A/N: Hello all, Before you start reading I just wanted to give you a quick heads up and tell you that Kazu appears in this chapter. When he speaks you may see him refer to Rehema as Jakkaru, and likewise the Inutachi will only refer to Rehema as she or her.
This is to stop the confusion of who they are talking about. As both the Jackal and the Doctor have the same first name, whenever Kazuki mentions Jakkaru he is referring to Rehema from his past, the one who Myoga claims was obsessed with Sesshomaru. Rehema who is presently with the Inutachi is also known as the doctork, but because she believes herself to be the reincarnation of the Jackal, she asks Kazu stuff in the first person. I hope that makes sense and without further to do enjoy!
Chapter 21: Harmartia
The oversized plasma screen blared with a popular anime and though she appeared to be sitting with an attentive gaze locked on the screen, in reality, she was drunk and in the middle of a haze. Three empty bottles of vodka lay on the coffee table beside her, a freshly poured drink settled in the shot glass in her hands. The digits on her hand which had been shaking heavily at one point, now only swayed slightly in time with her eye movements when she went to look at her palm.
How long had it been? In her unhinged mind it felt like weeks had passed since she'd returned to her apartment and found Fukuro half asleep on the couch she now sat on. A walk and sudden nap to clear her head turned out to have taken three hours long, only one away from the man Eiichi who she had found doing the same thing.
Definitely not a coincidence.
Coincidences and fate never truly went together in her book. The clock on her tv's front showed it to been approximately two days since she'd started binge drinking. Odd, it felt much longer. Grunting Rehema tossed back the drink in her hand, not even bothering to use her chaser which took the form of a can of lemonade.
It was usually against her morals to drink, but given her situation, she wouldn't have anything better to do for a while.
Two weeks off from work. Fourteen days she didn't have to wake up each morning knowing there was a chance another impossible case would show up. No researching their conditions, their families, or if the patient was a child, not fight the desire to tear out her hair from stress once she heard to them beg and plead for her to save their children's lives.
The past could wait a few days.
Obtaining a fourth bottle from under her coffee table, Rehema used her arm to cover the small burp that escaped when she bent down. She hadn't even taken a shower in two days.
Holding up the glass container of scotch, she grunted and shrugged off her guilt, recalling the last time she had drunk heavily and ended up breaking into someone's house. She still couldn't explain why she had done it, it was almost instinct that told her to do so.
Shaking her head at her stupidity, Rehema sighed and refilled her glass. She would go to the past tomorrow, perhaps the insanity there would keep her from losing hers here in her own home. Tomorrow. Throwing back her drink, the doctor grimaced at the sharp taste and shuddered as it passed through her body and hit her stomach with a sharp kick. She was definitely gonna feel this tomorrow.
"Re...Re hema?!"
"What are you doing back here so soon?"
"And what's that on your face?"
Adjusting the sunglasses covering her eyes, Rehema merely groaned and hugged herself as the Inutachi gathered around her, delighted and surprised to see her back so soon. Dressed in a pair of cargo pants and a shirt, the doctor's head was noticeably downturned as they all spoke to her at once, the combination of a hangover and the overly excited voice of Kagome slowly grating on her nerves. "My boss gave me another two weeks off…." She answered to all of them, not bothering to explain her current eye covering. Her hangover was at a level three, manageable enough so that she could function, but still turning her into a temporary vampire, making her unable to be out in direct sunlight.
Unfortunately Inuyasha seemed to be the most curious about her sunglasses, boldly getting close enough to her that he could stare. A clawed finger timidly poked at the glasses frames, only for it to be slapped away by Kagome who silently admonished him for being rude. "Keh, I saw a bunch of people wearing those things once, they're called shades or something."
"Right…." The doctor said quietly, rolling her eyes behind her glasses. "Is there any way we can take this inside?"
"Well about that…." Kagome responded cryptically.
"What?" Rehema asked back, lifting her head momentarily to look at her directly.
"Ummm no offense Rehema but you kinda look like you're suffering from a hangover," Kagome admitted softly.
"Yes, yes I am." She replied honestly.
Kagome nodded. "Then I don't know if you want to go in Kaede's hut just yet….."
"Why….not?"
Inuyasha spoke up. "Because that fox Kazuki has been there for the last day waiting for you to show up."
Rehema frowned. "Kazu?" The fox hadn't seemed all that interested in her the last time they'd seen each other at the demon mansion, he'd literally thrown her from his room after she'd recalled a distorted vision that involved the two of them.
"Yea he's in Kaede's hut, sleeping." Inuyasha said folding his arms in his sleeves, "He hasn't really said or done anything, just waited for you, he said he would wait as long as it took for you to show up."
"Even after you told him I wouldn't be back for two weeks?"
Inuyasha nodded and Rehema sighed. "Okay."
"Okay?" Miroku looked guarded as the doctor dropped her black and brown messenger bag and marched past the Inutachi towards Kaede's hut. "Wait, what should we do?"
"Stay out here," She ordered, pulling back the mat that served as the huts door.
It was dark inside the small room, no fire burning and the windows covered but even though her shades she could see the lump under a bunch of covers in the huts corner, the person underneath's breathing even, showing that he was indeed asleep.
Removing her glasses to reveal dark circles under her eyes, Rehema walked over to the lump under the covers and knelt, unsure of how to approach the situation from here. An untouched fire poker lay nearby and picking it up, the doctor grunted and weighed it in her hands a moment before calling out softly, "Kazu…."
No response, trying once more again got no answer, and already fed up, Rehema turned the end of the fire poker and gently prodded the side of the lump under the covers, earning a grunt and a mumbling of words.
"Kazu, wake up." She demanded, poking him a few more times for emphasis. All at once the lump sprang up and sleepy eyes Kazu appeared, irritated at having been roused so rudely from his sleep. Seeing the fire poker aimed at him for another strike, the fox growled and snatched it from her hands, chucking it through the air where it suddenly disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.
"Hey!"
"Hey yourself." He responded. The sleep quickly left his eyes to be replaced by annoyance, his brain finally catching up with how she had woken him. "A fire poker? Really?"
"What are you doing here?"
"I was sleeping until you decided to treat my body like a log." Yawning and showing off his sharpened canines, Kazuki stretched and plopped onto his back. "You look about as tired as I feel."
"You know that's not what I meant," Rehema said, not caring for his attempts at joking. "Why were you waiting for me?"
"What?
The doctor sighed and enunciated. "Why. Were. You. Waiting. For. Me?"
"Because I felt like it."
Rehema stared. Long enough to make Kazu uncomfortable. Shifting slightly in his chair, the red-haired fox reached behind him and grabbed the object he had been laying on. Holding it out to the doctor, Kazuki watched with a critical eye as she took the book from his hand and gently cradled it in her arms.
The leather bound book was worn with age, the dark brown cover pressed with an odd symbol. Around the edges, Rehema could see the signs of obvious fire damage, a fact that made a part of her heart heavy for reasons she couldn't fully explain. "What is this?"
"It….was her journal."
"Journal?"
Kazu nodded and scratched the top of his head absently. "Jakkaru was always doing something. She liked to write about her adventures. There were more books," He swallowed hard suddenly, "But they were all destroyed in the fire."
"Fire?" Rehema's fingers ran the length of the blackened edges.
"It's all I could save, everything else was burned by the time I got to the Shiro."
"Shiro?"
"The Shiro was an old grave site she used as a, what did she call it? A base of operations?" Kazu snickered.
"Graveyard?" Rehema frowned.
"It's a long story."
"So this journal talks about all that?" She guessed, weighing the book in her hands.
"I don't know about everything," Kazu admitted, returning to lay on his back. "You had hundreds of those things laying around, this just has some stories in it I think could really help you." Staring at the ceiling, the fox sighed and continued on, "You may not be my Jakkaru, but if you have some of her memories…." He trailed off and waited for her anticipated responses, his mouth downturning when he received none. "Rehema?" Sitting up, confused, Kazuki gasped and chuckled at what the doctor was doing.
Already engrossed in the first pages of the codex, Rehema had pulled down the shade covering the hut's window, the incoming sunlight serving as her reading light while she read about her incarnation's past. Seeing her well into the fifth page, Kazu grunted and stiffened himself for her reaction to a part he knew she would ask about.
"Kazu, why did we steal a buddha statue from a temple?"
"You gotta read to find out," He said slyly, grinning in response to her upturned smile."We aren't saints."
Dinner was an awkward affair. Between Rehema's reading and Kazu's chuckling every time a new facial expression revealed itself on her face when reading something new or bizarre, the rest of the Inutachi was unsure of how to handle themselves in this situation.
Shippo ended up being the icebreaker. His chopsticks slightly tipped in his bowl, the young fox demon informed the doctor, "Kazuki says Rehema and him used to have a lot of adventures."
"I'm Rehema Shippo." The doctor responded softly, turning the page as she spoke. The entire book was written in Arabic, a few visual art pictures thrown in every few pages that brought out mixed emotions. The sketches were done well. Too well in opinion, and to her knowledge she ad never been artistically gifted, meaning someone else had done the drawings. "I couldn't have made these?"
"You didn't," Kazu confirmed, sweeping his hair back from his face. "Sesshomaru did."
The entire group went silent. "Sesshomaru?"
"Yea," He responded as though it were the obvious thing. "Jakkaru's thing was always writing, I don't know how Sesshomaru ended up getting so good at drawing."
"But I thought Jakkaru was obsessed with Sesshomaru? Why would he get this close to her?"
"Obsessed?" Kazuki scoffed. "Have you been talking to that damn flea?"
"Myoga's the one who told us the story about Jakkaru and how Inuyasha's father had to dismiss her after she became too delusional."
"Myoga is full of it….If anything Sesshomaru's the one who was so damned obsessed." Kazu groaned and bared his teeth in agitation. "Damn cover-ups."
"Kazu….." Rehema closed the book and eyed him carefully.
"You mean Jakkaru never was obsessed with Sesshomaru?" Kagome finally asked, breaking her silence.
"Of course, she was just not in the way that ass kissing flea says she was."
Inuyasha chortled.
"Kazu…."
"You wanna know what really happened don't you?" He asked Rehema, noting the way she was looking at him expectantly.
Rehema's eyes darkened and she nodded, the pendant at her throat flashing in the firelight. Finally some answers.
"How much have you read?"
"I just got the part about Sake."
"Stupid dragon," Kazu said, grinning wildly as he remembered the flying reptile.
"Kazu,"Rehema said seriously, her voice devoid of nearly all emotion. what really happened between me and Sesshomaru?"
A/N: Finally some answers huh? Next chapter will start out with a small segment from the past along with some tales straight from Kazuki. Also, we will see the return of Sesshomaru. I haven't been updating like I used to because I've been working lately hence not a lot of time to write. I hope you will please review/comment and know that I'm working on increasing my speed. Til next time. -Theores