Disclaimer I don't own much. Of course this means Inuyasha and his crew.

Of Fates Unknown

Chapter Eighteen

The next morning, Kagome was working with Tadiz in the surgery, dealing with a new outbreak of the debilitating winter sickness that periodically swept the population. She had a great deal of respect for the physician and liked him as a person, too, despite his gruffness. He had welcomed her into the surgery and treated her with great kindness, when she had feared that he might resent her intrusion.

When he came into the room where she was preparing more potions with the help of Tadiz' young assistant and Shippou, she remarked that the same winter ills had affected her people for as long as she could remember.

"I wonder why such things happen only in the winter," she said.

"I've given that matter considerable thought," Tadiz replied, running his bony fingers through his thinning hair in a characteristic gesture. "I think it has to do with being confined indoors- too many people crowded too close together, and not enough fresh air."

"My mother said that once," Kagome recalled. "She believed that this kind of sickness actually passes through the air from one person to another."

"I think she was right," he nodded. "We tell those who are sick to avoid contact with others, but even when they do, those around them still become ill. Sometimes, I think of such sicknesses as being tiny bugs floating though the air, to be breathed in by others."

Shippou stuck out his tongue at this thought. "Ew, that makes me want to stop breathing!"

Tadiz laughed self-deprecatingly, "My wife says I am in danger of becoming a crazy old fool."

Kagome laughed with him, but the image remained with her, and when she returned to the outer rooms, she imagined the air to be filled with tiny insects hovering around the miserable people who sat waiting for their turns. When she began to imagine those bugs pouring into her nose, she pushed away the image very firmly.

Just as the deluge of patients had slowed to a trickle, a haggard-looking young woman appeared, carrying a small, pale boy whose ragged breathing was audible from the moment they entered the surgery. Tadiz greeted the woman familiarly and laid a hand on the boy's brow.

"He's no better, Master," the young woman said fearfully. "I did everything ye told me to do."

Tadiz tuned to Kagome briefly and she saw the look on his face. It was a look of frustration and resignation- a look that said he knew the boy would die and there was nothing he could do about it.

The woman turned to Kagome, too, and Kagome knew that she had heard what Tadiz could not say. Her dark eyes stared imploringly into Kagome's.

"Please, ma'am, can you help him? I've heard tell that ye're Ceadda. I don't hold with sorcery, but if it'll save his life…" She stopped, realizing belatedly that she might be insulting Kagome.

Kagome glanced at Tadiz, who shrugged. "I've done all I can do for the lad, Kagome. He has the wasting sickness in his chest."

Kagome lifted the child into her arms and carried him into the inner room, and even as she held him, she could feel a terrible heat rising from his chest. When she'd laid him down on the table and unwrapped the blankets covering him, her fingertips actually burned from the heat in the boy's chest.

Frightened, she touched his face and his hands and found them much cooler. Tadiz came in and she told him what she'd felt. He put his hands on the boy and said he felt nothing more than the mild fever the child had had for some time.

They both stared at her hands- and then at each other.

"Go ahead, Kagome," Tadiz said gently. "Sorcery can be put to good uses as well as bad."

"But I don't even know if…" Her voice trailed off as she moved her hands towards the boy's chest and saw a faint, bluish light begin to glow around them.

Both of them made a sound of surprise as the light became gradually stronger, until it was covering the boy's entire chest. She felt a faint tingling in her hands and noticed that the heat began to fade to gentle warmth.

Kagome stared at her hands in awe, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes. The strange light steadied, then slowly began to fade. Both of them were so fascinated with it that a few moments passed before they realized that the boy's breathing was no longer labored and he'd fallen asleep.

For a moment, Kagome feared that he'd died, that somehow she'd killed him. But then she saw the slow, steady beat of his pulse at the base of his thin neck. She looked up at Tadiz.

"So it's real," he said wonderingly. "The Ceadda power is real."

She stepped back from the table and lifted her hands to stare at them again. They still tingled slightly, but the light was completely gone.

"I'm frightened, Tadiz. I didn't ask for this. It… just happened."

He touched her shoulder reassuringly, a simple gesture that did far more for her than he probably knew. "It's a gift, my dear. And a gift to be proud of."

He gathered the peacefully sleeping child into his arms and carried him back to his mother. Kagome could hear the woman's anxious queries turn to happy cries, but she remained where she was. She just wasn't ready to face the woman's gratitude- and most likely her fear as well.

Tadiz is right, she thought. It is a gift to be proud of. But what else have I been giving? What else don't I know about myself and what it means to be Ceadda?

How desperately she needed some guideposts to this strangeness. Her ancestors must have passed down the secrets from parent to children- but she had no one to teach her.

)O(

That evening, after the boys had gone to bed, Kagome sat before the fire, seeking warmth and finding none. Instead, she felt as though she didn't quite fit her own skin- or as though something else were sharing it with her.

And that something that shared her body had now taken it over twice without warning: first, when the cart had been hurtling toward her, and now with the child. When she'd taken him into her arms, she'd had no idea that she actually possessed the ability to heal him. The hope had been there, but not the certainty.

If the extent of her newfound powers was the ability to heal and the ability to protect her, she could accept that, and perhaps in time even welcome it. But she thought about the tapestry and feared that there might be much more.

She fell into a light doze, her mind drifting to thoughts of the obelisk. Was there more knowledge there? Should she return and find a way to communicate with it? Was that even possible?

With her eyes closed, the image of that tall glowing object filled her mind, and she began to feel its lure as well. Then, abruptly, she felt a jerking sensation, as though something had literally pulled her from the chair. She opened her eyes to blackness- and then found herself in the tower room, lying in an ungraceful heap on the stone floor before the softly glowing column.

Terrified and confused, she tried to remember if she'd come up here and then perhaps fainted. She searched her memory desperately, but could remember only that she'd been thinking about it.

And even as the fear gripped her, it began to fade. Instead, she felt wonderfully soothed. She pulled herself into a sitting position and leaned forward to touch the obelisk. Warmth flowed through her, the beautiful, gentle warmth of a caress, and she moved closer until she had firmly pressed herself against it.

She must have dozed off, because she suddenly came to, with her cheek still pressed against the obelisk and her arms wrapped around its base. At first, she wasn't sure what had awakened her- but then she knew as she heard the sounds of footsteps on the stone stairs.

For one brief moment, she looked around wildly for a place to hide. But then she knew that she had no reason to fear anyone here- not even Inuyasha.

And it was Inuyasha who appeared in the open doorway at the top of the stairs. He stopped so abruptly when he saw her that she knew he hadn't expected to find her here.

For a very long moment, Inuyasha simply stood there, his gaze moving slowly from her to the still glowing obelisk behind her. She started to get to her feet and he seemed almost to be coming out of a trance as he hurried forward to assist her. She ignored his outstretched hand and drew herself up quickly.

"You don't belong here!" she stated coldly, in a voice that she barely recognized as being her own.

He stopped and dropped his hand, his gaze once more moving to the obelisk behind her. "I mean you no harm, Kagome."

She stared at him, knowing- without understanding how she knew- that he spoke the truth. For one brief moment, it was as though his mind had opened itself to her, and she could feel the confusing tangle of his emotions: awe, fear, desire, each of them struggling and failing to gain supremacy.

They stood there close enough to touch, if both of them had reached out. Their eyes met and held, and all that she'd sensed in him poured into her own mind. A soft heat rose within her, a very different king of heat that throbbed insistently with a need.

She cried out in protest at this feelings- and the spell was broken. She ran past him to the stairs, and then stumbled down them almost blindly. The heels of the delicate shoes that she was wearing caught on a step and she fell the last two steps to the stone floor just inside the door. Before she could get up, Inuyasha was there.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, kneeling beside her, but not touching her.

"I tripped," she said, feeling very foolish and vulnerable right now. She was still very much aware of his closeness, but that powerful need had ebbed away.

He got up and then extended a hand to help her, and this time she accepted. But the moment she put her weight on her right ankle, she winced in pain. Inuyasha picked her up, carried her through the doorway, and then kicked it shut behind him before continuing down the hall to his apartment.

If she had been merely aware of his closeness before, she now felt overwhelmed as he held her securely in his arms and she could feel the heat of his body and smell the clean, wholly masculine aroma that enveloped him.

He set her down on a chair in front of the hearth, and then asked if he should call Tadiz.

She shook her head, and then bent to close her fingers around the injured ankle. She heard Inuyasha's sharply indrawn breath as a faint glow outlined her fingers and tingling warmth passed from them to the ankle. The glow faded as quickly as the pain, and when she looked up at him, he was staring fixedly at her hands, much as she'd done herself earlier.

"Tadiz told me about the child," he said as he dragged his gaze away from her hands to meet her eyes. "He said you didn't know it would happen- the healing."

"No more then I knew what would happen when that cart came towards us," she replied, realizing too late that she'd denied doing anything. But it no longer mattered anyway.

"How did you get up to the tower?" he asked, his tone betraying nothing more than curiosity.

She hesitated, unwilling to tell him that she didn't remember. "I stole the key from your… from that chest." She gestured to his bedchamber. She refused to call the chest his, because it belonged to her.

"I knew you took the key- and the Queen's Val-Ceadda. But the tower door was locked- from the outside."

She turned away quickly, but perhaps not fast enough to prevent his seeing her shock, not to mention smell it. If what he said was true, then how had she gotten up there?

That thought was so frightening that she quickly exchanged it for another. She slid her hand into her pocket and found her key still there.

"How did you get up there if the door was locked?" she demanded, angry that he would lie to her and confuse here, when she was already confused enough.

He held up a key that looked identical to the one she'd found. "There are two keys. You found only the one."

"Give it to me!" she ordered, extending her hand. "It doesn't belong to you."

But he shook his head slowly, and then returned the key to his pocket. "The tower might be your place, and not mine. But his keep belongs to me, Kagome."

The rage built quickly within her and she rose from her chair. Of its own volition, her hand traced something in the air and began once again to glow and tingle.

And Inuyasha was flung backwards against the fireplace as though struck by a heavy object!

He steadied himself against the mantel as she stood there, her hand still raised and her brain refusing to believe that she'd been responsible for what had happened to him.

Before she could say anything, he had jumped over to her and seized both her hands in one of his. His golden eyes blazed darkly.

"Damn it bitch! Don't you ever do that to me again! I could have you disposed of the moment I suspected you were Ceadda. Instead, I brought you here and gave you the opportunity to learn about your ancestors."

His youkai side was raging from the attack by the girl, but his human side gave him pause. Looking past his anger he really looked upon the woman in front of him. He saw a look in her eyes that made his anger almost instantly disappear and he relaxed his grip on her hands, but still held them. "That just happened, too, didn't it?" he asked, his voice soft but with a hint of gruffness as his youkai calmed. "You were angry and you struck out. You can't do that Kagome. People will fear you even more than they do now."

Tears of anger, frustration, and a bit of fear welled up in her eyes and spilled over. His final words had struck her with more force that she had unwittingly used against him- but she knew those words had been deliberate. And she knew, too that he wasn't afraid of her now.

Inuyasha lifted his other hand and gently wiped away the tears from her cheeks. The smell of her tears doing more to dispelling any lingering anger of his youkai side that anything else could. "I know why you ran from the tower," he said in the same softly gruff voice. "I felt it, too. It seems that there is much neither of us knows yet."

Then he let her go and she turned and walked out of his apartment, resisting the urge to run all the way back to her own room.

)O(

Review responses:

hana no tenshi – I don't like being obvious. I prefer stories that have bits and pieces that have to be put together slowly to get the big picture… and sometimes that end result could be an end that was not what was expected. The whole thing about her powers going out of whack… consider it a test if you will. That's all I can say about that. Gotta love Shippou. (giggles)

For me, to want to read a story, it has nothing to do with length, or type. But rather if within the first page the story is well written, flowing, giving me a good mental picture, and not just he said she said with very little in-between. I know there are going to be spots were that happens. But I don't want the whole story like that.

LOL, at the lips thing… You know, I was considering once I am done with my story to do a parody of it. I can't tell you how bad I wanted her to see the Val-Ceadda and then put a sit spell on it. Or when she met him, walk right up and rub his ears. SO, I think that went this is over, I will seriously consider doing so.

Bluecabbage – I will try to update at least twice a day. I have caught up to were I had typed out, so now I am typing as quickly as I can to stay at least a day ahead.

jeff16 – I read your review at like 3am today, and had a debate with myself that wouldn't biological warfare would be considered control over nature. Because isn't bio in and of itself nature at its smallest? (shakes head) Don't ask, I couldn't sleep… And that early in the morning, nothing surprises me about what goes on in my head. It sort of went down hill after I tried to think about the time I had pictured little ameba boys lined up like good little soldiers all in a row ready to go into battle. (the ameba boys are from power puff girls. Basically giant single celled organisms, is the best way to explain it)

So now that it is a more reasonably time, I will have to re-think about it.

InuGoddess – (blushes) Aw, thanks. I am glad you liked it. Although this one is A.U. I was inspired by stories like: "The Lucky Ones", "Present Time", "Turnabout is Fair Play", "Unexpected Alliances", "The White Dog", and a very interesting AU called "Movie House Hanyou", and many others. All of them are very good ones in my book. Well written, so that you can visualize the story, and the character development is just awesome.

Well, that's it for this chapter. Thanks to all of those wonderful reviews! It always brightens my day to read them.

Brightest of Blessings,

Lady Banshee 999