Disclaimer: I do NOT own any of the Inuyasha characters; they were created by Rumiko Takahashi. However, the plot line depicted in this fan fiction came from the imaginings of my depraved mind.

-Chapter One-

Kagome climbs out of the Bone Eaters well carting a loaded back pack. Damn, this thing seems like it's getting heavier each time, she thought.

Despite the bag's weight, Kagome hoists it over the lip of the well. As it makes a thud on the hard packed earth, her head pops up only to come face to face with Inuyasha.

The glare on his features made her want to groan.

"What the hell took ya so long?!" he complains loudly in her face. "You said you would only be gone for a few days; it has now been a week!"

Kagome stares at him like he has two heads. Finally, in a hopeless attempt to keep the headache that was forming behind her brow at bay, she rubs the bridge of her nose between her middle finger and thumb.

"Inuyasha, I don't have the patience for this right now," she says as calmly as she was capable of at the moment, "so I'm only going to say this once, and you better get it in one." She pauses long enough to rub at the bridge of her nose again than continues. "I needed some time for myself to think."

"What did ya need to think about that took seven days!' Inuyasha continues to yell in her face as he throws his arms up not taking the obvious hint behind her words.

As he continues to rant, Kagome takes a minute to contain her exasperation as she doesn't want to do anything rash to Inuyasha, but it doesn't look like he's going to let her keep it considering how his ranting gets more annoying with each syllable that passes his lips. So, instead of trying to explain to him that he was the reason that she took the extra time away, Kagome decides to make him understand through a little traditional violence.

"Inuyasha," she says sweetly interrupting his tirade.

"What?" he asks with his usual arrogance.

"SIT!"

As Inuyasha's face connects to the ground, Kagome marches off in the direction of Kaede's village. She pauses in her steps and looks back. "Oh and when you're ready, you can bring the bag into the village with you." She turns back and continues to storm off leaving a twitching Inuyasha behind in his crater. As soon as she enters the village, Kagome was bombarded by her friends' greetings.

"Mama, mama!" Shippo yells out excitedly as he jumps into her arms. "I missed you, mama."

Kagome smiles as she hugs him to her. "I missed you too, my darling. Were you good for Sango and Miroku?'

"Yes, mama," Shippo replies with all his youthful earnestness.

She looks towards Sango and Miroku. Catching their eyes, she asks a silent question; they smile and nod in affirmation. She smiles back and turns towards the village with Shippo on her shoulder his tail curled around her neck.

They reach Kaede's hut to find that she is waiting for them on her steps. "Kagome," she greets with a wave, a cloth in her hand from her earlier activities. "Where be Inuyasha, child?" She asks with a frown.

"He lays by the well resting, Lady Kaede," she answers with as much as an innocent smile on her lips as she could muster.

"Ah," Kaede sounds perceptively. She turns into her hut with a smirk of her own that didn't go unnoticed by Miroku and Sango. They turned to each other knowingly and grinned.

The four followed Kaede into her hut where she had mid meal nearly ready. A nice spread of rice and fish with some of the ramen that Kagome left behind was on the table. Kagome sat next to Sango as they ate, talking about what she had done while she was in her time.

To tell the truth, she didn't feel that three days would have been a long enough break from Inuyasha because he's been an asshole to her lately, and she didn't know why. If it was just his usual behavior towards her, she would have been able to deal, but it seems like he has had it in for her. There's really only one reason that he would act this way towards her, but she hasn't seen signs of that reason anywhere.

Of course, this was something that she wouldn't want to tell Miroku or Sango because she felt that it would just become a mission for them to make things right. She didn't want things to be 'right' just yet because she wasn't quite ready to face the problem. Kagome was afraid to discover the truth because she knows that it would hurt, and she was tired of being hurt.

As night fell, Kagome became worried about Inuyasha, so she excused herself from Kaede's hut and went in search of him. She went to the well thinking that he might still be there stewing, but she didn't find him there, so she went to the Sacred Tree in Inuyasha's Forest. What she found there glued her feet in place.

Inuyasha was kneeling in front of the Sacred Tree.

Elsewhere in feudal Japan, a small group of travelers traverse the forest along the Western border. Sesshoumaru and his little party were making their way towards his castle for a little recuperation from their long travels.

"Lord Sesshoumaru!" he hears Rin call out breathlessly as she runs to catch up with him from where she stopped to pick a flower. "I found a pretty flower for you, Lord Sesshoumaru!"

Sesshoumaru paused in his walking and looked down at the smiling Rin. "Very nice, Rin," he says in his usual detached way. His praise earned him a wider smile before she ran off to gather more flowers while still in his sight.

He didn't know why she was always so happy. When she first started to travel with him and Jaken, she was mute for the longest time due to her traumatic death and revival. But after a while she started opening up the longer she stayed with him. After her words started coming back, her laughter emerged and now she was happy most of the time. He thought that it could just be something a human child goes through, however, as time goes by, he started noticing small little joys a child could bring. How bright one's day can be. Though he denied his emotions since he was a child himself, this girl opened his eyes to a whole new world through hers. A world where the sun shined all the time.

For all Sesshoumaru has learned while Rin follows him, he still hasn't figured out how a child could be so happy in dangerous times. It has always amused him how she could be so naïve to the happenings in their little world. But this is the way a child was supposed to be, he thought. Free of the wars and diseases infecting mankind; free to be innocent to all things that can harm her. It must be nice to feel free of responsibility.

His thoughts were interrupted by a strange scent on the wind. It was the scent of suffering and sorrow, and he didn't know what to do about it. There was a slight scent of salt with the sorrow, salt that came with tears. Curiosity getting the better of him, Sesshoumaru turns in the direction where the scent was strongest pausing long enough to tell Jaken to protect Rin.

After witnessing the scene at the Sacred Tree, Kagome had to get as far away as she possibly could, so she ran toward the west where she knew that Inuyasha wouldn't follow her. All the time she ran, she was praying that she wouldn't run into a certain aristocratic Inu who would most likely kill her than ask questions. Oh well, she thought as she ran faster, he'll just have to deal.

Kagome ran so far so fast she didn't realize she had already reached the border of the Western lands. She dropped to her knees at a near by tree as tears finally broke from her eyes. She let them flow freely knowing that if she tried to hold them back it would only hurt more when she returned to the village.

She cried knowing that all her hopes of a future with Inuyasha were shattered with his words at the Sacred tree. She was so absorbed in her dreams that she didn't notice the strong demonic aura closing in.

"Miko," she hears behind her from a deep cultured voice. "What are you doing in this Sesshoumaru's lands."

It was more a statement than a question. This particular Inu would never ask.

Kagome fought to control her emotions and make her tears stop. After about a minute, she rose to her feet and slowly turned to face the tall Inu Lord of the West. Her hands clutched into fists at her sides and her eyes leveled to the ground she says, "I'm sorry, Lord Sesshoumaru, I didn't mean to trespass onto your lands."

Sesshoumaru stepped a little closer sniffing the air around the girl. Yes, he thought, this is where the sorrow is coming from. But why would she be sad? Wanting to know the answer he asks, "Why were you crying, girl?"

"It's nothing," she replies.

He looks at her bowed head and her fisted hands, and he determines that she's not going to tell. Very well, he thought, it's no problem of mine. He turns in the direction he came and walked off. Before he could take more than five steps, he hears her call out.

"Wait," Kagome says as she steps forward frantically with her hand reaching for him.

The plea in her voice, matching her steps, stopped Sesshoumaru in his tracks. He couldn't leave her to suffer, and he didn't know why. His whole life he prided himself in his indifference to other peoples problems, but he felt that he needed to do something for her.

He turned to face her and found that her eyes held the evidence of the tears he asked of earlier. The feelings that her tears brought confused him. He didn't know why he wanted to put an end to her grief; he just knew it was right, but he would never make it so easy for her, so he waited for her to continue.

"Please," she said at last after what seemed like an eternity of silence. "I want you to stay; I need you to stay." With that, Kagome ran to him.

Sesshoumaru's eyes widened slightly when she rushed into his armor. A little worried that she might impale herself on his spikes, he reaches his hand out and grasps her shoulder slowing her approach a little bit. He didn't know what to do as her arms circle around his armor in a hug.. At first, he wanted to tear her offending limbs from his body, but something in her scent made him stop. He couldn't figure out if he should comfort her because these kinds of situations were unfamiliar to him.

Than he remembered when Rin scraped her knee last. She cried on AhUn seeking comfort in him. He remembered how Ah laid his head on top of hers and Un laid his on her shoulder. After a while, Rin had stopped crying.

Kagome was so afraid that she would die for what she was doing, but she didn't care if he sliced her to tiny pieces for daring to touch him. She needed this. She needed to be comforted; she needed it so badly that she didn't care who it was comforting her. So when she felt Sesshoumaru's arm hug her to him, a whole other dam burst and she wept harder than before. She wept for all the things she couldn't have, all the things she had lost since she was dragged down the well.

When she was spent, Kagome felt his hand wrap into her hair and tug so that her eyes met his golden ones. She saw something in their depths that she's never seen before. Desire. She knew that his desire surely wasn't meant for her. Sesshoumaru didn't even like humans so why would he desire me all of a sudden, Kagome asked herself. He looked away, and the moment was gone.

Kagome pulled away from him stopping only because he still had a hold of her hair. As if just noticing his grip on her air still, he let go and took several steps back. She steps back more with her eyes to the ground as if just noticing her embarrassment.

"I'm sorry," she said with a slight blush on her cheeks. "I didn't mean to fall apart on you, my Lord."

Not acknowledging her apology, Sesshoumaru turns and walks away. When he sensed that she wasn't behind him, he stopped and looked back at her still bowed head. "Are you coming?"

Kagome's head whips up to stare into his golden eyes. Seeing the silent consent, she rushes to his side and falls into step behind him as he continues towards his camp.

To Be Continued...

A/N:

Well here it is folks; my first chapter of my first fanfic. I have several more chapters ready, but I decided to put this out to see if I got any bites. Hoped y'all liked the first chappy!

I am a fanatically obsessed fan for the Sess/Kag movement even though it's a hopeless dreamer's hallucination. I believe in keeping characters created by someone else in their originality, so I'm gonna try to keep Sesshoumaru they way he is as much as possible: a bad boy (snicker). I know that Sesshoumaru doesn't have a permanent residence in his western territories, but, for the sake of the fic, I'm gonna give him one. (Don't hurt me Miss Takahashi cowers in the face of her creative superiority)

Please R&R... I just might be inspired to continue this story.