[Disclaimer] I don't own Inuyasha, so don't sue.
[Summary] One-shot. Kagome knows that Inuyasha hasn't been sleeping for the past few days. When she goes to find him late one night, she finds him asleep in the boughs of the Goshinboku.
~*~
Right
A Short One-Shot
Kagome had watched him fight fatigue for days. She doubted if the others noticed, but she could read it easily in the way his ears drooped ever so slightly, or how his usually vehement complaints lacked some of their fire. His efforts to mask his problems had once again failed to fool her.
Sighing softly, she rose from where she had been seated in Kaede's hut. Sleep was escaping her as well, and she had nothing better to do that try to find Inuyasha.
Glancing up at the sky, which shone so much brighter in the past that in her own modern Tokyo, she couldn't help but recall how all this trouble had started.
~*~
The day had started off simple enough. Inuyasha had led them off in the direction that another shard was rumored to be. They group had camped in a small clearing a good distance off the regularly worn path. It was only a few meters away from running water. The fire had been started, the meal had been eaten, and after a relatively peaceful evening they had settled in for the night.
As customary, Inuyasha settled in for first watch… and all the watches if he didn't bother to wake anyone. He had chosen a higher branch than usual to sleep on, and this proved to almost be his undoing.
Although youkai attacks mainly came from above ground there were a number of species that inhabited the soil. Their scent was that of the earth, and though their movements could be felt as vibrations on the ground, they got harder to detect the further one went from the forest floor.
Normally, these underground youkai were tame in comparison to their brethren. But, given the right incentive, they could become aggressive. Generally, a good number of pieces of the elusive Shikon no Tama were enough to provoke anything into aggression.
The beast, a worm youkai, had been plowing through the dirt when it had felt it, the gentle hum of the aura of the Shikon against its senses. The hum lured the creature in as surely as any Siren's Song would. When it was directly beneath the location of the fragments, it lunged upward.
Inuyasha's eyes snapped open. He barely had time to mutter, "Shit!" beneath his breath before his legs were gathered beneath him and he was leaping in Kagome's direction. He didn't understand how the pulse of youki had gone unnoticed, but he had no time to dwell on those thoughts. The ground gave a massive upheaval beneath where Kagome was sleeping, and the now alert teenager found herself, sleeping bag and all, in the jaws of a youkai. She did what any normal girl would have done: screamed.
Inuyasha's ears turned back at the sound. He didn't give his now alert companions a second glance as he measure the distance between his claws and the worm's lower jaw. "Don't move, Kagome!" The girl tensed and obeyed his yelled command and with one swift motion lit the sky with swipes of yellow youki. Of course, he also managed to swipe the bottom jaw off of his opponent. Kagome fell to the ground along with the jaw, and the worm –hissing in pain- quickly retreated back down its hole.
Sango and Miroku glanced at each other before they turned back to the predawn scene. Kagome was on the ground in a heap her sleeping bag marked with gashes the beast's teeth had left. Inuyasha was standing a bit away, panting, and looking every bit the office worker who had just been told to turn in a job that they didn't expect to have to have done for another two weeks.
The hanyou's nerves were frayed. He had needed the sleep he had been getting that night. Never before had they been attacked in the middle of the night while they were camped outside. Oddly enough, they were ambushed quite frequently when indoors, but outside at night seemed relatively safe for him to lower his guard just a tiny bit.
Obviously, he was wrong.
Unable to meet the questioning looks shot toward him from his companions, he folded his arms into his sleeves, stuck his nose in the air, "Keh"'d, and turned on his heel, marching into the forest.
The remaining members of the Inu-tachi shot each other helpless gazes and shrugged.
~*~
Another sigh escaped Kagome's lips. She was sure Inuyasha hadn't slept a wink since that night, and that had been over 5 days ago. She knew that the attack had unnerved him, but she was beginning to seriously wonder. He should have been able to relax now that they were back at Kaede's… but last night in the hut had been another sleepless one. His restless moving had woken her more than a few times during the dark hours of the night.
And now, as she followed his slightly drained aura though the forest, it only took her a moment to figure out where he had gone. When she entered the Goshinboku's clearing a few minutes later, she wasn't surprised to see red in the branches. But she was surprised to find him asleep; totally unaware of her presence (unless one counted the ear turned in her direction.)
He was in a lower branch, back against the trunk, Tetsusaiga resting on his shoulder.
As she looked up at him from her spot at the edge of the clearing, a smile graced her lips. She liked to see him sleep (especially one he so needed) but it felt right somehow to see him so relaxed in the boughs of the tree where they had first met. Resisting the urge to go to him and scratch his ears (just as she had done after first falling through the well) she turned and started to leave. She turned for one last look at an Inuyasha with all his barriers down before she returned to the hut, the smile to remain on her face well into the next day.
~*~
[AN] Random? Yes. Maybe a little inspired by the fact that I know exactly what it's like to not get enough sleep days on end. It was just a sudden idea and I was bored. I might take this down and rewrite it in more detail after getting all of your feed back.
Ja ne!