A/N: Sorry this one took so long. This is actually the second version of
this chapter. I wrote it before, and didn't like it, so I spent a couple
of days playing with it, got frustrated, and finally decided to scrap what
I had and start over with something different and (hopefully) better.
Thanks for your patience.
Here we go!
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Should that change, believe me, you'll be the first to know.
Synthetic Emotions
Sesshomaru watched Rin out of the corner of his eye as the girl stared raptly at the television. Thus far, he had yet to discover a solution to their problem. Were he capable of experiencing such a thing, he would have thought he was becoming vexed with it. His codes were unfortunately clear on this, however: he must obey his mistress, unless her immediate safety was at stake.
The program Rin had been watching was suddenly interrupted by a news bulletin. The girl crossed her arms over her chest and pouted a little, before shrugging it off and changing the channel. The next station was the same. An anchorman in an hideous red and navy blue striped tie was in the middle of delivering a 'special announcement.'
". . . at this point, reports are unclear as to the actual cause of the disturbance, but witnesses say that a pair of youkai interrupted a anti- youkai demonstration. Channel 13 news is lucky enough to have an exclusive recording of. . ."
Sesshomaru wasn't really interested, only listening to the man's babble with half an ear, until the anchorman's face was replaced with shaky footage of a pair of youkai fighting in the streets of Tokyo. One was a mammoth, disgusting thing, the kind used mostly for demolition and clearing land. The other, however . . .
The other was. . .
'He should have been recalled decades ago,' Sesshomaru thought, finally turning his attention to the television. The video was of poor quality, probably filmed on a hand held camcorder, but the image was more than clear enough to make out the figure of the other youkai, or rather, the hanyou. His long white hair and golden eyes alone were enough to identify him. Those traits had been the calling card of Inutaiyoukai before the death of its CEO, Taisho. But the face was what stuck in Sesshomaru's mind, so reminiscent of another face, but that one had been framed with jet-black hair, and had human ears and human eyes.
Sesshomaru's lips pressed together, and that something inside him twitched, once again trying to click into place, then stilled.
So, Inuyasha was still alive.
*~*~*
Sango would never have thought she could get queasy watching someone fix a youkai. The things were machines. She would have said that she'd sooner feel sick watching someone change a car's oil than fix a youkai. Yet, watching the young man introduced to her as Miroku carefully bend the metal back around the ball of Inuyasha's shoulder joint, her stomach twisted uncomfortably.
It didn't help that the youkai in question's face was taut in an expression of suppressed pain. Why on earth would a robot look like that? And as realistic as this youkai was, the look was disturbing.
As Miroku worked on the youkai's shoulder, the girl called Kagome explained how Sango had ended up with them here. The other youkai, the fox-child, added comments from time to time, but the story was really very short. The girl worked at the burned out cafe. She had been going there to see the damage and talk to her boss. The youkai were hers, and the white haired one was a Companion. When she had ordered it to help, it had done so.
After the fight had ended, she had her youkai carry her to the hospital, where the head nurse on duty had apparently given her a very strong sedative and sent her on her way. The city center was rioting, but, according to the news, the disturbance was now contained.
All this more or less matched up with Sango's own jumbled memories, but it didn't answer her real question. After Kagome had finished, the older girl could only stare at her in disbelief. Sango herself could not guarantee that she'd be so understanding if their positions had been reversed. She would like to think she would have helped the other girl, but. . . she very much doubted that she would be so natural about it. How did this girl manage it?
Finally the activist asked, "Why?"
Kagome blinked as though the question had never occurred to her. "What do you mean, 'why'? What else was I supposed to do?"
"You could have got your ass away like I told you to," the youkai muttered, its brilliant yellow eyes fixed on its owner. "You could have listened to me, and not put yourself in a fucking idiotic situation."
"I'm sorry, Inuyasha," the girl said guiltily, her shoulders slumping.
Sango looked from one to the other, another kind of confusion growing, like an itch in her brain. Did Kagome just apologize to her own youkai? To her own property? 'I think I missed something here.'
The youkai snorted rudely, then hissed through its clenched teeth as Miroku's grip on his pliers slipped. "Oh, how clumsy of me," the young man said with perfect innocence. "I ought to have been paying more attention."
An uncomfortable silence followed. Sango felt her skin crawl as the seconds ticked by, each one dancing up her spine. 'What's going on here?' Now the pair couldn't meet one another's eyes. This was not a normal relationship to have with a machine.
"If you go upstairs," Miroku said eventually, breaking the silence, " you'll see my kitchen on the right. I was about to put on a pot of water for tea. All you should have to do is turn on the stove. Under other circumstances I'd suggest something a bit stronger, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I'm just about done here, so I should be able to join you in a moment."
Sango nodded gratefully. When she stood, all the blood in her body rushed out of her head, leaving her momentarily dizzy, but she recovered quickly.
Miroku's apartment above his shop was small, and more or less what she would have expected of a bachelor. It wasn't a complete disaster area, but cleaning very obviously wasn't a priority, and a stack of cardboard boxes next to the trashcan proved that half the young man's diet consisted of take-out bentos. Judging from the dirty dishes in the sink and the wrappers in the trash, the other half was ramen noodles and Dr. Pepper.
Sango wrinkled her nose. She 'hated' Dr. Pepper. Then it struck her how ridiculous she was being. A girl and her youkai had just saved her life, and brought her to a complete stranger's apartment, and she was examining the contents of his garbage. Next she'd be going through his medicine cabinet!
She found the knobs for the gas stove, turned on the back burner, checked to make sure there was water in the pot, and leaned against the counter to wait for her host.
A bit of color out of the corner of her eye drew her attention to a magazine with her picture on the cover. The girl looked at her own face for a moment, then turned the magazine so she could read the cover. It was an anti-youkai publication.
Why on earth would this guy have that kind of magazine?
Out of curiosity she flipped to a dog-eared page and found herself faced with the article on her. She vaguely remembered giving this interview. It was one where she went into great detail about how her family had been killed. The reporter had been a real bitch. . .
There was a picture of her talking to another activist, an older man who was a professor at a local college. The photo was taken from behind, but Sango's face was in profile since she was turning to talk to the old man. Next to the picture, scrawled in the margin, were two words she couldn't quite make out. The guy's hand writing left something to be desired.
Squinting, Sango looked closer and tried to make out the note. An instant later she figured it out.
'Nice ass.'
"Oh, he better be talking about Mr. Ashuri."
*~*~*
Inuyasha stifled another cry as Miroku gave a finishing tweak to his shoulder. 'For fuck's sake,' he thought grimly, 'I understand that they wanted us to be careful not to damage ourselves, but this is a little much.'
"There you are," Miroku said, smoothing the skin back into place. "Don't move around too much. You'll heal up quicker that way."
"I know that," Inuyasha gritted. It was really hard to be patient when his shoulder was sending that particular sensation shooting through his nerves. It seemed to travel up and down his spine. Thankfully, now that the damage was taken care of, the feeling was already fading.
"Thank you," Kagome told the young man. She always remembered to say thank you and be polite. It was like second nature to her. She probably would have thanked the idiot if it were her own shoulder he was fiddling with.
"No problem," Miroku said, smiling that wry smile of his, as though deep down everything was just a little bit entertaining to him. Then the smile changed to a suggestive grin. "I think I'll try to make our guest feel more at ease. I do expect a little more information out of you two later."
Inuyasha snorted, but Kagome nodded. The girl looked tired. She was tired. He could smell it in her scent, and see it in her half-limp posture. He could even hear it in the steady, lazy rhythm of her heartbeat.
Miroku gathered up Shippo, earning some loud complaints from the brat, and left Inuyasha and Kagome sitting alone in his workroom. Kagome looked up to watch him go, but she was still slumped. Once he was gone she turned to the hanyou and caught her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on it.
Inuyasha worked his shoulder experimentally, ignoring the protests from the newly repaired joint. Despite the needle sharp shots of 'pain,' the arm moved as smoothly as ever. It didn't catch at all, no matter how much he rotated it. Damn, maybe he'd have to thank Miroku too.
"How's your shoulder?" Kagome asked, her voice low and gentle, and laced with weariness.
"Not quite good as new, but in a few hours. . ." he shrugged and didn't wince at the twinge it gave him. "How 'bout you?"
"Me?" the girl asked, starting. "But I wasn't hurt."
"Yeah, but you're still exhausted."
"Am not," the girl said, dropping her gaze to the floor. "You're the one who got hurt."
Inuyasha shook his head. "I thought we went over this. That's not important."
"But it is important," the girl protested. "It's important to me. I don't want you to get hurt for me."
"I said it doesn't matter," Inuyasha told her again. "It's what I'm made for. I'm programmed to do that. If I get a little busted up, well, it's better than you."
"But you wouldn't have gotten hurt if I had run like you told me!"
"Why are we still talking about this?! It doesn't matter," the hanyou couldn't completely keep the feeling out of his tone. "I'm not. . . you know I'm not real."
"I don't think that." She said it so quietly, he wouldn't have even caught it if he had human ears. "I don't think you're fake. I--that's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?" Inuyasha asked, leaning closer to catch the girl's words when she spoke again.
"I meant. . . that I didn't want. . . what. . ." her face was turning pink, especially her cheeks. She wouldn't meet his eyes again, and her words were barely more than breaths of air. "I don't want what you do. . . to be fake. It don't want you to do. . . that. . . because you think I want you to. I want it. . . to come from you. I want it to be real."
The hanyou didn't know how to respond to that. She thought he'd been pretending? Just going through the motions because it was what he was made to do? How did he tell her that it wasn't like that? While he was physically capable of faking--going through the physically responses without any of the desire or stimulation a human male would need--he had never needed to. Neither with Kikyo, nor with Kagome.
But he didn't know how to tell her all that, so he did the only thing he could think of. He closed the distance between them and brushed his lips lightly against hers.
She froze for a heartbeat, and he was scared she would push him away, but instead she laid her hands on his chest and kissed him back. Her mouth opened for him without having to ask for it, and she slid her tongue against his, artlessly drawing him deeper. He pulled her closer to him, hoping she understood what he was trying to tell her but couldn't put into speech.
*~*~*
A/N: That's it for today kids. Call me evil if you want, but I actually gave you an extra hundred and some odd words in this one, just to get up to the kiss. Hope everyone enjoyed the new chapter, and sorry again for taking so long. I'll try to do better with the next one.
Until next time.
Here we go!
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Should that change, believe me, you'll be the first to know.
Synthetic Emotions
Sesshomaru watched Rin out of the corner of his eye as the girl stared raptly at the television. Thus far, he had yet to discover a solution to their problem. Were he capable of experiencing such a thing, he would have thought he was becoming vexed with it. His codes were unfortunately clear on this, however: he must obey his mistress, unless her immediate safety was at stake.
The program Rin had been watching was suddenly interrupted by a news bulletin. The girl crossed her arms over her chest and pouted a little, before shrugging it off and changing the channel. The next station was the same. An anchorman in an hideous red and navy blue striped tie was in the middle of delivering a 'special announcement.'
". . . at this point, reports are unclear as to the actual cause of the disturbance, but witnesses say that a pair of youkai interrupted a anti- youkai demonstration. Channel 13 news is lucky enough to have an exclusive recording of. . ."
Sesshomaru wasn't really interested, only listening to the man's babble with half an ear, until the anchorman's face was replaced with shaky footage of a pair of youkai fighting in the streets of Tokyo. One was a mammoth, disgusting thing, the kind used mostly for demolition and clearing land. The other, however . . .
The other was. . .
'He should have been recalled decades ago,' Sesshomaru thought, finally turning his attention to the television. The video was of poor quality, probably filmed on a hand held camcorder, but the image was more than clear enough to make out the figure of the other youkai, or rather, the hanyou. His long white hair and golden eyes alone were enough to identify him. Those traits had been the calling card of Inutaiyoukai before the death of its CEO, Taisho. But the face was what stuck in Sesshomaru's mind, so reminiscent of another face, but that one had been framed with jet-black hair, and had human ears and human eyes.
Sesshomaru's lips pressed together, and that something inside him twitched, once again trying to click into place, then stilled.
So, Inuyasha was still alive.
*~*~*
Sango would never have thought she could get queasy watching someone fix a youkai. The things were machines. She would have said that she'd sooner feel sick watching someone change a car's oil than fix a youkai. Yet, watching the young man introduced to her as Miroku carefully bend the metal back around the ball of Inuyasha's shoulder joint, her stomach twisted uncomfortably.
It didn't help that the youkai in question's face was taut in an expression of suppressed pain. Why on earth would a robot look like that? And as realistic as this youkai was, the look was disturbing.
As Miroku worked on the youkai's shoulder, the girl called Kagome explained how Sango had ended up with them here. The other youkai, the fox-child, added comments from time to time, but the story was really very short. The girl worked at the burned out cafe. She had been going there to see the damage and talk to her boss. The youkai were hers, and the white haired one was a Companion. When she had ordered it to help, it had done so.
After the fight had ended, she had her youkai carry her to the hospital, where the head nurse on duty had apparently given her a very strong sedative and sent her on her way. The city center was rioting, but, according to the news, the disturbance was now contained.
All this more or less matched up with Sango's own jumbled memories, but it didn't answer her real question. After Kagome had finished, the older girl could only stare at her in disbelief. Sango herself could not guarantee that she'd be so understanding if their positions had been reversed. She would like to think she would have helped the other girl, but. . . she very much doubted that she would be so natural about it. How did this girl manage it?
Finally the activist asked, "Why?"
Kagome blinked as though the question had never occurred to her. "What do you mean, 'why'? What else was I supposed to do?"
"You could have got your ass away like I told you to," the youkai muttered, its brilliant yellow eyes fixed on its owner. "You could have listened to me, and not put yourself in a fucking idiotic situation."
"I'm sorry, Inuyasha," the girl said guiltily, her shoulders slumping.
Sango looked from one to the other, another kind of confusion growing, like an itch in her brain. Did Kagome just apologize to her own youkai? To her own property? 'I think I missed something here.'
The youkai snorted rudely, then hissed through its clenched teeth as Miroku's grip on his pliers slipped. "Oh, how clumsy of me," the young man said with perfect innocence. "I ought to have been paying more attention."
An uncomfortable silence followed. Sango felt her skin crawl as the seconds ticked by, each one dancing up her spine. 'What's going on here?' Now the pair couldn't meet one another's eyes. This was not a normal relationship to have with a machine.
"If you go upstairs," Miroku said eventually, breaking the silence, " you'll see my kitchen on the right. I was about to put on a pot of water for tea. All you should have to do is turn on the stove. Under other circumstances I'd suggest something a bit stronger, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I'm just about done here, so I should be able to join you in a moment."
Sango nodded gratefully. When she stood, all the blood in her body rushed out of her head, leaving her momentarily dizzy, but she recovered quickly.
Miroku's apartment above his shop was small, and more or less what she would have expected of a bachelor. It wasn't a complete disaster area, but cleaning very obviously wasn't a priority, and a stack of cardboard boxes next to the trashcan proved that half the young man's diet consisted of take-out bentos. Judging from the dirty dishes in the sink and the wrappers in the trash, the other half was ramen noodles and Dr. Pepper.
Sango wrinkled her nose. She 'hated' Dr. Pepper. Then it struck her how ridiculous she was being. A girl and her youkai had just saved her life, and brought her to a complete stranger's apartment, and she was examining the contents of his garbage. Next she'd be going through his medicine cabinet!
She found the knobs for the gas stove, turned on the back burner, checked to make sure there was water in the pot, and leaned against the counter to wait for her host.
A bit of color out of the corner of her eye drew her attention to a magazine with her picture on the cover. The girl looked at her own face for a moment, then turned the magazine so she could read the cover. It was an anti-youkai publication.
Why on earth would this guy have that kind of magazine?
Out of curiosity she flipped to a dog-eared page and found herself faced with the article on her. She vaguely remembered giving this interview. It was one where she went into great detail about how her family had been killed. The reporter had been a real bitch. . .
There was a picture of her talking to another activist, an older man who was a professor at a local college. The photo was taken from behind, but Sango's face was in profile since she was turning to talk to the old man. Next to the picture, scrawled in the margin, were two words she couldn't quite make out. The guy's hand writing left something to be desired.
Squinting, Sango looked closer and tried to make out the note. An instant later she figured it out.
'Nice ass.'
"Oh, he better be talking about Mr. Ashuri."
*~*~*
Inuyasha stifled another cry as Miroku gave a finishing tweak to his shoulder. 'For fuck's sake,' he thought grimly, 'I understand that they wanted us to be careful not to damage ourselves, but this is a little much.'
"There you are," Miroku said, smoothing the skin back into place. "Don't move around too much. You'll heal up quicker that way."
"I know that," Inuyasha gritted. It was really hard to be patient when his shoulder was sending that particular sensation shooting through his nerves. It seemed to travel up and down his spine. Thankfully, now that the damage was taken care of, the feeling was already fading.
"Thank you," Kagome told the young man. She always remembered to say thank you and be polite. It was like second nature to her. She probably would have thanked the idiot if it were her own shoulder he was fiddling with.
"No problem," Miroku said, smiling that wry smile of his, as though deep down everything was just a little bit entertaining to him. Then the smile changed to a suggestive grin. "I think I'll try to make our guest feel more at ease. I do expect a little more information out of you two later."
Inuyasha snorted, but Kagome nodded. The girl looked tired. She was tired. He could smell it in her scent, and see it in her half-limp posture. He could even hear it in the steady, lazy rhythm of her heartbeat.
Miroku gathered up Shippo, earning some loud complaints from the brat, and left Inuyasha and Kagome sitting alone in his workroom. Kagome looked up to watch him go, but she was still slumped. Once he was gone she turned to the hanyou and caught her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on it.
Inuyasha worked his shoulder experimentally, ignoring the protests from the newly repaired joint. Despite the needle sharp shots of 'pain,' the arm moved as smoothly as ever. It didn't catch at all, no matter how much he rotated it. Damn, maybe he'd have to thank Miroku too.
"How's your shoulder?" Kagome asked, her voice low and gentle, and laced with weariness.
"Not quite good as new, but in a few hours. . ." he shrugged and didn't wince at the twinge it gave him. "How 'bout you?"
"Me?" the girl asked, starting. "But I wasn't hurt."
"Yeah, but you're still exhausted."
"Am not," the girl said, dropping her gaze to the floor. "You're the one who got hurt."
Inuyasha shook his head. "I thought we went over this. That's not important."
"But it is important," the girl protested. "It's important to me. I don't want you to get hurt for me."
"I said it doesn't matter," Inuyasha told her again. "It's what I'm made for. I'm programmed to do that. If I get a little busted up, well, it's better than you."
"But you wouldn't have gotten hurt if I had run like you told me!"
"Why are we still talking about this?! It doesn't matter," the hanyou couldn't completely keep the feeling out of his tone. "I'm not. . . you know I'm not real."
"I don't think that." She said it so quietly, he wouldn't have even caught it if he had human ears. "I don't think you're fake. I--that's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?" Inuyasha asked, leaning closer to catch the girl's words when she spoke again.
"I meant. . . that I didn't want. . . what. . ." her face was turning pink, especially her cheeks. She wouldn't meet his eyes again, and her words were barely more than breaths of air. "I don't want what you do. . . to be fake. It don't want you to do. . . that. . . because you think I want you to. I want it. . . to come from you. I want it to be real."
The hanyou didn't know how to respond to that. She thought he'd been pretending? Just going through the motions because it was what he was made to do? How did he tell her that it wasn't like that? While he was physically capable of faking--going through the physically responses without any of the desire or stimulation a human male would need--he had never needed to. Neither with Kikyo, nor with Kagome.
But he didn't know how to tell her all that, so he did the only thing he could think of. He closed the distance between them and brushed his lips lightly against hers.
She froze for a heartbeat, and he was scared she would push him away, but instead she laid her hands on his chest and kissed him back. Her mouth opened for him without having to ask for it, and she slid her tongue against his, artlessly drawing him deeper. He pulled her closer to him, hoping she understood what he was trying to tell her but couldn't put into speech.
*~*~*
A/N: That's it for today kids. Call me evil if you want, but I actually gave you an extra hundred and some odd words in this one, just to get up to the kiss. Hope everyone enjoyed the new chapter, and sorry again for taking so long. I'll try to do better with the next one.
Until next time.