InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ To Shed a Little Light ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

A/N: Sorry this is late! I was out of town. A special thanks to my beta, thymecat, for saving this chapter from suck-dom. A couple more reviewers have figured out what this fic is based on: AngelsRebellion and ladyofthedragons1! *applause* If anyone else wants to hazard a guess, feel free and I'll admit to it if you are right. Or, you can wait until the end of the last chapter where I will post it in an author's note.

Thanks for all of your support!

Just a side note - I have a terrible head for names and faces. And I mean TERRIBLE! I've probably been writing from that mindset…so cut the poor girl some slack! It isn't her fault!

Disclaimer: I do not own any character created by Rumiko Takahashi.

Chapter 6

 

Inuyasha leaned over her shoulder and cocked his head as he peered at her neat handwriting. Before she could close it, he snatched away the notebook and held it open by its spiral metal binding.

 

“Inuyasha, give that back!” she lunged for it with an outstretched hand, missing it by a mile when he agilely twisted out of her reach.

 

“What is this?” he asked, a sharp edge to his voice.

 

“It's MINE! Give it!” Kagome growled, grasping for it again, only to find her forehead planted in his palm as he calmly held her back. Kagome swung her hands at him, but he was out of slapping range.

 

“Who the fuck are you describing?” he waved the open book just out of her reach, his claws puncturing the flimsy paper near the pre-punched holes. She gave up on her futile attempt to grab it and crossed her arms, sending him a fulminating glare. Ignoring it in favor of getting a closer look at the page, he tapped a cluster of penciled hearts with a claw, “And what are these funny dented circles?”

 

`He doesn't know anything,' Kagome reminded herself frantically, toeing the line of panic as she tense for another swipe at the incriminating notebook. “No one! Nothing!” she snapped in what she hoped was a tone that couldn't possibly be hiding a secret, but only sounded defensive and slightly desperate as it rang in her ears.

 

“Kagome,” he said, his voice strangled and uncertain, the tips of his ears quivering as the rest of his body tensed and froze. Kagome swallowed audibly in the stillness, her eyes locked on his ears with a morbid fascination. Suddenly, he looked straight into her eyes and pushed the notebook under her nose, his words brittle and clipped, “Why are you writing about my brother?”

 

Kagome's heart did a somersault and she somehow managed to trip over her feet while standing perfectly still. She landed on her butt on the tatami mats covering the wooden floor and her heart seemed to smash right through the floorboards. Her thoughts moved sluggishly, flowing and eddying around his words but not gaining purchase on their slick surfaces. Did he mean Sesshomaru? He must have another brother that he had failed to mention. Falling back into the safety net of denial, Kagome bit out, “I'm not!”

 

“Those are his markings!” he pointed to a sketch of a clawed hand with two stripes slashing the wrist.

 

Pushing to her feet, she leaned into his face with her arms straight at her sides, hands clenched into tightly balled fists. “They are not! Don't be ridiculous! And stop shouting or you'll disturb the innkeeper!” Kagome hollered and stomped a stockinged foot.

 

“Wench! You're the one who's fucking shouting-“

 

“Don't call me a wench, dog-boy! And you're just jealous that Miroku found us a decent place to stay instead of making us camp again!”

 

“I ain't jealous of that lech!”

 

“You are, too! Give me that!” she swiped the forgotten notebook from his hand and flounced back to her borrowed futon, shoving the book under her bedding. Sitting on the slight, rectangular lump, she dared him with a glare to come after it. Inuyasha seemed to consider it; his eyes darted from her face to her futon and back again, his ears pinned to the back of his skull. Finally, he harrumphed and turned his back on her, flopping down in the doorway of the little house and staring out into the darkness, Tetsusaiga propped on his shoulder.

 

After fifteen long minutes of staring at his broad, angry, red back, she eased the notebook from under her butt and opened it to the page on which she had been doodling.

 

Claws and Fangs *heart, heart*

One hand?

Silver

Fluff *puffy little heart*

Armor

Silk

Hair! *big heart*

Lord

Wet dog

Pup

 

And next to her list was a rough sketch of his hand as she remembered it from last night, though of course she hadn't included what he'd been holding in the picture. She stared at the list and then stared at her drawing. A frown creased the skin between her brows and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth to gnaw. Glancing from the page to her hanyou friend, her eyes fixated on his twitching silver ears, and then darted back to the bottom of her list.

 

`Nooooo…' It was impossible, right? Sesshomaru was a cruel, black-hearted bastard who had not hesitated to spray bone-melting acid on her! He hated anything with human blood; he wouldn't stoop to helping one through a cave, let alone maintaining an illicit love affair with one! There had to be lots of striped, one-armed inu-taiyoukai that wore armor and fluff! Sesshomaru was a monster and she was NOT screwing a monster!

 

Kagome snapped the book closed and shoved it back under the futon, completely disgusted with the illogical path down which her mind had wandered. To even consider the idea that her passionate, sometimes affectionate lover could be the cold Aristocratic Assassin was utter lunacy. Absolute insanity! Rid-god-damn-diculous!

 

`But what if…'

 

“No!” she said out loud, trying to drown out her internal voice. Inuyasha's ears flicked toward her and she scowled at the back of his head. With a small creak, he pulled the claws he'd embedded in the wooden floor and began to drum them in a fast, steady rhythm. Suddenly, his spine straightened and he climbed to his feet with predatory grace, a small snarl curling his upper lip.

 

“Hey guys, look what I found!” Shippo bounced into the room, followed by two servants laden with trays of steaming food. They eyed Inuyasha cautiously as they set the trays on the floor and hastened out of the room.

 

“Oh wow, Shippo! Is all of this for us?” Kagome clapped her hands and picked up a bowl of rice, inhaling deeply and sighing with pleasure at the smell of real food.

 

“Yeah, the innkeeper sent it with his compliments in payment for Miroku's exorcism!”

 

Inuyasha crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, casting a disgusted eye at the food though his nose twitched. “Humph. Exorcism, my ass. Where is that pervert, anyway?”

 

Kagome declined to answer in favor of cramming a wad of rice into her mouth.

 

“What's got you so uptight, Inuyasha?” Shippo asked around a mouthful of dumpling.

 

“Who says I'm uptight?” he snapped back, then startled when a frog croaked in a nearby pond.

 

“Well, you almost growled at those serving girls and just now-“

 

Kagome muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “Drop it, Shippo.” She didn't want to scrape the kit off of the floor tonight.

 

To her surprise, Inuyasha just huffed and stared into the night. “There's something in the air…it don't feel right.”

 

XxxxxxxX

 

Sitting at the bottom of the well, heedless of the blood gluing her shirt to her chest and the small rocks digging into the back of her thighs, she stared at the packed dirt wall with dull eyes. `His voice…it was the same voice…'

 

Her head throbbed with that realization. No matter how hard she had tried to push it away in order to concentrate on her friend's injuries, she couldn't help but hear her lover's velvety voice issuing from the same lips that had demanded Inuyasha's death; that had proclaimed her own worthlessness. It skipped through her mind like a broken record, the words garbled and nonsensical but that voice…

 

She had fired three arrows and missed Sesshomaru's heart, purposefully.

 

He'd appeared on the shoulder of an enormous ogre, as beautiful and terrible as a lightning storm, and just as deadly. His silver hair had glittered in the moonlight, combed by the breeze as he glided through the air toward Inuyasha. Kagome had caught her breath when he landed; admiring the burnished gold of his eyes but tensing for the battle that she knew was coming. Eyes roaming his face, she'd traced the blue crescent moon on his forehead, and then moved to the slashed stripes on his cheeks while her stomach had fluttered uncomfortably.

 

Then he'd spoken…

 

In Pavlovian response, a spark had ignited in her belly and she'd squeezed her legs together to relieve the ache between them. The words were lost in the fog that had descended on her brain, the satin tones sliding over her skin like lips in the dark. Shivering, she'd rubbed the backs of her arms to lay flat the tiny hairs that had risen. The crack of a whip had brought her out of her daze, and she'd shaken herself, berating herself for mistaking her lover's voice for that of this fiend. After all, her lord had one hand and Sesshomaru now had two!

 

The battle had been a blur as Inuyasha fought the demon lord for the blade and she had defended the hanyou with strengthened resolve. Not even the fiercely buzzing insects that swarmed from the hive that Sesshomaru had carried could shake her steadfast heart; it proved nothing. Nevertheless, Sesshomaru's rich tenor had chimed through her soul with each word he had spoken, cracking the fragile image she'd crafted of her lover as if it were a crystal glass resonating to the frequency of his tone.

 

“This is the end for you. Die.” They were wrong words and yet the same voice.

 

But it couldn't be true! There was no way…so she'd swallowed her confusion and lust and had fired a sacred arrow at the transformed blade of the sword of protection, leaving an irritated demon lord with a bejeweled arm and a rusty, useless sword. His golden eyes had glanced her way, flickering with some unnamed emotion that burrowed into her heart and held her rooted to the spot, even when he had lunged at her with claws outstretched. Razor-sharp, lethal claws that glowed green with caustic poison and extended from a blue-striped hand. Strangely, she had felt no fear; simply standing there as if waiting to be swept into his arms. She could kick herself now, but then…it had seemed like the most natural thing to do and she had almost been disappointed when Inuyasha had snatched her out of harm's way. His striped hand had filled her mind's eye as she'd doctored a poisoned Miroku and rejoined the fray.

 

The second arrow she nocked to her bow was aimed for the jewel shard in his left arm, but her hands had been shaking so badly that she'd missed and struck his armor. The metal had shattered and she'd almost cried out when he'd sent her a molten look of disapproval.

 

“Make her stop, Inuyasha.”

 

Of course, she hadn't stopped. He had caught her third arrow in mid-air, dissolving it with a hiss of green fumes and sent a blast of energy scorching toward her. She remembered nothing after that until she had woken in Miroku's arms, the sight of Sesshomaru's arm impaling Inuyasha's stomach etched into the backs of her eyeballs.

 

Her reluctance to kill almost cost the life of her protector.

 

She'd never seen Inuyasha so horribly injured; after the battle and Sesshomaru's disdainful retreat with his horrible little servant, he had fallen face first in a pool of his own blood and spent the next few hours unconscious. Even the potent healing power of his demonic blood had been challenged by the festering, gaping hole in his stomach, compliments of his dear half-brother. She didn't even want to contemplate Inuyasha's reaction to the news that his lover's reincarnation was sleeping with his sadistic, despised brother. When that volcano erupted, she'd like to be living it up on the moon somewhere; unfortunately, it would be her that triggered the explosion.

 

Was Sesshomaru her lover?

 

All of the evidence pointed to that very conclusion, yet it seemed impossible. Groaning aloud, she dropped her head in her hands. Her eyes felt hot and sticky, her nose burned and her throat ached, but the tears refused to come. There had to be lots of striped, one-armed inu-taiyoukai that wore armor and fluff and had a voice that turned her bones to rubber! Right?

 

As Kagome sat moaning and rocking her body at the bottom of the musty well, one truth burned brightly through her chaotic jumble of broken thoughts: Sesshomaru had had the power to kill them all with one stroke of the sword, but they were still alive. He'd attacked her twice and she'd escaped with only a few bruises and a lump on the back of her head to show for it. He'd let her live, purposefully.

 

Had he really come for just the sword?

 

She'd tended Miroku's and Inuyasha's wounds in a fog after the battle was over, administering anti-venom and applying bandages with hands that seemed detached from her body, controlled by someone else. Chitchat and concerned words had tumbled from her lips and they must have done their job for no one had asked her why she was floating two feet above her body. So removed from her surroundings, she had let Inuyasha embrace her at the well and could only put up a token resistance as he tore the jewel shard from her neck and pushed her over the edge of the well. It was far too late to do anything once she realized that the shard was her ticket back to the past.

 

She may never see her lover again. His identity could remain a mystery; the question of whether he was Sesshomaru or simply a demon with coincidentally similar traits may go unanswered. Kagome made a helpless, frustrated sound at the back of her throat and pounded the dank earth with her fist.

 

“What do I do?” she whispered to herself in the darkness of the well house, her voice echoing up the chute and rustling through the rough wooden building.

 

XxxxxxxX

 

Kagome walked behind her friends by several paces, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk as they passed under her feet but not really seeing them. She couldn't quite remember being this miserable: she was so far behind in all of her classes that she hadn't understood any of the lectures. It didn't help that her concentration was crap because she couldn't stop thinking about the possible identity of her lord and that she had let Inuyasha hug her, and then trap her in the future.

 

Oh, was her lord going to be pissed. Even if it turned out that he wasn't Sesshomaru (and sometimes, she could actually convinced herself that he wasn't) and she hadn't shot purifying arrows at him in the defense of his half-brother, she had still let another male embrace her and she had returned home without even saying anything. Not that she felt obliged to answer to him; she could go home whenever she liked. She certainly didn't need two possessive demons telling her what she could and couldn't do: one was already one too many.

 

Now she had a date with Hojo. How on earth had that happened? Yes, she had wanted to prove the point that she was an independent, normal teenager, but she wasn't the least bit interested in the boy. He was sweet, kind, and infernally boring. Nothing at all like her mysterious, passionate lover…who was not named Sesshomaru.

 

Stopping short just before running into Yuka, who stood with arms and legs akimbo, Kagome had a sinking feeling in her gut that she was in for a lecture.

 

“You better go on that date with Hojo,” Yuka waggled a disapproving finger at her.

 

Resentful and irritated, Kagome frowned at her, “I said I'd go, didn't I?”

 

“For someone who has a date with one of the cutest guys in school, you don't look thrilled. You're not still seeing that punk, are you?”

 

“Like seeing is the word for it,” Eri commented snidely behind her hand to Ayumi, who had the decency to look embarrassed.

 

Kagome sighed heavily. Having just spent an entire day gnawing on this particular problem, she wasn't inclined to pull it into the open for her nosy, hentai friends to pick apart. “I don't really want to talk about it.”

 

“Then you are seeing him. Or whatever,” Eri crowed triumphantly.

 

Yuka smirked and looked down her nose at Kagome. “He's no good for you. Go on that date and forget you ever met him.”

 

“But if she really cares for him…” Ayumi started, but was hushed by a quelling glare from Yuka.

 

“If you like Hojo so much, then why don't you date him?” Kagome groused.

 

Yuka's eyes widened momentarily then narrowed to slits as if insulted. “I'm just looking out for you, Kagome. There's no need to get nasty.”

 

“I wasn't-“

 

“I bet you haven't even seen his face yet, have you? At least I know who I do!”

 

Opening her mouth to protest, Kagome blinked rapidly and dropped her eyes back to the sidewalk. Ayumi gave her a concerned look. “Did you see him, Kagome?”

 

“I…”

 

“What is it?”

 

How could she explain this so that they would understand? Obviously, they wouldn't let her get away without telling them something. Maybe if she hinted at the problem, they could even give her some advice. “I think…he might be in a gang.”

 

Three horrified gasps robbed the local airspace of its oxygen and a forty-ish man walking around their small group and rolled his eyes at the teenage dramatics. `If only he knew,' Kagome thought longingly, almost wishing that she'd never been to the Feudal Era or had an encounter with a mysterious, sexy demon lord.

 

“I think this calls for milkshakes,” Eri declared solemnly, and the motion was approved with the nods of three dark heads.

 

Crammed into the tiny plastic booth of the local WacDonald's, Kagome met the stern stares of her friends as she slurped her chocolate `shake through a straw. Finally, Eri broke the stalemate and set her milkshake aside, placing a hand on the table and leaning forward.

 

“A gang, Kagome? This is bad.”

 

“No wonder he didn't want you to see his face: he didn't want to involve you in gang business!” Ayumi said earnestly around her straw.

 

Kagome blinked and sat back. Put that way, her lover's actions didn't seem so harsh. If he were, in fact, Sesshomaru, then maybe he was protecting her by hiding his identity!

 

“Humph! Who cares why he did it! You don't want anything to do with a gang,” Yuka snapped. “You could get seriously hurt!”

 

“I know,” Kagome mumbled and sucked another mouthful of chocolate sludge into her mouth, wincing when the cold drove an ice pick into her brain.

 

“Wait a second!” Eri prodded the table with a finger. “You said you think he's in a gang…you don't know for certain?”

 

“Well, no…not for sure…”

 

“That's a serious accusation, Kagome! You have to find out the truth! You might even have to turn him in to the police. Would they put you in the witness protection program?” Eri's eyes widened to saucers.

 

Yuka shot her a superior smirk, “Really, Kagome, you're supposed to find this stuff out before he bones you.”

 

Slowly setting her milkshake on the table, Kagome gave her perverse friend a blank look. “Oh? And do you remember the name of every guy you've blown?” Fighting to keep her expression blank, Kagome tried not to notice as Eri fell out of her seat and Ayumi blushed bright red. `I can't believe I said that out loud.'

 

With a dour pout, Yuka captured her straw between her lips and took a long draw from her `shake. `I guess that means no,' Kagome allowed a little triumph to seep into her inner voice.

 

Eri finally managed to right herself but kept her eyes on her milkshake. Giggling behind her hand, Ayumi shot Kagome a wink with twinkling eyes as Yuka excused herself to go to the bathroom. Inordinately pleased with herself for getting the best of her pushy, oversexed friend, Kagome finished her `shake in silence.

 

`Eri is right: I have to know the truth, one way or the other.' Chewing the end of her straw, Kagome stared blankly out the window, oblivious to the traffic and bustle on the street outside. `If he is Sesshomaru, then he has to realize that I will suspect him; if he isn't, well, it's time that I meet my lover face to face. Either way, I will see him.'

 

 

 

A/N - MMorg reviewers:

SilverMiko - Yeah! I love to hear it!; KawaiiGirl - S&M? Really? I thought it was pretty tame…; Laurell-chan - I didn't mean to portray her as stupid. All of us hard-core Sesshy fans would recognize him in an instant, but at this point in the anime, I don't think Kagome would; cryptic91 - if you don't like cliffys, you probably won't like this chapter…; Sari17 - it was dark out!; ashtonreed - no, he wasn't; AngelsRebellion - good job!; Rinseternalsoul - yep!; mspotts - ^_^; Mrs Sesshomaru - so glad!; SesshFanAlwayz - Thanks!; obese_a_tron5000 - love to hear it!; Amoraluv - ^_^;