A/N: Oh my god. If you're still reading this story I am so, so sorry. I've received so many kind, encouraging words about this fic over the past couple of years and I have read and treasured each one of them while feeling like the biggest asshole because I just didn't have it in me to work on it. So I have tried starting from scratch and rewriting the ending couple of chapters and am going to try try TRY to finish it
You are all wonderful, please enjoy.
Partytime
Kagome had been proud of herself. She'd actually managed to get all the way down the elevator and out of the building before her brave front crumbled and she started sniffling. By the time she'd made it to the train she'd actually been crying - silently, sure, but it was still pretty pathetic.
Okay, really pathetic.
She hadn't even gone home. Just sort of aimlessly wandered around the shopping district near her apartment. When she'd run into some friends from class, the invitation to a Friday night group date had seemed like the perfect distraction, and rather than politely demurring as usual, she readily accepted. She wanted something to distract her from the emotional tangle sitting low and heavy at the base of her ribs.
Unfortunately she only felt even lonelier – surrounded by peers she had trouble relating to, and finding it impossible to choke down the overly sweet drinks which had been purchased for the table.
Figured that fate would kick her when she was down and not even let her drown her sorrows with booze like any normal person.
"Hey Kags!"
Nagisa, busy with a school project, had joined the group late - her easy pragmatism had reminded Kagome of Sango more than once, and they got along unusually well. Although her heart wasn't really in it tonight, she tried to match the enthusiasm in Nagisa's tone, "Hey!"
"Did your friend find you?" taking a sip of her drink, Nagisa pulled a face. Apparently they also shared a distaste for overly sweet alcohol.
"My friend?"
"Yeah, the one who was waiting outside your apartment building. Older, looked rich and angry. He asked me if I knew you."
A shiver chased up the back of her neck, "Looking for me?"
"Yeah, I kinda got the impression that he'd been there a while. I know I've said I don't get girls who are into older guys, but he was pretty ... well, pretty. Kind of surprising. Not who I would have picked as your type."
"Its not like that." Kagome blushed.
Nagisa's perceptive eyes flicked her face, "But you want it to be?"
"Um…" she jumped as her phone started vibrating in her back pocket. Slipping it out she was surprised but not displeased to see her mother's name on the screen. With the direction this conversation was going, and considering the whole reason she was here was to get away from anything having to do with Sesshoumaru, she'd never been so happy to get a call from her mother in her life.
"Sorry, its my mom," she apologized, "it must be important." Ducking out of the main room and into the relatively quiet hallway which led to the toilets she pressed the phone button, "Moshi-moshi mama."
"Kagome?" her mother's voice carried an unfamiliar tone, "Are you all right?"
"Um, yes. I'm at a party, why?"
There was a long, odd silence, "Well, I just thought something might be wrong after the visit we had today."
"Visit?"
Why did it suddenly feel like someone was dropping heavy stones into her stomach?
"Yes, from Inuyasha's brother. The one you told us about."
Fate, it seemed, was determined to keep throwing her emotional distress in her face. It almost felt like heavy stones dropping into her stomach, weighing her down.
Plunk.
She had told her family about her meeting up with Sesshoumaru, and they knew that she'd been up to see Inuyasha. They'd been happy for her, but more because she was happy than that they could really understand what it meant to her that not everything from the past had been lost to time.
Still, that didn't mean she wanted her family meeting the guy she…well, the guy who was currently the closest thing to a romantic interest she had. "Sesshoumaru visited the shrine?!" Kagome gasped in a horrified whisper.
Plunk.
"He seemed very preoccupied about your whereabouts actually. I don't know why you said all those unflattering things about him either. He seemed like a very well-mannered, respectable young man."
Plunk.
"Mama," Kagome groaned, pushing aside for a moment that Sesshoumaru had apparently been able to somehow convince her mother that he was 'very well-mannered', "You do know that Sesshoumaru is neither young, nor a man, right?"
"Well, you know what I mean. Did the two of you have some sort of argument?"
As Kagome struggled with a response to that loaded question the noise from the other room seemed to dim suddenly and all at once, moments before the hairs at the nape of her neck stood on end and she felt a maelstrom of pulsing youki from the direction of the front door.
PLUNK.
"Mama, I think he's found me." Kagome distractedly finished in a whisper, "I have to go." She hung up on the sound of her mother's worried, questioning voice still audible.
If his youki was anything to go by he was pissed.
Sweating palms? Erratic heartbeat?
Check and check.
Reminding herself of all the many, many pissed off youkai she'd faced over the years, she steeled herself and stepped back out into the main room.
She didn't even have time to visually locate him in the room before he was beside her with his hand wrapped around her arm.
Able to see through the appearance illusion though the touch, the flashing red of his eyes and jagged stripes across his cheeks changed her inclination to stubbornly dig in her heels and refuse to move into allowing him to drag her resentfully from the building. Oh yeah, he looked pissed. He also looked moments from losing control, and if he did she wanted him as far from all these people as possible. When it came down to it she could at least protect herself to some extent, her friends and classmates on the other hand wouldn't know what hit them.
How the hell did he find me here? She hadn't told anyone she was coming to this stupid party, so how had he known where to find her?
As soon as they'd cleared the building she twisted and tugged at his grip, "Let GO of me you jerk! You're hurting me." He released her so quickly that she stumbled and swore at him again. Rubbing the ache out of her bicep she froze in concern as he snagged the chain at his wrist and tore it off with a snarl.
Sesshoumaru's youki exploded around her.
That she had been able to feel it at all though the concealment charm led her to suspect that it was flaring wildly, but the sudden maelstrom of demonic energy had her hackles up and her reiki burning through her like a wildfire. With a sharp turn he was coming at her - she flinched reflexively, lifting her hands as if that would help ward him off, but instead of some sort of attack but she was suddenly wrapped in warm arms, blinded by a blare of light, and then they were streaking through the sky.
Kagome fisted her hands in the front of his jacket. Chances were good that Sesshoumaru's tailor wouldn't thank her for her treatment of the expensive fabric, but since her grip on his lapels was the only thing between her and the ground (god only knew how far down beneath their feet) if Sesshoumaru decided to drop her, there was no way she was letting go. It felt like they were booking it - the wind was a roar around them as they bulleted through the air and stole the heat from her body until her fingers were numb and she had to squint her eyes against the burn of the cold.
She'd traveled by youkai before, but usually being carried or riding astride. The daiyoukai 'ball of light' thing was new. She didn't like it. The wind and his wildly fluctuating youki together were going to have her hair in an absolute mess by the time she got out of this, and she'd lost all sense of equilibrium - no idea which direction they were traveling or how fast.
On top of the terror and discomfort, when they finally got wherever they were going, their landing was not didn't so much touch down as slam down, Kagome staggering a bit, despite the fact that she was still being held firmly. Slapping her palms flat against his chest she shoved violently out of the loose circle of his arms.
Frowning, he took half a step after her before checking himself with a shake of his head.
"I am so done with this kidnapping bullshit! I was done with it 500 years ago! You can't just abduct me whenever you feel like it! Take me back. Right now."
"NO." his voice was low and rough.
"So what's your plan then? You're just going to keep me here? I told you this afternoon that we could talk then or not at all. It's not my fault you squandered your chance."
"This is not over."
"The hell it isn't! I'm absolutely fed up with all of this. So take. Me. Home." she punctuated her last few words with sharp jabs of her forefinger to his chest.
At the last jab he lost what little control he had left - youki flared around him, expanding in swirls and pulses as he snarled. A flash of demonic energy pulsed, blinding her for a few confused moments, and when her vision cleared once more Sesshoumaru was straddling the clearing in his inu form.
Huh. He really has gotten bigger.
There was a sliding and bunching of muscles as Sesshoumaru gathered himself and, with a howl that reverberated in her bones and left her eardrums ringing, he was gone, the speed of his passing kicking up a swirl of dead leaves and loose dirt and tossing her already tangled hair around her.
For a few moments she could still feel the violent pulse of his youki, until, growing fainter and fainter, it too was gone and she realized that a profound silence lay around her. Not even a cricket sang in the night.
Kagome shivered. Wrapping her arms around herself she peered through the dark. Luckily the moon was almost full tonight because there wasn't a single electric light to be seen. Even the view afforded by the elevation - she appeared to be some way up on the side of the mountain - showed no signs of modern human development. Dimly, set uphill against the slope and nestled in the trees, she could make out a traditional house and she determined that the 'clearing' she found herself in was actually a carefully landscaped hermitage garden. After carefully picking her way to the cliff edge the house faced, she could see no road, path, or stairs that led to or away from this place.
Awesome.
Well, it looked like the house was her default option. Although the grounds and house felt deserted she still tapped on the door and waited before sliding it open.
As its exterior indicated, the house was simple and very old fashioned, but even in the dark she could tell the building was relatively new and well maintained - the distinctive smell of clean tatami mats and, a little more faintly, cedar beams, met her at the entrance. Even without her adventures with Inuyasha in the past this smell would be familiar. The shrine occasionally had to have beams and supports replaced, and tatami and cedar were firmly ingrained as the scent of family and childhood.
She groped around for a light switch for a moment before pulling her cell out of her pocket and thumbing on the light, noticing briefly that she had zero reception, before doing her best to investigate. Apparently she'd been unable to find a light switch because there were no lights. Fantastic.
With a huff of irritation, she rummaged around in a side closet until she found a couple of old oiled paper lanterns and some matches. Whatever this place was, there were at least some allowances for human frailty around. Hopefully there were more than just lanterns, because it was going to be a chilly night.
Thankfully, another closet yielded stacks of neatly folded bedding and she drug out a futon and comforter that thankfully only smelled the normal musty of things stored in closets and not of mildew and rot.
The little room, lit by warm candlelight and with a futon set up, seemed a lot less desolate. She'd certainly slept in worse.
Aside from the one main room – which had shoji tracks laid to allow for quite a few different configurations – there was a small kitchen stocked with an assortment of dried and tinned foods with – thank kami – a gas heated oven and stove (she had gotten pretty good at cooking with fire, but it was a hassle, and she'd rather not). The little bath house situated at one corner of the house was also propane heated. She'd love a bath about now, but there was no way in hell she was going to fumble around in the dark to try and figure out how to light the boiler. Although there didn't appear to be any roads, they somehow got propane refilled up here - she would have to investigate more thoroughly in the morning. Maybe there was still a way for her to get herself off this mountain.
Instead of continuing to stumble around in the dark she unearthed a soft yukata that swamped her petite frame and smelled so much like Sesshoumaru that there was no doubt about as to it's owner, and went to sleep.
**Peace Y'all**