Chapter 4

"Where is it?" Kagome hissed in annoyance as she tugged yet another book off the elaborate bookshelf in Taisho's study. Growling in frustration when book number two hundred and sixty three didn't pan out, she tossed it over her shoulder and ran her hand through her bangs, fluffing up the ebony stands into a puffy nightmare before shaking her head sharply to return some semblance of order and turning back to the shelving unit. "It has to be here somewhere," she bit out.

She was determined to solve the mystery of Dr. Taisho.

After his revelation to her at the memorial to his granddaughter, he had left Kagome to her own devices. Recovering from her obvious shock that the girl had the same name as her, she had given her a proper prayer in reverence and respect, asking that the gods watch over and keep the girl now left to their embrace. But when her prayer was finished, Taisho was nowhere to be found.

Of course, there was a part of her that understood his wanting to distance himself for the moment, but that part of her was majorly outvoted by the much larger part that was thoroughly annoyed if not downright pissed off that he had just dropped a bomb like that on her and then taken off without offering any sort of explanation about the connection between them. Oh, and she knew there was a connection. She knew that it wasn't just a fluke that she and this girl shared the same name. She knew it because if it were just coincidence, Taisho would not have been as unsettled as he was or would have at the very least offered some words to say that there was no relation.

Now, more than ever, she knew he was keeping something from her. And that something, she knew, was huge. The mystery of who he really was, the connection that she shared with him and his family, the past she had been a part of and the present she had changed; the truth of all of it was being kept from her, just out of her grasp. And she WAS going to find it.

And that was how, after having made her way back to the main house, taking the offer of dinner so graciously offered to her by one of the many servants that cared for the grand estate, and being shown to the gorgeous room that was to be hers during her stay where she was to retire for the evening; that she had snuck out into the house and began exploring, eventually finding her way back to Taisho's study. And now she was currently ripping his bookshelves apart in a sad attempt to locate one of those famous hidden passageway that were so often purported to be concealed in grand old estates such as this one.

Ok, so she was being a snoop, a terribly messy snoop that was creating enough of a ruckus to wake the dead, but damnit! She was sick of being lied to and she was determined to find the truth! Besides, his dogginess was no where to be found, and he HAD said that she could have free reign of his house while she was there. He simply hadn't been specific enough about how far she was allowed to take that reign.

Another book was sent flying over her shoulder and across the room after it too had failed to reveal a hidden latch or secret mechanism. "Damn!" She was getting nowhere with this. Giving herself a moment, Kagome stepped back from the wall of books and glared at it angrily. Where was it? She knew there was something off about this room. She could just feel it. And, since her senses hadn't ever led her astray, she trusted what they were telling her.

Her eyes drifted across the wall of books slowly, but always were they drawn back to the central point and the rock mantle of the oversized fireplace. She had already checked it many times, running her hands along the acid-smoothed stones, looking for a leaver, a depression, something that was out of place or out of sync with the rest of the carved surface. But she had found nothing. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had missed something, that there was more to what she was seeing.

She scanned over the mantle, looking with a critical eye at each of the objects decorating the shelf. Ming vases, impossibly old and no doubt worth a small fortune, jewel encrusted dragons from every dynasty made from the finest jade and onyx, crystal glass holding large deco feathers gilded in gold. It was a small treasure trove, but with nothing of use.

"It has to be here," she said out loud, more to convince herself than anything.

But, refusing to give up, and having already torn the place apart anyways, she stepped determinedly towards the fireplace. She ran her hands up along the stone on the right side of the flue, looking again for anything that was out of place. When she reached the height of the mantle, she stood on her tip-toes and traced along the edge with her fingers, feeling her way where she couldn't see.

"Looking for something?"

"KIYAAA!"

Her shrill scream echoed loudly through the darkened room, ringing in her ears almost a loudly as the heavy pounding of her heart. And in her haste to turn to the sound of the voice, her arm caught against one of the ornamental vases set upon the mantle. She watched wide-eyed as the vase toppled and fell, seeming as though it had been stilled in slow-life on its path towards the floor. But no matter how slow the passage seemed, she wasn't quick enough to do anything to stop it. The vase impacted against the polished wood of the floor, shattering so forcefully that it seemed to explode, shooting shards of painted porcelain in every direction.

For a moment, all Kagome could do was stare in disbelief at the destruction. The object had been priceless, but now lay as nothing but a shattered mess; its beauty, hand crafted by endless hours of painstaking work to achieve the mortal equivalent of perfection, reduced to rubble in only seconds.

She blinked hard to pull herself out of her induced stupor. Giving her head a sharp shake, she snapped her attention up to the intruder. "You could have prevented that," she snapped irritably.

He lifted an eyebrow in a bored fashion. "You accuse me when it is you that has been tearing through my personal office so loutishly?"

Sniffing defensively, she replied, "I wouldn't be doing this if you weren't so bloody protective of whatever secret you've been keeping. Besides, you knew I was in here. I've felt the presence of your guards ever since I left my room." She smiled slyly. "It was so nice of you to tell them to give me a wide birth. Then again, it probably is for the best. Good help is so hard to find these days. We wouldn't want your maids cleaning yours up off the carpet after having an unfortunate run-in with one of my arrows." He blinked in surprise and her smile grew. She gestured over to his desk where, resting neatly beside Tenseiga, lay the bow and quiver of arrows she had 'borrowed' from one of the armory displays in the large dojo so conveniently located just down the hallway from Taisho's office. "I just found them lying around," she told him with false innocence. "It seemed such a waste to have such a lovely set go unused."

"You have been productive," he intoned dryly.

"Well, that's what you get when you take off to God knows where and leave a miko the free reign of your den."

"Den?"

Kagome scowled. "Would you cut that out already? It is far too late to be arguing with you about your obvious ancestral decent."

"Actually," Taisho corrected. "It is not late, but rather quite early."

"Really?" Sneaking a look out of the wall of windows, Kagome caught the first hints of grey seeding into the dark reaches of the night sky. "Aw man!" she whined in exacerbation. "I've been at this all night!" Huffing loudly, she planted her hands on her hips and wheeled back to face the youkai. "Well, if you insist on being here, you might as well help me. Where is it?"

"You will have to forgive me," he told her with a tired release of breath, "but am I supposed to know to what you are referring?"

Kagome narrowed her eyes sharply. "I hate you," she bit out frigidly before turning back to the fire mantle to resume her search.

Only this time, instead of flinging hard-covered copies of various books around the room, she carelessly began picking up the ridiculously expensive ornaments decorating the mantle and tossing them over her shoulder towards Taisho. She smirked to herself as she was doing it. He could catch them if he tried. Sure, any normal man might have had to juggle with them a bit, especially given her less than perfect aim, but he wasn't a man at all.

Besides, it just wasn't healthy to lock away so much power. If he didn't let it out now and then, he might end up exploding or something. And she really did NOT want to be around when that happened. The guy was scary powerful. She was lucky, she supposed, in some twisted sort of way, that he hadn't been on her 'enemy' list in the Feudal Era. She was sure that Dr. Taisho, or whoever he really was, would have even given Sesshomaru a run for his money.

"Scary," she whispered to no one in particular in response to her line of thought. But she shrugged it off quickly, tossing an ornate dragon roughly the size of a ferret over her shoulder as she did so.

"Kagome."

She paused in her search, turning slightly to watch as he set the dragon she had just tossed neatly on the mantle. The look in his eyes was one of firm displeasure, but she was completely heedless of it. She lifted an eyebrow in challenge, daring him to say anything about her chosen course of action, but he just looked at her, the piercing gold of his eyes so focused and so sharp in the deep shadows of the room that they seemed to cut the distance between them like a blade of fire.

"This is hardly civilized behavior," he told her in a tone that sounded far too fatherly for her liking. She narrowed her eyes, but he continued anyways. "Would you be very appreciative if I were to come into your home and create such a disturbance?"

"Pft!" she snorted. "Be my guest. We've been needing a reno for years! Besides…" She picked up the dragon he had just reset on the mantle, looking over it curiously, taking note of the sparkling sapphire eyes, the ruby red of its forked tongue, and the emerald studs that rimmed the crest of its onyx scaled back. "We never had such expensive stuff to throw around. I think I could get used to this." And just like that, she tossed the dragon over her shoulder once again. It hit the floorboards behind her with a solid thud, the heavy onyx of the carving much more durable than the delicate clay of the broken vase at her feet.

A barely audible sigh from Taisho made Kagome pause mid-reach to one of the crystalline vases. "I believe," he started slowly as he reached his hand up to brush against the stone mantle, "that you are looking for this."

His hand tightened against the stone and, for an instant, Kagome could see a flicker of crimson fires dancing across his fingertips. She took in a sharp breath when she heard a grinding scrape against the stone. His claws. That was why there was no leaver to pull or no false stone to press. The locking mechanism was buried within the stone, only accessible by the deadly lengths of his claws.

The sharp snick of a lock unhitching sounded out through the muffling stone that surrounded it, and instantly the wall of shelving just to the right of the fireplace shifted.

"Does that make you happy, Kagome?" Taisho asked stonily as he stepped back from the mantle to give her a path to the newly opened passageway.

"Yes, thank you." Kagome replied flippantly. She lifted her nose snootily in the air and strutted her way towards the wall. It came to her touch easily, giving way with only the slightest pressure and swinging wide to reveal a darkened hallway nestled between the framing of the house. The air was stale and musty from having been closed off for so long, and cobwebs hung in great sprawling nets from every nook and cranny.

Kagome shivered. Dark, musty, and full of spiders was not exactly her idea of fun. But, taking in a deep breath, she steeled her resolve and took a determined step forward.

"OWIE!" she wailed loudly, stumbling back from the passageway. Bringing a hand up to rub her aching nose, she looked bewilderedly back at the entrance. It felt as though she had just walked nose-first into a brick wall…a brick wall that left a dark tingling against her senses. Her eyes narrowed in fury and she wheeled about to face a smirking Taisho. "You could have warned me about the barrier!" she hissed out venomously.

He shrugged passively. "You could have been more respectful of my privacy."

"Oh, that's it!" With determined strides, Kagome spun around and made her way over to the desk. She picked up her bow, stringing and setting it with practiced ease, and leveling the sharp point of the arrow on a direct course towards Taisho. "One way or the other," she informed him in a voice dark with promise, "I WILL find out what you are keeping from me."

A fluid shift of her arm turned her arrow only a fraction of a second before she released. Instantly the room was filled with a blinding surge of pure magic. It radiated from the path of her arrow, leaving nothing but the purest of ash in its wake. When it collided with the barrier the whole building shook at its foundations from the force of the impact of sacred energies against the dark fires of a youkai spirit. The powers resonated against each other, sending furious vibrations skidding through the air in turbulent pulses.

But then, just before the whit-hot burn of purity began to ebb from the arrow, the barrier sagged inwards under the weight against it. The strong vibration carried through the air began to subside, and the hot glow of energies slowly faded, allowing the suspended arrow to drop aimlessly to the floor.

"Huh," Kagome grunted vaguely. "Well, that usually doesn't happen." She turned to Taisho and smiled. "I guess that just means you really are as strong as I figured."

"Astounding," Taisho replied in a bored tone. "Now, if you are about finished, it has been quite a long night and I believe we could both use some rest."

"You've got to be kidding me! You think that I'm just going to give up now that I'm so close to the truth? What a load of crap! This is so not over yet!"

Marching forwards towards the barrier, Kagome set her hands on the invisible surface. She could feel the burning sting of the energy coursing through it as it flowed beneath her fingers, but as she traced along its surface she could also feel the slight indent created by her arrow. It had weakened. Smirking, she looked over her shoulder to Taisho. "I may not be very well trained," she told him smugly, "but I've learned a thing or two about my powers in the time that I've had them. And after the battle with Naraku, not even Kikyo in her prime could hold bets over me."

Turning back to the barrier, Kagome closed her eyes and concentrated on bringing her powers to bear. She could feel them stirring inside of her, warm currents of energy that wrapped around her entire being in soothing layers. She willed them to come to the surface, to flow out of her body, detach from her spirit, and cast their light against the dark fires.

There was no impact, no explosion of energy, no terrible pulses of heat and turbulence. There was only the soft warmth of the glow that surrounded her. And in response, the seal place upon the secret passageway began to burn. Crimson fires licked up from the floor and the walls, an impenetrable barrier of wild heat and restless power. But she didn't feel the heat, wasn't intimidated by the power. She spoke to it; using her light and her soothing warmth she calmed the restless dance of the flames. One by one, they began to flicker out, freeing the passage to the child of purity and light.

When the last of the flames had died to nothing but glowing ambers fading from even her enhanced vision, Kagome smiled brightly in triumph and stepped forward.

"If you go, there is no turning back."

Taisho's warning made her pause. She looked back to him, but her eyes were troubled, a dark uncertainty swirling in the sapphire depths. "Why is it so important to you that I be kept from the truth?" she asked him quietly. "Why go to such lengths when I can see that it pains you to do so?"

"Pain is inevitable," he said solemnly. "It is what lets us know we are alive. But it is regret that weakens our resolve, and the wish to have done things differently that steals away our sanity. Do you believe that this truth you seek will give you any more comfort once found? Do you think that by walking into that dark space you will find a light you have been denied? Do you, Kagome?"

She blinked at the sudden hardness in his tone. Shaking her head hesitantly, she replied, "I just…I just want the truth. I…need to know what happened. I can't go on without ever knowing. I can't face this future without knowing my past was real."

"Isn't it enough that you believe?" he asked a he took a slow step forward. "Knowing what happened will not bring them back to you." He stepped closer again, closing the distance between them. "It will not bring Him back to you."

Sniffing quietly, Kagome looked up to meet his eyes. So similar to those of the hanyou boy that she had loved, but so different as well. Where Inuyasha's eyes were always troubled, always searching anxiously for a new threat, another strike from the world that could never accept his hanyou blood; His were the eyes of one who had taken on the world and walked away still standing tall. There was strength and assurance in the piercing gold of his eyes, but there was a darkness as well, a clash of amber in the golden depths that spoke of too many horrors, of too much pain.

What was it that he had seen that could bring such a powerful force to hold such deep regret? And why was it for her that he would share these pains?

Perhaps because they had both fought the battles only to loose their hearts to the war. Perhaps because her past was his as well. Perhaps because he too knew what it was to have a family formed against all odds to be stolen away by something much greater than they could ever be. But then, perhaps it was simply that he could hear in the silence between her words that her heart was calling out for someone who could heal the wounds still bleeding freely.

"I loved him." She whispered the words of her confession in a trembling voice, and as she did a lone tear slipped down from the crystal blue of her eyes.

"I know," he soothed as he reached out to brush away the glistening path of moisture.

She closed her eyes tightly and turned away from his touch. "But he loved her."

"Another broken heart in your Feudal fairytale?" He reached out again, tilting her chin gently to lift her eyes back to his own. "When will you find your happy ending, Kagome?"

"Do I deserve a happy ending?" she asked him instead. "How can I know if I am kept from the truth?"

"Truth can be a poison, bitter like dragon's tears."

She reached up and placed her hand over his, allowing her eyes to close for a moment as she felt the heat of his touch. But as her eyes opened, she was brought back to the present. She pulled away, smiling a sad, watery smile. "Tears can be sweet, if they come from the heart," she whispered in response.

"There is nothing I can do to stop you?"

"You could tell me what I want to know."

But he shook his head. "I can not."

"Why?"

"Don't you know, Kagome?" She shook her head in confusion, and he breathed in deeply, letting it slide out in a long sigh before saying, "Sometimes, our words simply are not enough. Sometimes, the only way to believing is seeing with our own eyes."

"Then why are you still trying to keep me from seeing?"

"Sometimes, what we find when our eyes have been opened is not what we have expected. And sometimes we are not prepared to face the truth."

She had heard what he said, and she understood that he was trying to protect her from the pain of the truth. But she couldn't turn back now. "I'm willing to take that risk," she told him as she turned back to the passageway.

"Perhaps you are," he said softly as he watched her step into the dark shadows. He sighed and closed his eyes, leaving his last words as a haunting echo in the empty room. "But perhaps I am not."

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Ano…. I can't think of anything to say after this chapter….So…..I guess I'll just say….Please Review :)

Till next time

Shadow