Disclaimer: I would like to say that Inuyasha and the gang to not belong to me. However, since I feed the soooo many cookies, they've decided to let me use them for a fic. Tah HAH!
A/N: Heya! Here I am....writing again....Hopefully this chapter won't suck as bad as the last one....
Thanks for the reviews...I'm hoping for more on this chapter. If I do, maybe I'll work extra hard on chapter 30! (passes out cookies and pocky)
Kagome felt the time shift take hold of her body and gently float her back down to the earth, landing softly into her own time. Sighing in relief as she glanced at the roof of the well-house, she turned around to find that Shippo's spell had worked.
Inuyasha and the sorcerer were both allowed to pass through, and the sorcerer was still slung over Inuyasha's shoulder, fast asleep. Which was a miracle in itself, Kagome thought to herself. She wasn't sure if the spell from the talisman would still work once they had crossed the boundary between the times.
"Oi," Inuyasha's soft voice reached her and she tore her eyes away from the figure to look into Inuyasha's golden eyes.
"Yeah?" She asked him, unconsciously keeping her voice as low as his.
"Kagome," he breathed her name and she watched nervously as he swallowed visibly. "I want to ask you something," he trailed off, his eyes tearing away from hers to glance at the walls of the well.
"What is it?" She whispered and watched his ears droop slightly. She frowned in response to the droop, wondering what he was thinking. Inuyasha shifted the body on his shoulder and leaned in closer to her face. Oh god, she thought to herself and blushed. What was he doing? Licking her lips in anticipation, she leaned her head in closer to his.
"Can I please kill this bastard?"
Kagome blinked once, then twice. She frowned, not sure exactly of what she had just heard. "What?" She asked, incredulous, and jerked her face back.
He growled slightly and leaned back, irritated all of a sudden. "C'mon, I said 'please'," he huffed and rocked back on his heels.
"Ohh," Kagome forced a smile. "Well that makes all the difference. Sure, why not?" She replied sarcastically. "Why not kill Kouga while you're at it, since you asked so politely?"
"Really?!" Inuyasha leaned forward, eager.
"NO!" She shouted in his ear and yanked on a forelock of silver hair. "Are you crazy?!" She turned away from him, not bothering to wait for an answer and began climbing up the ladder inside the well. "C'mon, mama's probably frantic by now," she winced once again.
Inuyasha huffed, then reluctantly followed. "So what do you propose we do with this thing?" He growled slightly, dragging his claws across the bastard's thigh and practically dancing in glee as blood ran freely down its leg.
'There,' he thought to himself. 'That's part of your punishment for hurting Kagome.'
More. The youkai snarled.
'Later,' Inuyasha replied in an even tone. 'I don't want the bitch to bite my ear off.'
"Oh god," Kagome sighed and leapt out of the well, bringing her hands up to tangle her fingers in her hair. "I don't know...." She trailed off, developing quite the headache.
"KAGOME!"
"Eh?" Kagome blinked as the door to the well house slammed open and her mother nearly toppled her over in a hug. Fighting for her balance, Kagome yelped as she started to tip backwards on the top stair.
Inuyasha leapt forward when he saw their bodies start to tilt and righted them by placing a hand on Kagome's back and shoving them upright. Kagome sent him a grateful smile over her shoulder as she leaned forward to embrace her mother.
"Mama," She buried her face into her mother's neck, grateful for the familiar smell of perfume and cooking to calm her racing heart down. Her eyes began to fill up with tears and she tightened her embrace, willing the tears not to fall. If she started crying, then her mother would start crying, and they would never stop.
It would be Inuyasha torture, she thought to herself with a mental chuckle. Poor hanyou wouldn't know what do to: yell and order them to stop or awkwardly pat their backs and pray that they would eventually tire.
Probably both.
"Mama, I'm so sorry we didn't check in," Kagome apologized, tensing up against her mother and bracing herself for an onslaught of anger. "But that first night after you left, we were lured back to the feudal era...."
"I know," her mother leaned back and beamed at her daughter, nonplussed.
"Eh?" Kagome blinked. Out of all of the responses she had rehearsed out in her head-this was definitely not one of them. "What do you mean, you know?" She demanded. All that time she had spent worrying over calming her mother down, and all she got for her efforts were a nod and a smile?
Kagome huffed, not sure whether to be pleased or not with the recent turn of her mother's mood. You'd think with all that worrying, there'd be something she'd have to try and prove to her mother.
"Well," Ms. Higurashi gave her daughter a sheepish grin, oblivious to her daughter's internal battle. "I didn't know at first, and I was frantic that first night. We turned right back around after we didn't receive your phone call the next day and came right back home." She paused and embraced her daughter again, filled with such elation that she was back from the feudal era and unharmed.
"So how did you know where we were?" Kagome blinked at her mother's sudden hug. "We didn't leave a note."
"Taka filled me in," her mother beamed.
"T-TAKA?!" Kagome and Inuyasha both sputtered at the same time, leaning forward in disbelief.
Inuyasha was the first to recover. "What the fuck does that little twerp know?" He demanded with a growl, cracking his knuckles reflexively.
"Oh he knows quite a bit," Ms. Higurashi smiled at the hanyou. "I suggest calming down, your anger will do you no good," she pointed out. "Taka hasn't done anything wrong."
"The hell he hasn't!" Inuyasha exploded. "He walks in, tells you he knows what's going on and you just believe that he has nothing to do with all of it?!" He stared incredulously at Kagome's mother. It suddenly became clear to him where Kagome got her own naïveté.
"Uh huh," her mother nodded, smiling and oblivious to the hanyou's frustration.
Inuyasha growled in response. Great, now the little fucker has got Kagome's mother thinking he's the greatest thing since the invention of the chopstick. What ever happened to intuition? What ever happened to thinking he was the greatest thing that ever happened to their little family?
He rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms, glaring at each member of the family present, a low rumble starting to growl in his chest.
"Mama," Kagome intervened before Inuyasha flipped a lid and did something rash. "Taka really isn't the most.... trustworthy of people," she reluctantly replied. "He's kind of.....creepy."
"He does have an air of mystery around him," her mother nodded sagely and both Kagome and Inuyasha nearly face-faulted at her understatement.
Inuyasha growled and shifted the body on his shoulder, feeling it grow heavy as he stood in one place. "Move," he said to Kagome and strode up the stairs, moving past both she and her mother to walk outside and onto the shrine grounds.
"Inuyasha nii-chan!" Souta came running off the porch to race over to his hero as fast as he could. "Is that the bad guy?" He asked breathlessly, eyes shining in admiration for the hanyou.
"Damn right," he dropped the body onto the ground unceremoniously and straightened, popping his shoulder in the process to loosen it up.
Souta cautiously took a step back and peered at it. "It looks like my sister," he blinked in surprise.
"Aa," Inuyasha nodded, crossing his arms. "We had to put a spell on it so that the well would let it back through to this time."
"Oh," Souta blinked again before taking anther step back. "It's....dead, right?"
"No," Inuyasha growled in Kagome's direction, and then became annoyed to see that she was talking to her mother and not paying attention to him. "Your sister won't let me kill it."
"Why not?" Souta frowned in confusion, glancing between the body and his sister to make sure that the one talking to his mother was the real one. He couldn't really tell, of course, but he trusted Inuyasha enough to know that he had brought the right one back unharmed, and the wrong one in a bloody heap.
"That's exactly what I'd like to know!" Inuyasha snapped and glared at Kagome, who was still oblivious to his anger. He growled and watched as she embraced her mother once more.
Jealous?
'Aghh! Shut up!' he closed his eyes and shook his head in attempts to shake his youkai voice out.
An image fluttered into his mind abruptly, Kagome spread out on the floor underneath him, and he felt himself flush in remembrance. He hadn't thought much of it before, when it happened, but thinking back now, he couldn't help but wonder why Kagome's unspoken wish turned out the way it did.
Was it her desire to mate with him? He glanced a peek at her from underneath his bangs. Nope, still glaring at him. Well, tough. Enough waiting, he was going drag her away and demand to have his promised 'talk'.
And sometime during that 'talk', he would convince her to let him kill the bastard. Yes, he nodded, it was a sound plan. He would lay down the demand and she would comply.
Walking over to Kagome with an arrogant stride, he took hold of her arm and dragged her towards the well house.
"Watch that bastard," he threw to Souta over his shoulder. "He won't move, but make sure nobody touches him!"
"I will!" Souta puffed out his chest, determined to make his hero proud of him. "Don't you worry, Inuyasha!"
Inuyasha rolled his eyes and dragged a protesting Kagome through the doors before turning around and sliding them shut. He turned around and leaned against them, sighing heavily and cracking one eye open to glare at her.
She was glaring back, just as ticked off as he was. "What are you doing? Why are we here?" She snapped and frowned, irritable from lack of sleep.
"You. Me. Talk," He bit out each word, punctuating each and every one of them with a soft jab in her shoulder. "Here or in the past?" He asked her, already knowing the answer.
"Here!" She blurted out all at once. "What happens if that thing wakes up and we're not here?" She demanded to know, worried for her family's safety.
"It won't," Inuyasha shrugged, confident. He pulled away from the doors and grabbed a fistful of her shirt, gently leading her down the stairs so that they had better privacy. He nudged her until she was seated on the bottom step and then sat atop the rim of the well himself, getting as comfortable as he could on the unforgiving wooden surface.
"You could have just asked me to move," Kagome grumbled in protest and leaned heavily on her hand, which was situated atop her knee at the elbow.
"Would you have moved without an argument?" He shot back and raised an eyebrow at her.
She frowned and glared at him. "Did you want something?"
"Yes," he nodded, crossing his arms and swallowing. Great, he thought to himself. How was he going to word this....
Do you want to fuck me as much as I want to fuck you? His youkai side offered sardonically from the inner recesses of his mind.
"Shut it," he voices aloud, then winced when he heard the words come out.
"Eh?" Kagome blinked at him. "What?"
"Back at the shrine....." Inuyasha blurted out. "When I came to, I was on top of you and trying to....er....undo my hakama." He flushed slightly, then cursed himself for it. "Why was that? What was your 'unspoken wish' on the talisman?" He glanced up at her through his bangs and pinned her with his molten eyes.
Kagome sighed, knowing this little talk would come about. "I....I want you," she admitted, a large blush settling across her whole face. "And....the woman in the talisman said that even though I didn't voice it aloud, she was going to make it happen anyway."
"Yes, we've been through all that," Inuyasha frowned at her. So she did want him. Well.....it was obvious that she did, given their previous experience together back in her room, never mind the fact that she asked him to mark her as his own mate.
He growled to himself, torn. The claim hadn't been solidified yet, and wouldn't until the mating process was complete. But to do that.....it would put Kagome in danger. If Naraku found out about their mated status, he could use that to his own gain, and manipulate the two of them like he did fifty years ago, with Kikyo. The last thing Inuyasha wanted was another mistake like that.
Kikyo....he swallowed to himself. Kikyo was nice, and kind to him. But....she never really accepted him wholly, as a hanyou. She wanted him to become human for her, using the shikon jewel. As much as he claimed to want to become human himself, it tore a little patch of his heart away to know that the woman he had come to adore would only love him circumstantially.
With situations as they were, he left it alone and pushed those feelings in the back of his mind, determined to use the jewel to become human for both Kikyo and himself. But now that all of that was in the past, he had come to know Kagome.
As much as everyone claimed to know that Inuyasha saw them both as one in the same, with Kagome as just a reincarnation, he really didn't. They didn't even smell the same to him. And while he had thought they looked similar at first, he couldn't mistake one for the other now. Kikyo was Kikyo. And Kagome is Kagome.
He glanced up at Kagome through his bangs once more and swallowed. Why the hell couldn't be have said that out loud? What was really holding him back from being with Kagome? Naraku? Or himself?
"Inuyasha?"
He jerked his head up to meet her concerned gaze. "Hn?"
"If...." He watched as she swallowed heavily. "If you don't want to be mated to me anymore...." She trailed off reluctantly, a blush forming across the bridge her nose.
"Fuck!" Inuyasha growled and slammed his palm down on the wooden rim of the well. "I don't want to hear you talk like that!" He snarled at her, a little more viciously than he originally intended. "Of course I do!" He shouted.
Kagome jerked her head back in surprise. A simple 'Stop talking' she had expected....but that last proclamation? Tears welled up in her eyes and she smiled, realizing that it was as close to an 'I love you' as she could get with Inuyasha. He just wasn't good at vocalizing his feelings.
"Thanks," she whispered and nervously clapped her hands together absently, rocking her body back and forth on the bottom step, willing him to say something and break the uncomfortable silence.
"Keh!" He snorted and watched with amusement as she began to emulate a nervous scent. The youkai in him pressed him to slid off the rim and crouch in front of her, his scent overwhelming hers and marking her with a scent claim once again.
He leaned in closer and softly licked the underside of her chin once, letting her know that he was there, and grateful for her presence. She was his alpha, he smirked, and leaned in for a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth.
Kagome swallowed and felt her body grow heavy with relief. Back to licks and nuzzles, she grinned softly, and leaned in to stroke the side of his cheek with her own. Now this language the both of them could understand, and get across to each other way more feelings and emotions than they could with words.
"My mate," Inuyasha rumbled slightly in her ear, his hot breath on her skin making her shiver and lean instinctively towards him.
Then again, maybe not.
"Yours," she shyly admitted and pressed a quick kiss on his shoulder before leaning back with a blush. They had been intimate, sure, but for some reason, whenever he was affectionate towards her, she couldn't help but blush and become nervous. Perhaps it was because these moments occurred only fleetingly and few in between, so she was not accustomed to them yet.
"What do we do?" She asked him, leaning her cheek against his with a sigh.
He accepted her weight with no trouble at all, and reached down to nudge her hand. She responded almost immediately this time, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it with her own. He growled, letting her know he was pleased that she had caught on so quickly with a soft lick to the cheek.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"Well," she swallowed and mentally prepared herself for her next words. "Do we wait until after Naraku is gone?"
Inuyasha tensed and closed his eyes, opening his mouth to answer-
"Because I don't think I can wait that long," the whispered admission came like a punch in the gut and his breath left him in a 'whoosh'.
"You....can't?" He tried to work the moisture back into his mouth as his tongue grew to feel heavy to lift.
"Well...." She hung her head a bit lower. "I'm not saying I'll....leave you or anything if you say we have to....."
"Damn right you won't," Inuyasha growled and bit her earlobe softly. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, savoring the sweet fragrance that was Kagome. He wanted nothing more than to bury his nose into her hair and stay there forever with that intoxicating scent.
Kagome coughed lightly, alerting him to the fact that he still hadn't answered. He growled at the reminder and bit her earlobe a little rougher this time, letting her know that the reminder was not appreciated.
"I don't want to wait either," he admitted with a growl. "My youkai blood is killing me about this. He won't shut up!" He snapped.
Kagome giggled softly. "Is that why it seems like you're talking to yourself?"
"You think this is funny?" He raised an eyebrow and flicked her thigh with his claw. "It's not. Both he and I want you....now," he panted as heat pooled into his lower belly.
"Now?" Kagome's eyes flew open. "But we're in the well house!" She exclaimed.
"I know," he groaned and shifted to move against her. "And not to mention the fact that your mother is listening in at the door...."
"She WHAT?!" Kagome leapt up and away from the hanyou, her heart facing at a hundred kilometers an hour. She slowly turned towards the door and nearly leapt out of her skin when she saw her mother holding up a glass to the slatted door.
"Do you hear anything?" She heard her brother ask excitedly from behind her mother.
"Shhh...." Her mother held a finger to her lips and frowned, trying to concentrate.
Kagome felt herself sweat-drop. 'And I come from this family?' She asked herself with a groan as her head fell atop the last step gracefully in a dramatic gesture.
"Ms. Higurashi! LOOK OUT!" A voice that sounded suspiciously like Taka's rang out throughout the shrine, causing Kagome to leap up to her feet.
"Wha-?" Was all she got out before a blast ripped through the door, missing her mother's form by inches. The broken wood pieces blasted towards her and Kagome shrieked, closing her eyes and turning her face away.
She felt Inuyasha leap forward and throw his haori-clad arms around her head, protecting her from the wood splinters. She leaned into him gratefully until the blast died down.
"Mama!" She wriggled out of Inuyasha's grasp and tried to run towards her mother to make sure she wasn't hurt, but Inuyasha caught her easily, forcing her body behind his own as he leapt out the broken door, tetsusaiga at hand.
"Get back!" He shouted to Souta and Kagome's mother once his eyes had scanned over their bodies, satisfied that they weren't harmed.
"Oh god," Kagome moaned as she looked over Inuyasha's shoulder wide-eyed to the figure standing ten feet away from them, arm outstretched and cackling with energy. "It's awake!"
Bwahahaha! Evil cliffhanger! (dodges various fruits and vegetables)
Whaaat? It was better than the last chapter, right? PLEASE REVIEW!
(passes out cookies)
