You keep lying, even when you are at your greatest ease, because to appear cowardly is worse then most. Now that she /could/ shield herself, even to however weak the extent -- there was always the chance he wasn't really listening. That he hadn't really noticed...and she could just /pretend/.

"I'm never good at it."

There wasn't cheer when she finally decided to reply, energy draining.

"...I knew him when he was a baby. He was a counterpart of Naraku, and Kagura had him." She looked away, though she didn't shrug out of his grasp. "-- I think you were off trying to find Kikyou when she had set him in my arms, and he had begun to speak to her. It all got hazy after that, but I knew he was looking for something and he was getting annoyed as he dug deeper and deeper. It was like a drill -- some sort of ice pick that he was grating further and further with one of his tiny, perfect hands."

Kagome blinked, exhaling when she realized she'd been holding her breath.

"He found you, and kept digging. And then there was this dark spot, and he got happy again. He needed the darkness in me so that I could become corrupted, and become another reincarnation ... it took him so long that he supposed that it was the only thing there." The girl's voice brightened somewhat as she continued, though it ultimately dropped into the tired, over-used voice for excuses as to why she'd left her homework on the kitchen counter.

"You broke through the hut, and you saved me. The baby had found Kikyou somewhere in there, and knew that I hated her...no matter how I claimed that I didn't...and that was enough. Gomen nasai -- I shouldn't have -- if I hadn't, then you wouldn't have had to - "

The hanyou listened as long as he could stand it. He even exceeded his old record by a couple of seconds. Surprisingly, he really /listened./ He took in the information, tried to make as much sense out of it as he could. All he really got out of it was this one concept.

That little thing had used Kagome's hate - yes, he felt comfortable using the term 'hate' - for Kikyou and turned it against her. Once he'd gotten that, he really didn't need to listen anymore...

"You talk too much sometimes," he told her through her own words, leaning in to gently kiss her lips. But this time, there was no deliberate slowness of impending doom. That was nice. He wasn't crying. That was nice. They were both soaked. That was...something else that didn't quite come to mind right now. The hand still under her chin, Inuyasha slipped an arm around Kagome's waist, pulling her close. As if he needed to confirm something.

It was so hard to believe all that had just happened. Well, maybe not so hard. They'd gone through some weird things before, but never anything as momentous as this. They'd confessed love, and the world hadn't ended. They'd faced the child-like incarnation of Naraku, the last, since he was dead, and all that was left was a scorch mark and some dead leaves. And he could hold the miko without coming up with some silly excuse.

Now /that/ was nice.

"Yo-"

Kagome was about to protest when his lips pressed to hers, any sort of argument smothered before an actual sentence could be fully realized. Inuyasha's mouth was damp and warm as a hand reached to his shoulder, the other tentatively placed on the hanyou's hip as her feet arched, going up on tiptoe almost subconsciously.

It was nice not to expect the sky to come tumbling at any moment, not to expect something exceedingly horrid to automatically appear just when guards were let down and her babbling had ceased. It was so /nice/ to know that he was real, warm and living, and not a figment. She had started to have her doubts when she'd realized that he had been listening.

That didn't occur very often in her conversations with the him.

"Mm."

She murmured softly, the numbing tips of her toes within the ruined tennis shoes a thing of the past. They were just shoes, after all ... and when Inuyasha tasted very sweet, and smelled like rain for an exceedingly obvious reason ... it made her all the less inclined to focus on frivolous matters.

Like whether she was going to have to have her entire leg amputated.

Yes, there were much more important matters at hand.