OXOXOXO

Rin was digging through her flower pot full of change when the one floor board in the living room behind her squeaked. She turned around to chew him out, but the flash of metal brought her attention to the gun at his waist.

"Good bye," he said almost cheerily. He raised the gun and fired, but Rin was already diving into the bathroom.

Rin's apartment was in an older part of town, meaning that all her doors were solid and all her furniture was practically antique. She thanked her stars for that as she threw the dead-bolt in place and lay down in the cast-iron tub.

"If I get through this," Rin muttered angrily to herself, "that guy is going to be very unhappy." She covered her ears as bullets rang over her head and pinged into the side of her hiding place. She thought about how here door must be ruined, then mentally slapped herself for thinking something so absurd. With her hands over her ears, she heard muffled male voices and scuffling. 'Jeff,' she thought to herself. Jeff was the kid that helped the butcher; a football player in high school and now a boy builder in his spare time. He had moved in about a year ago and was one of those sweet lug kind of guys that wanted to protect every woman in his life, from mother to neighbor.

She removed her hands. Silence. She chanced a peek over the rim. Nothing. She walked over to the door and looked through one of her new peep holes. Empty. She smiled. Good old Jeff. She pulled back the dead bolt.

"Jeff, I gotta tell you, you have the most perfect timing." She looked around her living room. "Jeff?" Noises drew her to the front hall.

Rin stood in her doorway looking into her front hall. Nearest her stood Sesshomaru, closer to the door were three men she didn't recognize struggling with her 'new neighbor'. His glasses and beard lay at his feet.

"Okay," she said, grabbing all five men's attention, "who are you, who is he, and what took you so long?" Sesshomaru shook his head.

"Ronis Bortan, mercenary," one of the men holding him informed her.

"Mercenary?" she repeated. The men were watching her, waiting for the typical feminine response: tears, hysteria, maybe a little shock and anger. Rin wasn't in the mood to fit stereotypes. "You self-centered jerk!" she shouted at Sesshomaru.

"Rin, we need to talk-"

"Wonderful idea! Spill."

"Do you think it could wait until-"

"No! I'm sick of doing things on your schedule. It was my life that almost ended, and I want filled in now!"

"You need to calm down," he said, advancing with his hands up like someone would do to a mad animal. It miffed Rin.

"No, what I need is to stop being treated like a child! So help me, if you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going to move to Mexico just to get some piece of mind. Now what the hell is going on?!"

"Fine." His jaw muscle twitched. "Take him, I'll be there directly."

Ronis saw this as his last chance to finish the job. He head-butted one man, pushing him into a wall, bit another hand that tried to grab him, and shoved the last, grabbing the man's gun in doing so. Rin's eyes widened as she saw, realizing his intentions, but had nowhere to hide. She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders automatically to wait for the bullet. She heard the shot but felt no pain. A vague memory sprung up in her mind of someone telling her that in times of severe pain, a person's body can go into shock. She had it all explained in her head in under a second and prepared herself to open her eyes and see an arm blown off or something. When she did open her eyes, though, all she saw were Sesshomaru's eyes staring back.

"Mr. Tashio!" Sesshomaru fell to one knee and put a hand over his mouth, but the blood dripped between his fingers. All Rin could do was stand there stunned. Sesshomaru had literally taken a bullet for her?

"What the hell is going on in here?" 'Now Jeff decides to show up,' Rin thought sarcastically to herself. It did, however, serve to bring her around.

"Help them," she pointed to the men that had just barely managed to get the gun out of Ronis' hands, "that man just shot up my apartment." Jeff's eyes widened but her authoritative tone pushed him into action. Rin crouched down with Sesshomaru. "I'm going to call an ambulance. Try not to move, you might dislodge the bullet and damage something else." He probably already knew this, but saying it out loud helped to un-jumble her mind. Her conversation with the 911 operator was short and sweet. Rin pressed a cloth to his wound to stem some of the blood flow until the medics got there. They didn't make it before he passed out, though.

Oxoxoxo

Rin was sitting in the waiting room, watching the clock. It must be broken. No clock could ever run that slow. According to that stupid broken clock, it had been two hours into Sesshomaru surgery when Inuyasha showed up. His face was pale, his long Tashio-silver hair messier than usual.

"I couldn't get away, Ronis was being impossible. They barely got him in the handcuffs. What's going on?" Rin took a deep breath and wiped a hand over her face.

"At first, they thought the bullet was just stuck in his lung, but when they pulled it out they found it had gone through the sack surrounding his heart. The nurse just came by and said they had to revive him once, but he's stable. They're closing now." She wiped away the tears leaking through her eyelids. "He's in a mild coma. The nurse said he had a 50-50 chance of survival, it's all up to him." Rin was standing there, breathing into a crumpled Kleenex, when she suddenly felt Inuyasha's arms come around her. She was tempted to pull away, Inuyasha not being the man she loved, and then remembered that he was probably the only person in the world that could understand how utterly depressed and defeated she felt.

"Sesshomaru's about as tough as they come," he said as she snaked her arms around his waist. "He'll pull through." Rin nuzzled her face into his strength. She never had a brother, but she thought this could possibly be how it felt to have someone strong to rely and fall back on. It made her jealous.

"Thank you, Inuyasha."

"No problem. Anything for my future sister-in-law." That made Rin's head come up.

"What are you talking about?" He winced.

"I guess he didn't have a chance to talk to you, did he?" She shook her head. "You'd better sit down."

Oxoxoxo

"-and had you put under surveillance while he tried to draw him out. He thought that if you knew what was going on you'd do something reckless and get yourself killed. Although, you almost managed that not knowing what was going on." She hiccupped. "He was coming to see you, to tell you what was going on. He loves you and wants to be with you."

"And I suppose he told you all this," she said sarcastically. It would take a crowbar and a truth potion to pry all that out of him. I know my brother," he said dully, "and it's usually what he doesn't say that tells the most." Rin smiled at that. It was true. "All I want you to know is that when he wakes up, it won't be hard to get him to un-stuff. Just don't let him tell you no." Rin smiled and kissed his cheek.

"I really appreciate this, but I wasn't planning on taking a 'no' this time. From now on he's just stuck with me." Inuyasha smiled encouragingly at her just as the nurse walked up.

"You can visit him now, but he's not awake."

OXOXOXO