Author's Note: Hey everyone, welcome back. Just a heads up, I went and got a second job for the upcoming holiday seasons, which means I'm going to have much less time on my hands, which means updates for this fic will come to you once or twice a week as opposed to once a day. No worries though, it's still truckin' along here. I hope you enjoy!

I've had a few inquiries about my other fics. If you have any questions about any of my other fics continuing or not, you can check out my Fanfiction Schedule section on my profile page.

Disclaimer: I wrote my first Inuyasha fanfiction thirteen years ago. And still, I own none of the Inuyasha series or its characters. So sad.

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Chapter 10: Inuyasha's Return

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Inuyasha

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Inuyasha roared, slamming the side of his fist into the mirror. It shook under the force of his angry assault, but held firm, much to his dismay. Breaking something sounded like an excellent idea to him at the moment. The only problem was that there was nothing around him that he could break.

He was back inside his cell. How the hell had he gotten back into his cell? It didn't make any sense. He had been released, and he knew that Kikyou hadn't come to visit since then. She never did except for the one night a week at midnight. In all the years he'd been held captive she had never broken the pattern.

So how the fuck had he gotten back?

The walls seemed to close in on him after spending the whole night a free man. He was caged up like an animal again. And it didn't help his mood that he actually felt like an animal. Really, out of every moment in time, the mirror had chosen that moment to bring him back. When he'd been wrapped around a soft, supple, feminine body. He brought his fingers up to his lips. They felt swollen. He could feel the doppelganger's sizzling skin on the tips of his fingers still, could see her eyes fluttering shut, her cheeks flushed red, her body quivering under him. He lifted his other hand up to look at his fingers. The first two were still sticky, proof that he'd really been next to her, pushing into her. He could still taste her. Her tongue, her skin…

He shook his head and bit his tongue against his lustful thoughts. His groin was extra sensitive, pushing against his borrowed pants. He couldn't remember a time that he'd ever been so turned on. And he'd been so close to getting the release that he needed.

And damn if the doppelganger didn't want him. She turned to putty under his skilled fingers. Inuyasha couldn't help the slow grin spreading across his face as he remembered how her face had changed from calm and relaxed to instantly ready for him. How her eyes widened and he leaned in, how her heart pumped loudly inside her chest.

"Shit," he growled, pushing away from the glass and laying on his back on the cold stone floor. He breathed in deeply, then out. In. Out. In. Out. He counted to fifty in his head. He thought about running through the trees, the wind in his hair. He thought about bathing in the natural spring water of the forest, he thought about anything other than Kagome and her body.

He sat up, clenching his abdominal muscles, and then released them as he lay back down. Again he sat up, clenched, then down, released. Up. Clench. Down. Release. Again and again he performed his crunches, over and over and over. One hundred. Two hundred. Three-fifty. The burn kicked in somewhere in the high five hundreds.

After eight hundred crunches he started to feel more like himself. Once he reached eleven hundred, he flipped over and started all over again with push-ups. Up and down, up and down, breathing in and breathing out. The sweat dripped from his forehead, splashing onto the flattened rock underneath him. Still, he pushed onward.

Physically drained, his body now burning from exhaustion rather than lust, he collapsed again onto his back, his arm resting across his forehead. He focused on his breathing, feeling his chest rise and fall as he inhaled and exhaled. He stared at the ceiling of his cell, his eyes tracing along the cracks and bumps that ran back and forth above him.

Now that he could finally concentrate on what was actually important, Inuyasha turned his thoughts to the mirror.

He had never, in all these years, been snapped back inside his cage for no reason at all. He'd been out before, doing Kikyou's bidding, but he'd always stepped back into the mirror with his own feet. Never had he been in one place and then suddenly another. Never had he been ripped away like he'd been ripped away from Kagome. Never.

There was something he was missing here. Something was off. He frowned, wondering if it was because Kikyou had been the one to let him out the other times. Maybe he could only truly be free if Kikyou's lips were the ones to do it?

That doesn't make any fucking sense though, he thought, rolling onto his stomach and resting his head into his folded arms. If only her lips can free me for good, why allow Kagome's lips do it as well? Why let anyone else free me at all? He supposed it could be some sick game of Kikyou's, but he didn't think so. It wasn't really her style. Her style was more blunt and to the point.

So what was different this time? What had changed? He lifted his head then, hearing noises on the other side of the mirror. He watched as the first of the museum-goers shuffled passed the glass, gawking and pointing and talking in hushed voices. Daytime had to be in full swing now.

Kagome flashed into his mind again. He was kissing her atop her friend's roof, under the stars. Through her heated moans and whimpers of arousal he could feel the air around him warming bit-by-bit, could feel daylight coming like a slow-moving tidal wave, ready to swallow them both up. He'd felt a rush. It had been years, years since he'd seen the sunlight. Since he'd felt it against his skin. Since Kikyou came only once a week and always at midnight, that was the only time she freed him to work for her. And his tasks were always done well before the sun rose.

Well before the sun rose.

Well… before…

Inuyasha inhaled sharply. He sat up on his haunches and shouted at himself inside his head, hurling curses left and right.

How the fuck could he have been so stupid? How did he miss it? Of course, it was the most obvious thing in the world!

Daylight. Daylight was the key. It was the curse. It was the safety Kikyou had spelled into his entrapment. It made so much sense, Inuyasha wanted to shout at the top of his lungs. He wanted to laugh until his sides hurt, laugh until he puked. If the bitch let him out at night and he somehow managed to escape, which he had never been able to, and he had tried many times, all she had to do was wait until morning, and –snap- Inuyasha would be right back in his cage, wrapped up nice and tidy for her, like a present.

He had to suppress his furious growl. Fuck her. Fuck her and her control issues. Fuck her and her spells and her entrapments and her fucking obsession with him. He didn't want to fucking do her bidding anymore. He hated doing the things she made him do. He had nightmares about it. He hated himself for it. He wanted out.

But how could he get out now? He needed more than a single night, then a mere twelve hours to hunt down the jewel shards and piece them together. He needed more than a night to attain his freedom. How could he possibly do that if the mirror kept dragging him back over and over?

More than anything though, more than he'd ever wanted before, he wanted to feel the sun against his skin again, feel the warmth of it soak into him. I wonder what Kagome looks like in the sun, he thought fleetingly. The need grew in him. He ached to see daylight.

He had to calm himself down again, and it took a bit before he finally had his murderous rage under control.

Kikyou was smart, but she wasn't unbeatable. He would find a way to outwit her.

Inuyasha sat cross-legged in the center of his cell, watching the humans shuffle back and forth in front of him, thinking. Every idea he came up with, every solution he thought of was immediately shot down. But there had to be some way to give himself more time out of the mirror, some way to keep Kikyou from spelling him every week.

Killing her wouldn't work, after all, unless she weakened, and she wouldn't weaken unless she couldn't spell the mirror and couldn't draw her power from it.

Inuyasha stood up and paced back and forth across the small cage. He was on the verge of something, he could feel it. He'd watched Kikyou perform her spell over and over. He knew the enchantment by heart now. But what did that matter when it was time he needed? He couldn't break the enchantment, not with any spell of his own. But what choice, really, did he have if not to break it?

It struck him then. Fuck, it was obvious! Break the mirror. He could break the mirror from the outside, and re-frame a large piece with the spell. A piece large enough to fit inside during the day, and small enough to carry around at night. It would be crowded inside, but really, did it matter in the long run?

No, it fucking didn't.

He was so excited he slipped up and stepped too close to the glass, showing himself for the briefest nanosecond. There was a couple standing in front of the mirror, the man looking down at the description plate, reading aloud, his girlfriend staring up into the glass. Her eyes widened as she caught the quick flash of Inuyasha and she tugged at her boyfriend's arm, pointing at the mirror.

"Did you see that? Did you see?" She exclaimed, jumping excitedly on the balls of her feet.

"What?" He asked, head snapping up to the mirror.

"The youkai, I swear I saw him, I swear!" She stepped closer, eyes narrowed and searching.

"No you didn't," the boyfriend said, smiling at her.

"No, I swear he was there, just for a second!"

Fuck, I was careless, Inuyasha berated himself as he watching the bickering couple. Not that it mattered so much, no one was going to believe her. He couldn't help but yearn to be free of the mirror again though, to not have to worry about being seen, to be able to walk freely among the humans again.

He smirked. She wouldn't stay with her boyfriend if she got a good look at me. He chuckled quietly, the sound echoing off the walls around him.

He was revitalized now, bursting with energy. So what if his first plan hadn't worked out so well, with Kikyou showing up and all. And so what if his second plan had failed too, being sucked right back into the mirror? Third time's the charm, he thought, grinning to himself. This plan was going to work. And it was just too bad that Kagome didn't feel like being pulled away from school and family. He needed her if he was going to succeed. If he was right about her, she would be able to detect shard fragments. She could lead him right to the jewel.

And since she seemed to be oh-so-willing to fuck him, he didn't mind if she warmed his bed, either.

He sat back down again, his plan forming, plotting his actions in order to gain the jewel and defeat Kikyou once and for all.

Right now all he had to do was wait for the sun to set.

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Please remember to review, I'm serious about my writing and my stories, and if you have anything to comment about or anything to mention or anything to say, I would love to hear it.

~SugarRos