A/N – Inuyasha turns 15, meets Kikyou, and discovers that there's more to life than fighting.
Disclaimer – I don't own Inuyasha. Don't sue.
Eccentricities VII
Inuyasha bounded into the clearing, all but vibrating with impatient excitement. Sesshoumaru, seated cross-legged under a tree, opened one eye and stared balefully at him, before closing it again and resuming his meditation. Inuyasha scowled, but by now he was used to his brother's habits –
"Hey!" he growled, nudging Sesshoumaru's immaculate, white-silk clad knee with his dirty foot.
The great Western Lord's eyebrows twitched. "Continue in this vein of behaviour, Inuyasha, and you will find yourself the recipient of my full attentions…"
"Keh." Blithely, Inuyasha dismissed the threat that would make a lesser being's blood run cold. "I'm going away for a while. There's a human village about three days to the east."
That gained Sesshoumaru's full attention. He opened both his eyes and fixed Inuyasha with his most exasperated glare. "A human village," he repeated neutrally.
"Yeah. I've been watching them." He smiled, a bemused, dreamy expression that made Sesshoumaru's eyes narrow. "There was a miko. She tried to kill me…"
Sesshoumaru supposed that he should have seen this coming. The whelp was fifteen years old, now – old enough to discover that the body is good for more than just fighting and eating. But… A human miko?
She tried to kill me.
That, at least, showed that Inuyasha's instincts ran moderately true. At least he hadn't fixed on a useless, soft-voiced songbird like his mother.
"Did you tell her who you were?"
"I told her I was a hanyou, yes. She said she didn't care: that half-youkai also meant half-human."
"Hmm." A remarkably insightful statement. "I meant, did you tell her you were my half-brother, and the son of the Inu no Taishou?"
"Well…" Inuyasha fidgeted. "No. Not really."
Not really? "What did you tell her, then?" Would this miko, so tolerant, be so blasé if she knew that the boyish, clearly infatuated hanyou had a very dangerous, notoriously intolerant half-brother?
Under his steady, skeptical gaze, Inuyasha looked extremely uncomfortable. "I told her I'd been abandoned after my mother's death, that you – my full-blooded half-brother – hated me and were actively trying to kill me…"
Sesshoumaru stared at him, aghast.
"I couldn't tell her I was still living with my elder brother, could I?" he burst out. "She doesn't like youkai. She would have thought I was… I told her I had to look after myself, that I was all alone in the world."
"Inuyasha…" Sesshoumaru sighed. Then, because there was really nothing he could say, he only shook his head.
Three days later, Inuyasha crouched high up in a tree, overlooking the human village where Kikyou lived. As he waited for her to come out, he frowned, remembering Sesshoumaru's expression as he'd outlined the…exaggerations…he'd told Kikyou, trying to impress her.
His elder brother was hard to read at the best of times, but that particular expression had been indecipherable; he rather thought he'd finally managed to deprive Sesshoumaru of words. Considering that acid, sardonic tongue, it was quite a feat.
A familiar, long-anticipated scent drifted on the wind, and he bounded out of the tree, landing just in front of the red- and white-clad priestess as she approached the forest. Kikyou jumped back a few steps, her hands automatically going to her bow.
"Inuyasha!" she gasped, lowering the bow when she recognized him, her hand pressed to her heart, beating so swiftly that he could hear it from where he stood. "I didn't see you…"
He grinned, his teeth sharp and white, his eyes inhuman gold in the half-light. "I've been waiting for you," he said. He could see the moment she forced herself to ignore his alien features, and the way she tried not to look too long into his eyes.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, fiddling with her bowstring, her thick dark hair sliding forward to cover and conceal her eyes.
He paused, and gathered his courage, willing to trust another being other than Sesshoumaru for the first time in nearly ten years. "It's the night of the New Moon," he answered, willing her to look up and meet his eyes squarely. "It's my secret night…"
Hidden upwind in the shadows, his youki tightly leashed, too well concealed for either the whelp or the miko to sense him, Sesshoumaru listened as Inuyasha put his life in the girl's hands. He bared his teeth, snarling under his breath as her eyes widened, and she put a sympathetic hand on his arm –
What lies are you telling her now, whelp? Do you think she will like you more, if she knows of your transformations?
But the truth was he knew just how much Inuyasha must trust her, if he was willing to stay with her on the nights he became human, vulnerable and weak. Well, Inuyasha might trust her, but Sesshoumaru certainly didn't. He would stay close, and keep very close watch over this girl who had so infatuated his younger brother…