Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko et al., not me. I just borrow them to have some fun.

A/N: This is my first fic I decided to publish. Be nice to me! If you think I deserve it, please review. Rating may change, although I doubt it. Cheers to my beta, who is also my sister, Raijin.
Thank you reviewers! I really appreciate them - so keep 'em coming!

Chapter II – Talks At Night

There are things that annoy me. There are people who annoy me. Take my half brother, for instance. He never failed to annoy me. But, I never failed to annoy him, either. After Kagome had fallen through the well, there was nothing I could do but wait. She would come to me in time, the necklace around her neck ensuring that she would always find her way to me. I made my way slowly to the tree where Inuyasha was sleeping, giving him time to prepare himself for my arrival.

He was prepared.

"Well, if that isn't my stuck-up royal big brother," he said. I gave him a mild glance. Soon he would have even more reason to be angry. His hand was resting reassuringly on Tetsussaiga's hilt. The sword that had cost me my arm.

"What are you doing here?" Inuyasha asked, and then sniffed the air around me. "Hey! You smell of Kagome!" He looked around him, then jumped down from the tree and went to the old miko's hut.

"Kagome?" he called. No one answered, of course. I decided to follow him when he entered the hut. I could as well spend the time until Kagome came inside. Maybe I could intimidate the inhabitants of the hut enough to offer me some tea. When Inuyasha turned around to leave the hut again, he bumped face-forward into my armour. He looked me straight in the eyes – he had never had even the slightest hint of good manners on him - and snarled:

"Where is she?"

"Through the well," I said. "She will be back soon enough, your little pet."

He took a step back. Behind him something stirred, everyone was wide awake now, probably expecting me to bring doom over their humble hut or something along these lines. I did neither, but instead took off my shoes and sat down in a civilized manner.

Inuyasha sat down heavily. The young girl that looked like an older version of Kagome sat next to him. Her sister, the old miko, left the room for a moment with the remark she would get some water for tea.

"What brings you here, Lord Sesshoumaru?" Kikyo did not look well in the light of the small fire. I guess it was the look that was expected from someone who had spent the last fifty years being dead. The old miko offered me a cup of tea which I accepted with a nod. So we sat in silence until my brother could not hold himself back anymore. Patience was never one of his strengths.

"Come on, Sesshoumaru, tell us what you are doing here." He leaned closer. "I am getting impatient."

"You were always an impatient one, Inuyasha," I said. "We are waiting for Kagome, of course."

"Yes, we are waiting - what are you doing here?"

"She has something that belongs to me"

"Are you saying that she stole something from you?" Kikyo asked, unbelieving.

"No, I am not saying she stole something from me. She merely has something on her that belongs to me."

I could see my brother seething with anger and suddenly, I felt young again. There had been a time - long, long ago - when he and I used to live together with our father and his mother and I used to do things to him that older brothers tend to do to their younger siblings. Taunt him, tell him that he was adopted or found in the woods, hang him upside down or let him dangle out of the window, things like that... But this was not the time to hang on to old memories.

"Now what do we do about that?" The old miko offered me more tea. I accepted. She brought me the cup and then took place on the floor next to her sister again.

"Now we wait," I answered, enjoying the aroma of tea and my brother's anger. Already I could feel Kagome nearing the well on the other side - the pull was getting less strong, but it was still strong enough to draw her to me irresistibly. Only with me would she find peace, and that was just what I wanted.

With the rain setting in, I could hear the soft tapping of heavy raindrops on the roof above our heads. Soon the whole scenery was draped in heavy veils of warm rain, fog rising from the hot ground and transferring us into a ghost world, with only ourselves for company. The scent of rain filled the room. Inuyasha inhaled it with relief.

I looked at my brother's face, lit only by the small fire in the middle of the room. He did not seem to notice that the dead girl was holding his hand. He was looking into the flames, casting me a dirty look from time to time. His ears were twitching. He did not seem to like the smell of the dead girl, to me simply a neutral scent of earth and bones. To my nose, it was as if she weren't there at all. But my brother seemed to mind it. Maybe it was only my imagination, but it occurred to me that when a part of Kagome's soul went to Kikyo, she gave to her the part of her soul that loved Inuyasha. Now Kagome was left without her feelings for my half brother, Kikyo was tortured by her feelings for him, and Inuyasha was insecure, because he was left without the blessing of Kagome's love and with the affection of someone whose scent he hated. This was muddled to no end, and I decided that it was a good thing to take Kagome away from this mess for a while, at least I thought so.

Suddenly a fast movement from Inuyasha woke me from my dreamlike state. Within moments we were on our feet, looking through the open door. A shadow was nearing through thick curtains of rain, coming ever closer, until it cleared to our eyes and we saw Kagome standing in front of the entrance, still in the rain. She stopped and looked at me. Not at my brother, not at anyone - it was me she was giving all her attention.

Instead of feeling flattered, I felt a short feeling of... almost fear. Her eyes were blazing with anger when she stepped into the house. She was dripping with water, the forms of her body clearly visible under her dress. The old miko helped her come in and wrapped a blanket around her body and a clean white rug around her head to make her dry and warm and keep her decently covered. Kagome fell to her knees. I noticed that her feet were bare. The call must have dragged her right out of her house, without even the time to dress herself properly. On hands and knees, she crawled closer to me, until her face almost touched my chest armour.

"This was the most unpleasant night of my life," she complained. "This... thing you put on me dragged me right out of the tub. You are lucky I managed to get dressed before I jumped into the well."

With a weak hand she hit my shoulder and leaned her head against it. "My mother thought I was mad when I ran past her without even as much as a goodbye. She will be very worried, Lord Sesshoumaru, very, very, very... worried..."

Kagome's voice faded and her whole body sagged against me. Inuyasha immediately jumped to his feet, ready to annihilate me, or so it seemed. I held her arm until her head came to rest on my thigh. She stretched her legs away from under her body, which she seemed to find a comfortable sleeping position, and slept, drenching my clothes with her wet hair.

"Here is Kagome," I said.

"I'm not blind!"

"But I do suspect that you are stupid." There is only a limited time I can hold myself back from taunting my brother. This is probably a major character flaw, but there, everyone needs a hobby...

Inuyasha watched me with suspicion, barely holding himself back, probably in respect that Kagome had put her head conveniently near my poison claws, while Kikyo, eyeing me cautiously, came closer to Kagome. She extended her hand, finding the necklace almost immediately. I should have thought so, since she was connected to Kagome. I took the dead girl's hand gingerly with mine to remove it from Kagome's body. If I applied more pressure, I feared, it may fall off, or dissolve into dust, or do something equally appalling. She looked at me as if she could read my thoughts and there was almost a hint of hurt in the depths of her dark eyes. She cradled the arm I had touched to her bosom and turned to Inuyasha.

"Kagome has received a gift she should not have accepted," she said with her hollow voice.

"What?" My half brother has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.

"There is a necklace around her neck that keeps calling her to the one who put it on her," Kikyo said calmly. There was no love lost between the two girls, I noticed, now even less than before.

Inuyasha came closer and sat next to me, almost touching me. He brought his face close to mine, almost as Kagome had done before, but other than her, he was not a pleasant sight to my eyes.

"I take it you have given her the necklace," he said with a surprisingly calm voice.

"So it is."

"Now, without further ado and your usual riddle speech, would you, o great Lord of the Western Lands, tell me why you have done this to Kagome?"

"Now, I am thrilled that you seem to have learned how to build coherent sentences with more than three words..."

"Don't you try to distract me!"

There he had me. I do not believe in lying. It just does not pay off. On the other hand, I did not want to admit my intentions. From a completely different angle, he had a right to know what I wanted with this girl who was his friend. But, he was not entitled to question my actions. While I still was debating with myself, the old miko said:

"If this is a chain made by a demon smith, then indeed you must take our Kagome with you." She had a sip of tea. I could see how her calm annoyed Inuyasha.

"No way he is taking her with him!" he exclaimed. "She has nothing to do with him, anyway."

"Lord Sesshoumaru," the old miko went on. "You will want to take her with you, I guess. But before you leave, please think about taking the necklace off. She is needed here."

"She herself told me that my brother has another shard detector to help him."

"Kagome has a child to care for."

"Cannot his father take care of the child?" My eyes went straight to my half brother, who blushed.

"Little Shippo was adopted by Kagome." I remembered now. There was a little red fox demon following the young girl around, calling her 'Mum, Inuyasha hit me on the head, Mum'. Thinking about it, this was a convenient reason for taking Kagome away and not telling anyone what exactly I intended to do with her. She could, if she wanted, as well take care of Rin. This way I would avoid lying and at the same time not let anyone in on my plans. From time to time, even I had to halt for a moment in order to admire my own brilliance.

"He can come with us, if he wishes so," I said. "He can study with Rin. Kagome will be looking after her."

"So you are offering her a respectable post in your household?" the old woman inquired.

For a moment I was wondering what she was talking about, then I understood what she was implying.

"All posts in my house are honourable, old woman." At this, she backed away from me, feeling the temperature in the room sink by a couple degrees.

"I wanted to ask..." she went on, nevertheless.

"You do not need to fear for the virtue of this girl, if this is what you mean."

She bowed her head. "Forgive me, Lord Sesshoumaru."

"You're all talking about Kagome leaving, but you're forgetting something."

"And that would be?" My half brother was an annoying little runt. I should have drowned him in a barrel a long time ago. Now that I remember, I had tried to... several times, in fact.

"That would be, you jerk, that I will not let you take Kagome away from m-, err... I mean, us." His hand went to his sword, yet again.

This was the moment that Kagome chose to open her eyes and sleepily say: "Sit," which sent my half brother flying through the tatami mats on the floor.

"What was that for, you stupid..." he yelled.

"I told you not to fight in the village," she grumbled sleepily. "Could hurt someone. Could damage property." Her breathing slowed down again.

"You just damaged the b-bloody floor!"

But she was gone again, sleeping. Inuyasha managed to get up from the wreckage that was the floor and cast an angry look at Kagome.

"You know what, Sesshoumaru?" He lifted his hands to his hair as if to adjust it, and then let them fall down again without completing the task. "Take her and the annoying brat and be gone in the morning. Let her see if I care!"

Always count on Kagome to enrage my brother and always count on Inuyasha to act stupidly when he is angry. They all played into my hands. Inuyasha's dead girl looked at Kagome indifferently, while Kaede shook her head.

"Well, if that is so," she said, "Inuyasha, you will have to go to see her mother and explain this... mess to her."

"The heck I will!" He turned his head away like a child having a tantrum.

"Sit," murmured Kagome in her sleep.

Soon after, my brother took off in the rain.