InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Turn Around Again ❯ Chapter 2

"Turn Around Again" by Jezunya

Me no own. XP

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Kagome sighed, longingly gazing out the window to the world beyond her stuffy classroom. It was almost lunch time. The bell would ring, and she would be free… She paused, her brow creasing slightly. Parked across the street in a deceptively inconspicuous spot was the very same car that had been in front of her family's shrine that morning.

She shook her head. It was just a black car. Lots of people had nice cars like that. It had to be a coincidence.

Still… she thought, chewing her lip. I can't help feeling like I'm being watched…

The driver suddenly turned, seeming to look directly at her. Kagome gasped and whipped around to stare back at the front of the class. She tried to calm her speeding heart. That man with the silver hair… It was definitely the same guy who had watched her leave her house earlier that morning. She shivered slightly at the memory of how his eyes had seemed to bore into her, despite his dark glasses.

Who is this guy? Some kind of stalker? Kagome chanced a quick look back at the window, but the car was gone.

***

Inuyasha sped away, whipping around corners and down streets far above any safe speeds, and not caring in the slightest. He had to get away. He didn't even know why he'd followed the girl to school. He wasn't taking the job. He couldn't.

She looked so much like Kikyou.

He shook his head. Don't think about it, Inu. She's gone, there's nothing you can do now. Just forget about her. Forget.

Before he knew it, he was in the familiar parking garage under his apartment building. He parked the car and made his way over to the elevator. He paused, his finger barely an inch from the button for his floor. Instead, he pressed 6. Miroku's floor.

He let himself into the other man's apartment, looking around cautiously and testing the air with his nose. "Miroku?" he called, turning a corner into the kitchen.

Miroku looked up from his stove, "Oh, Inuyasha. I didn't hear you come in." He turned back, stirring something in a large black pan. "You want some mac-n-cheese?"

"Nah."

Shrug. "Your loss."

Inuyasha folded his arms and leaned against the doorway as Miroku got himself a plate and sat at the small kitchen table. He watched him eat for a few moments, then asked quietly, "How much did you know about that job you got me?"

Miroku looked up. "I did look through the files a bit, if that's what you mean," he answered carefully.

"There was a picture of her attached to her profile, wasn't there?" Miroku just gazed steadily at him. Inuyasha let out a disgusted growl. "So you knew?! You knew that she looked like Kikyou!"

"Look, I'm not the one who wants her killed, Inuyasha," Miroku countered defensively.

Inuyasha turned away angrily. "You know what? It doesn't matter! You can tell the client he can go fuck himself in hell! 'Cause I'm not taking the job!" He stormed out of the apartment, cutting off Miroku's yell of his name as he slammed the door behind him.

He stalked up the stairs to his floor, working out his anger with each heavy step. At last, he was at his apartment, directly above Miroku's. He unlocked the door, and stepped into the dark room.

His apartment was a stark contrast to his friend's. Where Miroku's was bright and cheerful, with a kind of 'lived in' messy look, Inuyasha's was kept spotlessly clean. Lights were rarely turned on, and when they were, only soft reading lamps. Tall bookshelves lined several walls, packed with volumes both old and new. There were no photos on the walls, no hint of family, friends, or even personal history. All the furniture was oak, black leather, or a mixture thereof.

Inuyasha flopped unceremoniously down onto one such leather sofa. He pulled his sunglasses off, looked at them for a moment, and then tossed them away. He stayed there, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything. His mind had another idea, though. Out of the random bumps on the ceiling, the shape of her eyes formed. They stared at him, accusing and betrayed.

He closed his eyes.

The shot rang out, cutting clear and loud through the silent night air.

The figure crumbled to the ground.

He smirked, lowering his still-smoking gun. Target: eliminated.

The figure drew a shaky breath. She was still alive. His eyes narrowed, and he slowly approached, holding his pistol at the ready. The figure continued to breathe heavily. He turned her over with his toe.

His gun clattered on the ground next to him.

She stared at him, her eyes accusing and betrayed. "Inu…"

The sound of a horn honking rudely down in the street woke him. Inuyasha blinked sleep-heavy eyes, turning to look at the clock on the small side-table.

4:32

He groaned and climbed to his feet. He'd slept through almost the whole afternoon. And I still feel like I could sleep for weeks, he thought, stumbling through the door into his bedroom. He sat on the edge of his bed. Reaching down to take of his shoes, his eyes fell on the nightstand and the sole picture on it.

Him and Kikyou.

They were standing next to each other, the Tokyo harbor showing behind them. Kikyou stood straight and tall next to him, cool, calm, and collected, as she had always been. She was staring out of the picture, her eyes…

…Accusing, betrayed…

Inuyasha slammed the picture face-down on the nightstand and shoved his feet back into his shoes. At least remembering to grab a hat, unlike that morning, he threw his jacket back on and hurried out of his apartment, only one thought on his mind: he had to get away.

When he was safely out in the hall, he stopped to lean against the wall opposite his door, feeling like he could breathe again, but not losing the heavy self-loathing. No, that he could never escape… He took a deep, calming breath, quelling the wave of anger and hate that had welled up in him, and forced himself to go through the motions of locking his door and walking calmly to the elevator.

The ride down to the parking garage was long and empty, as was the drive away from his building. He simply drove, not really paying attention to where he was going. After several minutes of wandering around downtown he found himself pulling into the parking lot of a quaint little café. Deciding to go along with his unconscious motions, he parked and turned off the car. He sat silently staring up at the building for a few moments. It was the type of place that Kikyou would have said was a waste of time, money, and space, with its friendly, chatty waitresses and cutely rounded tables and chairs. He climbed out of the car and made his way to the main building to order some coffee, the fact that it also seemed to be a teen hangout not really registering in his mind.

He found an empty out-door table to sit at, bordered on two sides by a small cement wall and tall bushes and away from the main hustle-and-bustle of the café. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the clear sky, expelling a long breath, almost a sigh.

She slumped against him and he could no longer hear her heartbeat.

"Kikyou..!"

She wasn't breathing…

The sky rumbled, and rain began to fall around them. A far-off flash of lightning and another wave of thunder…

Inuyasha was drawn out of his reverie when he realized that what he was hearing was actually not the replay of a night five years ago, but several chairs scraping over the floor across the café's patio. A group a teenage girls in green and white school uniforms were seating themselves at a round table on the other side of the patio. Inuyasha's eyes narrowed almost imperceptively. The Target was with them.

He shook his head vehemently. He had to stop thinking like that. She was just some random high school student, just a normal girl who didn't need to know he existed. Just a girl.

She looked so much like Kikyou.

A waitress in a short skirt came and placed his coffee before him, smiling sweetly before moving away again. He stared down into the browned depths of the cup, stirring a finger around in it, seemingly unaware of its scalding heat. He cast a glance back at the girl. She was sitting with her back slightly to him, chatting and laughing lightly with the other girls, all obviously enjoying their free afternoon. And he had refused the job - she would live to enjoy other such afternoons.

The tiniest of rustles in the bushes near him alerted him just as he saw the point of red light tracking up the back of the girl's chair. A high-pitched ringing accompanied it. Inuyasha's ears perked up underneath his hat. He knew that sound. He could feel his hackles raise, knowing that the hidden gunman was about to pull the trigger.

"If you don't take the job, the client will find someone else who will."

Inuyasha could feel his forehead bead with sweat. The red dot settled on the back of the girl's neck; her head would be completely blown off. There was another rustle from the bushes as the gunman carefully aimed and prepared to shoot.

He was acting before he even realized it. Inuyasha leapt to his feet and, reaching into the bushes, knocked the gun askew just as the trigger was pulled. The table exploded in a shower of splinters, only inches away from its intended target, and the café instantly erupted in a storm of screams and chaos.

Kagome could only stare at the demolished table and shattered cement beneath, where she'd been sitting only moments ago, everything seeming to move in slow-motion for a moment. Then she was grabbed roughly under the arms, practically thrown to her feet, and pushed at a run out to the parking lot. She was stuffed into the front seat of a car, which roared to life and sped away only seconds later.

A figure stood on the soft dirt of the café planter, cloaked in the shadows of the tall bushes, the shiny black nozzle of her rifle visible from between the leaves, but going unnoticed in the pandemonium. Red eyes narrowed, watching the car speed away and disappear in the evening traffic.

"Damn it. The Boss is not going to like this…"

***

They whipped around corners at break-neck speed, the café vanishing from sight almost immediately. Kagome yelped as she was thrown against the car-door on one particularly painful turn. Righting herself and rubbing her bruised arm with one hand, she looked over to see who this maniac driver was that had grabbed her.

She shrieked, causing the silvery-haired man to cringe against the steering wheel and shoot her a death-glare. "Stay down," he said crossly, reaching over and pushing her head down out of sight of the car windows.

"What-?! Who do you think you are?! Why have you been following me?! Let me outta this car!!" Kagome screamed, sitting back up.

"You- you saw me?" The surprise was obvious in his voice, but then he shook his head and growled again, "Dammit girl, will you just shut up and stay outta sight!" He reached for her head again, but she slapped his hand away, glaring fiercely.

"Why? So no one will know you're kidnapping me?!" she yelled.

"I am not kidnapping you!" he hissed back.

"Oh yeah?!" Kagome waved her hands around, indicating the inside of the car. "Then what do you call this?! I'm stuck in a car with a strange man I don't know who has been following me around all day! And you say you're not kidnapping-!!"

A hard 'click' cut her off, and Kagome found herself staring at a pistol pointed straight at her, held down low enough that no one in the surrounding cars could see-. The man didn't look at her, kept his eyes on the road, but his face was suddenly set as if in cold stone, and when he spoke, his voice was low, cold, quiet.

"You are going to shut your mouth, and you're not going to talk anymore through this whole trip. Understand?"

"You-!"

Here he did glance at her, his eyes like shards of amber ice, cold, calculating, almost lazy from having done this same thing so many times. "It's not aimed to kill. But if you don't want to lose a limb or at least a lot of blood, you shut up right now."

Kagome stared at the muzzle of the gun and nodded mutely, a sick feeling growing in the pit of her stomach, and pressed herself back into the corner where the seat met the wall of the car, as far from the man as she could get. He didn't look at her again, but pulled the gun back and placed it back inside his jacket.

***

It was after a few more minutes of driving that the man pulled over to the curb and killed the engine. Kagome sat up, looking around. They were on a quiet residential street that she didn't recognize, parked unobtrusively in the shadow of a large shade tree.

"Okay, here's the deal," he began, drawing her attention back to him. He sat sideways, one elbow resting on the steering wheel and the other on the top of his seat, glaring down at her with slightly-narrowed gold eyes. "Somebody wants you dead. Don't bother asking me why or who, 'cause I don't know. But I am not kidnapping you, ya got it? If anything I'm the reason you're still alive."

Kagome looked at him skeptically. "What do you mean? I'm just a normal kid! Why would anybody want to come after me?"

"I said I don't know," the man glowered at her. "But I do know this: somebody's going to a lot of trouble to track you down and has hired some real experts to get rid of you. Now, to me, that screams anything but 'normal kid.'"

Kagome faltered, her eyes widening. "But… Why me?" she asked softly, her bravado melting away. She had calmed down enough now that her anger wasn't overriding her other emotions, and they began to show up clearly on her face.

Inuyasha had to turn away, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. He hated that look. Fear. Especially on a woman's face. That and tears. Maybe that was why Kikyou and I got along so well.. He reached under the steering wheel and twisted the key, switching the ignition on. When the car pulled forward, Kagome looked around out the window, then turned her large questioning eyes on him. "Where are we going?"

Inuyasha was almost caught short by that. So now he wasn't 'kidnapping' her? They were just 'going'? Ok… "Someplace safe," he answered cryptically, busying himself with steering and avoiding her eyes. When she'd spoken, he had glanced at her, and what he saw there had surprised him. Yes, her fear was still written all over her face, but there was also something else there: determination. And for some reason, that shook him in a way he couldn't even begin to explain.

Kagome leaned against the car window, counting the trees they passed and watching as the houses began to dwindle and traffic began to pick up. Just before they reentered the busy main roads of downtown, she turned her head to look over at him. "Hey."

"Hey what?"

She hesitated, bit her lip lightly, and then, seeming to come to a decision, asked, "What's your name?"

His eyebrows rose slightly. Why did she want to know his name? Well, whatever… "Inuyasha," he said flatly.

The girl nodded, saying the name to herself, trying it out. Then, "I'm Kagome."

"I know."

"You-?!"

"Oh, forget it…"

This was going to be a long drive…

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Whee! I finally got off my butt and finished this! ^-^

Well, hm, I think this is my first on-going fic without a huge ol' glossary at the bottom.. hehe ^^;

Um, well, I really don't know what to say. I usually have tons of space taken up by notes and the glossary, but this time… hm. Well, I guess, a big "Thanx!" goes to the wonderful people who reviewed! ^_^ I luv feedback on my fics, so don't hesitate to review and/or email me! (hint hint *points to bottom of page where there is a button conveniently marked "Submit Review"*)

Oh no, I'm rambling… So, yah, review!