DISCLAIMER: As always, I don't own the original story of the Inuyasha series nor do I own the characters and I don't own the Chinese fairytale that I'm basing this story on. But as far as I'm concerned I do own the idea of mixing these two things together :).
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hey everybody! I'm back again!!! I hope you all haven't forgotten about this
story :). Crete was really fun! Very sunny, people are nice, food is good...really
unforgettable holiday!! Of course, I haven't forgotten about this story. It
took me a lot of concentration to finish a chapter, but here it is finally hahaha.
Sorry for letting you all wait!
Oh by the way, I got my grades back and I've passed both tests and the deadline!! I'm soooo happy!!
'...Italic...': thoughts
-- --: locations
"...": spoken words
-.-.-.-.-: time gap
=capslocked words=: noises
-by Kittymui-
Swaying attitude
Previously:
Suddenly, a certain scent gushed out of the same chamber and filled the halls.
Sesshoumaru abruptly stopped walking and turned to the origin. 'The scent of blood...her blood!!' he thought alarmed and began to dash through the hall towards her chamber. 'And a lot of it...!!'
-.-.-.-.-.-
The door to Kagome's chamber flung open and Sesshoumaru couldn't believe what he saw.
The girl was standing calmly in front of a broken mirror and silently watching her own reflection that was long gone. There were shards and pieces of glass lying everywhere around her feet. One of the shards, however, was covered in blood. And the sound of blood hitting the floor echoed in the silent chamber.
=TAP TAP TAP=
Without further thinking, Sesshoumaru ran to the girl and grabbed both her wrists. He had hoped not to see what he feared for as he lifted up her wrists up to his eyes but there they were. Two fresh cuts could be seen on each of her wrists and red liquid was gushing out of them.
When Sesshoumaru shifted his gaze from the wrists to their owner, he found her looking at him with a calm, nonchalant expression.
"Let me go..." she said with a soft voice.
The demon lord ignored the girl and turned his head to the doorway. "RIN!!!!" he yelled.
"Let me go!!!!" the girl repeated and struggled to escape from his strong grip.
Sesshoumaru turned back to her. "Don't move, you will quicken the bleeding," he ordered.
But that did not calm her down. "Just let me die!! I've got nowhere to go anymore!!!" she cried as tears stung her eyes.
Sesshoumaru didn't respond to this, he only stood there and kept his clawed hands firmly around the cuts to slow down the bleeding.
After several seconds, the girl stopped struggling and dropped her face to the floor until her bangs were covering her eyes. "Father and mother won't send people to get me...even Kikyou onee-sama didn't come to save me... And I can't go back...can't...go...back..."
She raised her head and looked the demon lord straight in the eyes with her teary navy ones. "Don't you understand? I'm a disgrace!! I've disobeyed my mother and lost my wings! I don't deserve to be the seventh princess of Celes!! I'm a nuisance!! I don't deserve to live!! I should have died back then!!"
She pushed her fists towards Sesshoumaru's chest and started to launch soft punches onto it. "Why did you have to save me? You should have let me die!!" she cried, broken in sobs.
Not really sure how to respond to this, Sesshoumaru just watched in silence how the girl vented her frustration upon his chest. But he was totally surprised by what happened next as she stopped punching his chest.
The girl suddenly collapsed to his chest and buried her head into his haori.
As if his body acted by itself, Sesshoumaru slowly let go of her wrists and moved his arms towards her back.
Right before they actually touched her back, he snapped out of it. 'What the hell am I doing?' he asked himself ridiculously.
But before he could even think of a proper explanation, the girl was putting her full weight onto his chest as she started to lose consciousness.
Out of reflex, the demon lord placed his hand on her back and held the girl close to him to prevent her from falling to the hard floor.
At that moment, Rin arrived. She widened her eyes when she saw the blood on the floor and the unconscious girl leaning onto Sesshoumaru's chest. "Sesshoumaru-sama...what happened?" she asked, broken in pants.
Sesshoumaru didn't reply nor turn to her, instead, he only looked down at the girl in his arms with an expression on his face that was unfamiliar to Rin.
-.-.-.-.-.-
As Rin cleaned Kagome's body, she couldn't help but steal glanced at Sesshoumaru once in a while. 'What was that look on his face a while ago...?' she mused bewilderedly.
More surprisingly, the demon lord didn't even intend leave the chamber when she said she was going to clean the girl's body and change her clothes. He merely walked towards a window and turned his back to them.
Rin started to clean the hands of the sleeping Kagome and mindlessly studied the bandages around the girl's wrists that were keeping the remaining fluid of life within her body.
Was her Sesshoumaru-sama changing? She couldn't help but wonder.
She had been following him ever since he had given her a second chance in life when she just turned 8. In these past 15 years, she had not been able to affect the demon lord as much as this strange girl had in the past week.
Rin gave the sleeping girl an envious look. 'Who or what are you...? And where did you come from?' she thought. 'What did you do to make him look at you with that expression...?'
Eventually, she finished cleaning and changing Kagome in a clean white nightdress.
"Sesshoumaru-sama?" she called as she gathered all the dirty cloths and bottles in a basket. "I'm done."
After pulling the white blanket over Kagome's lower body, Rin picked up the basket and turned to leave.
She had expected the dog demon to leave as well, but much to her disappointment, he stayed behind.
Reluctantly, Rin exited the chamber and closed the door behind her before shuffling down the hall.
-.-.-.-.-.-
After the door closed, Sesshoumaru finally turned around and looked at the girl on the bed. His eyes slowly traveled to his hands, which were stained with blood...her blood. He made his way to the divan next to the bed and sat down.
Sesshoumaru studied her pale face as he replayed her outburst of anger and sadness in his mind.
"Don't you understand? I'm a disgrace!! I've disobeyed my mother and lost my wings! I don't deserve to be the seventh princess of Celes!! I'm a nuisance!! I don't deserve to live!! I should have died back then!!"
'A disgrace...huh?' he thought nonchalantly.
Though he hated the scent of blood as much as Naraku, the thought of washing off her blood of his clawed hands surprisingly did not cross the dog demon's mind at all.
It was annoying...yes, the girl was indeed annoying him. But why did he have the desire to see her open her eyes again? Why did the thought of never being able to see those depthless navy orbs again made him uneasy?
Suddenly at that moment, he felt a pulse coming from the left side of his waist.
When Sesshoumaru dropped his gaze to his waist, he realized that one of the two swords was pulsating.
'Tenseiga?' the demon lord thought surprised.
=PULSATE=
'You want to heal her...?' Sesshoumaru asked inwardly, as his right hand slowly reached out for the hilt.
The demon lord stood up from the divan and unsheathed the healing fang, his eyes never leaving the sleeping girl on the bed.
He silently approached the bedside and raised Tenseiga up to the air. 'I can see them...' he thought, narrowing his eyes.
Several hideous creatures were hovering above the girl's body. They were bald, skinny and had a white skin. They had big round eyes that almost looked as thought they were about to fall out of their wrinkled heads, if it were not for their large eyelids.
Without further hesitation, Sesshoumaru slashed through the life-sucking creatures and waited for some reaction from the sleeping girl.
Slowly, her face began to regain its original healthy color again.
The demon lord's eyes traveled to the thick bandage around her wrists and he hesitated several seconds before sheathing Tenseiga and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
Curious whether the deep lethal gashes had recovered, Sesshoumaru carefully lifted up her right wrist and rested it onto his lap. He slowly started to unwind the bandage that was partly painted red of her blood.
After a short while of unwinding, he finally reached the skin.
Although his expression remained as stoic as always, he felt slightly relieved when he saw no gash or scar on her wrist.
His eyes narrowed, however, when they fell on the faint chain marks. 'They didn't heal...?' he thought surprised. 'Why...?'
His gaze shifted to the face of the sleeping girl. 'You won't let me heal those wounds...why...?' he asked in his mind.
After he concluded that it was no use solving that mystery on his own, Sesshoumaru gently put her wrist back on the mattress. He stood up from the bed and sat down on the divan again.
And without actually realizing it, the demon lord drifted into a shallow slumber.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The singing of birds could faintly be heard as the first rays of the rising sun fell on Kagome's face, waking her up from her deep slumber.
Slowly, but carefully, she got up into a sitting position. 'W-where am I?' she thought fuzzily. 'What happened...?'
Her half-sleepy eyes shifted to the broken mirror and the pile of glass shards on the floor. 'That's right...I tried to...kill myself...' she thought with an emotionless expression.
But then something clicked inside her and she quickly looked down at her wrists. Her eyes widened at the flawless skin of her right wrist, except for some faint red chain marks.
'Huh...?' Kagome thought puzzled and immediately began to unwind the bandage around her left wrist. 'Wait a minute...' she said inwardly as she realized that her left wrist was flawless as well. 'How...why...?' she wondered confused.
It was then that she finally noticed something unusual at the spot where the divan should be standing.
Kagome looked up form her wrists to the side of her bed and widened her eyes again of surprise.
It was the silver-haired demon lord. He was sitting on the burgundy furniture and resting his back against the back with his head slightly tilted aside and forward. Several strands of silver had escaped from behind his pointy ears and were shading a small part of his calm face.
Slowly and silently, Kagome crawled on the bed towards the demon lord until she was facing him. 'What is he doing here...?' she wondered with her eyes locked on his sleeping face.
Then she suddenly remembered what had happened after she cut her wrists. The whole scene reenacted itself inside her mind and she could clearly see the silver-haired demon standing before her again. He was holding both her wrists and she was desperately trying to escape from his grip.
"Let me go!!"
"Don't move, you will quicken the bleeding..."
Being deep in thoughts, Kagome reached out her hand to the displaced strands of silver hair. Her eyes followed her hand as it carefully placed the strands back to its place behind the dog demon's ear.
Mindlessly, her eyes slowly drifted back to Sesshoumaru's face again. But this time it looked different that before.
It took Kagome several seconds to realize that the demon lord was fully awake now and was looking at her with his gold-amber eyes.
Taken aback by surprise, Kagome totally forgot that her hand was stretched out and touching the demon's ear and they remained frozen like that for a short moment, which seemed like forever.
Their staring competition ended when the dog demon shifted his gaze from Kagome's eyes to her arm that was still stretched out next to his head.
Kagome immediately realized what he was looking at and quickly retracted her hand while dropping her gaze to the bed. "I-I'm sorry..." she apologized meekly.
Though her eyes were fixed on her knees on the bed, she could still feel his icy glare on her. 'What should I do now...? What should I say...?' she thought awkwardly.
Before she could decide on anything, her thoughts were blocked when the demon lord suddenly got up from the divan.
It was not until then that she realized that the lower body of Sesshoumaru was practically almost completely covered with red stains. Kagome widened her eyes. 'Is that...my blood...? He stayed by the bed all this time...?' she concluded surprised. 'Didn't he find me a nuisance...? But then...why...?'
All the questions became forgotten when she reminded herself that he was about to leave the room.
"W-wait!" she halted him.
Sesshoumaru stopped walking near the door, but didn't turn to her.
"W-why did you" Kagome began but was cut off when the dog demon started to speak.
"You wouldn't let me heal the wounds of your torn wings and chain marks...why?" he asked, looking slightly over his shoulder to her.
Kagome gave him a puzzled look. 'Eh...?' She had opened her mouth to ask the demon lord what he meant by that but no sound came out of it.
But before she could make any sound, the demon lord began to walk away again, leaving her no chance to form any words.
Sorry for the abrupt stop. But my muses won't give me enough inspiration to continue. And I didn't want my readers to wait more than 20 days for one chapter...sorry!! I still hope you liked this chapter :). I'll try to update as soon as possible again, but I will be a bit busy this holiday since I have to work and all...not to mention that I want to relax a bit too.
Lots of greets,
Kittymui
Next chapter: Uninvited visitors
-.-.-.-.-
Sorry, no teasers this time. I didn't have the time to finish the next chapter.
-.-.-.-.-
Vocabulary:
onee-sama: big sister
Tenseiga: healing sword given to Sesshoumaru by his father
-.-.-.-.-
REPLIES ON REVIEWS:
HanyouAkita: Thank you very much :). Thanks for being patient, I hope you liked this chapter as well.
bad-girl4: Sorry for letting you hang like that hehehe. Here's the next chapter, I hope you liked it.
weird0: I'm glad you loved it!
Helba: Hehehe yeah she did break it. But don't worry, this will be the last time Kagome trying to kill herself.
dORIE: Haha she will be able to do that very soon, be patient.
saiyuki luver: Thank you very much. The other stories that I've written are called "Life of a songmaiden", "An Elves' Child" and "Destiny".
Camisha: Hahaha yeah, I don't really need to many reviews for me to keep on writing. Because my principle is to finish what I've started so when I've started a story, I will definitely finish it.
Shadow62: Yeah I passed them, thank you very much for reviewing! :)
silverstargazing: Actually I went to Crete :). I started to write my chapter as soon as I came back, I really do hope you liked it.
AngleCat HellFire: Thank you so much, that's very encouraging.
migele: It's so good to know you liked An Elves' Child. As for Tenseiga, you really did see it coming didn't you? Hahaha.
demonswty: Don't worry and trust me. I won't let you down hehe :).
drow goddess: Thanks!!
sorata-chan: Hehehe I guess you found your answer by reading this chapter.
Shiroi senshi: Sorry for the cliffie, I sure hope you didn't see the end of this chapter as one hehe or else I would feel terribly guilty.
stoictimer: Thanks for reading my other story and reviewing it. I'm so happy to know you liked it! Thanks for reading this story too.
DarkAngelB: Nice long review, thanks!! It's really encouraging :). I'm happy to know I managed to write a different story than most of the stories.
fullmoon: Thanks!
Inukamisashi: Thanks!!!! I'll do my best!!
Guardian-of-the-night: Thank you very much! I had a really nice trip :). And sorry for the cliffhanger hehe.
robin's-hope: Pfew, I'm glad my readers could follow my explanation or I'll be really disappointed in my own explanation skills hahaha. Thanks for reading and reviewing the story! I'm so happy to know you like it.
Madam Sorceress: Sorry for the cliffie :). Thanks for reviewing and I hope you like this chapter!
Posted: 18 July 2004
Last Edited: 25 July 2004
Spelling check: YES