Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of InuYasha, they belong to the wonderful Rumiko Takahashi. This was written in response to Forthright's Fortune Cookie Drabble Challenge and hopefully the inspiration will last long enough to get me through the ones I've picked!
One who admires you greatly is hidden before your eyes.
Perhaps his pack would never understand why he felt that he had to constantly prove his true devotion to his woman. His woman, though in truth she had never agreed to it nor had she even truly encouraged his claim save for never in fact disputing it either. InuYasha would dispute it as fast as he could draw breath to shout it, but until he heard the words from her singular lips he would never release hope. What his greatest fear was would have surprised any that knew him, most would have said that he only feared failing in his oath of revenge upon Naraku.
Kouga of the Yourouzoku feared that Kagome would never see him. Oh she saw him alright, every time that he would come up to the group she traveled with in his whirlwind of impressive speed and demonic puissance, and he'd even once been told that she knew always when she sensed his two shards of the Jewel that it was him and not some other youkai that had been lucky in its scavenging for power. Yet he also knew that she did not really see him, not the way that a woman does her man.
Always, always that half-inuyoukai with his brash nature and robe of the Fire Rat stood between them and he filled her eyes with silver hair and golden gaze, filled her with empathy for his life. But what was worse was what Kouga saw what else he filled her with, which was sadness and tears. Loyalty and love should never be repaid with such a coin, it made mock of the true worth of the gift. He would give everything he owned to gain even a fraction of the regard that InuYasha had, and everything that he might own for the rest of his days.
The worst had been of course something he himself had been guilty of in the beginning. He had heard a shouting match betwixt the two in which Kagome had tearfully told InuYasha that she was more than just a shard detector, and a wave of shame had kept the proud Prince in the shadows, undetected by the fighting pair in their intense focus upon the other. After all, had he not himself taken her from her companions because he'd found out that she could see the Shards which he sought to use to protect his pack?
It was that which he sought the hardest to overcome, to make her see that to him she was always and forever more than just someone with the chance ability to see what had been shattered and scattered to be taken up and abused or used. If only he understood that the shroud of vision that separated the pair worked both ways, his instincts would serve him in unraveling what maze kept him from truly calling her his woman and kept her from simply saying … "I am."
AN:
Word Count 498