Open Your Eyes – Seeing Eye to Eye
Kagome felt mortification flood her being, fear immediately following. Bad enough she'd taken a patient out of the hospital without permission, she'd dragged him into her home and dressed him. Slowly, painstakingly so, Kagome's eyes rose to meet answering honeyed amber ones darkened in angered annoyance. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened once more in a futile attempt to make words come forth.
Inuyasha merely continued to glare accusingly.
Giving up on speech, Kagome stood, head ducked as her mind ran without check. I'm all alone with a sex-deprived maniac whose only known weakness is cold, I'm all alone with a sex-deprived maniac whose only known weakness is cold, I'm all alone. . . The mantra rolled through her mind over and over, kindly forgetting the minor details of his formerly comatose state and the nurses' attempts at murder. Her chest throbbed, the shallow scratches Inuyasha had gifted her with earlier acting up for the first time since their attainment. Whatever small shock she'd suffered from was wearing off as she lifted one hand to hold to her chest.
Kagome edged around the couch, nervously making her way toward the entrance to the room. Inuyasha was talking, though nothing registered as the slightly panicked young woman came closer to her goal.
Inuyasha's eyes followed her progress with clear disgust. He wasn't sure how or why, but this pathetic being had woken him from the darkness and taken him in after he'd collapsed.
She'd also done a bit more than that, but he didn't care to think on that at the moment. Now was not the time to let instinct or hormones rage, even as her subdued fear wreaked havoc on his senses. "Well? Cat got your tongue?" The young woman made no sign she'd heard him. He repeated the statement, louder this time. Inuyasha was once more greeted with silent un-acknowledgment.
His thin patience was fraying as he followed Kagome with his eyes, the small pain in the back of his head and the various aches throughout his body registering for the first time and angering him further. Inuyasha was not particularly pleased with his situation, or what little he knew of it.
The last thing he could remember before waking up in the sterile, ammonia laden hospital room was driving. With Kikyou. She'd been afraid, more-so than the woman walking away from him, but of her same age, figure, stature, coloration. . . The list ran on and on. For a moment Inuyasha had fooled himself with believing this woman could have been the one in the car with him that day, when something had gone terribly wrong. Yet that was only a moment. The odds of Kikyou ending up amnesiac with a crafted 'family' were outrageous. He was no intellect, but he had more than enough common sense to know that. And this strange woman had a family indeed. Or at least a brother, a younger one he supposed.
Inuyasha's lip curled at the thought, baring unfriendly canines longer than any natural-born humans eye-teeth. He took some small satisfaction in the knowledge that if this pathetic mortal were to see his predatory grimace, she'd have been even more terrified.
There-in lay the problem. As of this moment, she wasn't seeing much of anything. In fact, even if she were, everything might appear too surreal for her and lead her to the false conclusion she was dreaming.
All this thinking was making the pounding in his head even worse. With a groan more than laced with aggression, Inuyasha rubbed at his forehead. "What the hell…" he began, trailing off. A lethargy and tiredness was slowly permeating his senses, so similar yet unlike the one he'd just woken from. Fighting as much as he could against the overwhelming urge to just lie where he sat, the canine humanoid felt himself slowly drawn back with heavy eyelids dropping ever lower.
Within moments, and despite all his best efforts, he was once more dead to the world.
---
Perhaps hours had passed; perhaps even days. All Kagome knew when she woke up was that the alarm clock was persistently bleeping to the uncaring morning world, awaiting the violence that would stop its primary function and ultimately make it frivolous.
Kagome wasted little time in complying, her tired mind raising her hand and slamming it down on the snooze button in an effort to stave off the inevitable – the motion of waking. Yet already the time for slumber was passing, and its need on Kagome was passing too.
Stifling a yawn, the young woman sat up in bed, slowly drawing her errant limbs close. She looked up, forcing her eyes to adjust to the dim, comforting light that filtered through the dusty blinds and the blinding brilliance of morning that came from the open door.
The one she had most assuredly closed last night…
---
The ebony darkness had fallen in around him like a heavy blanket. No – more like water, coming with the tide to weigh him down and wrap him in its cold embrace promising forever, because forever was the only promise he had ever made and broken, yet not.
Yet as Inuyasha woke, it was not to cold, to drowning, as he thought it would be. Nor was it to Kikyou's smile, secret and small and promising, no, she was gone.
She was gone.
Grief… That is what he should be feeling right now. Inuyasha couldn't. He couldn't grieve for something that he didn't feel was real.
For what wasn't real…
At least to him.
Anger began to fill the void, anger and purpose, fevered as it was.
"The woman," he growled, seeing Kagome in his mind's eye, furious for how she looked so like his beloved, his heart, his home, but she wasn't. No, this impostor woman was nothing more than a taunt, a tease sent by some cruel god…
Or his brother.
Inuyasha threw the blankets off him, standing in the ridiculous clothing that only enhanced his pale ivory skin's pallor. His mane's pallor. And the vivid gold that lingered as fire-touched in his eyes.
He had to find her. And soon.
He needed proof.
He needed to see…
---
Claws descended at her throat. No, not claws – fingernails. Or so Kagome thought as hands clasped around her neck and Inuyasha shook her hard. "You have to take me!" There was something wild in his voice, in his angered, furious demand. "You have to take me to her grave."
Kagome gurgled her response, not knowing whose grave the man choking her wanted to visit. If he didn't let up soon, it would be hers, and she had a feeling that wasn't what he was after.
Yet Kagome was scared. Stiff.
Then the anger flared to life as her weak scrabbling at his hands on her throat turned into an empowered tearing.
Inuyasha seemed not to notice. "Why aren't you saying anything?" he demanded, nostrils flaring.
Almost… There… Kagome's hands ripped Inuyasha's from her throat, as she responded with a quick punch in the face, panting as she scrambled through the blankets to the steady floor, staring at Inuyasha's shocked form on the bed. "I'm sorry," she said, sarcasm dripping from her every word, "I've never been into all that kinky shit." One hand lightly touched the abrasions, and she grimaced.
There would be no apologizes from Inuyasha. "Bitch," he spat, rubbing his jaw and moving forward off the bed itself, "You will take me to Kikyou's grave, or else…" His gaze held menace.
Kagome was shocked. He had just been strangling her because he though she would automatically know that when he was raving like a mad man about visiting "her" grave that Kagome would know "her" was Kikyou. After saving his ass not once, but twice, he had the audacity? And now, he was ordering her in her own home to take him to where he needed to go?
"You'll what?" she said, half bravado, most in anger.
The male grinned toothily, cracking his knuckles. "I'll kill you."
She doubted he was joking, but Kagome did not find it in her to particularly care at the moment. "Try."
Inuyasha growled, lunging at Kagome, who scrambled backward madly and pushed herself onto her feet. "Calm down!" she shrieked, edging away from the white haired demonesque man on the floor. "I can't help you out here – I have no idea where the grave you are looking for is. I don't keep a running tab on where everyone has been buried in the last five years!"
Something in Inuyasha's eyes seemed as if they were accusing Kagome of neglectfulness to society by not doing exactly just that.
Frustration, anger, and fright were taking their toll on Kagome, and she was fast nearing her breaking point. When Inuyasha rose to his feet, literally growling at her much as a dog would, Kagome could take it no more.
"I hope the damned police find me and lock me up for kidnapping charges so I don't have to deal with your idiopathic, self-loving, angry pity party anymore!" Kagome flew around her bed and out through the bedroom door, soaring down the stairs and barely pausing to grab her jacket off the coat rack and slip into her clogs before descending into the frigid morning snowfall. Ice flakes clung to Kagome's chilling form, though she plunged obstinately on away from the house. No light penetrated the cloud cover, and as the flakes eddied with the shifting winds she could make out a dark building to her left. Shifting directions, Kagome moved on, shivering as the warming effect of her anger and adrenaline waned.
She recognized the sliding doors to the bone eater's well when her finger's touched the wooden surface. For a moment, she paused, remembering back to when her grandfather had still been alive. She'd asked him back then if this were a wishing well, and if she could make her wishes and dreams real by crying them out to the well. He had laughed, and said maybe – but that was not the legend behind the well. He told her then how in the ages long past the remains of youkai that the villager's had slain were thrown into the well's depths, never to be seen again. He had also said be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it, yet these colloquialisms had been as natural to her deceased grandfather as breathing.
"Grandpa, can I make a wish?" Kagome murmured, using force to move the sliding door on its track, disturbing the snow that lay in its path. Her lips felt chapped from the short exposure to the outside, and her tongue ran over them as she stepped inside and pulled the door shut. Stepping back, she let out a sigh, noting the frigid bloom of air that formed in front of her as she did so. "Grandpa, can I?" She was cold, miserable, and frightened. Her mother was insane, her brother in a coma, her father a workaholic, and her childhood home a refuge for a homicidal maniac. Only the last of these was a new development, but in her current state, even the knowledge she already had was too much. Moving toward the stairs, Kagome eyed the top of the well, with its wooden cover. Lifeless, like the dark.
A sudden gust of wind sent an eerie howl through the small building, startling Kagome forward. Unseen ice sent her tumbling forward, with a helpless cry. Barely managing to keep on her feet, Kagome flew forward and down to land on top of the well cover, bashing her shin against the well lip hard enough to break the bone, knocking the wind from her lungs and bashing her skull against the wood cover. She felt dizzy, but the absurdity of the situation overwhelmed her. Laughter, weak, maniacal, welled forth from her lips, aggravating her pounding head as she lay prone, too weak to hope to move. Pained tears formed in her eyes and froze as they tried to run tracts down her cheeks, becoming icicles on her flushed skin. Grandpa, she thought, isolated in the cold, Can I make a wish?
"I wish... Someone would save me," Kagome whispered, her eyes closing as she sunk into oblivion, unaware of the cracking occurring beneath her. Someone, please...
- - -
Eyes watched her, thousands of them. They were heartless, inescapable accusers of – of what? She didn't know, but she felt the anger. She could taste the hate.
White was burning away the eyes, killing the watchers. There was a poison in the white that was the antithesis of pure – a hint of an underlying contradiction. The form of a canine, large and wild-eyed formed from the white, large, imposing, and menacing. A voice lay over the scene, when a blended figure of red and white streaked across her dream vision, facing off against the white dog. "There were legends of the offspring of youkai and ningen. By far, they were believed to be the more powerful beings, and less stable. Such children were not accepted by either side of their family tree, seen as evil by both sides. Not demon enough to be youkai – not human enough to be ningen." The white dog turned away from the humanoid figure, dismissing its presence. She could feel the anger radiating form the blended figure of red and white, the anger and the underlying pain.
Hanyou.
Hanyou.
HANYOU.
- - -
She remembered being cold, first. There was unforgiving, rough, bumpy cold beneath her, pressing uncomfortably into her skin. Cold, hanging in the air itself, tortured her as it snuck in and stole the warmth from her body. Cold in the pit of her stomach, in her head.
The warm hand that grabbed her sent an electric shock through her body, fogged as her brain was. Someone turned her over, a low groan forming in her belly and creeping up her throat, leaving a burning path of pain. "You..." Her words were not making sense. Was this her savior? Another word, another one she remembered from dreaming – what was it? What was - "Hanyou," Kagome whispered, the blurry red and white figure above her registering. From my dream... Is it?
A harsh "Keh!" exploded from the one over her. Kagome's vision adjusted, and she found herself looking up at Inuyasha, who currently looked as if he had eaten a particularly bad egg roll.
"Wha-"
"Shut up." Inuyasha grunted, lifting Kagome's dead-weight. She registered her surroundings, and the splintered wood on the bare ground.
Bare ground? "Where-"
"The bottom of some well."
The bone eater's well. "How-"
Inuyasha growled in frustration. "Do the words 'Shut up' mean nothing to you?" He shifted Kagome's bulk, jostling her pounding head. She felt light-headed, temporarily losing her vision as Inuyasha lifted her upward. Silence was singing to her, if not as loudly as Inuyasha's own silence.
The world was flooding back into Kagome's vision when Inuyasha stepped down from the lip of the well to the ground. He tossed Kagome off his shoulder, watching impassively as she fell to the ground with a thud. He glared at her, expectantly.
Kagome gasped, laying back against the ground and clasping her hands around her head. Forcing her eyes open, she met Inuyasha's slanted gaze. "What?"
Inuyasha raised his lip. "You are going to take me to her grave."
This is ridiculous. Kagome just concentrated on breathing through her teeth. Her pounding head made her temporarily immune to the cold.
"Now," Inuyasha demanded. Kagome didn't flinch.
Inuyasha growled, took one striding step toward Kagome, threw her over his shoulder, and then proceeded to march outside into the snow storm. Kagome bit her tongue holding back her moans of pain, shivering as the frigid outside air hit her like a tidal wave. "Wait," she groaned, "Wait! What, what are you doing?"
He grunted.
Kagome grimaced, frustration rising in her breast. "I can't bring you anywhere without my keys!" She paused. "And clothing!"
"You obviously thought you were dressed well enough when you ran out here and fell down a well," Inuyasha returned snidely. Kagome remained silent, though she could not prevent herself from shivering once again.
Silence fell over the two. Kagome sighed, mulling over the fact that while her teeth were chattering away, at least her head didn't feel like it had been lodged in a vise. Now it only felt like it had been hit by several solid lead bats.
Snowflakes were gathering on the back of Kagome's neck, sending chills down her spine – literally. With as much as she was shivering, Inuyasha would have to be a particular type of moron to not notice. Then again, she was not currently in the best frame of mind, so it could be entirely possible that she was severely misjudging recent events. After all, waking up to find a near-total stranger looming over her raving about wanting to see dead significant other's grave sites.
Then again, maybe it wasn't her head, nor her impromptu escape through the snow to the well house.
Why did it have to be so damn cold?