He never touches me casually. It is always with thought and care. Enough it is plain to me. That more than anything tells me there is something wrong.

Inuyasha is always casual about anything he doesn't fuss about. I imagine his reaction to a fatal wound might be Keh. Didn't need those organ-thingies anyway.

So I know that his hesitation holds something deeper inside it.

And he knows mine hold the same.

:

So, as I lie here beneath his tree branch, mimicking sleep as skillfully as he, I wonder what harm he fears and to whom.

He has a strong fear of rejection, so he might hesitate from the fear that this time I will push him away.

I hope one day he will realise that I care for him and know that would hurt him more than anything physical I could do.

However, I think it may be the physical issue he fears.

Does he worry that I am so much frailer that he might hurt me by mistake? After all, he uses his body as a weapon for killing more frequently than to express tenderness.

If so, he will learn in time that he is more than skilled enough not to harm by accident.

I don't think he hesitates for the reason I do, but it never does to underestimate him.

:

It is my own measure of skill that makes me hesitate.

I use my miko powers even more on instinct than he fights, because I have so little practice with them.

What would happen if I accidently used them on Inuyasha, when we touch?

Might it kill him or turn him human permanently? My best skill is purification, after all. Despite it's name, the energy will burn good and evil alike, if youkai is involved.

If I only understood my powers better, I might know whether or not touching him was safe, how I could make it so.

But Kaede can tell me little. Most good mikos only use their powers against attacking demons- they don't experiment. And far too many of the wise people I meet seem to think they should give me vague answers so that I have to work things out for myself and remember the answers.

How could I forget an answer to whether or not I could burn a friend to death by mistake?

:

I know perfectly well I could do it on purpose. He is strong, but so am I.

I wish I could play the horrified innocent, say I could never do that to him, but I've seen too many horrors, too much death, too much of it my own fault to lie to myself about this.

I know somewhere deep inside, that if we kill each other, it won't be halfway and from a distance.

It will be him tearing something vital out, in a parody of a hug and me burning the youki out of him; entirely fatal death blows, which leave our corpses in a twisted parody of an embrace.

No doubt the reality would be even uglier than my mental image. Yet however morbid the idea, it attracts me a little that he would go to Hell with me rather than Kikyo. For that I hate myself.

:

I am not resolving not to go near him for fear of what we could do to each other. We will touch again, despite the possible consequences.

But such horrors are harder to forget at night than under warm sunlight.

:

So I lie here and hesitate to call him down, to sit close and chat, because I fear I'll end up touching his skin, and he crouches on guard, on his branch.

Maybe he is subconsciously resisting the desire to jump down and sit with me, refusing to admit he wants to be close to me. Wariness of others is second nature to Inuyasha.

Maybe I am merely hoping that this frustrated longing is not my burden alone. That our shared hesitance troubles his nights. That it gives rise to more than a passing regret. That I am more than an unpleasant inconvenience in Inuyasha's life.

But I wonder whose frailties haunt him these long, lonely nights without another's touch.