InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ To Catch a Falling Star ❯ those are words that no gentleman would use ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter Ten

"Such a fulsome greeting, Inuyasha," said Sesshomaru. Sometimes, about all Inuyasha appeared to have experience with was profanity, and even then his vocabulary was sadly limited as far as Sesshomaru was concerned. He took in the figures gathered at the edge of the porch of the hanyou's den building: that girl, the taijiya, her pup, the kitsune--and the rapidly fading, miniscule youki of a flea youkai: that retainer of his father's who had attached himself to the hanyou, he supposed. The young human boy was absent, as was the priest.

"Fuck you, too," his half-brother spat, flicking a glance at Sesshomaru before turning his attention to the other youkai. The once-human girl put a hand to his arm--in restraint, Sesshomaru supposed: a foolish purpose where Inuyasha was concerned. He turned his own attention downwards, his nostrils flaring as the breeze brought him the scent of the human village more strongly than before: ashes, grease, tears, rice, leather, piss and vinegar and offal. How Inuyasha managed to stand the filthy reek was beyond him.

"Rin, go fetch your things."

Rin's face puckered a moment--really, humans only enhanced their resemblance to monkeys when they did that: they should know better--before she nodded. "Hai, Sesshomaru-sama," she said, and smiled. He noted that she had another tooth missing. Children seemed prone to a propensity for littering, leaving bits of themselves and their belongings behind everywhere. Inuyasha had once even abandoned one of his milk teeth in a persimmon, then had the unmitigated gall to try passing the fruit off on Sesshomaru as something edible.

"Leave, wolf! Sesshomaru-sama has business here," Jaken announced from behind Sesshomaru, who turned infitesimally so he could see the other youkai as well as his half-brother; the wolf--Kouga--had sunk into a crouch, one hand to the ground for balance as he panted. What an unexpectedly humble posture from him that was, too.

"I have business as well," the wolf said, breathing labored, looking at Inuyasha. Beyond him, the crows settled at last into their roosts once more after the last bursts of their dissatisfied caws.

"The hell you do!" The hanyou shook off that girl's hand, with a muttered, "Stay here."

"Sesshomaru-sama is--" Jaken began, the lids of his bulbous eyes narrowing with irritation to glare at Kouga.

"Jaken," Sesshomaru said.

"Hai, Sesshomaru-sama!" When Sesshomaru stared at him, declining to say more, uncertainty closed the toady's open mouth. He shuffled over to Ah-Un, grumbling under his breath words Sesshomaru did not deign to hear.

"Dog turd," Kouga began, making Jaken squawk angrily until he saw that the address was directed at Inuyasha, "I want--"

A snarl scratched its way up Inuyasha's throat; Sesshomaru held back a sigh as the hanyou whipped Tetsusaiga out of its sheath. He definitely was an idiot to make such a fuss with Kouga having already signaled his regret for the intrusion.

"Oi," the wolf exclaimed, springing out of the way of the hanyou's first slash at the last possible second. "Inuyasha--"

"It's my territory and you're in it. Again," Inuyasha growled, taking another swipe with the sword. He had such a talent for stating the obvious; but--again? The fool deserved to have interlopers, if he wasn't able to guard his claimed area properly.

"Dog turd, I just came to--" Kouga threw himself flat to avoid the swing. A few voices murmured amongst themselves: some of the other humans who lived nearby had started to gather near the edge of the building by the taijiya, presumably supposing that their resident youkai was fighting off some vicious intruder on their behalf. Heh. Sesshomaru considered it rather degrading on Inuyasha's part to lend himself to such, as if he were some human's guard dog; besides, it was a waste of time and effort: they died so quickly that protecting them was scarcely warranted. But, Sesshomaru supposed, protecting the humans meant that someone was around to cultivate that rice; Inuyasha had his pack to feed, and was ridiculously willing to indulge their sensibilities at times: a sure sign of his human breeding expressing itself.

"I know what you came for, and you can't have her. She's mine." So. Inuyasha was courting the girl now; not a terribly surprising circumstance, given his questions of the past autumn. And apparently the wolf saw something of value in her, too, if he were also chasing after the girl's tail. Although if this had happened before, Inuyasha really was an idiot for not dealing with the wolf youkai so emphatically that he wouldn't make another attempt.

Sesshomaru slanted a look at the female in question; she was stalking toward them, ears forward and her scent edgy with ire: rather more aggressiveness than he'd seen from her in the past. "Inuyasha," she began, before being interrupted by a growl--apparently his half-brother was unable to let anyone complete a sentence when in the throes of a fit of temper--but continued loudly, "Inuyasha. I want to hear what he has to say."

An uneasy mutter from a couple of the villagers came to Sesshomaru's ears. "She wants to stop the fight?" "Somebody should find the Miko-sama; she's fought youkai before. She'd know what to do."

When another swing and another faltering evasion on Kouga's part resulted in nothing but a yelp and a few hairs shaved from the youkai's tail, Inuyasha slammed Tetsusaiga back into its sheath; the proximity of those humans and the fact that he would be ripping up his own territory apparently discouraged him from using the kaze no kizu.

"Bitch," Inuyasha snarled, flinging the words at her as he made a clawed lunge for the wolf, "you're not going to let him hide behind your skirts."

"Dog turd, talk! That's all," Kouga gasped out, stumbling away from Inuyasha with a gash down his shoulder.

"Inuyasha, stop!"

"Just try to make me, bitch!"

It was not the wisest of actions to insult and challenge one's lead female so openly; but then, Inuyasha seldom followed the course of wisdom. Sesshomaru watched as the woman's features tightened with anger. "Fine," she said, inhaling visibly.

Oh, this was interesting indeed. Her youki had been rather innocuous up until this moment, as it had been when he left Rin with her in the fall; but now it was flaring: a sullen rise of power that seemed oddly turned on itself, as if it were fighting some unseen opponent. A look of intense concentration warred with the anger in the girl's face as she sank to her knees, claws fisting into the earth. Heh. She could do little sitting on the ground like that. What the hanyou needed was to have some manners smacked into him, but that would be an uphill struggle. Their father's death had been inconvenient in many ways.

Then her scent started to change. Inuyasha hadn't been thinking at all whenever he made whatever wish it had been that set all this up; if he had, he would have avoided this sort of trouble.

"Shit!" Inuyasha yelped as he slammed into some unseen barrier and was thrown to the ground, midway through a swipe at Kouga. He got to his feet, shaking one hand painfully, then made another attempt--only to fall back again. "The hell?"

"Oi," said the first villager who had spoken earlier, his voice a little louder this time. "She is trying to stop them. I knew it--a miko just couldn't change like that without something being wrong with her."

The wolf rose likewise, but more slowly, still obviously winded. Tentatively, ready to snatch back as if from a flaming branch, he reached the hand not held to his torn shoulder towards the spot against which Inuyasha had impacted. "Kekkai?"

"Kaede!" Inuyasha growled, his ears pinning back.

Sesshomaru sighed. "Inuyasha, you fool. Look at the girl."

Inuyasha blinked, his shift from a combative focus patent as he spun on his haunches. The girl's ears were flat, her head ducked; tension held her shoulders and arms taut, the flexing of her claws into the grass and dirt her only movement. Sesshomaru saw Inuyasha flinch when he caught wind of her scent. The hanyou moved a step away from Kouga. "Kagome?" He approached her with a few swift steps, the faint twitch of an ear her only response. "Oh, shit." The hanyou's own ears flattened in dismay, color fading sickly from his skin.

"Kagome? What's wrong with Kagome?" the kitsune boy yelled, tail twitching in agitation. "Dog boy, what did you do?" A hand to his collar jerked him back when he attempted to jump off the porch, the taijiya holding him in place.

"Shit!" Kouga echoed, leaping back as the finger he'd been poking with sank through the barrier.

Inuyasha barked out a harried, "Shut the fuck up! All of you." He unsheathed Tetsusaiga.

"Showing some intelligence at last, I see," Shesshomaru said. He had wondered how long it would take the hanyou to make that move.

"No-one tells Sesshomaru-sama when to be quiet," Jaken huffed.

"Dog boy, stop it!" the kitsune shrieked.

Kouga approached the kekkai again. His hand moved over the barrier before fingers sank in again at a different spot. Reaching higher, he found a place where his whole hand, instead of sliding up along a dome, appeared to slip over an edge.

A muffled whine escaped through the girl's tightly clenched jaws, the acrid smell of pain tainting her scent.

"Shippou-kun, hush," the taijiya said severely, keeping her hand fisted in his collar as she stepped off the porch to push through the villagers huddling by there in an indecisive knot. Shippou stumbled along with her a few steps, then hurried to keep up until she was once again holding him back.

Inuyasha snarled, "I said shut up," reversing the untransformed sword and shoving it into the girl's lap. When it threatened to slide to the ground, he grabbed one of her hands by the wrist and tried to curl her fingers around the hilt. "Bitch, you've got to hold onto it."

"Kagome, drop the barrier. Now," snapped another voice. Followed by an anxious villager, an old human woman stumped towards the hanyou and the girl. She smelled of incense and illness; and Sesshomaru recognized her as the one he had left Rin with, and Inuyasha the kitsune, last winter after Sesshomaru had made Inuyasha cough up the location to which they had traced that Naraku.

Kouga, engaged in climbing over the top of the poorly-made kekkai, gave an angry shout as his support disappeared and he fell to the ground.

A shudder ran through the girl. Sesshomaru caught a flash of red in her eyes as she lifted her face, slick with a sheen of sweat, before she gulped a breath of air and the color faded to an unimpressive brown. She sagged, slumped, breathing as if she, too, had been running at top speed for a long time.

"What the hell were you doing?" Inuyasha demanded, claws digging into the wrist he still held.

The girl's chest rose and fell as she sucked in a breath of air; her face reddening as if it had seen too much sun. Another breath, then she pulled away to say with dull anger, "Trying to stop you from hurting Kouga-kun when he said he just came to talk." Sesshomaru could sense the waning tang of a youkai fading from her scent, to be replaced with the tartness of anger.

"She was trying to put up a kekkai, Inuyasha," the old miko said; Sesshomaru could see the disapproval that settled into the lines wrinkling her face, folded and webbed as a dried prune.

"You were ordering me, bi--what?"

The girl crossed her arms, looking aside as her ears twitched in obvious discomfort at the movement. "You told me to stop you," she said. Sesshomaru stilled a twitch of his lip that wanted to curl in appreciation. She was not entirely unintelligent.

"Kagome," the miko interrupted before Inuyasha could reply, "did you tell Inuyasha what I said the other night after he left?" The kitsune, wriggling free of the taijiya's hold at last as she struggled to balance the fretful baby with the boy's determined squirming, darted over to throw himself at the girl.

Kouga shook himself as he got to hands and knees, then stood, the black tail of his hair sliding over one shoulder.

Inuyasha bit back a curse as he snatched Tetsusaiga from where the kitsune's arrival had shoved it ignominiously to the ground. "What the hell do you mean by that? What did you tell her? Kagome, do you realize--"

"Miko-sama," said the opinionated peasant, hesitantly making his way to stand near the old human, "are you going to do something about her now? She was preventing Inuyasha-san from defeating that youkai." He gave a distrustful glance to Kouga, who snarled a reply in tandem with Inuyasha.

"The fuck I'll let anything happen to Kagome," the leader of the wolf youkai growled.

"Kagome wasn't--shut the fuck up, wimpy wolf!"

"Can't you say anything else, dog turd?"

"Taka-san," the miko said in a tired tone, "how many times do I have to tell you that Kagome-sama is perfectly fine?"

"Inuyasha! Kouga-kun! I wish you two would hush and--"

"A pity you weren't more thoughtful with your wish, Inuyasha. You could have avoided this trouble by making her a full youkai to begin with."

The girl flinched, falling silent as Inuyasha howled in a towering fury, "I wasn't asked! I don't know what fucking shitty wish I made, you assho--" His words were cut short as a jangling staff slammed across his shoulders and knocked him to the ground next to the girl.

"Not even gone half a day, and look what a furor I return to," the priest announced in a mournful tone as the heated voices crashed and broke in a wave of startled silence around the hanyou. The priest's glance, however, was alert and quick as it moved from the abashed and unhappy figure of the girl, to the kitsune in her lap, to the resigned figure of the stoop-shouldered miko, to the fisted, angry stance of the wolf youkai, his breathing slow at last, to the truculent villager, and then to Sesshomaru, who returned the look impassively. Rather casual treatment of a pack leader by a second, but--effective. "Sango, light of my life and guide to my enlightenment through sens--" The priest coughed at the fierceness of the taijiya's glance and concluded meekly, "Perhaps you would care to bring enlightenment of another sort to me? --Informationally, I mean!" He finished in a hurry as the taijiya lifted a flat-palmed hand in what, by the way the priest reacted, had to be some sort of warning.

"Kaede-sama was about to explain why Kagome was having problems controlling her youki when she tried to keep Inuyasha and Kouga apart with a kekkai," Inuyasha's female second, the taijiya, explained with a succinctness and informative simplicity that left Sesshomaru mildly impressed. A noise from the young male taijiya who had made his way to the priest's side caused her gaze to jump to him before it flicked to the silently fuming Inuyasha, who had grabbed hold of the girl's wrist again and was exchanging glares with her, the ears of both erect and tense.

"Ah, I see," the priest said, eyes sweeping over the villagers. "That sounds like a long discussion indeed, and I find myself rather thirsty. Some tea might be nice. Taka-san, all," he continued smoothly with a bow to the other peasants, "you must not let us keep you from your own efforts while we address Kagome-sama's little difficulty."

"But," the human protested.

The old miko said authoritatively, "I already told you, Taka-san. There is nothing to worry over. All these youkai are known to me; they are . . . acquaintances . . . of Inuyasha. And Kagome-sama is fine. Your wife would have been the worse if she had not helped her with that burn, ne?"

"Shithead," Inuyasha muttered in a burst of eloquence as the villagers reluctantly dispersed. He stood, pulling the girl up with him in a move that dumped the protesting kitsune to the ground.

"Inuyasha," she began, then fell into a bristling silence when he shot her a sharp look.

Miroku gestured with one hand, flapping it up and down in a movement absurd to Sesshomaru: just another one of those inexplicable things humans did. "Maa, maa," he said placatingly. They would be best not to have taught Rin any bad habits.

"Jerk," the kitsune said resentfully under his breath, picking himself up from the grass.

As the others headed to the porch, Kouga passed by Sesshomaru, cleaning the blood of his shoulder wound from his fingers with his tongue. The saunter familiar to Sesshomaru from last winter had been absent since the wolf arrived; Kouga moved reluctantly with frequent glances over his shoulder, as if there were somewhere else he would much rather be. But his voice was as insolently casual as ever when he asked, "What brings you to talk to Inuyasha? I thought you two couldn't stand each other."

Sesshomaru said flatly, "My business," and ignored him thereafter until the wolf shrugged and moved away. The air freshened with his distance, wolf-sweat and blood dispersed by a welcome gust of wind that brought with it the pines and maples of the forest. Sesshomaru wanted to consider what Inuyasha had blurted about the wish. He'd been thinking the hanyou a fool for having made use of the jewel, but apparently that had not been the case; therefore, it was that girl who had to have used it. Except that Inuyasha had claimed to be responsible for her situation during Sesshomaru's visit last fall, when Inuyasha had so rudely demanded to know--the idiot--about mating. As if it were his, Sesshomaru's, role to inform him of such. Much good may the information have done him.

"Sesshomaru-sama!" Rin said happily, picking up a bundle as he neared. "I'm all ready."

"Give your things to Jaken," he said, responding indifferently to the details with which he could tell she wanted to burst forth. The building they approached wasn't as odiferous as the others nearby--he supposed with so many youkai in residence, even if two of them were half-blooded, something had to be worked out--but still: old wood and paper, vinegar and noodles and fish, all overlaid with the scents of humans and the others, but mostly heavier odor of a male hanyou.

"Hai!" Rin jumped off the porch with a bouncy step. A shadow crossed her face as she passed Inuyasha and Kagome; instead of heading immediately towards Jaken, she paused to look back at them.

The young taijiya boy whom Sesshomaru had used Tenseiga to revive along with that girl pulled Rin's attention away from Sesshomaru when he asked, "Rin-chan, are you leaving?"

"Un! When Sesshomaru-sama does," she confirmed, turning to the boy with another bright smile. "I'm going to go see Jaken-sama now. Want to come meet him, Kohaku-san?"

Kohaku shook his head, the worry that pulled down the corners of his mouth plain to Sesshomaru. "I should stay here. Have fun, though."

On the porch, Inuyasha dropped to a seat, pulling that girl down after him. "Did you decide not to tell me, or what?" he demanded as the priest sat down to one side of him, the taijiya and her pup by his side. Sesshomaru stood on the other, his back to one of the porch columns. He combed his fingers through the pelt over his shoulder, idly watching Kouga's sullen move away from the pair to a seat opposite them.

"No!" the girl snapped emphatically, meeting the hanyou's narrowed gaze with her own. "I meant to, but I forgot."

"You forgot? What the hell did you forget?"

Having made her way to the porch behind the rest, the old woman accepted the taijiya boy's proffered arm to kneel, heels tucked under pleated red trousers. "Kagome, you were angry again, ne?"

The girl's mouth tightened, lips thinning in remembered displeasure. "Yes."

Inuyasha growled, his free hand clenching angrily; he kept hold of her wrist with the other.

"I just wanted to ask you a fucking favor, dog turd!" Kouga said. "That was all."

Sesshomaru shifted, sinking his fingers momentarily deeper into the pelt. Whatever the wolf's situation was, it had to be extreme--both to have him willing to ask for help and to send him to Inuyasha. No wonder he had been acting so meek when he had arrived, particularly if he and the hanyou had a history of fighting over the girl. No one with eyes and a brain, however, could have failed to notice that the two were courting--the way Inuyasha kept hold of her wrist had been clue enough for Sesshomaru--and that it would end successfully for the hanyou: no female youkai with two thoughts to rub together in her head would allow a male so close for so long if she were unwilling to breed with him. It just went to show once more the essential stupidity of wolves.

"I had thought," the old miko said before Inuyasha could spit back a reply, "that Kagome's miko abilities were interfered with by her becoming a hanyou. But now I have begun to suspect that it is the other way around, that they are what restrain her from becoming a youkai."

Inuyasha looked like he'd bitten into a worm-ridden ume.

The priest arched his eyebrows and looked to his mate inquisitively. The taijiya shook her head. He turned back to look between the miko and the girl. "Kagome-sama is sealing herself?"

"I think perhaps. As a hanyou, she's--balanced, to some extent. She can't really use her powers, but neither were they hurting her. But if she tries to use them, or if something makes her lose control. . . ." The miko shot a glance at Kouga and then Inuyasha, who was staring down at his hand wrapped around that girl's wrist. She, in turn, had bent her head towards him, eyes resting on his face, ears to the side in evident apprehension. Her skin had reddened further, on her face and hands and feet as far as Sesshomaru could see, until she looked feverish.

"And then she tries to purify herself?" the young boy taijiya whispered into the uneasy silence that followed the old woman's words.

Inuyasha flinched as if struck. Across from his back, Kouga said in a voice low with bitter anger, "And you said you would protect her."

Inuyasha reared back, baring his teeth in rage. Before he could turn to retaliate, the girl reversed his grasp on her wrist to take his, other hand flashing out to grab his free arm and slam his hands to the wood flooring of the porch.

"Kagome."

"No."

"It was her wish, wolf," Sesshomaru said coldly. "And her choice to spend her life for him back then."

"I don't want to talk about this." The intensity of her words drew Sesshomaru's eyes to the girl. She had leaned forward, resting her forehead against the hanyou's, whose eyes were closed; her hands still pressed over his. "There is not one thing I would change, do you hear me?" Inuyasha opened his eyes and she stared into them, her gaze direct, for the space of a few breaths.

"What I want is to hear about what brought Kouga-kun here," she continued in a more normal tone. "And eat, and then go bathe. Please?"

The last word was what did it. Inuyasha's chest moved as he drew in air and straightened. "Fine."

Sesshomaru, like the others, watched the exchange silently. Heh. Whatever inadequacies his idiot half-brother had, he'd stumbled onto a good decision, for once, in choosing that girl as his lead female and future mate.