AN: LONG CHAPTER! 10 pages on Microsoft Word. *Grin* I'm so proud of myself.
Chapter 36: Astrophysical
I pulled out sixty dollars from my pocket and hurried to hand it to the cab driver before Kagome could pay him. Sesshomaru had given me some money for the cab back and I wanted to make it up to Kagome. I didn't really think a cab fare would cut everything I had gotten from Kagome, but I figured it was a start. We got out of the cab and I followed Kagome into the apartment and up the stairs. When we finally got to her apartment, I glanced, making sure that no one was watching.
I hadn't smelt any youkai around the building, but it didn't hurt to be careful. Not to mention, I wasn't sure what Kagome's neighbors would say if they saw us enter her apartment. Not only was I dirty and bloody, but also I was a guy… going into Kagome's apartment. I didn't think it would look too good for Kagome's reputation.
"Aren't you coming in?" Kagome asked, and I realized that she had already entered, and was waiting for me. I hurried inside and Kagome locked the door. "Well, here we are. My apartment. Do you want something to eat?"
"Uh, actually… could I take a shower?" I asked, looking down at my clothes.
"Oh! How stupid of me. Of course." Kagome gasped, smacking her forehead before she led me to a room near the front door. "Um, here's the bathroom. I suppose you should… uh… just get started and I'll see about a towel and some fresh clothes for you."
I waited till Kagome had gone and closed the door behind her. I looked around the small room and studied the knobs that were used to run the shower. There weren't too many and I figured out how to run the shower fairly quickly. Once the water was a nice temperature, I kicked off my shoes—the one's Kagome had bought me—and stuffed my socks inside them. I hoped around on the cold tiled floor while I pulled my ruined hoodie and shirt off and dumped them on my shoes. I was a little upset about the hoodie, since Kagome had given it to me. The shirt, pants, and socks were all from the couple dozen set that Rin had bought for me while I had been unconscious.
Once I was out of my top layer of clothes, I looked down at my boxers nervously. Common sense and experience told me that I should strip out of my underwear and get into the shower, but another part of me wondered if it was appropriate for me to do that in Kagome's house. After a few seconds, I pulled my underwear off and hid it under my pants, before quickly getting into the shower and beginning my shower.
I had already finished washing the shampoo out of my hair when Kagome knocked on the door.
"Inuyasha?" Kagome asked, and the door creaked open. "I've got some clothes and a towel for you."
"Okay." I called out, a little embarrassed with her seeing me in the shower. I watched her as she quickly dropped a couple items of clothes onto the floor and hurried off with my bloodied clothes.
I hurried to finish my shower and stepped out of the shower and toweled dry. My hair was dripping down my back, so I threw the towel around my shoulders while I got dressed. Kagome had given me a pair of baggy black jeans and a white T-shirt with a red sweater.
I wondered, briefly, where Kagome had found these clothes for me, but I remember she had a brother, and the clothes did smell faintly of Kagome, except that the smell wasn't Kagome at all. Shrugging, I walked out of the bathroom while trying to dry my hair, but it wasn't working.
"Kagome?" I called, sniffing the air.
"I'm out here." Kagome called back and I walked through the kitchen to a small, covered balcony. She was sitting outside, watching the stars. I was mildly surprised that it was so late, but not terribly. My fight with Naraku hadn't taken too long; however, the rain had slowed everything down. Not to mention we needed to get everyone, even the humans, off the pillar Naraku had created. I had helped the humans down, even though I hadn't stayed for the creation of the treaty and the signing. I really didn't care all that much. Besides, after an entire day of fighting, being injured, dying, rain, walking, waiting and moving prissy humans down a tall pillar with rock spikes waiting to impale me if I fell, I had been ready for a shower and bed
Funny that I wasn't tired anymore. I took a seat next to Kagome and began to tried to comb my hair with my fingers. It wasn't working at well as I had planned, as I kept wincing as I started to pull out my hair with the snarls.
Kagome stood after a few minutes of watching me struggle and came back with a spray bottle and a comb.
"Inuyasha. Go ahead and sit on the ground. I'll see if I can help you with the tangles." Kagome offered with a smile I took her offer and slid off the bench, onto the hard floor. I quickly realized that the floor was terribly wet, so I stripped off my sweater and sat on it. Kagome sat behind me, with one leg on each side of my head and quickly began to work on my hair.
"Was I really dead?" I asked after a moment.
"I… I believe so." Kagome sighed. "The demons in the area seemed to think you were."
"Than I must have been." I agreed, before lapsing into silence again.
"What was it like?"
"What was what like?"
"Dying… and death."
"It's nice. I think I prefer being alive though."
"Just nice?"
"I don't really remember it. I just remember seeing my mother's face again."
"Oh." Kagome nodded and we lapsed into silence again "What's bothering you?"
"Who said anything was bothering me?"
"I did. You just look uncomfortable. I thought you would be happier now that there's this new treaty and all. Aren't you excited?"
"Not really. Should I be?"
"I don't understand. This is a big step forward for you You've become an accepted part of the demon community."
"Legal maybe. The only thing we have going for us is that now is that it's illegal to kill us. I don't think that my kind will ever be fully accepted. We'll always have to struggle for acceptance."
"But I still don't understand. The treaty…"
"Is legal and nothing else. You can't force people to change their opinions. Example, racism is illegal… right?"
"Uh, sort of." Kagome nodded.
"So, it's illegal to kill a man because he has a different—ouch!"
"Sorry." Kagome apologized as she kept trying to pull out a snarl.
"If he's a different race from you." I finished. "However, you can't get a member of the KKK to accept his foreign neighbor."
"Yes, but if people, or in your case demons, are raised to believe that youkai's and hanyou's are equal, things will be different." Kagome told me confidently.
"Kagome, look at the stars."
"What about them?" Kagome asked, as she stopped combing my hair for a second.
"Other than with the change of the seasons, do the stars ever change?"
"No."
"That's how it is with me and my kind. No matter what happens, our status will always be the same. Nothing is going to change." I sighed and Kagome began to comb my hair again. She began to braid my hair, and I looked up at the stars and sighed. After a moment, I closed my eyes and cautiously rested my head against her knee.
"Oh!" Kagome whispered after a moment and I looked up at her, afraid she was angry. I was a little surprised to see she wasn't even looking at me. I saw that she was pointing to the sky and I followed her finger to see what she was pointing at.
"What is it?"
"Didn't you see it?" Kagome asked, and I shook my head.
"It was a shooting star. Aren't they beautiful? I used to think they were rather sad, but I think, for you, they're hopeful."
"Huh?"
"A shooting star is a change in the sky. Don't you see? It's a change in the permanency that you see. Congratulations, Inuyasha."
"I still don't see it." I shrugged.
"Don't worry, Inuyasha." Kagome smiled, kissing my hair. "Everything changes… and I'm going to be with you through it all."
"Really?"
"Of course. I'm your friend, aren't I?" Kagome smiled and I smiled back.
"If you want."
"And I do want to be your friend."
"Good, because I want to be your friend too."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The fog lay on the ground and floated in the air. It was heavy, so heavy that I couldn't see the ground at all. I couldn't see much further than five feet in front of me either. I looked around, trying to figure out where I was, but I soon realized that I couldn't see anything at all.
I stayed where I was for a moment, before I began to wandered through the fog, looking for something… or someone. I didn't know what I was exactly looking for. However, I did know that it was important and I knew that, when I saw it, I would know it.
"Kagome?" I heard Inuyasha call, and I turned around to face him. I was a little surprised because he was wearing a pair of red PJ's, but he didn't seem to notice at all.
"Inuyasha." I smiled, shrugging off his weird apparel. "Can you help me? I'm looking for something, but I can't find it."
"Sure. I know where it is." Inuyasha grinned, as he turned around, and walked further into the fog. I stood there, watching him, until he had completely vanished in the surroundings. "Come on, Kagome. Follow me!"
"I can't see you Inuyasha." I protested, as I started after his voice.
"Sure you can. Can't you see me?" Inuyasha laughed, but I began to panic. The fog was becoming heavier with every step I took; it was so heavy I was having trouble inhaling the wet air.
"Please, Inuyasha. I can't see anything!" I begged, as I scanned my 'surroundings'.
"I'm right here!" Inuyasha shouted and I could tell he was growing aggravated.
"Where?"
"HERE!" Inuyasha shouted, and I gasped at the anger in his voice.
I stopped and looked around. I had finally stumbled onto a small area where there was no fog, except for on the ground, where it was especially heavy. I shuffled towards the center of the fogless area, and felt my foot snag on something.
"SHIT!" I shouted as I fell onto my hands and knees, with my left leg held in the air. I disentangled myself from what I had tripped over and crawled back to look at it. Whatever it had been had been huge and heavy. Perhaps it was what I was looking for. I ran my hands through the fog trying to find anything solid, and finally I hit the object. Grabbing it, I pulled myself towards it and stiffened when it tipped over.
"Kagome?" Inuyasha asked, as I saw his face. It was Inuyasha, and he was hurt. Horribly. Blood covered his clothes and face. He was bleeding from him mouth and nose, and his eyes were a little glazed. I looked at his hands and noticed that they were covered in blood as well, and the blood was flowing from underneath his clothes. I pulled him into my lap and brushed his hair out of his face. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew that my hands were wet, but I barely noticed that, or the fact that the fog had suddenly disappeared.
"Inuyasha. Don't move. You shouldn't, or you'll hurt yourself even worse." I told him, as I unbuttoned his top to look at his wounds.
"It really hurts." Inuyasha laughed.
"I know." I nodded. I tried to fight to urge to vomit when I saw his wound. It was a chest wound and it looked as if someone had ripped the large areas of skin from his chest and stomach regions. The blood was flooding freely and there was a great amount of it. In fact, there was so much that I realized that Inuyasha should have, actually, been dead. Pressing my hands over my mouth, I bit my tongue and tried to keep my stomach steady.
"Goodbye… again." Inuyasha whispered, before he pulled my face closer and gave me a kiss on the cheek I watched as he slumped back down to the ground and I numbly registered that he was dead. Pressing my fingers to the wet region of my face, the one that Inuyasha had kissed, I pulled my fingers away and saw that the tips of them were painted with blood. Pressing my hands to my face, I tried to close my eyes from the sight.
"Oh… God." I whispered, as it became harder to breath. Even though I shut my eyes tightly, I had seen the gore and I could still see Inuyasha's death. I almost gagged when I finally gathered the courage to look down at my clothes and I found that the blood had begun to stain my clothes and skin. There was so much of it that the blood was leaking onto the ground and, as I looked down at Inuyasha, I felt a scream rising in my throat.
I sat up in bed screaming. I could feel the blood all over my body and even my pillow and sheets were damp. I tried to stop my screams by pressing my hand against my mouth but all I did was bite myself. I could taste my own blood in my mouth and I screamed again. Throwing off my covers I ran down the hall, intent on scrubbing the blood off my body. I slammed the door to my bathroom and turned the faucet on. I cupped my hands under the flowing water and began to splash water all over my face and body. I scrubbed at my skin, but the sensation of Inuyasha's blood wouldn't leave. I looked down at my hand and saw that it was still bleeding from the bite mark on the palm, but I couldn't think of what to do about it. I couldn't focus on anything other than the sight and feel of the blood that coated my skin.
"Kagome!" Inuyasha shouted as he ran into the bathroom. He flipped on the lights and I saw that his gun was drawn and he was prepared to fire. "What's wrong?"
"OH GOD!" I yelled at him, as I turned my head to look at him. I was nearly crying and I was slightly, if not completely, hysterical. "Get it off me! Get it off me!"
"Get what off you?" Inuyasha asked, clearly disturbed.
"Your blood! CHRIST! It's everywhere!" I screamed, as I looked back at the sink and began to wash my hands and arms again. I felt some tears as they ran down my face, but I wasn't crying too hard. I was simply hysterical.
A small part of me had already analyzed my panic and wanted to treat me. I knew that I was irrational and I knew that it had only been a dream, but the rational of my mind was by now only a small part and it was growing smaller by the second.
"Kagome, the only blood on you is your own." Inuyasha said, in a soothing voice. "Please. Calm down."
"DAMN IT! I can feel it all over my body. And you died! You died again! How could you? How COULD you?!" I screamed at him, as I turned my body away from the sink for a second before returning to my task of scrubbing myself.
"I'm sorry?" Inuyasha replied, though it sounded like he was unsure if he should really be apologizing or not. "Uh, what do you…"
"Kagome?!" I heard a voice shout from the outside hallway. "What's going on in there?!"
I turned the water off and tried to fight back my tears enough to answer my door but it wasn't working. On the plus side, I had stopped screaming.
Growling, Inuyasha hurried out of the bathroom to answer the door.
"Ka-Hey! Who are you? Where's my sister? What's going on?"
"Inuyasha. Inside. Nothing. Go away." Inuyasha snapped before slamming the door. Stomping back into the bathroom, Inuyasha began to throw open a few drawers in an attempt to find something. "Don't you have a first aid kit?"
"In… In the kitchen." My rational side finally managed, as I tried to control the involuntary shaking of my muscles.
"The kitchen?" Inuyasha muttered as he left the bathroom. "Who the hell keeps a first aid box in the damn kitchen?"
I turned the water back on and began to scrub at my skin again. I could still feel Inuyasha's death and blood coating my skin. I barely noticed Inuyasha's return until I felt his hand wrap around my shoulder. He pulled my hands out of the water and forced me to sit on the toilet. I watched through my tears as he took a long roll of bandages and some anti-bacterial cleanser out of the first-aid box. He gently cleaned the bite-wound on the palm of my hand and then began to bandage it. When he was finished, he looked up to meet my wet eyes.
"Now, you say that you're covered in my blood? And you can't get it off?" Inuyasha asked and I nodded. "Well, there's a reason for that. It's the demon in my blood. It'll stick to you unless you use a special soap to get it off. Let me see. I think I've got some of that soap here."
I watched as Inuyasha dug around in his pocket before showing me a small bottle.
"Here. Now, why don't you take a long shower and use up all my special soap. I'll get you out when the soap should have worked." Inuyasha told me before he helped me stand and left with the promise of gettign a towel. I quickly stripped out of my clothes and got into the shower. It wasn't long before I had used all of Inuyasha's special soap. I stayed in the shower, allowing the water to flow down my body. I could feel the soap and the water washing away the blood and finally my muscles stopped shaking.
I was finally sane again, but now I was tired. I was so tired I had to sit down on the floor of the shower. I heard a knock at the door and I slowly, shakily, turned off the water.
"Yes?" I croaked, my voice almost gone.
"I'm coming in, all right?" Inuyasha asked.
"All right." I replied, wrapping my arms around my chest and lower stomach. I smiled weakly as Inuyasha walked in with his eyes shut tightly and a towel extended. Taking the towel, I pressed it against my chest and wrapped it around my body. "You can open your eyes now."
"Are you feeling better?" Inuyasha asked, blushing slightly. I nodded, and tried to stand. Grabbing my hand, Inuyasha hauled me to my feet and gently helped me to my room.
Once I was had changed, Inuyasha helped me into the living room where I assured Souta, Hitomi and a few of my other neighbors that I had not, in fact, almost been raped or murdered by Inuyasha. I could tell that Souta had drilled Inuyasha mercilessly on our relationship, but Inuyasha must have handled it, because no one mentioned anything to me. When everyone had finally gone, I tried to stand up, but I found that I couldn't move at all. I was ready to fall asleep on the floor, but Inuyasha insisted on carrying me to bed.
"I'll have to ask Souta what he was doing here." I sighed, as I rested my head on Inuyasha's shoulder.
"Oh, I can tell you that." Inuyasha snorted. "You'd better watch out or you'll be an aunt soon."
"Really?!" I gasped.
"Yeah. Your brother and that Hitomi girl both smelled heavily of each other." Inuyasha blushed and I laughed. I let go of Inuyasha's neck as he laid me down on the guest bed and pulled the sheets over me.
"I can't…" I protested.
"Yes, you can. Your bed is soaked with sweat and it's really just disgusting, so you can't sleep there. I'll just sleep on the floor, since you're probably more tired than I am." Inuyasha shrugged, not meeting my eye. "Now, go on. Sleep. You must be exhausted and drained."
"Inuyasha?" I asked, as Inuyasha sat down on the rug next to the guest bed and bundled up his sweater to use as a pillow.
"What?"
"What was in that soap and how did you know it would work?"
"It was just normal soap from your kitchen." Inuyasha muttered as he placed his head on his makeshift pillow and turned away from me. "I used to have nightmares when I was little and that's what my mom always did. She'd give me some 'special soap' and tell me to wash away the nightmares. It's all in your head."
"Don't you want to know what I dreamed about?" I asked, yawning slightly.
"No. Everyone is entitled to his or her own nightmares. Tell me in the morning if you want, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Now, go to sleep." Inuyasha commanded me.
"Well, good night." I whispered, but Inuyasha didn't respond. I hadn't really expected him to. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I kept seeing snippets of my nightmare inter-woven with memories of Inuyasha at the institute, interwoven with memories of him free. I let out a sigh and watched Inuyasha's sleeping form inch closer to my bed. "Why do you worry about me so much, Inuyasha? I don't understand you. Why do you care?"
I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but, when I was finally about to drift off, I heard a shuffling and I felt the side of the bed dip under a sudden weight. I almost opened my eyes in surprise, but I didn't. Nothing bad had happened yet, and Inuyasha wasn't alert. I trusted him.
"Because you were the first doctor that did cared about me." I heard Inuyasha whisper, his voice laced with sleep and weariness. "You didn't care that I almost killed you and you didn't care that I was a freak. You could have dismissed me as a hopeless case when I was in the institute, just like all the other doctors did when Youkai attacked them, but you didn't. There were hundred of times that you could have abandoned me, but you never did. You always came back and you never treated me like I was any different from anyone else.
"You let me out into the world when no one else would. Besides, almost everything that I have is due to you." Inuyasha laughed shortly and then lapsed into silence. I almost thought he had fallen asleep, until he spoke again. "And you're my friend. I… Thank you, Kagome. Pleasant dreams."
I felt the mattress bend again before leveling out. I heard a quick shuffling and I opened my eyes to see Inuyasha curled up on the floor next to my bed. I smiled at him and, as I turned back to sleep, I mentally reminded myself not to step on him when I woke in the morning.
Another Omake- (Again, from my beta reader. I'm just not funny. *sweatdrop*)
Beta reader: Wow, she's caring. "here, just sleep on the floor... Good doggie!" -_-
So you know. I didn't mean it like that, damn it! He moved there himself anyway. ¬. ¬