InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Quadrangle ❯ Recrimination ( Chapter 10 )

A/N: No, the last chapter was not the end! I'm not that evil! This chapter is somewhat of a continuation of the previous chapter, however. It should clear up some of your questions, but others will be revealed as the plot continues.

 

Blue-eyed Floozy - Ouch! I guess I deserved that… here's that next chapter.

 

Chapter 10 - Recrimination

 

(Previously)

 

Sesshomaru didn't understand the problem. He had his body back; the jewel was out of the hands of the undead miko. Kagome was…his. “You did well,” he stated indifferently though his gaze was sunlight warming her skin. Kagome blinked, startled by the praise, and slowly smiled.

 

(And now…)

 

Soul collectors swooped down and over Kikyou as Inuyasha held her close, retrieving the little blue orbs of light that floated from her body. Astonished, all he could do was cling to her, watching the serpentine demons and listening to the blood rush through her veins propelled by her now beating heart. Her body warmed in his hands, eyes glossing with moisture, lips parting to expel wet puffs as she breathed, truly breathed, for the first time in over fifty years.

 

“How can this be, Kikyou?” Inuyasha whispered, running a gentle finger over the smooth skin of her cheek.

 

Kikyou blinked again, coming back to herself little by little, then gazed beyond him as the last soul collector spiraled out of sight. Placing a shaky hand over her heart, she felt the thrum of life in her body.

 

Her eyes locked with Inuyasha's, staring down at her with an amazed tenderness that made her stomach squirm. Did the man have no self-respect? Irritated, she brushed his hand away from her face but he only clung to her tighter.

 

“I know you didn't mean what you said to me,” he told her with quiet conviction. He'd been wrong to doubt her earlier; since her resurrection, she'd said many horrible things, but it was the pain and anger of waking to a clay body that had been talking, not the sweet miko who'd taught him how to love. He'd weathered those storms, proving over and over to her that he had never forgotten her. Now that Naraku was dead and she was alive, he'd fulfilled his promise to her. He'd never felt this free.

 

“Unhand me, Inuyasha,” she demanded, pushing out of his arms to sit up. It wasn't supposed to be like this; she was lying in the wrong arms with the wrong soul in her body. A soul of a simple peasant girl, an ordinary woman, it had been the last to break free and had not been collected.

 

How could things have gone so wrong? And more importantly, how to set things right? Her eyes wandered to the tall taiyoukai standing in front of her reincarnation. His body inhabited by Inuyasha's soul would have been her path to a pampered life, though by the way he was staring at the girl, it seemed that the lord did not hate humans as much as reputed.

 

Kagome's heart rate sped up as Sesshomaru leaned toward her, his eyelids drooping sensuously as he inhaled, the tip of his nose brushing her hair and sending shivers up the long strands to tickle her scalp. It was all she could do to stay on her feet; if he got any closer, she would melt.

 

“Hey, get the hell away from Kagome,” Inuyasha sprang to his feet, apparently having noticed the couple as well.

 

Jerked violently back into reality, Kagome stepped away, shooting Sesshomaru an apologetic glance. He straightened, bored mask in place, though his brow was slightly creased in irritation. With a smooth step, he'd placed himself between the advancing hanyou and the girl who beguiled his senses.

 

“What business have you with my pack?”

 

“Your pack? She ain't part of your pack,” Inuyasha blustered. “Now get outta my way, mutt.”

 

Shippo watched the confrontation build again and flicked his tail nervously. He was pretty sure Inuyasha didn't understand about the scent mark, being a hanyou and all, and he doubted that Sesshomaru would bother to explain it. `Come on, Shippo, Kagome needs you! Get it together!' Mustering as much courage as his pint-sized body could hold, he shouted from Ah-Un's back, “We are so! Sesshomaru-sama-“

 

“Inuyasha, please don't make a scene,” Kagome cut him off and stepped from behind Sesshomaru, suddenly exhausted beyond words. Despite the warm sunshine, she was cold, and arguing with a jealous, two-timing hanyou was not at the top of the list of things she wanted to do at the moment.

 

Scowling, Inuyasha crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his arms into his voluminous red sleeves. “I ain't the one making a fucking scene. It's that bastard who-“

 

“Osuwari.”

 

He hit the ground with a thud and a strangled yelp. “Wench! What'd ya do that for?”

 

“'Cause you're an idiot,” Shippo piped up smugly from the sidelines. He hadn't missed being picked on and to see the ornery hanyou eating dirt once again was a beautiful sight indeed.

 

“Hn,” Sesshomaru agreed.

 

Kagome sighed loudly, and began massaging her temples, trying to ease the headache she felt building behind her eyes. She wanted a long, hot soak and a nap, not a shouting match. “Let's try to keep this civil, okay?”

 

“An undertaking doomed to failure when involving the uncivilized,” Sesshomaru quirked an eyebrow at his prone half-brother, ignoring Kagome's annoyed glare.

 

“No doubt about that,” Shippo added and blinked innocently when Kagome turned her glower onto him.

 

Arms shaking as he strained against the subduing spell, Inuyasha scowled at the traitorous kitsune. “Why you little-“

 

“Enough. You have your body, your sword and your miko. We will be taking our leave. Though,” Sesshomaru paused and let his eyes run over the woman who had risen to her feet and was watching the altercation with a disgusted twist of her lips, “she is not much of a miko.” Kikyou grimaced, looking away, and Sesshomaru wondered what it was that drew his brother to her. She was certainly not as pleasing to look upon as Kagome, though the two did share a passing resemblance, and her power was considerable weaker. In fact, if he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that she was an ordinary human.

 

Finally released, Inuyasha leapt to his feet and blocked Kikyou from the taiyoukai's line of sight with his body. “You leave Kikyou out of this!”

 

“Still defending her, Inuyasha? I have said it before: you are a fool. You should kill her for her treachery.”

 

“She didn't mean it like that! She'd never-“

 

“Osuwari!” Kagome shouted, the word exploding from her throat before she'd even known it was there. Inuyasha was flattened unceremoniously and groaned; it had hurt this time!

 

She'd had it with his blind faith in Kikyou. `How can he doubt me with no reason then turn around and put Kikyou on a pedestal and proclaim her innocence despite her own damning words? Time and again, I prove my trustworthiness and loyalty, only to be accused and berated, whereas Kikyou betrays us and he always comes to her defense. It isn't fair. I don't have to take this crap.' Pursing her lips into a thin line, Kagome kneeled in front of the hanyou, once more prostrate on the ground. “I'm sorry, Inuyasha, but I'm tired and I just…I just can't.”

 

“What, so you're gonna leave? Run home? Fucking-“

 

“Osuwari.” She braced her hands on her knees and pushed to her feet, her face blank and eyes dull with fatigue. Placing one careful foot in front of the other, Kagome walked toward the dragon and tried not to fall apart.

 

“Kagome! Don't-“

 

“He never learns, does he?” Shippo asked rhetorically, but Rin shook her head anyway.

 

“Osuwari.” Ah-Un's back suddenly seemed like an insurmountable peak as she stood near his scaled rump. Just the idea of having to climb on his back was overwhelming and her carefully maintained façade of indifference was beginning to crack. He treated her so poorly; why was it hard to leave him behind? It felt like she was leaving some integral part of herself cursing and yelling in that shallow crater, something without which she couldn't function properly. She'd almost turned back to him when an arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up as mist gathered and congealed around her feet. Her last view of the hanyou was from high in the air through wisps of silver cloud as the world below her shrank. `Odd,' she thought. `The higher we get, the heavier I feel.'

 

XxxxxxxxX

 

“Who needs her, anyway?” Inuyasha burst out as he paced across the springy grass surrounding the shrine. After several steps, he would stop, scent the air, scowl darkly, and begin pacing again. He'd been doing this for over an hour and Kikyou was beyond irritated.

 

“If you do not need her, then stop talking about her,” Kikyou snapped.

 

“I ain't talking about her!”

 

Kikyou tried not to roll her eyes, settling for a small, if exasperated, sigh.

 

Pace, pace, sniff. “I can't believe she left with him! She left me, with him! And that runt Shippo took his side. When I find him I'm gonna-” He stopped pacing and inhaled deeply, then scowled and planted his hands on his hips as a large cat passed them overhead. Roaring a greeting, the firecat churned the air with fiery paws as she swooped down to meet them.

 

“Took you guys long enough,” Inuyasha glared daggers at the monk and taijiya as they dismounted.

 

Shrugging, Miroku rolled his shoulders and eyed the woman sitting behind the hanyou. She looked like Kagome in miko's garb, but she had the air of Kikyou. And yet, she did not have the aura of a priestess. Miroku placed a hand in the small of his back and leaned backward, sighing in relief as it cracked several times. “Inuyasha, is that you?” he asked, though by the tone of his voice, it was simply for formality's sake; Sesshomaru would not have greeted them in such a way.

 

“Yeah, it's me. Who the fuck did you think it was?”

 

“And Kikyou?” the monk hazarded a guess, since this woman did not have the scars that Kagome would. From the burst of power he had felt as they were out looking for Kagome, he supposed it possible that she could be Kikyou brought back to life.

 

She nodded, “Surprised, monk?”

 

“Verily,” he responded, raising one eyebrow. She had not lost her venom; in fact, he disliked her more now than when she was undead. There was something twisted about her that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

 

“Where is Kagome?” Sango asked, her voice dangerously quiet. She stood at the ready, seemingly unaffected by the long hours spent on the cat's back.

 

Snorting, Inuyasha crossed his arms and glowered into the forest. Kikyou answered for him. “She left with Sesshomaru-sama.” Sango nodded, unsurprised, and exchanged a glance with Miroku, which went unnoticed by the hanyou.

 

“Inuyasha, how did regain your body and how is it that Kikyou is alive?” Miroku asked him

 

Inuyasha shrugged, still looking away. “Kagome must have done it. I don't know.”

 

Resisting the urge to brain the hanyou with his staff, Miroku sighed. “What were the circumstances of your exchange?”

 

Inuyasha glared at the monk, then sat abruptly with his hands planted between his feet. “She collapsed, I think when the jewel was restored. We were both trying to keep her from falling-“

“Both?”

 

“That bastard and I! Do you want I should finish or are you gonna keep interrupting?” he snapped. After a placating gesture from the monk, he continued. “Anyway, a light shot out of her and knocked us out. When we woke up, we were back.”

 

“Hmm,” the monk bowed his head in thought. “Well, the wish was impure. Perhaps the restoration of its power simply undid what shouldn't have been done in the first place.”

 

“But Kagome didn't have the jewel with her when it happened, did she? Why would it go through her like that?” Sango asked the monk, pointedly ignoring the hanyou.

 

“She had it when I was given a living body,” Kikyou interjected, but was also ignored.

 

“Kagome has always had a deep connection to the jewel. Didn't she tell us that she was born with it in her body? Inuyasha, where is the jewel now?”

 

“Stupid bitch swallowed it.” Inuyasha never saw it coming. One moment, he was sitting on the ground, and the next moment he was laid out flat, a large welt raising the hair behind one triangular ear. He didn't even have time to yelp. In retrospect, he decided that he much preferred a sitting to being hit with a boomerang. Moaning, he rubbed at the lump and stared up at the furious taijiya brandishing her Hiraikotsu.

 

Two spots of color appeared on her cheeks, though not out of embarrassment. Eyes blazing, she glowered down at the prostrate hanyou. “Idiot! How dare you talk about her like that after what you did?” At the annoyed, somewhat bemused stare from Inuyasha, she swung Hiraikotsu again, smiling in satisfaction as bone struck bone with a hollow thunk. “Didn't you see the scars on her neck? You almost killed her; would have, if not for your brother!”

 

Inuyasha growled and dodged the next blow, “I don't wanna hear it. She left with him.”

 

“You poisoned her, Inuyasha, when you left with Kikyou,” the monk said solemnly, his normally pious voice tinged with accusation. “She would have died a week ago.”

 

“Impossible!” Inuyasha spat out. “I'd never hurt her!” He growled louder, trying to push aside the image of purple scars lining her neck, her terror as he grabbed for her with Sesshomaru's claws, her slight form quivering against Sesshomaru's chest.

 

“We didn't think it was intentional, but it would have been fatal, nonetheless.”

 

“What…how did he save her?” he asked, his anger deflating as he realized the enormity of what he'd done. He hadn't meant to; he'd had no idea! But that didn't change the fact that he'd almost killed her, she who loved him as he was, she who he loved and was now in his brother's arms. He sank to the ground, clutching his head with his claws, not aware of the keening that issued from his throat.

 

“We don't really know. He saved her life, and that was enough for us.”

 

Kikyou laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off, then leapt to his feet and stomped away, putting distance between the woman and himself and ignoring her soft cry of protest. He couldn't stand to have her touch him right now. She lied to him and he'd believed her. She'd tried to deceive him and he'd defended her. She'd come back to life in his arms and she'd pushed him away. Because of her, he'd lost the one thing that really mattered most to him.

 

And for once, he didn't know if Kagome would forgive him.

 

XxxxxxxxX

 

Sometime during their flight and the half-waking twilight in which she had drifted, Kagome had slipped an arm around Sesshomaru's waist and was now nestled in the crook of his arm, dozing on her feet against his chest. Somehow, she'd managed to find a comfortable spot between the spikes and metal brackets of his armor. In the back of her mind, she thought she should be scared, or at least a little concerned, that she was riding on a cloud in the embrace of a demon lord who had tried to kill her on more than one occasion, especially since said demon was now at full capacity, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

 

She was hardly aware of landing, so softly did Sesshomaru's cloud alight, fully awakening when the wind no longer hummed its song in her ears. Raising her head from its hard silk pillow, she'd blinked at the ground, now solidly beneath her feet. His arm shifted, a striped wrist sliding further over her stomach and she strangled a gasp at the sight of those claws on her person. He stiffened, she could feel the tension building in his body, but instead of pulling away, she closed her eyes and buried her face in the silk of his haori. She wouldn't let this irrational fear rob her of her newfound security. `Well, maybe not wholly irrational,' she thought begrudgingly.

 

When the strain had drained from his muscles, she stepped away, immediately regretting the loss of warmth but in desperate need of a bath…or a nap. Maybe the nap first. Was there even a place to bathe here? Speaking of which…

 

“Where are we?” she mumbled through a yawn, balling her hands and rubbing her crusty eyes.

 

“Out of reach of the hanyou,” Sesshomaru stated, his bored tone slightly colored with irritation.

 

“Oh. Good.” Kagome didn't think she could handle him for a while. All she could see in her mind's eye was Inuyasha cradling Kikyou's body so tenderly after she'd just said such horrible things to him. `I've never thought less of him because of his mixed blood. He's fine the way the way he is. I'll never understand him. I don't think I want to try, anymore.'

 

Loosening the ties that held her sleeping bag in a tidy roll, she spread the thick fabric next to Ah-Un, who had landed and was now lying with his feet tucked under him, watching Shippo and Rin bicker good-naturedly. “When will we get back to the village?”

 

“The village?” Sesshomaru canted his head as he stared down at her, wondering which village she meant: the one in which they'd left her friends, the one in which the old miko resided, or her own, wherever that was.

 

“In Inuyasha's Forest. Everything's done now, isn't it? I doubt you want to be saddled with me for any longer than you have to.”

 

He was silent for a moment as he processed her statement. He'd thought that he'd made his desires apparent by his actions, some of which had been unintentional but he'd meant them all the same. “You would not be here if this Sesshomaru did not wish it.”

 

Kagome laughed, a short humorless sound that Sesshomaru decided did not suit her. “No more wishes, please.”

 

“Miko,” he intercepted her sharp glance and started again, “Kagome. You reversed my brother's wish when the jewel was restored.” Kagome shrugged, then nodded. “The undead creature…how was she revived?”

 

Worrying her lip between two teeth, Kagome fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. “I'm not really sure. As I was fighting with her, I remember wanting to give her the life she deserves… and I know that she wanted to live again…that must be when it happened; right before Inuyasha pulled me off of her.”

 

“And the jewel?”

 

“I'd already swallowed it,” Kagome said, thinking along the same lines that the taiyoukai had obviously been following.

 

“Hn.” He crouched behind her, flaring his nostrils to take in the perfume of her skin, so clean and energizing that it was almost intoxicating. “And why do you have this strong bond with the jewel? Surely it has had other keepers.”

 

She jumped slightly, not having noticed his proximity until he spoke. “I was born with it in me and was bitten out by a Centipede youkai not long before I…broke it.”

 

“Indeed.” Though interested in her answer, he could only half listen as he inhaled again, his eyelids hooding his eyes as she filled his senses. He had been attracted before, but that was nothing compared to the addiction he was developing. It was the influence of the jewel, he was certain, that freshened her scent and stirred his youkai, but that didn't change the fact that he was becoming hopelessly ensorcelled.

 

Shrugging out his armor, he tossed it aside and moved to pull her into his lap. She jerked when his hand curled around her waist, and again he sensed that strange flutter of fear. Suddenly irritated, he pulled her around to face him. “Why are you afraid of me?”

 

The sharp scent of anxiety spiked and she almost cowered under his gaze, refusing to meet his eyes and pulling at the arm he held with an unnecessarily tight grip. He released her abruptly and she fell backward, almost shaking with relief. Following her line of sight, he realized she was staring at his hand. He flexed his claws experimentally and watched her startle at each pop of his knuckles. So, she had learned to fear him, but it taken his half-brother's idiocy. He found that her fright did not please him. Curling his hand into a fist, he planted it knuckle down on the ground and leaned forward until he could see her eyes under bangs.

 

“I will not hurt you,” he reminded her sternly.

 

“I know,” her voice was breathy and thin but she finally looked him in the eye. He felt better about what he saw there; she trusted him. Leaning closer still, he nuzzled her cheek with his nose. Kagome let her eyes slip closed as she leaned into the caress, her breath catching in her throat as his breath bathed her ear.

 

A giggle, followed by a theatrical shushing, broke the mood and they both froze. Turning their heads in unison, they met two pairs of bright eyes and matching wide grins. Rin giggled again, and Shippo nudged her side with his elbow. It was Shippo who finally broke the silence.

 

“Should we, ah, go find something to do?”

 

Kagome felt her face ignite and she sat back, pressing cool hands to her cheeks. “Shippo!”

 

“'Cause Mama and Papa always told me to go play when-“

 

“I just want a nap!” Kagome cut him off, waving her hands frantically. Shippo gave her a look that said he wasn't fooled and Rin just giggled.