A/N: Wow, I always speak too soon. This story is flowing more smoothly now…things happening a little faster now. My last chapter may be new to many of you still, it seems FFnet is slow lately about getting out the notifying emails out, so if the last chapter seems totally foreign to you READ it! And If this chapter is too weird in the beginning especially, you probably need to read the last one too...plus I am a review whore, I love hearing from you guys, it keeps me coming back again and again.
Disclaimer: I do not own them
Last chapter: In the future, Shippo lead Mrs. H out of his home and Shinku met her and took her away. They're afraid of the Taishita. (That's Sesshomaru.) In the past Inuyasha and Kagome were recovering from the mating season. Shippo interrupted them (that's where the title comes from) and told them about Naraku's supposed plot to use their link against them. Inuyasha is concerned about many things, but there is something he is refusing to tell Kagome. She has not pressed about it yet. Miroku, Sango, Kaede and Inuyasha and Kagome and Shippo discussed the potential plot that Naraku might be hatching against them. The talk was rather heated and tense. Particularly when Kaede compared Kagome to Kikyo, and said the deception could well work again. Kaede charged them all with looking out for each other. Eki, the demon lizard, Naraku's latest spying minion, discussed the timing of the attack on the shard hunters.
Family names: Taishita: Sesshomaru's surname. Byakko: Shippo's surname.That's all that's important for this chapter, I'm too lazy to write out the rest for now.
New Moon
I came awake suddenly, gasping. When I saw electric lights in the ceiling I thought for a moment that I was home, that indeed everything had been a dream, a terrific nightmare. But then I smelled the cigarette smoke.
Souta doesn't smoke and neither do I.
I sat up cautiously, wrinkling my nose up at the stink, and realized that the bed I was lying on was not my own. Even the lights, though they were electric, they cast a different shade than my own. These were a sickly yellow and dimmer too. The room was smoky. I could see it up high, further blocking the light.
The walls were plastered with movie posters. I saw movies from all the different eras. Modern, 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, and older than that still. Gone With The Wind was plastered beside Tokyo Drift. Princess Mononoke beside Blade Runner. There were also pictures of naked women, or mostly naked women.
"Welcome back, Lady Higurashi."
I turned my head to see the speaker of the voice, though in the pit of my stomach I felt I already knew it. I felt sick again already. And sure enough, when I finally saw him, I knew the speaker well enough. He was a terrible redhead. In the light he had freckles, and when he grinned his canines gave him the appearance of a predator, they were too sharp. His smile was too mischievous, too wide to be human.
He was Shinku.
"Where am I? What are we doing here?" I frowned at myself, hardly understanding why I was even bothering to ask such questions. I didn't think I wanted to know the answer. And the more important question was, "What are you going to do to me?"
Shinku laughed, blowing cigarette smoke out his nose and mouth. I felt my face wrinkling with disgust at it. I've always hated smoke. My throat was already beginning to dry up just breathing the stuff.
"I'm going to educate you, because my father is a pussy." His grin never faded, his eyes, I noticed oddly that they were a bright blue in this human like form, twinkled.
It was very rude of him to speak of his father in such a way, and though I felt the urge to try and scold him, it occurred to me that I was at this fox's mercy, it was not a good idea. I didn't trust Shinku one bit. The pictures of naked women on his walls didn't do much to help me feel comfortable either.
"I just want to go home." I sat up slowly, mindful of my stomach and the ever-present nausea. How long had it been since I'd eaten?
Shinku took another long draw on his cigarette and blew it out in my direction. I turned my face away, scowling at the window. Traffic lights were outside, tall high rise buildings. We were in the city…
"Beautiful view." Shinku said, gesturing at the window when I looked back at him. "My father doesn't appreciate the city. That and of course, he's afraid of it."
"Afraid of it?" the idea seemed preposterous, that a youkai, an immortal creature would be afraid of a human, mortal city. "Is it the noise? The lights?" I asked, genuinely perplexed.
"Yeah, but I get on just fine." He waved a hand at the room. I looked now for the first time. There was a computer on a messy old desk. The flooring was wooden and old, dusty. Clothing lied scattered about; the place had a faint odor underneath the stale smoke smell of old laundry. The most prominent thing about this tiny scrappy apartment were the bookcases. Shinku had bookcases in every corner, lining every wall. I squinted, trying to read the titles. Some of the books looked very old, leather bound, falling apart at the seams.
"Ah." Shinku murmured, smirking. "You've noticed my collection. I may not look it, and my father may not give me any credit, but I am a learned man." When I looked back at him his smirk became a grin, "Well, not a man I guess. Living with humans makes one forget sometimes." But his grin told me that was a lie, he was always aware of his differences, of his power. He had just learned to speak as if he were human.
"Right." I kept my tone neutral. The place, the messiness, the stink of the smoke, my nervousness, all of it was conspiring to make me feel sick. I felt a headache fast approaching. The night had been exhausting, overwhelming. I glanced back at the bed I was sitting on, at the ruffled sheets, the stains on the old comforters, old food on some plates lying around it…and a box of condoms up on the nightstand.
"Can't be making any hanyous of my own." Shinku laughed at me and reached for the box, tossing it carelessly onto the messy desk with its computer. The screensaver was more naked women. I felt my stomach churning.
"Please," I breathed, "Just let me go home…"
"Nope, I can't do that Lady Higurashi." His voice was solemn now. "I promised my father that I'd educate you, and that's what's going to go down." He jerked a thumb at the bookcase closest to his computer. "My books. I'm a historian of sorts. I enjoy classic human literature. I've traveled to America, to Europe. I know humans very well, Lady Higurashi." He stared at me unflinchingly, with a seriousness I'd never imagined him capable of. "But the truth is; I'm one very lucky bastard."
I didn't say anything; there wasn't anything I could say because frankly I thought he was crazy. My expression must have revealed what I was thinking because Shinku broke his solemnity and grinned, but it was a tight look, underneath it I could see that he was serious still.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" he smirked.
I turned away, looking instead at the window. The lights and city traffic were comfortingly human while I was inside that smoky room with Shinku, who I was suddenly aware was absolutely inhuman. I felt my skin crawl, remembering the condoms on the nightstand. Lifting my hands off the bed I tucked them into my lap disgustedly, tucked myself down into a sort of protective ball.
Shinku sighed. "I'll say it simply then, Lady Higurashi," his use of my name in such formal, respective terms, made me shudder. There was a tone of mocking in it. "Humans rule the world now. They have ever since I was born about a hundred years ago. It wasn't always that way." I could hear the grin in his voice; I didn't turn away from the city, from the fresh, crisp, cold night air creeping in through the window, letting out the stink of smoke.
"I'm going to give you a history lesson that no one else can, Lady Higurashi. Tell me, did you ever wonder when your daughter came home with these stories of hers, about hanyous and youkai and kitsune boys like my father—did you ever wonder what happened to them?"
I closed my eyes on the lights and sounds of the city and sighed. "I wondered about Kagome everyday, I worried, what kind of mother would I be if I hadn't?" my voice quavered with the same old pain. It was like a scar, never fading quite all the way, never the same and sometimes, when times were hard, it hurt just as much as if it were a fresh wound.
"No, no. I mean did you ever wonder why you never saw demons here, now?"
I shook my head, "No, I didn't." and then I paused, remembering things Souta had told me over the years, a few times when Kagome might bring something back with her, or discovered something in the shrine's archives that was actually very dangerous, a demon waiting to spring or a curse written into wood or stone… "No," I corrected myself, "I didn't wonder because I knew they do exist now, but…"
"Yes, they do exist." As I turned to watch him, Shinku dipped the butt of his cigarette into a small astray on his messy desk. I wondered how he avoided burning the place down with the papers so close to the swirling, oily smoke. "And many more than you ever thought—but in hiding. And yes, they are not in the same numbers as five hundred years ago." He cleared his throat, "Five hundred years ago humans did not rule Japan. Youkai did."
"Why hide?" I frowned, "Why do you pretend to be human? Why didn't Shippo come looking for me before?" I stopped myself, there were too many whys. Too many questions that needed answering. I was likely to go insane before Shinku answered any of them.
"Humans." He grinned without mirth, "That answers all three of your questions, Lady Higurashi. I hide myself because of humans. I pretend to be human because it's what humans expect me to be. And my father," he pulled a red lighter with the silhouette of a fox on it out of his shirt pocket and began playing with it, flicking it on and off, "Did not try to find you because he is afraid of what humans would do to him. Even you."
"That doesn't make any sense."
Shinku smiled down at the lighter, running his thumb in and out of the small flame. "It doesn't, does it? But that is what five hundred years of history has done. Humans rule Japan now; they did not five hundred years ago. It won't be long now before the whole lot of us are extinct, breeding into your human population. The Tetsusaigas were just some of the first."
I felt my throat catch, I had trouble speaking, it came out as a whisper. "Tell me what happened to my daughter. I don't care about any of the rest…"
Shinku lifted his mischievous blue eyes at me and I froze, feeling that I had made some sort of grave mistake. When he grinned his canines gleamed predatorily. "By the time I'm done telling you all this—you'll care."
He flicked the lighter shut. "It begins now."
Inuyasha had lost control again. Kagome could feel his increasing struggle as the night wore on.
The rain had increased, drumming on the roof loudly above them. The Shard hunters were spread out around Kaede's hut, the coals in the fire hissed as occasionally a raindrop slipped through and landed in them. Miroku had started snoring lightly, Sango was wheezing through her nose, or perhaps it was Kilala who was doing that, Kagome couldn't be sure. Kaede always snored in the next room, loud as the buzz of a chainsaw. Shippo was curled as usual against her stomach, kicking in the throes of some silly, innocent fox dream.
All the sounds of the night seemed excruciatingly loud. The rumble of someone's stomach set Kagome on edge, making her sweat. A cough might send her into a panic. She wasn't sure anymore whether the tension was her own or Inuyasha's, spilling over through the link and into her.
She fidgeted beneath her sleeping bag. Shippo breath, when he exhaled at her face, smelled like stale chocolate. She had never counted on her treats lasting for month at a time. Stale or not Shippo had eaten it and now the smell on his breath made Kagome queasy.
And Inuyasha wasn't helping any. He tried to sleep, but it was fitfully. Kagome heard his movement, the rustle of his hakama and haori, the scrape of the untransformed Tetsusaiga over the floor, even once she thought she heard a gentle flap as he moved his dog ears.
He hadn't eaten much that evening, after the somber talk of Naraku she couldn't blame him for losing any appetite. But it wasn't that, she knew, the hanyou had forsaken food for a long time now. The mating season seemed to rob him of all other desires. When Miroku had groped Sango he hadn't even added a word, and when Shippo had attacked him, Inuyasha had all but ignored him.
She worried about him, wondering how long the season was supposed to last…
And then she remembered the moon. It was waning now, which meant that soon Inuyasha would undergo his transformation and be human for a night. That would probably spell the end of his mating season madness. She risked sighing aloud, thinking that she would not miss it too much, a return of control might be a good thing. She tried to bury her own worries, her own internal embarrassment at their lack of control, at the potential consequences…
Inuyasha stirred in his corner as well as within their link. Tetsusaiga clanked on the floor, fabric whispered as it was rubbed together. Through the link Kagome felt his nervousness, his uncertainty—and his desire. Sleep. He commanded her.
I would if I could. She shot back.
Guilt flowed from Inuyasha and into her. Kagome realized why with a jolt. She had become a nocturnal creature because of the mating season; it was affecting her just as it did Inuyasha. He couldn't eat, she couldn't sleep. They were driven to each other above all else.
Kagome… It was a call, a summons of sorts. He'd called her this way before, and she had submitted, giving in, but now she resisted.
No, Inuyasha, we can't. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to fight the flutter of her own desire. Was it really her desire, or his? It was impossible to tell and Kagome didn't think trying to figure that out was worth the effort. Her body did not care what her mind told it, it only knew the drive, and it didn't care whose desire it responded to, only that it responded and eagerly at that. There's no birth control in the Feudal Era.
She hadn't meant the thought to spill over to the hanyou but he heard it anyway and had a mixed reaction. Partly he was wounded, but mostly he was terrified. Again Kagome felt the brush of the same secret fear he'd been plagued with before, earlier in the day. The fear was enough to stave off the lust brought on by the mating season, so Kagome decided that now was as good a time as any to push him for an answer.
What are you hiding?
She heard the hanyou's back thump against his wall through the darkness. What?
You're hiding something, Inuyasha. I can feel it. What are you so afraid of?
The hanyou scrambled to hide his thoughts, even to try and jam the link, to withdraw from her, but Kagome latched onto him, refusing to let go. Stop running away, Inuyasha! She had the urge to say sit to him for good measure, but restrained herself. She hadn't used the subduing spell in a long time and didn't want to use it now. She decided to try another tactic and sent feelings of hurt to him. Don't you trust me?
There was a very quiet growl that passed through the dark from his corner. Stop trying to manipulate me, bitch!
He'd caught on. She sighed, aloud. Please…?
A scratch of clawed hands on the floor reached her, and then his answer. You don't want to know.
If it scares you so much then yes, I do want to know! She let her concern flow to him, and received only nervousness in return. He'd fallen silent, fighting another wave of mating season induced lust. Kagome heard his breathing pick up slightly with growing tension—and then she realized that she could hear everyone's breathing if she listened for them.
What's wrong with me? She asked herself, frowningly. Inuyasha heard the thought and grabbed it up, eager for a distraction.
The link has given you better senses…
Kagome caught something in those words. They weren't Inuyasha's own. He was regurgitating that information from some other source. Who would tell him important information like that? Kagome could only think of one creature…
Myoga told you that?
There was a long pause from Inuyasha, though Inuyasha had clearly understood her question he was uncertain how to answer it, which seemed very odd to Kagome. Yet as she took in ever little slip and inkling of information that Inuyasha's mind let out, a slow dawning of understanding began to form. The secret he was keeping from her had something to do with Myoga, or maybe was some tidbit of news that Myoga had brought.
Finally Inuyasha replied truthfully. Yeah, so?
What else did he tell you?
That drew the deep fear she'd been looking for and confirmed her suspicions. Inuyasha answered this question at once, and revealed himself as a very poor liar. Nothing.
Why are you lying to me?
She realized as he reacted to her thought that she had pushed him too far. He wasn't going to tell her now; the only thing she succeeded in doing was frustrating the hanyou and irritating him. Whatever he feared he covered up with his usual blustering anger, and that had not changed in the many years she'd known him. Anger spiked at her, thrown through the link and Kagome cringed in her sleeping bag and heard another small growl come at her through the dark.
Just leave it alone will you? He snapped at her, It doesn't fucking matter, okay? Drop it!
Withdrawing, Kagome rolled onto her side and pressed her head into her pillow, taking a deep breath. Inuyasha's emotions seethed at her, she could almost feel them. His trouble became her own, and still she couldn't sleep.
Shippo stretched against her, yawned innocently. Kagome peeked at him, seeing the tiny slivers of his ghostly green eyes mostly closed for a moment before he turned and began snuggling into her once more, returning to slumber. Kagome envied him.
Miroku moaned in his sleep, half-forming a name. To her ears in the past it might've sounded like "Sssssgo," but to her new enhanced hearing it was clearly: "Ssssango…"
Inuyasha snorted in his corner, apparently hearing the same thing. "Feh." Then he fell into silence again, battling his urges, the instincts of his youkai blood. After an unknown amount of time, Kagome heard him rise to his feet. The floor creaked beneath him as he moved, his clothing whispered with strange sounds Kagome had never noticed before. She stared through the dark, tense and alert, as he passed her by. She could hear his claws grating ever so softly against the metal of his sword. His eyes landed on her through the dark, she was sure of it, but she didn't twist round to look. Then she heard the flap of Kaede's hut lift and fall back down with a slapping sound. Inuyasha's footsteps disappeared outside, becoming slowly fainter. He moved slowly, not running as she had anticipated.
Frustrated, angry though she wasn't quite sure why, Kagome curled into a ball on her side, cupping tiny Shippo between her stomach and her thighs. Mama, I miss you. She stroked the kit's red hair, tweaked his ears. And as he kicked in his sleep and smiled in response to her touch, she thought about herself as a child, curled in her own mother's lap, sleeping between her parents before her father had died…
She cried a few tears, mourning the loss of both her family and her era, as well as the loss of her childhood, the innocent days when her entire world had been in one time frame. There hadn't been a well, there were no demons, no Naraku, no Kikyo, no Inuyasha.
Wiping the tears away bitterly, she dismissed the thoughts. Would she really have chosen, knowing how she'd end up, to never fall down the well, to never come to the Feudal Era? She considered it for a time, allowing that to entertain her mind. Out in the forest somewhere she knew with the aid of the link that Inuyasha was tearing apart the forest with his rage, cursing, shouting, anything that would alleviate his unspent frustration, anger, and most importantly, his longing.
She wished bitterly to be in his arms, without worry, without thought of what it might cost her, cost them both. What was Naraku planning? Could they survive when the plot was aimed at them? And destroying them with their own need for one another?
And just as the sun began to peek over in the east, rising for a new day to begin, Kagome decided that yes, in spite of all of the difficulty, all of the frustration and tumultuous emotional roller coaster, yes, she would always have chosen the well, the shards, Naraku, Kikyo, Kilala, Shippo, Miroku, Sango, Kaede, and Inuyasha. But if she'd known it would cost her family…? No, I would have chosen Mama, Souta, Gramps…
Out in the forest she could feel Inuyasha listening to her thoughts. He understood her decision, would even have agreed if she'd asked him, but in spite of it he was still wounded. Along with that downtrodden mindset came exhaustion and hunger finally. The lust of the mating season had finally dissipated.
And in Kaede's hut, just as Miroku stirred groggily and groped the still sleeping Sango, Kagome's eyelids at last grew heavy as stones. Moments later, even through Sango's shouting at the perverted monk as she beat him, Kagome was asleep.
The night of the new moon came, just a few days later. Inuyasha had maintained his distance in the intervening time. He reminded Kagome of a beaten dog, cowering before its owner and slinking off, avoiding any further wrath. The entire group was still subdued, but enjoying the break from travel and shard hunting nonetheless. The talk of Naraku and his plots remained heavy on their minds, but though they remained alert there was nothing out of the ordinary around the village, and lives went on, heedless.
In the evening, before the sunset, the group made sure to return to Kaede's hut. Inuyasha stayed inside as the sun began to set, though he complained bitterly about it. Kagome stayed outside, not far away and always within sight of Sango and Miroku. Shippo and Kilala played with one another, romping about in a way that reminded Kagome of puppies. Miroku and Sango were talking quietly, bickering a little perhaps.
Kagome watched both Shippo and Kilala, but also the rice and crop fields, the water shining in them, bright gold and pick as the sun was setting. The air was very clear and crisp, much more so than her world could ever offer. She twiddled her thumbs, considering trying the well again and then dismissing it. Each time she tried it and the well failed to transport her home, she only had to mourn the loss over. She was beginning to lose hope and trying to imagine that it was indeed possible for her to live in the Feudal Era for the rest of her life.
Fears still plagued her. What if she made a mistake? Met someone she wasn't supposed to, influenced someone not to do something that they otherwise would have. Anything could destroy time, could affect perhaps even her own future. In the Feudal era she would have many ancestors and various relatives, most of which she would know nothing about… (A/N: Seriously, you never know. Has anyone else seen the episode of Futurama where Phillip J. Fry goes back in time and accidentally becomes his own grandfather? Yeah, it's pretty friggin sweet.)
Glancing at Miroku and Sango, she shuddered, thinking, I could be related to them and never know it. Maybe Kohaku was a distant grandfather and I'm supposed to save him?
Inuyasha inserted his own comment there sarcastically through the link. Yeah, and maybe Naraku too.
She scowled. Stop it, Inuyasha, you don't understand. The farther back in time the more ancestors you have. I could be staring at some of them now… She turned her gaze back to the rice fields, watching as the workers moved through them with their sunhats still on, ducking low every so often to do something.
But Inuyasha had withdrawn away from her again, protectively. He was trying to preserve his secrets, whatever they may be, before his transformation at nightfall. He had refused to tell her anything in the days since their first argument about it, and it appeared that new moon or not, he wasn't going to let her know. Of course he was vulnerable now. As the new moon rose up and his youkai blood waned and disappeared with it, Inuyasha was losing his grasp over the link, leaving himself wide open to Kagome, while she, in turn, remained invisible to him.
This would be the only night, monthly, that they would essentially be split from one another.
"Lady Kagome!" Miroku had risen from his place a short distance away at Sango's side and was approaching Kagome. His smile was wide and innocent, the violet eyes warm and friendly—but there was a big red welt on one of his cheeks from where Sango had walloped him. "How are you this fine evening?"
"I'm okay." She looked between Sango and the approaching monk, wary. "What did you say to Sango to make her hit you, Miroku?"
Sango came up behind him and the monk flinched away from her, chuckling once nervously. "He asked me to have his child again."
"Oh, is that all it was." Distractedly, Kagome intertwined her fingers together; playing with them like a child might while intensely bored. But in the grown Kagome it was clearly a sign of some sort of stress.
"Kagome?" Sango asked, noticing her movement, "Are you doing all right?" her chocolate gaze was warm but clearly concerned.
"I'm fine, I was thinking about the well a little." She scowled, turning her face to the sunset. The golden-orange of its light painted her brightly. She squinted against the light.
"I'm sure Lady Kagome is saddened because tonight is the new moon." Miroku put in, "She can't go alone with Inuyasha to investigate it…"
Both young women glared at him for the inappropriate comment, but Miroku continued to smile cheerfully, seemingly unknowing and innocent. They knew him to be anything but those things, yet it was possible that he had made the comment with pure intentions, trying to lighten the mood or at least turn it away from the melancholy tone it had taken.
"Kagome, do you suppose that Lady Kaede could make a subduing spell for Miroku too?" Sango asked in the same cheerful, innocent tone that Miroku had spoken in moments before.
Kagome smirked. "I'm sure she can, Sango. We should get right on that tonight."
Miroku stamped his staff into the ground, jangling it and catching their attention. "Ladies, ladies, I assure you that will not be necessary. Unlike Inuyasha, I can control myself."
Kagome scowled, "You're lucky tonight is the new moon."
"Why?" Miroku asked, withholding his smirk as he looked between the two girls and their disapproving expressions.
"Because Inuyasha didn't hear you."
"Ah, yes, this is the night when he is just one more human." The monk let his staff rest against his shoulder and clapped his hands and then held them together, as if praying. "It falls to me to look after you lovely ladies then…"
"You know, he's going to hear you eventually." Sango warned, "Or someone might just go in there and tell him to come out here and punish you."
Now an openly lecherous grin painted Miroku's face. He turned to face Sango completely and took her hands in his. "Sango, love, certainly you are aware that you may punish me at any time you feel the need. I am dearly in need of it, I should think."
Kagome rolled her eyes and started ignoring them, watching as Shippo raced at her with Kilala trailing fast behind. The kit crashed into her, nuzzling into her neck and panting. "Kagome! Kagome! Save me! Kilala is gonna get me!"
Kagome winced when he hit her and tried to shift his tiny body. "Shippo—be careful, that hurt."
The fire cat skirted around Kagome and leapt onto her shoulder, mewing and then pawing at Shippo. The kit squeaked and fell into Kagome's lap and held on tightly.
"Hentai!" there was a slapping sound and then a thick thump as Miroku landed splat on the ground in a heap of robes, a jangling staff, and lots of tinkling prayer beads. He blinked up at Sango as if she'd kissed him instead of slapping him.
"Lady Sango! Such strength, such power!" he rubbed his cheek reverently.
"It's funny," she shook her head, hands on her hips indignantly like a mother talking to a naughty son, "I have to keep reminding you…over and over again."
Kilala abandoned Kagome to take a stance at her mistress's side, though she was anything but fierce in her kittenish form. Shippo, however, was not distracted from his cowering in Kagome's lap—except he was not cowering any longer. He dug at Kagome's waist, sniffled and put his cold nose against the warmth of her kimono. Then he began to tug on her clothes, "Kagome!"
The miko didn't notice him at first, Miroku and Sango's comical arguing distracted her, but soon his incessant tugging drew her attention away. "What is it, Shippo?"
The kit wrinkled is nose as he stared up at her. "You smell funny."
"Thanks, Shippo." She chuckled and ruffled his hair, ready to dismiss his comment as something silly and meaningless, but the kit continued tugging on her and calling her name.
"No, no Kagome! You smell funny. Different." He clambered higher on her again, which drew a hiss of abrupt discomfort from the girl.
"Shippo—stop that, it hurts. I told you that once already." She sighed as the kit ignored her and began sniffing at her hair, her neck, and then finally he started to dig at her armpits. That was when she decided she'd had enough.
"Okay, no more." She scooped Shippo up in her arms and pinned him against her stomach, hoping he wouldn't squirm.
Throw him in the fire. Inuyasha suggested through the link.
No, I'm going to bring him in to see you. His responding annoyance made her smirk triumphantly. Keeping Shippo pinned, she left Miroku and Sango to their sexually charged bickering, and stepped through the flap over Kaede's hut. The smell of the food cooking inside made her cringe and suddenly feel sick. She swallowed uncertainly and stepped through anyway.
Inuyasha was putting his clawed hands to a last use before his transformation in a matter of minutes by skinning and gutting a rabbit he'd caught earlier in the day. Kaede was tending the fire; her face was pinched with what was probably pain. When Kagome entered the room, with Shippo still squirming in her arms, Kaede was the only one that looked up, the hanyou had already acknowledged her through the link, but his dog ears lowered slightly and twitched.
"Inuyasha!" Shippo squealed, "Kagome smells funny."
"Yeah, well you look funny." The hanyou snapped back, irritably.
Kagome was distracted by the faint smell of blood in the hut, by the sight of blood and fresh meat on her mate's claws. Inuyasha noted her rising disgust and at last lifted his eyes to her, his eyebrows quirked at her. Are you okay, Kagome?
She looked away from the raw meat and swallowed thickly. I'm fine. But her heart was fluttering, her stomach flip flopping.
Shippo broke free of her hold and bounded to the raw meat Inuyasha was working with. "Oh! Oh! Inuyasha! Please! I want some! Can I have some? Please?"
The hanyou batted him away, "Not a chance, runt." Through the link Kagome heard him think: If I can't eat it raw then you sure as hell aren't allowed to.
Dizziness crashed over Kagome. She stumbled and sat down, groaning a little.
"Child?" Kaede called, frowning concernedly, "Are you all right?" (A/N: I hate the ye thing and to make it make sense to me I'm only going to use it when Kaede is referring to more than one person, cuz seriously I just don't get its usage and I like things to have rules because I'm an English major and it matters to me.)
"Uh," Kagome swallowed again, battling nausea, "I'm okay." She tried to smile convincingly but only managed to show them both that she was still feeling sick.
She caught the way Inuyasha stared at her, the golden eyes somewhere between worried and terrified. Grabbing hold of anything that would distract her from the nausea she was battling, Kagome probed the link to try and see what was passing through his mind. He was lamenting that this was the night of the new moon; he was robbed of his powerful senses, thrown into the mortal world, and he hated that weakness. Yet at that moment he regretted it for a different reason—like Shippo he was curious about what her scent might tell him.
Scowling, Kagome threw disapproval at him by way of the link. No one needs to smell me okay?
He blinked at her and then returned the scowl, she realized that he had not meant for her to catch his thoughts. He tried to grip the link again from his end, to control it and hide more from her, but Kagome didn't feel his mind turn away—he had little to no control over it. This night all of his secrets would be open to her…
Don't you dare. The hanyou shot at her, glaring. The idea of Kagome taking advantage of his new moon weakness was a horrible thing to him, a nasty, bitter betrayal.
Shippo stole some of the raw meat away from Inuyasha and gobbled it down while the hanyou was distracted. Inuyasha made a hissing sound and lunged for the kit. "You little idiot! That's for the meal tonight!"
Shippo leapt away just in time and dashed for the flap of the door and out. Inuyasha flexed his claws, looking after the kit with murderous intent. "If he's not careful I'll skin him for dinner…"
Kaede grunted, catching their attention, "There's still more meat left to be treated, Inuyasha. Attend to that before going after the kitsune."
The hanyou started to answer her and then stopped, his body tensing. His ears folded backward, his face twisted with pain. Kagome watched his fingers and hands, quivering and shaking. Pain surged through the link to her and she choked, looking away, closing her eyes until it faded slightly.
Outside the sun had at last set.
Inuyasha's body transformed. Ears lowered, reshaping inside and out, migrating from the top of his head down to the sides where they were invisible thought his thick hair. His hair flickered at first, caught in between, and then it darkened completely. Eyes switched their pigment, light receptors switched off without the support of his youkai heritage to support them. The places in his brain meant for interpreting scent shut down completely.
It took only moments, a few blinks of an eye, and then the hanyou no longer existed, in his place was an ordinary young man. And the first thing he did was frown disgustedly down at his own hands, no clawless. "Feh." (A/N: ooo I heart human Inuyasha. He's hot, but of course I will only drool from a far, I am taken, so he is all of yours…)
Kagome recovered as his pain faded away from her, she opened her eyes slowly, and then winced, shutting them again. The light of Kaede's fire was too bright; the smoke smell gave her a headache. The rabbit's blood intensified her queasy nausea several times over. When Kaede spoke, asking her if she was all right, the sounds made Kagome gasp and cover her ears.
"Shit," Inuyasha cursed nearby. Kagome heard him moving, so acutely now that she could hear the way his joints cracked and squeaked, all the individual movements of his muscles, even his heartbeat.
"Inuyasha? What's going on?" Kaede asked, also moving slightly, and Kagome could hear her body too, the differences caused by age and injury and mortality.
Something fell over her, like a blanket or a shroud, darkening the world through her closed lids. She smelled Inuyasha all around her. The scent calmed her. She felt his arms around her, pulling her close. Tentatively she opened an eye and found that Inuyasha had draped something over her—his haori.
What's going on? She asked him, using the link, but there was no response. Although she could feel his mind, feel his concern over her, it was as if he had suddenly gone deaf. He could not hear her through their link; he could not tell that she was there at all. His mind was completely blocked from the link, though she could see everything about it with utter clarity now.
"She has my senses now." Inuyasha answered Kaede in a quiet voice, trying to avoid irritating Kagome's new, overwhelmed hearing.
"Feedback," Kagome whispered to herself, understanding. The light from outside Inuyasha's haori was brilliant, blinding. How does he function? She wondered. Everyone had always assumed that Inuyasha's senses were a blessing, but now Kagome saw that part of his foul temper might stem from his own private suffering. Humans lived in a world full of too much noise, light, and sound. Even the smells in the room were overwhelming. She swallowed thickly as the nausea in the pit of her stomach made a wave of heat pass through her.
Inuyasha's hands roved over her back, supporting, comforting—but Kagome could only feel the link, the openness of his mind, the vulnerability. He was still afraid, even terrified of things he had not shared with her, hadn't told her. Undeniably, Kagome wanted to know. The temptation was there, and it was powerful.
She took a deep breath, and tried to resist.
A/N: Some of you may read this and think 'Omg, she's becoming a hanyou.' Now some might like that idea, others might not, me I don't have a problem really with it. I've read excellent stories where she is a hanyou before, but that's not what's happening here. The link is throwing her feedback. The last new moon (many chapters ago) they had not physically bound the relationship or the link. No feedback. But now that they are bound physically too, the link gives Kagome these senses so that she can compensate for her mate's loss. There's also another reason why it would overdo it now and make things haywire…Preview!
"Can you still use the link?" he asked. His voice sounded surprisingly calm, but she could feel what a lie that question was underneath. He was terrified that she would say yes. To him it made sense that because he couldn't feel it the link was essentially dissolved for the night, gone with his youkai blood, dormant, waiting for the sun to come up again.
She wondered if he could see her face with his human eyes as she debated lying to him just to make him feel better…
"No," she blinked as she heard herself lying, "I can't."
