Disclaimer: I'll own Inuyasha, yes, I will! As soon as I copy those legal documents…

Hanyou Don't Get Sick

Chapter Four:

Fear

Kagome hovered anxiously as her mother checked Inuyasha a final time before retiring for the night. Higurashi Sayoko glanced at her daughter and nearly sighed. The poor girl was all but wringing her hands in pure feminine distress; Kagome's iron-reigned composure had crumbled as soon as Sayoko had returned in the late morning, and she had been reduced to endless and petty qualms throughout the afternoon. Kagome's fervor to help Inuyasha had, at times, seemed to be counterproductive and detrimental to Sayoko's attempts to improve Inuyasha's condition.

Especially her rather inappropriate suggestion that they take his temperature rectally for accuracy.

"He looks as comfortable as he's going to be tonight," Sayoko comforted her daughter, standing and giving Kagome a gentle pat on the shoulder. Noting the fatigue in the young girl's eyes, Sayoko added firmly, "Kagome. He will be fine. You need your rest. You won't do him any good if you're exhausted."

Wiping leaky eyes, too tired from the day's anxieties to hold back the tears, Kagome asked her mom pleadingly, "He'll be better in the morning, won't he, Mama? He'll be okay, right?"

There was a depth of emotion in Kagome's eyes that any mother would feel uneasy seeing in her fifteen-year-old child's eyes. Sayoko coughed lightly and cast Inuyasha's restlessly sleeping form a narrow-eyed glance. She and the boy would need to have a serious talk about rights and responsibilities and keeping his hands off her daughter, and soon.

Very soon.

She coughed again. But that was getting off topic. Looking straight into Kagome's eyes, Sayoko stressed, "Yes, Kagome. He will be fine. I don't know what he's sick with, so I can't guarantee his condition will improve overnight, but…" Her daughter looked on the brink of some complete emotional breakdown, so she hastened to reassure her. "He's strong, your friend. And he's a fighter. He'll get through."

He'd better. He was long overdue for that talk.

Sayoko turned to go, then stopped, frowning. She glanced back at Kagome, PJ-clad, kneeling by Inuyasha's head. Her gaze traveled the short distance between Inuyasha's futon, on the floor, and Kagome's bed, blankets already turned down, ready for the night. "I don't like these sleeping arrangements," she murmured.

Kagome had been thoroughly oblivious to her mom's continued presence in the room. "Wha—?" Her head snapped up, eyes following her mother's. She, too, frowned thoughtfully. "Hm. Maybe you're right, Mama. Do you think I should set up a sleeping bag or something down here?" She indicated the floor beside the fitful hanyou.

Sayoko's eyes could have popped from her head. "NO!" Her response was a little too quick, a little too forceful, and had Kagome gaping at her. "No," Sayoko softened her words with a poorly attempted smile. "I think…You'll sleep better in your bed, honey. Now get some rest."

"All right." Kagome ascribed her mother's wacky behavior to stress, tiredness, or maybe a lingering reaction to that dumb idea about taking his temperature…through his…

Kagome flushed, and she cast Inuyasha an embarrassed glance. Good thing he'd been unconscious then. How utterly mortifying. With a sigh, she patted his shoulder lightly, whispered a casual good-night, and flicked off the lamp as she crawled into bed. Worry did strange things to her sanity, her head—and her heart.

He was running. He was always running. It didn't matter if he ran towards a goal, an enemy, the next fight, or away from his pursuers. He could never, never outrun the memory, the tears, the pain. The humiliation.

He'd stopped running the day he met her. Inuyasha, even in his fitful sleep, mumbled quietly as his lips curved into a gentle smile. She'd grounded him—literally, with one damn word and the magic of the rosary bound around his neck—and kept him tethered to her.

Naturally, he'd fought the tether, at first. He'd cursed its boundaries, cursed her existence, convinced himself he hated her for it. But it was, in reality, all a lie, and he'd always know it, somewhere hidden deep in his consciousness. He couldn't hate her.

He loved her.

"Yes, Inuyasha, love her."

Inuyasha stirred restlessly as dark clouds bloomed over his dreams, shading the peaceful scenes that had dominated the first few minutes of his rest. The all-too familiar laugh, that disgusting odor, pervaded his senses, and he thrashed out, a call catching in his throat.

He had her.

Naraku always claimed his goal was to gain power, fueled by greed, revenge, a twisted sense of need—no different than any other of the legion of evil men on the planet. But under it all, Naraku just wanted to see his greatest foe, Inuyasha, suffer.

"And what would you do for the one you love?" His filthy hands were all over her as she screamed, protesting, fighting the mysterious, invisible bonds created by the power that Inuyasha's fever-fogged mind bestowed upon Naraku. "What would you do to protect her?"

Her wide, terrified eyes met his, and she begged him, in a voice filled with pain, to say her name. Just…say her name.

And he couldn't remember.

He choked on the words; in some part of his brain, Inuyasha knew it was just a dream. But that knowing didn't lessen the gut-ripping, knee-buckling fear as her name danced just out of reach. Gods, don't let this happen, he begged as the smell of her blood—sharp and metallic, harsh in his nostrils, and oh-so-real—blinded his senses.

Naraku smirked as he dug his fingers into her skin, letting her shrieks of pain echo across the land, reverberate through Inuyasha's skull.

"Too bad, Inuyasha." He dragged his fingers along the side of her neck, over her shoulder, down her chest, exposing ripped flesh as his hands roamed over her body. "You're just not good enough for her…"

His own silent screams jolted him awake, and it was to steel-edged pain that he felt his senses resume their waking functions. His heart pounded unevenly, his body drenched in sweat, his eyes jerking wildly across the ceiling. The muted light was pale, and Inuyasha's muddled, frantic internal clock registered early predawn. His ears caught the sounds of peaceful breathing from somewhere to his right, slightly elevated—Kagome, tucked safely into her bed—not caught in Naraku's trap, not bleeding and dying before his eyes as he watched helpless.

Just a dream. Just a nightmare.

Reality struck with cheerful persistence. The vindictive little devils were still there, digging teeth, claws, and their many sharp instruments of torture into weak, pain-bruised muscle.

Inuyasha lay still on his futon, feeling uncomfortably hot, sweaty. He struggled away from the jellifying terror of the nightmare, forcing himself to focus on the present. Dream-memories were faint, all but the last merely indistinct blurs of sound and smell and feel, all buried under present and remembered agony from his dumb stomach. Maybe he had eaten too fast, after all, he thought, and had gotten indigestion.

The result of that was that the call of nature was distressingly persistent.

Sighing, Inuyasha flipped back the covers and slowly staggered to unsteady feet, stumbling as quietly as possible out of Kagome's room and down the hall. He didn't like the bathroom—small; covered in shiny, bright tile that hurt the eyes and amplified noise; smelling overpoweringly of soaps, cleansers, disinfectants, and the like.

He leaned weakly against the counter in the unlit room, his bladder relieved. The pain had yet to recede, but it had eased a little, somehow bearable now as it hadn't been the night before. Pausing to catch his breath, Inuyasha cast the white object in the corner—a 'tub', Kagome had called it—a glance, wondering if maybe a bath would make him feel better.

It always seemed to work for Kagome.

With a small, wincing shrug that pulled at stiff muscles, Inuyasha peered a moment at the sliver handles through the darkness before giving them a yank. Rewarded by the thunderous downpour of rapidly heating water, Inuyasha plugged the drain and stripped off his clothes—his haori, with Tetsusaiga, was still somewhere in Kagome's room, he supposed—and dropping them in a pile on the floor.

Exhaustion slammed into him, and Inuyasha groaned gratefully as he lowered his battered body into the loving embrace of the steaming water. The heat scalded his skin, washed away sweat and his carefully accumulated and preserved protective layer of dirt, and soothed both body and mind. Even the stomach demons relaxed as he sloshed water over his chest.

Heavy-eyed, he sank deeper into the water, shutting off the tap. The heat fuzzed his tired brain, wrapping him in a warm cocoon of safety. His eyes slid half-shut, and he sighed deeply as his thoughts rambled. His illness-borne dreams swarmed his consciousness, fragments of nightmares that sent an involuntary shudder through him even as he shifted lower in the water. Some he recognized as old memories—flashbacks of his younger days. Others were twisted half-truths, perversions of things he struggled to remember.

Many were just plain lies. Lies brought by his subconscious guilt, his ever-present fear that someday, something would happen to Kagome…and he just wouldn't be fast enough.

The water lapped at his chin, and he mumbled something incoherent as he tipped back his head to slide fully under the water. Just one minute, he thought as he shut his eyes in defense against the hot water. Just one minute…then I'll be up. I promise.

The water closed over the top of his head, and he was just too tired to respond to the reflexive alarm that squealed in his head. Hot liquid forced its way down his throat, into his lungs, but the pervading warmth comforted him from the new sense of burning agony.

And his last conscious thoughts were slow, and drugged, safely ensconced in the muted tones of underwater bliss.

8.5.04

NOTES: I don't quite have the dream sequence down, I apologize. I understand it would make more sense if Inuyasha were the one to hurt Kagome, having forgotten who she was (it's a recurring nightmare for those two, isn't it?) but I figured I'd just break tradition. Naraku's gotta play some part of Inuyasha's fevered dreams, shouldn't he?

And don't worry. I won't let him drown. =)