Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko et al., not me. I just borrow them to have some fun.
A/N: Raijin beta-ed this really fast.
(It's only 5 winword pages)
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Chapter VI – Scratches
Early in the morning of the next day, I was told that someone had requested to see Kagome and me. She was summoned to Kagome's morning room, where she would have a splendid view of the green cherry trees in the garden below.
The servant bowed and attempted to kneel down and open the door for me, but I stopped him with a slight motion of my hand. I heard shuffling and breathing, until Kagome had finally settled at the low table with the help of her maids. The door was shoved aside, and Kagome's servants left the room, leaving tea cups and small candy as refreshment for Kagome and her visitor. Only when they were out of the door, I entered.
The demon exterminator's looks had changed only slightly since Naraku's death, although the loss of her brother had drawn tiny lines of sorrow on her face that even her pregnancy could not smooth out completely.
She sat to Kagome's left. When I entered, their eyes followed me while I sat down across from Kagome, Sango to my right. I noticed that her rounded belly was only a hint under the kimono she had been made to wear by my servants, as if not to insult my eyes in her demon hunting attire.
She had asked to see Kagome and me, as if she had known that she would not be allowed to see Kagome alone. Now she was looking at her fingers while Kagome was tending to her duties as the lady of the house and pouring tea for everyone, her hands slightly shaking. She spilled a few drops on the lacquered surface of the table and with an uneasy side glance at me quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of her dress. I said nothing.
She turned to Sango uncomfortably.
"I dare not touch you," she said with her raspy quiet voice. "If I hug you, I might squeeze you to death." She laughed and made a small, clumsy move with her hands. "Yesterday, I almost… Thank goodness that Shippo is such a sturdy little thing…"
"Then be careful, Kagome," the demon huntress said, and threw herself at Kagome, who caught her in her arms and carefully held her. Her eyes went to me as if to see what I thought about this display of affection. Her pupils were still perfectly human. She was stroking Sango's back and shaking shoulders and breathing in her scent of lesser demon and herbs. Sango had reached my palace riding on her cat's back.
After a while, Kagome steadied Sango in an upright sitting position and put a hand on her thigh. A heavy burden seemed to weigh the young woman down. She was playing with her cup and her look went nervously between Kagome and me. My patience grew thinner in the prolonged silence that not even the ever chatty Kagome would break to ease the tension lying in the air.
Finally, the demon exterminator spoke, laying a hand on her belly.
"Two nights ago," she said. "I felt my child move in my body for the first time. This woke me up."
Kagome's breath caught, her hand went to her necklace.
"I turned to my husband to tell him this and saw him struggling to move away from me. He was holding his right hand on his chest, tying to find his beads and a piece of cloth…"
She was silent, then went on:
"When he finally found everything, he tore his hand from his chest and I could see a hole in his clothes and his flesh, bleeding freely all over our bed. And this sucking, soaring sound of wind…" Kagome moved forward to touch Sango, and somehow ended up holding her in her arms again, not caring how tight her hold was. Sango's voice faded, and then came back as strong as before:
"He fastened the cloth and the prayer beads over his palm to hold it tight - and then Miroku fell down, face forward, and did not wake since."
Kagome's lids fluttered, she was breathing fast, and producing small, soothing animal sounds.
"You must come back with me, Kagome," Sango spoke, hands digging into Kagome's sleeves. "I can feel the void in me, tearing away at my child's life. He has inherited Miroku's curse. The void is back." She paused. "And if the void is back, then somehow, he is back also."
By now, the demon exterminator was sobbing with her mouth open against Kagome's shoulder. Kagome leaned her head against Sango's.
I stood up and turned to the door to leave without even as much as a glance at Kagome and Sango. Kagome was next to me in a second.
"We need to talk about this, my lord," she said.
"No," I said.
"Please, you must…"
She followed me when I left the room and closed the door. The servant had left his post, and we were alone in the corridor. She tried to push me into a corner. Had I not been so intent on leaving her company, I would have found it amusing.
"Sesshoumaru."
"You are not going anywhere. Even if he is back again, it does not concern you any longer."
"But…"
"You cannot do anything to help them. You cannot use your powers to heal or purify. You are weak and in pain." I tried to push her aside, but with her new demon strength, she persisted, and I would have had to use much more force to remove her than I wished to use on her.
"I must!" she said. "I need to see if I can do anything to help! You said yourself that it was my fault that the jewel had been broken. Let me go!"
"There is nothing you can say or do to make me change my mind right now." I said, taking her left hand and turning her away from me. "Go to your little friend and console her. Better yet, go to your room and rest for a while. You look tired."
"Don't try to…"
"Kagome, I need to think. He is not only your enemy. Leave me be for now. But remember this: You cannot leave my side, and I will not - I will not let anything happen to you."
She shook off my hand. "Do not try to decide over my head yet again. I will not let you rule my life. You are not my master."
I pushed her face-forward against the wall. She stiffened under the pressure of my body. "I am not your master? Am I not, indeed?" Suddenly, for no reason, I had the feeling that she was dying away in my hands, not knowing it, and that I could do nothing to prevent her being torn away from my grip - and from this world. If the cursed half-breed Naraku was back, then…
Kagome struggled under my grip, growled when I tore away the back of her dress, and cried out when I carved the remaining four strokes into her back, unwilling to wait any more nights. Even if she were to die, the judges in Hell should see who she belonged to. I leaned against her still struggling form with my whole weight, closed my eyes and inhaled her odd, part demon part human scent. With one last effort she managed to shake me off and went for my throat with her teeth. I dodged her attack and leaned against the opposite wall. For a moment that was shorter than a heartbeat, I could see her pupils contract to narrow slits and expand to their normal form again. She extended her clawed hand and drew a bloody mark along my jaw with her nail. I did not move nor flinch. Then she slid down to the floor, paralysed and unconscious from my poison. The door to her morning room slid aside, showing Sango's face with red-rimmed eyes.
"I heard an odd noise, what…?" She ran to Kagome and knelt next to her. Noticing the signs on her back, she bent down to read them. "What have you done?" she asked.
I turned away, opened a door next to me and motioned the servants that were inside the room to take Kagome. Then I nodded to Sango to follow them.
"What have you done, I asked," she said, bravely.
"The Lord of the Western Lands will not answer any impertinent questions while in his own home, human," I said with practised arrogance. "Be with her when she wakes," I ordered. "I need to think. If you do not wish to get lost here, you should follow Kagome's servants. I will tell you what I have decided later. Go now."
She looked at me, as if contemplating if she could take me out, but decided wisely that she stood no chance against me, and followed.
I turned in the opposite direction and walked to my study, holding my hand over the fast healing cut on my face. When I opened the door, the quiet, dark room welcomed me with silence. Suddenly I felt I the need for fresh air, and left the house through the window.
The garden embraced me with its green, clean scent of moist earth after the rain, and heavy drops of the night's rain glittering in the midday sun. I walked away, further away from Kagome than I had been in almost four weeks. Since the necklace forced her to stay close to me, I had tried to make it easy on her by staying at her side at most times.
I came to a small pond that was shielded from the rest of the garden by a hedge. For a while, I just sat down on the grass and looked silently at the white and red fish in the water that were playing between long stems of lotus flowers. I bathed my hand in the water and made my sleeve wet. Somewhere behind the hedge, I heard Shippo and Rin. The little fox demon was breathing in a slow, steady rhythm, sleeping. The girl was combing his bushy tail and singing under her breath: Kagome, Kagome, bird in the cage… The voice of Rin's tutor, asking a question; Rin answered, then continued to sing.
My eyes almost fell close. In the buzz of insects in the grass, busy again after the sun had warmed the moist grass, my head cleared slowly.
I have been careless. I have been eager to have things done my way, and I became careless. The price that I have paid for Kagome's necklace had been high then, but now that he, somehow, was back again, it had become even higher. I had no doubt that shortly, a weapon made from my fang would be in his hands and that he would wield it to destroy not only my half brother and his friends, but also to destroy me, the Lord of Western Lands.
While Naraku was alive, I generally approved of the idea of gathering the shards of the Jewel of Four Souls and purifying them, before the cursed thing could become a weapon in his hands. After his death, the jewel shards still missing were the only thing that kept Kagome on this side of the well. If she completed the Jewel, once done with her quest, not even I could keep her here, I felt, although I knew she felt more than friendship towards me.
I remembered how eagerly I had followed through with the plan of turning Kagome into a demon. There was a feeling of urgency in the back of my head that would not let go until I had gone to the demon smith and handed over my fang. Now I wondered if this feeling had been my own… Or had Naraku found a way to manipulate my feelings and thoughts?
Pictures flashed in rapid succession through my mind; the ancient tome with a bookmark in the right place to show me how to turn human to demon as I was leafing idly through it; I had thought the bookmark had been Inuyasha's. The black eyes of the demon smith glinting with greed when he received my fang in payment and how lightly I had given it away, without a second thought. The blue sky torn with red flames that burned Naraku when Inuyasha's sword ripped through him, Kagura and Kanna retreating into the woods... Sango's brother falling down like a puppet that had been cut off its threads, his body expelling the shards violently…
Kagome had found and purified the large chunk of the Jewel that had been in Naraku's possession, and all the small shards she could find. While busying herself, she desperately tried not to look at her friend who was holding her brother's fallen body. The demon exterminator's face was pale, her eyes broken. No-one dared touch her until the monk uncovered the now flawless palm under the cloth and knelt next to her, cupping her cheek, for once not trying to feel her up. She leaned on him and started to cry.
I only came in time to see Naraku burn, not before. Still, I had been so certain that he was finally dead, perhaps because I was convinced that Tetsusaiga would be the sword to destroy him in the end. My half brother stood there, stunned, sword in hand and looking at nothing in particular. Kagome finally spotted me; I nodded ever so slightly in her direction. She did not need me now. I left the clearing, a plan slowly forming in my head. A month after that, I gave my fang away.
I spent the rest of the day in my garden, thinking and planning. Kagome slept longer than usual because of the poison. The servants tended to her friend and the children. As the sun slowly crept towards the western horizon, my doubts stilled somewhat. As the day comes to its end in the West, so will Naraku come to his end by the hand of the Lord of the Western Lands, I thought.
As if summoned by my thoughts, a warm breeze, foul to my nose, reached me, called to me. Slowly I walked towards the tiny pavilion that was in another secluded area of my garden, close to the outer wall. I touched the carved white wood and looked inside.
The last rays of the setting sun made his white pelt blush. His face was uncovered, beautiful, his eyes dark because he kept them in the shade.
"So we meet again, Lord of the Western Lands. I wished for so long to speak with you," he whispered.
I felt he was alone, none of his children nearby. Although, this could be just another of his schemes. I did not trust my senses anymore when it came to him. There was no use in trying to kill him now - the thing in front of me was just another puppet. I stepped inside.
"What do you want?" I asked. "I have nothing to say to you."
"But perhaps you would like to ask me some questions?" he offered, smiling slyly. "And I wished to see her."
"You will not come close to her," I said, feeling calm. "Naraku."