disbelief, staring at the hanyou.

"Getting you angry. Stressing you," he said simply, wariness entering the lines of his body as he watched the tension curl through her.

Kagome closed her eyes, yelling with all the force in her lungs, "SIT! SIT SIT SIT!" Dark earth scattered over the snow as the rosary spell slammed the hanyou into the dirt. She stalked towards the crater that had made, Inuyasha ground too into the hard winter earth to groan.

"I'm going to throttle you," Kagome announced in an even tone that belied the rage surging through her. "You have made every moment of my life for weeks hellish, and you were doing it knowingly." She jumped down lightly into the crater. One of Inuyasha's ears twitched feebly. "I'll throttle you," she said conversationally, stepping on one of his legs, "and then I'll use my claws to flay you." She stepped on his other leg. "And I will make the tatters of your skin into a rug." She knelt on his back, knowing her knees had to be digging into him; she didn't care. Reaching through a handful of hair, Kagome grabbed his rosary and twisted.

The rosary shattered.

Inuyasha opened one yellow eye as beads rolled off his back and pattered into the dirt around him. Lifting his head, he turned one cheek to the earth so he could look up at Kagome and spat out a mouthful of dirt. "I apologize," he said to the frozen face above him.

Kagome stared at him, then looked at the beads caught in the folds of his haori and spilled over the ground, then back at Inuyasha.

"Do you think you could get off?" Inuyasha asked.

Kagome started. Gingerly, she eased herself off the hanyou to crouch on her heels at his side.

Flattening his palms on the ground, he levered himself up with his arms, then rolled over to lean against the lip of the crater, closing his eyes. His movements were clearly painful to him, but looked oddly energized at the same time.

After a moment, Kagome sat down likewise, crossing her legs and staring at Inuyasha. "I don't know whether I want to hit you or what," she said finally. "You've never apologized to me before."

"I've been sorry lots," he said.

"But you've never said," she began heatedly, then caught herself, sighed, and stopped.

"You've got other problems to think about besides what you're going to do to me," he said, eyes still closed. He carried himself as if in anticipation of something, a drawing in of energy on the cusp of some outward show.

"Like why you were being awful to me on purpose!"

"Like the fact that you almost went into heat."

Kagome stared at him. "Almost went into--"

"Like why you have to get angry before you can do something with your miko powers."

She gaped at Inuyasha. "What?"

"Like how crappy you are at reading your opponent in a fight."

"Wait, what--"

"Like the lousiness of your aim, too."

"Mou! Inuyasha! Wait just a minute!" He cracked his eyes open, thin golden slits observing her; even through the thickness of the fresh earth-smell in the air she could catch the thread of his amusement. Sourly, she said, "I'm glad I'm able to provide you with entertainment."

"Come sit over here," he said, lifting one hand from a spot next to him. At her dubious glance, he added, "If I irk you, you won't have to look at me over here."

"It's not that," she said, dryly. "If I get too close, I may still be tempted to hit you over the head."

"Kagome."

Reluctantly, she shifted over to the spot he'd indicated, thinking, I still reserve the right to clobber you if I don't like what you have to say.

He drew his legs up more comfortably. "Which do you want first?"

When she could feel a flush creeping up her neck to darken her face, Kagome was grateful to be sitting beside him. If she couldn't see him, then he couldn't be looking directly at her, either. "The heat thing," she said, making her voice as firm as possible.

"Aa. Well. I wasn't sure until the fall, really, that you might have one. You could have just been missing your times because of all the upset. But when you still didn't have your bleeding times, I thought you might. And Sesshomaru thought you might, too."

Kagome bit her tongue. Has he been talking about me to Sesshomaru?

"I wasn't sure what I could do. I . . . knew you didn't want pups," Inuyasha said slowly, his voice too matter-of-fact; Kagome reconsidered the sitting-next-to-thing, wishing she could see his expression. His scent wasn't telling her anything. "Or to, to, to be--bothered by males going after you."

Gods, Kagome thought. Her eyes came to rest on his hands. He was resting them on his knees, but they weren't very relaxed; the tendons along his fingers stood out as he gripped his knees.

"Kouga gave me an idea--not the wimpy wolf himself," he added hastily when she shifted beside him in surprise. "But you remember he said his pack had pups this past spring. Three or something like that. It's not very many; it's a small litter. One female's. Only, I don't guess you know, there are at least three females in his pack."

When he paused, as if he were going to stop his explanation there, she said, "I don't understand. Is there something important about that number?" Kagome could feel the movement of his shoulder as he shook his head.

"No. Not the number, just that they're there. And they didn't have litters of their own. I . . . I've not seen too many dog packs--they hang around villages mostly, and I didn't really spend much time near villages after Mother died until . . . well. But I've watched some wolf packs. Usually only the lead female has pups. To keep the other females from going into heat, when it's their breeding time, she bothers them. Picks fights. Keeps them stressed for a while."

Kagome drew in a breath, brows pulling together. "And you thought--so that's why--"

"I didn't know that it would work," Inuyasha said hurriedly. "You're an inu hanyou, not a wolf. But I thought I'd try. And it has worked."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, it seemed to be working. If I'd said anything, you might not have been bothered by what I was doing, and then it wouldn't have worked."

"No, I mean, why didn't you tell me before, that it might be a problem?"

Inuyasha sounded surprised. "Why? You couldn't have done anything. It was my responsibility to figure something out."

"Inuyasha!" she exploded. "How do you know I can't do anything unless you ask me?" She turned her head, glaring at his profile. "I have birth control pills with me. I used them all the time when we were searching for the shards, to make things a little more convenient. They might not have worked, but they could have, I don't know, toned things down a little. Let me get somewhere by myself."

Stung, Inuyasha said derisively, "Going somewhere by yourself would have been useless. You wouldn't have rested until you had someone between your legs, anyone between your legs. Even that wimpy wolf. Pills? Fuck."

"That's not the point," Kagome ground out, unclenching her teeth with an effort. "The point is that you didn't tell me." She took a breath, turning to stare up at him belligerently. "You may be pack leader--" that caught his attention pretty quickly: he jerked around, focusing sharply on her. "And you have responsibilities. But I have responsibilities, too! You said I was the lead female. You have to tell me things that might impinge on me, or any of the others." As irritation sparked in his gaze, she bared her teeth at him.

"Don't try to boss me, bitch," he said, eyes narrowing.

Kagome leaned towards him, ears tautly forward, gaze intent. She was not going to back down. "I'm stating facts. I'm not giving orders. It's a fact that, if I'm ignorant, I can't uphold my responsibilities. So if you know something I ought, I need to be told."

"Keh!" Inuyasha glanced away from her, facing forward again.

Kagome relaxed minutely. "So you'll tell me?" She took a deep breath when she caught his nod. If stress were all it took, maybe she'd never go into heat. Right now, that thought suited her just fine. She let the breath out, puffing at her bangs to get them out of her eyes. "What was that you said about my miko abilities?" She looked in front of her again, too, feeling the soreness of her tense muscles.

Inuyasha sounded rather sullen when he muttered, "They worked when you got angry."

"What?"

"That's what you said, isn't it?" he demanded impatiently. "You were angry when you broke the rosary at Kaede's, and you were angry when you broke mine."

Thinking about this, Kagome caught her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it. Every time she'd failed to pierce the spell, she had gotten angry--an anger she had shoved aside, calming herself in yet another attempt to break the rosary. What did anger have to do with her miko abilities, though? Could she only use them now by getting angry, or was she getting angry when she tried to use them?

Kagome's attention was distracted by a change in Inuyasha's scent. She peeked at him from the corner of her eye to see a beatific expression lighting his face, the anticipation of earlier coming overwhelmingly to the fore. "Tell me to sit!" he ordered her abruptly.

"To--" Kagome turned to stare at him before a chuckle worked its way out of her throat. Obligingly, she said, "Sit."

Nothing happened, and Inuyasha grinned more widely than Shippou at his most hyper. "No."

"Sit!"

"No!"

"Sit!"

"Make me!"

"Sit!"

"You can't make me," he said, tauntingly. Despite the dirt on his face and smudging his hair and ears, his eyes were gold clear through with delight. They glinted as he looked at her; he shifted, placing his hands on the ground and copied her earlier move of leaning forward intimidatingly.

Unsuccessfully fighting a grin of her own, Kagome scooted away from Inuyasha. He leaned closer, standing onto his knees to make himself taller still. Kagome shrieked, turning her back on him to fling herself out of the crater. Almost stumbling when she landed, she pushed herself upright and dashed around the God Tree. "Sit!"

"Never, bitch!" He came around the tree at her; she circled to keep the tree between them, ducking to grab a handful of snow.

When he moved after her again, she lobbed it at him, cried "Sit!" and then made a sprint towards the well.

After only a few lengths, a hand snagged Kagome's ankle, sending her to the ground. Wriggling, she flipped onto her back, readying another kick only to find another hand full of snow above her. A cold drop fell onto her nose, making her laugh. "No, don't!" She flung up her hands to try to push Inuyasha away, only to have him raise his hand out of her reach.

He pretended to glower, ears eased to the sides. "Say you submit."

"No. Sit!" His hand lowered. She squeezed her eyes closed and scrunched her chin down in anticipation of having the snow dumped on her. "Don't!"

Kagome could feel the snow getting closer, and curled onto her side, clasping her arms about her head and ears as she tried to shield herself. "I submit, I submit," she said into the protective screen of her wet hair and elbows, laughter subsiding into gasps.

When nothing happened, she opened her eyes cautiously, looked at the clean snowfield between her and the well, then rolled over. Inuyasha crouched beside her on his haunches, hands resting lightly on the ground. His mouth grinned in silent mirth as he looked at her. "Hell, you're covered in snow," he observed.

"I think I'm all wet, too," Kagome informed him, standing. She brushed the snow from her clothes before it had a chance to melt and soak in.

"Snow does that," he said. He straightened. "Are you cold?"

She shook her head, gathering her wet hair with her hand and pulling it behind her shoulders. "Not really."

He watched her a moment, then worked himself out of his haori and dropped the red coat on her head. "Here."

Draping it over her shoulders and wrapping it around herself, Kagome looked at her bare toes and took a deep breath, smelling him and the snow and the dirt and his pleasure. She'd broken his rosary, and he hadn't been angry because he hated her, and he wasn't going to keep things from her again. Feeling a momentary bubble of contentment, she said, "Thank you."

"Your aim still sucks. We'll practice some more tomorrow."

"Alright."

"And you'll talk to Kaede about your miko powers."

"Hai."

"And you remember I apologized."

Kagome sighed, sobering. "Yes." She turned her gaze upwards, watching the gray clouds sheeting across the sky, feeling too exhausted now that they had calmed down to muster the energy to be upset with him at the moment. But. . . . She had to find Shippou. And this heat thing: what a kick in the gut that was. Kagome held back a grimace when a breeze snaked over her damp feet. It sounded like she had been a hair's-breadth away from barefoot and pregnant by spring. If it was even over yet: a half hour couldn't have passed since Inuyasha had been trying to antagonize her. "Ano," she said, and slid a glance sidelong at him, intending to ask about that. He was looking at her already, close enough that she could see the way the gold of his irises shaded to a darker honey color at the edges.

Inuyasha blinked, a panicked look briefly crossing his features before he settled on a scowl. "What?" he said, cranky.

Maybe she did have the energy to be irritated, at least.

"Kagome-sama!" It was Miroku's voice, carrying clearly from village on the chill air. Kagome looked up at the pale yellow of the cloud-misted sun, judging the time. The children. The classes. She felt like swearing again; the words might be ugly, but, used sparingly, they certainly seemed to work as a release for tension.

"I have to go," she said flatly, and walked away from Inuyasha.

-------------------

AN: More thanks than I can express to Miriam for the generosity of her time and comments on chapter drafts! Particularly through the reorganization (more on which below), her observations and questions have been instrumental in helping me decide what to do and write.

Thanks to everyone for your reviews! Your comments about the details you liked, those you didn't, and the questions you have at various points have been immensely useful.

About the reorganization: as I wrote chapter seven and sketched out chapter eight, I found myself trying to split the story between following up on the Kouga-Ginta-Hakkaku plotline and what was going on with Kagome and Inuyasha. Although the story is (will be) primarily focusing on the former plotline, the set-up and development aspects of the Kagome and Inuyasha angle have really taken on greater emphasis than I planned for in my original outline. To accommodate that, I've reorganized the story into a stricter chronological format. Although this chapter is new, I've significantly revised and written new material for the preceding chapters. For those who'd be interested in re-reading them, I'll highlight what has changed where, hoping thereby to summarize those changes for readers not interested in revisiting earlier chapters.

Chapters 1-4: Minor edits. Kouga's reason for visiting has been changed; he's moved his territory and is passing on the news of that (again, the Ginta and Hakkaku disappearance plot is not gone: it's now been shifted to the forthcoming chapter 9).

Chapter 5: New and old material, with significant changes and additions to the old material. Various relationship dynamics more explicitly indicated (Sango and Miroku as well as Inuyasha and Kagome).

Chapter 6: New and old material, with significant changes and additions to the old. More background given on the jewel, Sango's pregnancy, Kagome and Inuyasha, etc.

Chapter 7: All new!

Chapter 8: Coming soon (by Wednesday, I hope, with chapter 9 to follow by next weekend)!