AN: Yay, someone's reading this thingeh! (dances) Funny that I get a review right when I'd started to neglect my writing.. Anywho, because lunaflower323 is such an awesome reviewing reader person (throws her some cookies and... cat treats? oki.. mebbe i'll get some better rewards at the store later), I shall get off my arse for a while. Besides, I'm just getting into one of my personal favorite points in the storyline (starts in chapter 13.. dunno how long it will draw out though, knowing me.. lol) Well, that's kinda why I neglected it, I couldn't quite get ze important scene right. But perhaps since I've had my break it will come easier, ne?
Chapter Eleven - Conflicted Hearts
Laughter pervaded the hot afternoon, coming from the direction of the kitchen hut. Kaede smiled. The goddess that Inuyasha's troupe had brought along yesterday, with one of their most dangerous enemies in tow, no less, seemed to be getting along quite well with Kagome and Sango. The old woman returned to gathering her herbs.
"And then," Sango continued, her eyes tearing up from all her laughing, "Kagome sat Inuyasha right off the side of the cliff!" The three women howled with laughter.
"Was he all right?" Maina asked, catching her breath.
"It wasn't a very tall cliff," Kagome replied, her nose in the air, trying not to continue laughing. "And besides, he's half youkai, it's not like it would have done any permanent damage. Not to mention he deserved it!"
"It had to be the most entertaining thing I've ever seen!" Sango interjected.
"I don't know, I think what you did to Miroku a week or two ago was just as funny," Kagome said with a smile.
"What happened?" Maina asked, fluffing the rice that would be served at dinner.
"We camped near this huge hot spring," Kagome began, "and Sango and I went to bathe.."
"And there was this big black frog sitting on a rock nearby, only it was dark out so we didn't see it," Sango continued for her.
"Yes, and it jumped right on Sango, and she screamed and jumped up out of the water," Kagome said, already beginning to laugh, and once again forgetting that she was supposed to be preparing the fish sitting before her.
"And Miroku rushed in to see what was wrong..," Sango supplied.
"And he saw Sango standing there stark naked.." Kagome paused for a moment, unable to keep the premature laughter at bay.
"And so I grabbed a towel as quickly as I could and covered myself up, and the frog was still there, but I was so embarrassed that I'd forgotten all about it.." Sango now was laughing as well, though her cheeks were showing some color from the relived discomfiture of the incident.
"And she started chasing Miroku with her Hiraikotsu and hitting him over the head with it," Kagome supplied, holding her stomach, tears now coming to her eyes as well.
"And when Miroku turned around to face me, trying to explain himself," Sango giggled, "the frog jumped out from under my towel and onto his face!"
All three rolled with laughter for a full minute, their duties of food preparation long forgotten.
"He was scrambling to get it off of him - his eyes were as big as saucers!" Kagome exclaimed. Maina, the first to regain her composure, began to reason out the story.
"But it sounds to me like Miroku really did have a good reason," she began.
"Oh, he peeks in at us so often and comes up with so many lame excuses for it that the rare times in which it is justified are pretty much ignored," Kagome laughed.
"Besides," Sango interjected, "I was so angry with him then that I forgot I'd even screamed in the first place - I didn't believe him when he said he heard it!"
"And if he's not peeking in on us while we're bathing, he's groping our behinds or asking us to bear him children," Kagome said dryly.
"So it's true that he asks every woman that?" Both Sango and Kagome sighed with knowing.
"When did he ask you?" Sango said with an irritated scowl.
"While I was in the middle of changing Sesshoumaru's bandages," she answered with an amused smile.
"Did he grope you too?" Sango asked.
"No, fortunately for him he didn't," Maina said, her smile widening as she tried not to laugh.
"What happened?" Sango asked. A sly smile crept across Kagome's face - she had a hunch she knew what had happened.
"Well, Miroku had just told me about his family's curse and all," Maina began, already giggling, "and then popped the question.."
"And?" the other two asked in unison, their eyes wide with anticipation.
"And Sesshoumaru started growling at him," Maina replied, she now being the one laughing before the entire story was told instead of the other two, "and he told Miroku that if he touched me he'd rip him apart before his kazaana ever got a chance to kill him!" The other two laughed, if a bit nervously, along with her.
"But then," she continued, calming down again, but still grinning uncontrollably, "then he said that he was just trying to protect me from falling under the lecher's persuasion!"
"Ha! That sounds like the same lame stuff Inuyasha says after trying to kill Kouga!" Kagome exclaimed. Maina gave her a questioning look.
"Kouga is a wolf youkai," Sango explained, "and he proclaims that he's in love with Kagome."
"Ah, so Inuyasha has a rival!" Maina exclaimed. "No wonder he seemed perturbed when he thought that I was a wolf youkai!"
"Indeed," she continued, "Inuyasha just hates Kouga. The only reason he hasn't killed him is because Kagome keeps sitting him whenever he tries to!" All three started laughing again, having been reminded again of the image of Inuyasha being sat off a cliff.
"It's a good thing that Miroku's not a serious rival," Kagome said, first to break up this bout of laughter. "You seem to have some amount of control over Sesshoumaru, Lady Maina, but it's not nearly as direct a control as Inuyasha's rosary."
"Can we drop the lady stuff, Kagome? I'm really not all that fond of formality," Maina said with a kind smile.
"Okay, Maina," Kagome responded cheerily. The women quieted for a moment, and began to start on the dinner preparations again, when Kagome spoke up, her mood noticeably more somber.
"Maina," she began quietly, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" Maina looked up from the rice she had resumed work on.
"Alright, I suppose you can..," she said hesitantly.
"What's your relationship to Sesshoumaru? Really?"
"Kagome, Sesshoumaru is… a private man," she replied meekly, now regretting having recounted the amusing events that insinuated a relationship she had not wanted them to know about.
"He doesn't.. hurt you, does he?" Sango asked quietly, thinking back on what she'd seen of his uncaring killings.
"No, no, it's nothing like that!" she said quickly. "He's perfectly gentle with me, really!" The two of them blinked at her, dumbfounded.
"Gentle?" Sango repeated. "Are we talking about the same Sesshoumaru?" Kagome waved her hand in a negative motion at Sango and quickly replaced the query with a kind explanation.
"Look, the reason I'm asking is just that.. Well, he's not the most sociable of people, but he seems comfortable, even companionable, with you. And during the battle, he was genuinely worried about you - it was written all over his face, which is of course a huge leap for someone like him.." Maina looked up at the girl with wide eyes.
"You saw that too?" she asked softly. Kagome nodded. "I didn't just imagine it then…"
"It seems pretty obvious you aren't just allies, like you've told us.." Maina was focused a little too much on the rice by this point.
"We've known each other for a very long time, Kagome. I don't think I've ever been put in any kind of danger before - any situation where I couldn't use my powers. Maybe he just didn't know how to react to it.."
"Or maybe there's more to it than that," Kagome said with a smile.
"Nonsense," Maina said firmly, shaking her head for emphasis. "Our relationship is strictly casual. It's nothing serious." Kagome placed a hand on her shoulder and peered into her strangely nature-esque eyes with her own deep brown ones.
"Maina, is it your heart saying that, or your head?" Maina turned her head away from the school girl.
"You don't understand. There can't be any more between us than there already is," she said quietly. "We've each got our own responsibilities, our own duties. It simply can't work."
"What do you mean?" Sango asked.
"He rules over vast lands - he has to roam about to do that effectively. And I can't exactly abandon my forest and allow the violent southern youkai to invade, now can I?" she said defensively.
"I didn't mean to upset you by bringing this up, Maina," Kagome said soothingly. "To tell you the truth, I've just been kind of concerned about you."
"Concerned?" she asked in disbelief. "But you barely even know me.."
"Yes, but you've been brooding an awful lot, and I don't need to know you all that closely to see it," Kagome told her. "And it's when Sesshoumaru's brought up that you become melancholy like that. Believe me, I know that sort of behavior - I think I probably originated it." Maina gave her a questioning look, but the young woman just smiled kindly.
"You can trust us, Maina," Kagome continued. "I think it's safe to say that all of us are in the same boat. I've got heaps of conflict about my feelings for Inuyasha.."
"And I have mine about Miroku..," Sango said softly, nodding her agreement.
"Miroku?" Maina asked. "I don't see many problems there. Sure, he's a hopeless lecher, but he always seems to be kidding around in that respect. He has a good heart. He'll come around."
"You've only known him for a day…"
"I've known many similar to him, some of them much worse, believe me, and they all ended up settling down in the end. And I never heard of any of them having problems in their marriages, either, if you can imagine that," Maina said with a smile. "But what about you, Kagome? It seems to me yours is just a case of stubbornness and pride on Inuyasha's part."
"Eh, it's pretty complicated, actually," Kagome said with a nervous little laugh. "It's not only that Inuyasha is more stubborn than a mule, and that there's a wolf youkai trying to win me over. There's also… another woman." A serious expresson crossed Maina's face as her mind automatically thought back to Inutaishou, who Inuyasha reminded her of in so many respects, and who had had affairs with various human women despite being mated..
"Her name is Kikyou," Kagome began. "To make a long story short, she died fifty years ago after pinning Inuyasha to a tree because Naraku tricked them into betraying one another. She was brought back to life, and now Inuyasha runs after her whenever she happens to cross our path.."
"You're in competition with the miko who sealed him under that sleeping spell for fifty years?" Maina asked with a gasp.
"You know about it?"
"Yes, it happened just before the second Great War! We were even more outnumbered than in the first, as the handful of inuyoukai who survived the first one had since died, and we had to assemble instead a hodge-podge of Inutaishou's old allies. Jaken went out to find Inuyasha and ask for his assistance in fighting the panther youkai, but he came back telling us that he'd been sealed to a tree! But it turned out all right in the end, because by that time I had discovered how to make semi-permanent barriers, so I didn't have to use up all my energy trying to maintain them during the battle," Maina explained.
Suddenly, the door flap was pushed aside, and Kaede stepped inside the kitchen hut.
"How is dinner coming?" she asked, wearing a sagely smile. She'd had a feeling they were socializing too much to be cooking very quickly, and it was nearing dinner time.
"Um, just fine, Lady Kaede!" Kagome said cheerily, quickly picking up her knife. "I'm just about done preparing this fish to be cooked!" The other two women, she noticed, had found ways of secretly sneaking back to their work as well.
"Just see that it's done soon, girls, the sun's beginning to set already," she said, exiting the hut. She almost laughed aloud as she heard them scrambling about inside, nervously asking each other if certain items of food were done yet.
"Here you are," Maina said cheerily, placing the tray of food before Sesshoumaru. He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Did the old woman tell you to bring me so much?" he asked irritably.
"The more you eat, the better and faster your wounds will heal," she replied matter-of-factly. He glared at the dishes on his tray, all generously piled with food.
"I am healing perfectly well with a single bowl of food as a meal. I will eat no more than that." Maina sighed and walked across the room, where everyone else had already begun to eat. She took her tray, on which she had already dished out all she wanted, poured herself a cup of tea, and took all of it back to Sesshoumaru's bedside. The others watched her curiously, but she paid them no mind. As soon as she seated herself next to the taiyoukai, Shippo took the opportunity to steal the goddess' spot between Kagome and Sango.
"You do not have to sit with me," Sesshoumaru told her quietly. She flashed him a half-smile.
"It would be rude to let you eat alone over here."
"I have no problem with solitude."
"Yes, I know," she said, bringing a piece of fish to her mouth with her chopsticks. Chewing it quickly and politely, she continued. "But someone has to make sure you eat, correct?" He only glared at her in response. She was unfazed. Putting on a subtle and pleasant smile, she pointed to one of the dishes in front of him with her chopsticks.
"You really should try that, at least," she told him. "I got a sample of it while we were cooking. It's delicious." Sesshoumaru picked up his chopsticks, but only poked at the food, turning it over, examining it. Maina chuckled, provoking him to return to his glaring.
"It's not poisonous, you know. I was right there in the kitchen while the food was being prepared - I even cooked some of it myself," she said with an amused grin.
"It's human food, nevertheless," he stated impassively. She narrowed her gentle eyes with an almost inaudible 'hmmph.'
"In all my years, never have I met a creature as stubborn as you..," she muttered. She picked up a chunk of food from said dish with her own chopsticks, holding her free hand beneath it so as not to make a mess on the white silks that had miraculously come clean after having been so thoroughly bloodied, and she raised the food to the level of Sesshoumaru's mouth. "Just eat this much, and I'll consider leaving you alone about the food issue."
The two sat there for a few moments, exchanging equally formidable death glares, before the taiyoukai finally gave in. It was a trivial matter, after all - he would let her win. There would be more important victories to take for himself, he reasoned. He leaned forward and took the food. A self-satisfied smirk crossed the goddess' face as she watched Sesshoumaru chew and swallow the food as quickly as he could without choking himself.
"See? It's not so bad, is it?"
"It's palatable," he grumbled, "but just barely."
"Good, that means you can eat the rest of that dish as well!" she exclaimed with a wide grin. Sesshoumaru growled, low enough that not even Inuyasha could hear him from the other side of the room, but loud enough that Maina could hear it from her close proximity.
"If you were not immortal, I think I would have killed you by now for your insolence," he said in that cold and commanding voice that made all others fall to their knees begging for mercy. But she wasn't intimidated in the least - and not just because she was immortal, either. She laughed good-heartedly at his threat.
"I don't believe you would do such a thing," she said confidently. Suddenly, she lowered her voice to the practiced volume which only his keen hearing could detect. "I'm far too dear to you as an ally, Sesshoumaru…"
The dinner circle across the room watched with great curiosity as the goddess slowly but surely got the stoic taiyoukai to eat. They couldn't really hear what either of them were saying, but they took great notice when Maina fed him. All but Shippo, who was intently focused on eating, sat with chopsticks hanging in midair as the proud creature took the food from her. Then they all looked at each other with matching wide eyes, the silent question hanging in the air.
'What the hell is with Sesshoumaru?'
AN: Oki, I admit, this one is a filler chapter because I'm trying to have a certain amount of time passing in between the significant events.. But it helps in that whole character development area I suppose.. (excuses excuses) Anywho, I love this chapter, filler or not. I have a love/hate relationship with those lighthearted filler episodes that are so frequent in Inuyasha's fifth season.. They are fun but.. still. (rambles again...)
Oh well. I had much fun with the kitchen scene in this chapter. I laughed myself just as silly as the girls did.. And the memories of theirs didn't come from events in the show.. Well, I seem to remember Inu getting sat off the side of a cliff, but my memory may be playing tricks on me. Fun fun! Chapter 12 will come soon.. it's a short one, but it bugs me and I might rewrite half of the damned thing, but I'll delay it more if I can't get 13 worked out quickly enough.. Sorry for those who like quick updates, I'm more the type to let it sit for a week or so, changing a word here and there or rearranging a sentence once or twice a day.. Paranoid perfectionists unite!