Warning: Mildly lemony situations, not always consensual

Chapter 7: The Dark

Kagome, lantern in hand, moved slowly through the forest. The flickering light danced as she walked. The trees cast eerie shadows along the path.

A loud noise of many hooves sounded behind her. "Hey, girl," a loud voice called. "Are you lost? Perhaps we can help you find your way home."

"No thank you," said Kagome. She could see the base of the hill where the palace was from where she was in the forest – it was only another ten minutes walk or so before she would reach it. Besides, something in the crude voice of the man alarmed her.

The hooves galloped quicker, nearing Kagome. She spun around, and found five men in samurai uniforms on horses bearing up on her.

"Good evening," Kagome greeted them, "I'll be on my way now." She turned and hurried in the direction of the castle. Before she knew it, she started sprinting.

But the men caught up with her.

"Listen," one said sharply and thrust his face into hers, glaring at her. Kagome smelled the alcohol on him and withdrew slightly, until her back bumped into a tree trunk and she couldn't retreat any further.

Kagome's imagination of these types of situations revolved very much around the soap opera and anime scenes she watched. "I've got money," she squeaked. Of course they wanted money; they always wanted money... and something else.

The men exploded into raucous laughter, the sound grating in her ears. "She thinks we want money," they guffawed. "Well, well, the Lord of the Eastern Lands pays us enough! Why do we want more money? But there seems to be a shortage of pretty young virgins in the Eastern Lands..."

"That's because you raped them all," cut in another man.

"Yeah, well you helped," the man shot back.

Kagome's eyes darted from man to man. They seemed more interested in bickering than her. If she just managed to slip away...

Her hand slipped for an arrow from behind her and quietly aimed for one of the men standing the furthest away. The arrow glowed with a pure light and flew over, sealing itself in the man's heart. His fell dead onto the ground before he could utter a cry.

The sound of his body falling onto the ground made the men direct their attentions to their fallen comrade. However, just as Kagome was about to string another arrow, a hand closed around her wrist.

"Oh no you don't," the man closest to her said and slammed his body against hers, pressing her to the tree.

"This one's really spicy, and I'm not sure that it's a bad thing."

"So, boys, who'll get the first go?"

Loud cries of "Me!" and "Not you, you've gone first thrice already!" pierced the air.

A rough strip of cloth was tied over her eyes, effectively blindfolding her. Someone shoved her roughly to the ground. Two hot, grimy hands gripped her shoulders. Another hand clapped over her mouth.

The hands left her shoulders and moved to the neckline of her kimono, pulling the closed fold apart, revealing her bosom for all to jeer at. Those hands seemed to be so practiced – as though this movement had been repeated many times before. She shivered without meaning to, to the amusement of the men, which they made quite known to her.

For a moment the cool night air swirled around her breasts, chilling her even more. But rough, large hands immediately closed around them, squeezing the firm flesh between its fingers.

Hot tears started to trickle down Kagome's cheeks as something hard pressed against her entrance through her clothes. Hands roamed over her freely.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. This was all Sesshoumaru's fault. Couldn't he have better protected his lands and all the creatures in it? Or at the very least, warn her that it wasn't safe to go one step out of the castle?

Wait... maybe it wasn't his fault. What did the men say? The Eastern Lord paid them well, they didn't want any more money... The Eastern Lord.

So, that loser was behind this. Well, wait till Inuyasha heard.

Kagome was so busy cursing everyone; she didn't notice the blinding light around her and the removal of the hands from her skin. It was only as she felt her kimono being drawn over her body again, and as she felt herself being picked up, that she snapped out of her angry indignant thoughts and started to cry silently instead.

It was Sesshoumaru to the rescue again. Great. She kept becoming indebted to him. And she was too upset to care. For once, sassy remarks failed her, and she just collapsed crying into his arms.

She didn't really remember too much about the incident. In fact, she only remembered crying the hardest she'd ever cried before. Even Miroku never crossed the line – well, he never crossed the line that far.

Tears blurred her vision as she felt herself being carried silently inside.

Even in her condition she felt the faint repelling force of a barrier as she was taken up a flight of stairs. There was only one place she could be in – and Kagome took comfort in knowing that she could be safe there.

She felt herself being lowered down softly as Sesshoumaru kneeled before a shady long object. Kagome squeezed out the last of her tears, clearing her sight, but still couldn't quite make out what the object was.

Then, in the quietness of the room, the rich soothing sounds of a koto playing filled the space and slightly warmed the iciness in Kagome's heart.

(A/N: This part is a bit of an insight into Sesshoumaru's thoughts at the moment. You could almost say it's a Sesshoumaru POV, but I don't really think it is...)

This was his entire fault. If he hadn't thrown an icy fit about the barrier incident, she'd have stayed with Rin and had not gone off on her own. Sesshoumaru raged against himself and the Eastern Lord as his slender fingers flew over the strings of the koto.

Maybe it was her fault too, partly. She was the one who left the palace in the first place.

Rin had started worrying when she couldn't find Kagome or Sesshoumaru, and had sent Jaken scouring the castle grounds for her. When this had proved fruitless she sent Jaken to town, when the gossip about a 'beautiful lady from Lord Sesshoumaru's castle' reached his ears. A few more minutes of speaking to the monks from the temple and Jaken had flown back to the palace, searching for Sesshoumaru.

Lucky for everyone, Sesshoumaru had already come out of the west wing's protective barrier and was easily found by a frantic Jaken. The toad imagined that anything wrong with Rin or Kagome would equal the price of his life, and was terrified when she couldn't be found.

Sesshoumaru had found Kagome's scent easily, and followed it. He hadn't liked a single bit of it. It was a mixture of fear, anxiousness and anger. Her anger rode high above the voluminous clouds of fear she had, and Sesshoumaru almost cracked a smile, pitying the recipient of that anger.

But his smiles had disappeared when he arrived on the scene, watching a man on top of Kagome, foully trying to attempt rude foreplay. His friends were on the sidelines jeering and cheering him on. Sesshoumaru couldn't decide who was angrier, him or Kagome, but knew for a fact that the receivers of his anger would not survive.

He wasn't supposed to feel this way about her. Sesshoumaru was the taiyoukai that held himself nobly aloof, from all humans and inferior youkai. Humans were for killing, small youkai were for killing too and the more sly youkai were for scheming with, plotting about and then killing. The moment a youkai fell in love he would be at the mercy of his lover, and would be better off dead. Sesshoumaru had seen it with his father, was seeing it happen with the Eastern Lord and wasn't about to let it happen to him.

So why the hell did his blood boil whenever he saw Kagome mistreated or upset?

Song after song he played, seemingly never tired or out of new songs. Each was different, yet all struck soothing chords in Kagome. For all the fright and fury she had experienced in the last few hours, most of it dissipated into the lulling melody of the music.

"Sesshoumaru?" she whispered.

He continued playing, but she knew his attention was fixed on her.

It was probably one of the most inappropriate questions to ask at the moment with the given circumstances but she forged ahead anyways.

"Have you ever fallen in love?"

She glanced into his eyes but for the first time they didn't meet hers. Instead, they trailed far away, as though reliving old buried memories.

Sesshoumaru, on his part, had always expected the question from her but would have definitely not expected it from her just a couple of hours after she was almost raped. Forced to think his reply thoroughly, he quickly thought back to an incident six years ago.

Flashback

"Stop sulking, will you?" snapped his mother, in a revealing kimono, dressing her hair with the most gaudy of hair ornaments.

"I wasn't sulking," a fifteen-year-old Sesshoumaru shot back. "Of course, it's none of my business my mother goes around sleeping with her bodyguard- " He never got to finish when his mother delivered a stinging slap to his face.

"Oh?" she laughed bitterly. "And I suppose you want to tell tales to your father. As though he'll care – he's too enraptured in his new wife to care. And now that she has that son of a bitch Inuyasha he'll love her even more. Why can't you be like Inuyasha more? Everyone loves his cute little ears and childish innocence. Instead, you stay totally emotionless and silent, falling in love with some stupid slave girl."

"Akiyume is not stupid," said Sesshoumaru, blood rising. "And unless you want everyone to learn about her, you'll shut up."

"Yes? Well, remember, Sesshoumaru, if you told your father about my affairs, he'll brush it off and at the most have me beheaded. But you're his heir... falling in love with a slave! Imagine who his wrath will fall on more harshly."

Sesshoumaru trembled with anger. Abruptly, he left the room, and found Akiyume in the halls, with another servant. Her back was to him and she obviously hadn't realized he was there.

"Anyways," she said, laughing to the male servant beside her, "As soon as I've finished twisting that silly Sesshoumaru around my finger, I'll marry him and get rich. Then you'll be promoted, of course, and we can continue seeing each other. So you see, tonight I'll sleep with him for the first time, feigning shyness, of course, and when he's completely in love with me he'll do what I want. Don't you think it's worth letting him have me for awhile?"

"Of course, Akiyume... I just think it's a pity your precious innocence will be wasted on such a useless young man."

"Innocence?" growled Sesshoumaru. His mother had already put him on his tether; now he finds out that Akiyume was cheating on him. "I don't deem such scheming... innocence." He spat the word out like it was bitter, and indeed, it was.

"Sesshoumaru..." Akiyume gasped. "Don't listen to what I just said, I was only joking... It's just that he," she jerked a finger to the servant, "won't stop until he has me and I had to fob him off with lies. You understand, don't you?" she pleaded desperately.

"Yeah... sure I do," Sesshoumaru said, not betraying his disgust. "Of course, I'll have him removed tomorrow morning." He smiled faintly at her.

It was the last time he ever smiled.

End Flashback

So he had loved a girl, and had his love thrown back into his face. Women of all classes had chased him relentlessly – he had unwittingly toyed with their affections and thrown it back into their faces. It was some sort of vengeance, they guessed, against all women. Sesshoumaru himself was totally unaware. To him, the women were the ones that threw themselves at him; he, in a very gentlemanly manner, had received their offers of love. It wasn't his fault they were too blinded to notice that he didn't love them back.

He still had to answer Kagome's question.

"No," he said quietly. "I've never loved anyone before."

"Not even your parents?"

"Perhaps, once, my father. He was a formidable taiyoukai, until he fell in love with Inuyasha's mother. Certainly never my mother, she kicked me into the care of maids, slept around with servants and threw her tantrums at my expense."

"You speak of your mother and step-mother like they're evil," said Kagome. It wasn't fair – he was judging the whole feminine race by the conduct of two women, whom Kagome didn't know were wicked or not.

"I said, my mother didn't stay very faithful. I don't blame her; she had an arranged marriage, a promiscuous nature, and was very beautiful. But she had a horrid temper and would force me to go along with her little malicious plots. Inuyasha's mother... I'm assuming that he's always made her out to be the human victim of a youkai family's youkai ways."

"He does not," Kagome stated, "In fact, he seldom talks about her."

"Well, she was also a very beautiful woman," Sesshoumaru said. "But she knew this, and used it to twist my father around her finger. He spent more and more time with her than in patrolling his lands and making political alliances, which, at that time, were very important to us as we had little land and little connections. And when Inuyasha came..." He broke off, his voice almost catching in his throat but quickly smoothing it over with an extra loud note on the koto.

"Well?" asked Kagome expectantly.

"My father... He simply acted like he had only one family, Inuyasha's mother and Inuyasha. Even when my mother died, he didn't attend the cremation. After Inuyasha's birth my father and I never spoke to each other until he was at his deathbed, when he told me to accept the position of heir."

"Which you did," remarked Kagome.

"To this day I still fight with myself whether or not I should have. Putting up with doddering lecherous fools like the Eastern Lord, or protecting creatures that don't deserve to be protected except for the fact that they live in my lands and I am bound to protecting them... Those are not things I enjoy doing. But letting Inuyasha become taiyoukai... I don't exactly regret my choice. Besides, sometimes I can look around and take pride in these lands that belong to me."

Ok, what the fuck am I doing, telling her things I have never shared with anyone? Sesshoumaru demanded to himself. She would never understand. She has no business asking me questions and I have no business answering them.

"So why do you hate Inuyasha?"

I am not answering this woman... I am not answering her... "I don't hate him. I pity him. He's so puffed up about his powers he flaunts its flaws shamelessly, instead of learning to increase his abilities. He was born with the power of our Inuyoukai family and has the compassion of his human mother. But he doesn't use this gift to his advantage, but wastes his emotions on treacherous human mikos and his power on swinging Tetsusaiga wildly. But speaking of the half-witted hanyou, I'm returning you to him tomorrow."

Kagome froze in Sesshoumaru's lap. "Why?"

"It's too dangerous here. The Eastern Lord can no longer control his men, as tonight has proved. If you are wandering with Inuyasha, his overbearing protectiveness of you will at least protect you. Meanwhile, a war may very well be raging over these lands."

A war... was she the cause of it? "You're not doing this all for me, are you?" asked Kagome in a small voice.

"No," he said shamelessly. "For one, the Eastern Lord has been getting on my nerves lately. A chance to squash his ego down a few notches would be nice. Also, this isn't the first attack his men have made on people in my land. There have been others, though none of dared to complain or raise an outcry. As for war... I have no interest in it, but if the Eastern Lord refuses to take action against his men who committed wrong, a war may break out. He understands perfectly well that I am honor-bound to protect everything in these lands; though you don't come from here, the others his men have ravaged are reason enough. We lords don't generally raise wars over a handful of creatures, but if he refuses to punish his men I can give him hell."

Then, he pulled Kagome closer. "But some of this, be assured, is for you."

Kagome relaxed in his embrace. "If you return me to Inuyasha... After you settle affairs and everything, you'll get me back, won't you?"

"That would depend on you. Rin would love to have you stay on much longer, but would you want to?"

"Maybe, if I decide to."

"He probably cares about you deeply, you know."

"As a friend. Maybe a sister."

"Yes, but wouldn't you like to have him as a brother?"

Kagome thought for a moment. Inuyasha was certainly very protective and would always be that way, even if he was in love with someone else. She had to move on, she couldn't mope forever.

"Sesshoumaru..."

"Yes?"

"If anything like what happened tonight happens again, and you're not here to save me... What I'm saying is, if there's anyone right now I'd rather give my innocence to, I'd rather it be you."

(A/N:) Sorry for the cliffy. Any ideas on what Sesshoumaru says next? Thank you all for the reviews, I never expected so many. This, actually, is my first fanfiction, and I'm pleasantly surprised at all the reviews I received. Also, don't ask me why I wrote this chapter, to me it sounded weird and out-of-place yet it seemed just right.

A few people have said things about the pace of this story. Some says it's perfect, others say it's too slow and others say it's too fast. Well, I try to make it so that enemies don't jump into bed in the span of a fortnight, but I also try not to make the audience fall asleep (hello, this fic's rated R for a reason). So I'll keep in mind your suggestions, but I'm only human and can't please everybody. I wish I could though.

A koto is a Japanese stringed instrument, like a zither.

Review Responses:

RoguesHeart: Lol... I wish I could tell you the end of the story but I can't; I've got a vague plan but I generally don't map out everything before I start writing, I write better that way.

Shadow-mai: Yes, I do think he's a bit too soft sometimes, but I generally like to think that he's pretty soft under his hard shell. Thanks for the advice though.

PyslightlySycoh: Sigh... about the Pocky crumbs... it's killing my arteries I should stop eating them.

InaZuma Yosei: Well, hopefully it'll clear up.

unknown: Soon they will, but it doesn't make sense for people to be enemies one minute and hopping into bed the next. Though feelings are multi- layered, complex things.

The Foxen: Hands her three boxes of Pocky I've got a fire extinguisher too, but I haven't had to use it yet, thank god.

zeddy222: Yuppz, he was screaming his head off.

Lady Icykimi: Thanks, I actually do research stuff on websites for my personal benefits. I'm personally interested in Japanese culture in general. The hard part comes when I have to decided which time period which cultural achievement was developed.

Seshura: Yea, me too, it's so sweet in a serious way.

me: Walking... gliding... I dunno. How about... aristocratic catwalk??? Just kidding...

DarkJamAB, Inuyasha's girl, demonswty, KagomeFan, Joy4eva, YSM, Smeagol/Sesshluva: Thanks for the review, I'll update as soon as possible.