Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Dammit...

Ah...reviews are good.
If I confuse you in this chapter, sorry. I know what I'm doing...I think. Sorry for any typos. I can't seem to get rid of them.

Dedicated to Kusaki Hayashi. Happy late B-day! Are you 15? If you are, happy Quince, girl!

(I've edited this to take out the lyrics before I get in any more trouble. HAPPY NOW FF .NET?)

Scroll Ten
Simple and Clean

In the comfort of the shade of the trees, azure eyes watched the blood of Kurabawa Hiroshi pool around the feet of the lord's guards.

Treason was not a forgivable offense in these times of war, and the punishment was death. And like a good citizen, he had turned in Kurabawa, arguing that Kurabawa had planned to kill the lord to take the sacred jewel. Kurabawa denied everything of course, until he was put under torture, where he confessed all his plans. The uncle, outraged, ordered him to execution, and he wouldn't listen to any of his nephew's ramblings about the good man who had turned him in.

Kurabawa continued to curse the man of said blue eyes until death took him from this world, disguised as the sharp edge of a royal sword.

In gratitude for saving his life, the lord granted his savior the luxury of residence in the castle, with plenty of food, women and money. He lived happily like this for a couple of days, until he found himself thinking of the jewel, its power, and the miko who held it captive. He wanted it. He wanted them. But, being the smart being he held himself as, he knew he couldn't do it on his own. He needed manpower. If he had men, they could raid the miko's village and he would be free to take her and the jewel.

But no such men could be found in this peaceful region of Japan. And until such men showed up, all he could do was wait and enjoy the gifts of the lord.

"I can't thank you enough for informing me of my disgraceful kin," was what the lord had told him. "Can I please learn your name?"

The man looked at the lord with a cynical smile. It was dark, and only one candle lit the room of the traitor. With his shady face, his blue eyes looked clearly at the lord. "Call me Onigumo."

-

Inuyasha watched Kikyou play with those blasted kids again. He snorted angrily, leaning more comfortably onto the tree. She had played with them all morning, damn it. Why couldn't they leave her alone for a while?

He watched them play around some more, and for a mad moment he felt a sudden urge to join them. But when he got the long awaited invitation, he simply refused to accept it, and claimed that the miko had lost her mind.

Though the kids (some of them at least) had gotten used to his presence, he just couldn't get used to them. They were so foreign yet...familiar. They held a strange trait that he knew he had once upon a time possessed, but had lost it sometime in his own childhood. It might have been sometime when his mother had passed away, and he was presented with the harsh rules of the world, rules that kept him losing and never winning. This same trait that he found in children attracted him to them, to the strange shine that only they seemed to posses. And he noticed the older the child was the less that shine shone. And he feared if he remembered what that shine was, he would also remember his lost childhood. And so that kept him away from discovering the purity of the young.

Sometime in the middle of a "Ring Around the Rosy," he felt a demon presence approaching, lurking in the comfort of the tall grass and taking its sweet time to get to Kikyou. Inuyasha hastily sat up and turned to look at Kikyou, thinking she was too distracted by the runts to notice anything. But Kikyou had also noticed, and although her face concentrated on the children, her eyes looked towards the side, directly to where the demon lurked. Grabbing a hold of an arrow, she calmly told the children to go back to the village and grabbed the middle of her bow, placing the feathery end of the arrow against its string.

-

"Show yourself, demon," she commanded, pulling the string and pointing the arrow toward the disguised demon.

It sprung up from the grass, fangs dripping a clear liquid with every intention to sink into priestess flesh. She let go of her arrow, perfectly slicing it in half. Snake demons were so easily destroyed when working independently. But this particular snake did not work alone, and its partner had intelligently sneaked up behind her while she was busy exterminating the other snake. And when she noticed with shocked eyes what it was up to, it was far too late to save herself.

"Claws of Steel!"

Or so she thought.

He was a crimson blur to her normally sharp eyes, and his attack left a trail of crimson liquid falling from the air. When he finished, he stood up firmly, carefully pulled the sleeves of his top as far back as he could and shook his hands as if that action would get rid of the demon blood. With a strange sort of anger he looked at her and yelled, "What the hell is wrong with you? You tryin' to get yourself killed?"

Kikyou merely stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. What was going on? Why was that demon able to get past her senses? And why did Inuyasha protect her? She looked at him with a confused stare, not knowing which question was more important.

He looked at her as well, the anger still easily readable on his face. Suddenly he looked away and crossed his muscular arms across his chest. "You're getting too damn sloppy," he said haughtily.

This was the first time she ever noticed his power. He was very well built, considering the faint outlines of muscles on his arms, his claws were as sharp as the tip of her arrows, his white fangs tended to bite on the lower lip when nervous and his ears...well, his ears were just cute.

He waited for her response, perhaps a clever comeback, but when he looked back at her, all she could muster up was a brilliant smile. A pretty smile but a smile that made Inuyasha uneasy nonetheless. Biting his lower lip, he looked away again though he was clearly no longer angry. She watched as his face challenged the color of tomatoes. "Feh! Leave it to you to smile after staring death in the face."

-

Kaede watched her sister smile at the flushed hanyou. She had been worried about her elder sister and decided to go back to make sure she was okay. But it seemed she was more than okay, for Inuyasha seemed to be great company. Kaede admired her elder sister's beautiful smile and wondered what the hanyou had done or said to her to emit such a face into the light of day.

She looked so...happy.

Something Kaede hadn't seen in a very long time.

Kikyou, although she always seemed confident, had never really expressed any sort of happiness. She was always so serious, putting duty even before family. But Kaede didn't mind much, because she truly admired her sister. She admired her strength, her courage, her wisdom and her beauty.

She was so perfect.

And there wasn't anyone else in world Kaede would rather be like than her big sister.

But it bothered her that she had never realized that smiles, much like the one happily spread on her face, never came along often. Her sister's smiles were so rare that they seemed so strange. Kaede couldn't completely understand why her sister never smiled, refusing to believe that she was unhappy. If that were the case, what made her feel like that? She could be rich if she wanted to, few could challenge her beauty and she was so respected. And respect to a woman was rare. So what could it be?

What was it about the hanyou that made her sister smile so beautifully?

What could he offer her that no one else could?

Kaede sighed inwardly, disturbed at the possible answers to her questions. Well, it didn't really matter. If he could make her smile, she was sure she could too. She was sure she could make her sister happy. She was sure that she could make her smile. She didn't want the smile that Kikyou had on to be the last one she saw. She would make sure there would be more where that one came from. She knew she could help her sister forget whatever she was unhappy about.

What she didn't know was that someone else also wanted to see Kikyou smile more often.

And so far, he was doing a pretty good job.

-

He thought he would lose it.

His sanity was put to the test when he saw that blasted snake circle around her for the attack. And for a moment he thought he had gone color blind, because all except Kikyou was red. Although he hadn't thought much about it the moment he sprung from the comfortable place in the tree towards the oblivious miko, he thought about it now, as she calmly looked away from him, adjusting the strap of the container that held the arrows.

There was a certain quality about her that made him curious about her. Something that made him want to get to know her. She aroused a strange feeling in him, and that feeling felt like...the shine of the children.

But what did that mean?

Why did she retain the shine others lost as they grew?

Was it because of that that she treated him equally? Didn't it bother her that he was a half-breed? Didn't she care what people would say if they found her speaking to him?

Didn't she care about anything at all?

And why did she take pity on him?

Was it really because she thought they were so alike?

Or...was it really pity that she felt for him?

"Inuyasha, would you care to join me in a walk?"

Her voice sounded distant to his thinking brain, but he quickly snapped out of it. He looked at her, wondering is he had heard right. Then wondering if he had heard anything at all or if it was just a creation of his imagination. Dazed to the confusion his brain had caused him, Inuyasha let out a gawky "Uh..."

A long and awkward silence followed as they both stared at each other, Kikyou waiting for a response and Inuyasha waiting for a repeat.

At last, Kikyou slowly closed her chocolate eyes. "It's all right if you don't want to," she said with an understanding smile.

She slowly walked away from him, as if hoping that he'd change his mind and catch up to her.

Inuyasha leaped onto a tree that she would soon pass by. He dug his claws into its tender bark and leaned to look at the miko carefully. "Doesn't it bother you that I'm half-demon?" he asked her.

She looked up at him and saw his ears twitch forward, anxiously waiting for a response. His amber eyes looked at her with a strange sort of stare, burning their curious golden gaze into the miko's serious chocolate eyes. Kikyou smiled, raven strands of hair caressing her pale cheek. "No."

That was it.

Kikyou held the same shine as the children.

She was pure.

She held an innocence found in children who haven't been corrupted by adult actions.

In a world were corruption is an everyday event, somehow, this woman had kept pure.

Something he had lost long ago.

Something that, when he kept near her, made him feel complete.

The feelings he held for her (whatever they were) were the only feelings left clean.

-

Eight eyes.

Eight malevolent eyes watched the odd pair walk off together.

"The miko and hanyou, huh?"

It crawled back into the cold shadows.

"I'll make good use of that."

-

It didn't matter how quiet their walk was.

It didn't matter that he was walking a safe two feet behind her.

It didn't matter the reason he was walking with her.

All that mattered was that he was.

Walking with someone by your side was so much easier and comforting than walking alone, and it somehow made it more intimate, as if they shared a secret that linked them closer to each other, a mysterious shine that only beings with a common knowledge could ever hope to understand.

The silence only served to deepen the intimacy, giving the atmosphere the quality of security that words were not needed for expression. It was like an eternal calm…a wave of pure relaxation that resonated from their innocent action. An intoxicating peace consumed the body and secured it in a warm and calm embrace. Only to excite it with a mere thought that this moment was being shared with someone who you truly cared.

And suddenly nothing else mattered anymore.

Except that person walking beside you.

He didn't have to say anything to her.

He didn't have to walk closer to her.

He didn't have to do anything.

Except stay by her side.

End of Scroll Ten

Yay! I reached chapter ten! I was gonna end it in this chapter, but I dunno what happened. But I think for sure it'll end by chapter twenty or before that. I dunno. What do you think?
On another more random note, I'm having trouble making Inuyasha do fluffy stuff for you guys without getting him out of character. And that, my friends, is something he and I are unwilling to do. He keeps growling angrily at me and won't let me touch his ears, says that if I make him do that or this, he'll run away with Kikyou. I keep telling him that the only place that'll accept him is the circus, but he doesn't seem to care, though I'm not really sure he knows what a circus is. Just don't tell him he's got fans that would gladly take him in, for I'm sure he'll get very upset if he runs into an InuKag fan when Kikyou is by his side...
Well, like every good romance story, there's always someone opposing the romance. Poor Inuyasha and Kikyou…they'll soon find out that the world isn't all flowers and butterflies when it comes to love…

Oh no. I rambled. Oh well! Review now!

Adios!