Warning: Rape

Recap: She stood when she heard Sesshoumaru's voice on the other side of the door. "Angel-san?" Why was he being so formal all of a sudden?

"Come in, Sesshoumaru," she said.

He entered, looking at the ground for some reason. His eyes were hidden behind his bangs.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, hoping he would look up to answer her.

"No," he shook his head, keeping it lowered slightly.

"Then what's going on? What did you want to see me about? Is it anything to do with what I said at breakfast?" she needed him to look at her, tell her what was the matter.

"It's nothing to do with breakfast," he said, continuing to hide his eyes. "Do you recall that spell we found?"

"Which spell?" she asked, knowing full well the one he was talking about.

"You know which one. Return From Whence It Came," he reminded her. "I think you should use it."

"I can't Sesshoumaru, you know that. It requires-"

"I know what it requires," he said roughly. "Why don't we make it so you can use it?" He stepped forward, backing her into a wall, and pressed his lips hard against hers, putting one hand on the wall, the other pulling the already-loose night robe off her shoulder.

She turned her head away, breaking the kiss. "Sesshoumaru, what's gotten into you? You're acting like a completely different pers-" He cut her off but taking his hand from the wall and turning her head back to him. He kissed her again, this time more deeply, his tongue plunging into the hot cavern of her mouth. Angel felt him press his arousal against her abdomen and moaned into the kiss. She could feel the heat churning in her gut.

The tall figure before her could smell her lust, which only excited him further. He hitched her legs up around his waist and carried her to the bed. He kissed down her neck, one of his hands pulling her garments off while the other worked at disrobing himself. He kissed down to her chest, along the curve of the pale flesh of one breast and took the pink, hardened nippled into his mouth. He swirled his tongue around it, tasting before he sucked vigrously, a fang grazing over the sensitive skin, drawing a thin line of blood.

Angel closed her eyes against the brief moment of pain. She had he fingers entwined in the long silver locks. When he'd finally finished untying two knots, each with one hand, he released the breast and moved up so that his erection was at her entrance.

When Angel's hand passed over the flesh of his bare back, she felt something strange. She moved her hand so that she could feel it again, properly. She also thought it odd that he seemed to be waiting for her to do so. She realized that the skin felt scarred, so she lifted her head to see, brushing aside the hair. What she saw shocked her: a spider-shaped scar. "Naraku..." she breathed.

"Yes," he answered, pushing her back down and finally letting her see his dark red eyes, letting the illusion fall as he slammed into her and heard her cry out.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Sesshoumaru was awakened by the scent of lust and Naraku. But what had truly jerked him from his slumber was Angel's cry of pain. He practically flew down the hall to her room and threw the door open to see Naraku pumping into her as Angel growled and tried to push him off. Sesshoumaru tore Naraku of her and threw him across the room. He caught sight of Angel's body, blood dripping from scratches and bite-marks, before she tried to cover up with the robe underneath her. How badly he wanted to just hold and comfort her, but at the moment, he had another problem to deal with, one that was quickly recoving from his recent collision with a wall.

Sesshoumaru stepped over and dragged Naraku up by his hair. "How dare you come into my home and commit this hideous act," his voice was low and threatening. "I cannot allow you to live for this."

"Sesshoumaru, how's your cheek?" Naraku's voice was as calm and taunting as ever, despite being stark naked and Sesshoumaru painfully tugging his hair.

"Why did you do this?" Sesshoumaru demanded.

"How could I resist such a tempting young whore?"

Sesshoumaru's eyes widened and became tinted with red in his rage as he began mercilessly wailing on Naraku. Punching, kicking, and clawing every inch of him he could reach. Until he heard a small voice. Angel had finished wretching over the side of the bed and was asking him to stop. Why on earth would he stop? More importantly, why would she want him to?

She gave him an answer. "I want to know why he killed my mother and tried to kill me eighteen years ago," she said softly.

"Why should I tell you?" he taunted again.

"Because if you do not, your death will all the more painful," Sesshoumaru said. "Answer her." He gave Naraku's hair another painful yank as incentive. It served a reverse purpose. The dark, purplish miasma filled the room, choking the other two and stinging Angel's open wounds. A sharp appendage that reminded them of a spider's leg pieced Sesshoumaru in the shoulder of the arm that was holding Naraku, causing him to release the vile thing. Naraku took the opportunity to escape.

"Damn!" Sesshoumaru shouted when he realized Naraku was gone. "I should have killed him when I had the chance." He clutched his bleeding shoulder while trying to guard his face from the clearing smog. When it had cleared enough so that he could breathe without gagging, he looked up and saw Angel sitting on the bed, hugging the robe to herself and closing her eyes against the present pain and horrifying new memory. He walked over and sat on the end of the bed. Then, he did what he's been longing to do since he pulled Naraku off her. He pulled her into his lap and just held her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"What?" What had she to be sorry for?

"Naraku got away because I asked you to wait. And you got injured; that's the second time I got you hurt," she wasn't crying, but what she was saying made no sense. It wasn't her fault. "And now I'm getting blood all over your robe." Sesshoumaru cleared his throat and indicated his shoulder.

"The only one to blame here is Naraku. But I do have something to ask you," he paused; when she didn't object, he continued. "Why didn't you use your powers?"

"My kind... Our bodies don't allow us to use our most powerful attacks when we're um... so that we don't accidentally kill our... the person we're..." She couldn't even say it. "And even before... I couldn't catch his scent; and he looked like you. That's why I allowed him to get so close. He looked like you; and he knew about the transportation spell from this morning. I was just sloppy. I could have stopped it. I should have realized it wasn't you."

"Stop, just stop." He had to halt her self-blaming babble. "It wasn't your fault. None of this was your fault. How can I make you believe that?" He was at his wits' end. He was never any good at dealing with emotions; that's why he always kept his at arms' length.

"Dealing with him the last two days were like something out of Nightmare on Elm Street, which I guess you wouldn't get. I just want to know why. Why he tried to kill me when I was younger. Why he brought me here now. Why he's been targetting me. Why he did this. I just need to know."

"I know you do. And I promise we will find out," he tried the only optional path of comfort and reassurance. "For tonight though, why don't we both wash the blood off, get bandaged, and get some sleep, if you feel you can." She nodded, then both looked around the room. It looked ransacked and there was a pool of vomit on one side of the bed. "Would you like to sleep in my room tonight?" She nodded again. Of course, when she'd fallen asleep in his room the previous night, she'd died. Apparently, she could deal that memory more easily than the one that occurred in her room.

They went down to the hotspring together, Angel leaning heavily on Sesshoumaru for both physical and mental support. When she went to undress, Sesshoumaru gave her privacy. He was going to stand guard outside the door, but she stopped him. "Please, don't leave me alone... No, I mean, let me have a look at your shoulder..."

Sesshoumaru agreed. It hurt to see her so scared but unwilling to admit it. Right now, he wanted to make her feel safe, and he knew the only way to do that completely would be to make sure Naraku was dead, once and for all. But, at that exact moment, all he could do was stay with her and try to make her not feel helpless.

They entered the water together, this time not sitting apart. Angel washed the blood off her skin, letting the herbal water soothe the flesh wounds. Sesshomaru immediately washed all traces of Naraku's poisonous miasma from his flesh and wound to prevent any infection and to just get it off him. When Angel was clean enough before she started to scrub her skin off, she turned her attention to Sesshoumaru's wounded shoulder. She place a hand on each side, the entrance and exit wounds, to assess the damage done.

"This isn't be too bad. It just tissue damage. No bones or serious muscle tissue was damaged. I can heal this easily in a matter of minutes. Do you want me to?" She looked up at him.

"I..." He did want her too. He needed to be in top fighting condition. He was planning on going after Naraku the next day. But he also knew her energy should be put toward herself.

She could see that he was having a diffucult time deciding. "I think using up a little bit of energy will help me sleep," she said, trying to convince him to let her heal him.

"Alright, but only what I can't heal over night," he said, allowing her to aply a bit more preasure to the wound.

She began by drawing warmth away from the area, slowing the bloodflow . Then, she focused on the tissue and muscle reattaching themselves to each other. Lastly, whilst encouraging the skin to regrow, she let the warmth flow back to both soothe and encourage bloodflow again. She finished and washed the blood off her hands. "It might feel a little sore tonight, but you should be good as new by morning," she forced a smile.

"Fine. Are you cleaned up?" Sesshoumaru had a sudden need to get out of the water and back to his room. When she nodded, he helped her out of the water then got out himself. They dressed and walked up to Sesshoumaru's room. Angel was leaning on him less. She seemed to better able to handle it than she had earlier. When they were inside the room, Sesshoumaru gave her a clean robe to change into from the bloody one. She took it gratefully and changed quickly. Sesshoumaru changed into a robe without a bloody hole in the shoulder.

They climbed into the bed, Sesshoumaru allowing her space if she felt she didn't want to be near him while she slept. She did. She snuggled against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her in a protective embrace. After all the stresses and strains of the day, she fell asleep almost instantly. 'Perhaps,' Sesshoumaru thought. 'Perhaps she does feel safe with me.' He decided he would do everything in his power to make her dream happy dreams. No Naraku. He knew he would have to sleep as well, and, therefore, could not simply create dreams for her, but he could delve into her memories and remind her of happy moments. He could do that in his sleep.

Before falling asleep, he assimilated himself into her memories so that he could more easily sift through them with less concentration. It was only as he felt sleep infringing on his consciousness that he began working his way through the memories. There were few signigicantly uplifting memories in her childhood, save for a few cute moments when she was a toddler. It was when she was a teenager that the genuinely happy memories surfaced. Laughing and joking with friends in a hallway lined with many skinny metal doors. Rehearsing and performing in plays. Even in sleep, Sesshoumaru could feel her relax with these images filling her mind.

After he fell asleep, he allowed what he deemed the most pleasant memories to play full out with small blips from others. She was dancing around her kitchen to happy Psycho le Cemu j-rock making fudge or something, singing her own little song to the music that had absolutely nothing to do with the song actually playing. She was staring at a computer screen wondering about the name of the godly being with the red stripes on his cheeks and blue crescent moon on his forehead. She was sitting with a group of friends in a school hallway. Her foot fell asleep, so she got up to stomp it to try to wake it up and get the blood flowing again. She began all sorts of odd movements, like shaking her leg in the air, looking very silly but having a fabulous time, joking with her friends about it. Of course, doing so almost caused her to fall into the door of the mens' faculty bathroom. This resulted in a dogpile across the hall from the door and a tickle fight. It ended when they all had to go to class. She was was liturally waltzing down the sidewalk in the city with her friends telling her to stop attracting attention to herself but smiling all the same.

Sesshoumaru came across something very odd. The memories that seemed to stand out as the most enjoyable seemed to be almost highlighted by Angel in her own mind. There were some recent memories that were practically highlighted, circled, underlined, and bolded. Waking up in an unfamiliar room then having a familiar voice answer at the door. Waking to find herself sitting in the lap of a man gazing down at her with concern clearly letched across his face. Waking in the arms of the same man, this time tears glistening in his eyes. Two memories of sharing time in the hotspring with this man. Falling asleep, feeling safe, in his arms. Of course nearly all of these had rather unpleasant memories directly before them, but these helped her to ignore those.

That last one had been particularly special to her. But there was another that he'd somehow skipped over. Odd especially because this one was another special recollection. She walked through a curtain, out into the daylight and saw a divine being standing in the sun. This was that first time she ever actually saw, in person, the man she'd come to love.

Sesshoumaru woke with a start at that word, love . Did she? Could he? He looked down at the sleeping figure in his arms. He could clearly see a smile on her lips. He decided he would worry about it in the morning and went back to sleep. Only instead of memories, he was dealing with his own issues in his own dreams, the way it should be.

Okay, I know rape is very Mary-Sue-ish, but at least I didn't pull a "Oh, I was raped; screw me to make me feel better" overly dramatic, throws head back with hand on forehead in the style of old movies. Constructive critism and praises only, no mean flames. If you don't have something nice to say, at least be polite about it.