Disclaimer: I'm just doing this for all my stories now: for this ENTIRE FIC, Inuyasha and all those great, wonderful, fun characters related to the story, don't belong to me. Those are all Takahashi-san's. Don't sue me. However, if anyone touches Kotan, Aya, or any original characters, you will lose vital digits. Alright then!

AN: ...Wow... I actually wrote something that took me less than two months to get out to you guys... Be proud of me?

Anyways, you'll actually start to see something of a plot come about from here on in. I've already been building up to it so far, but the big stuff starts here.

Enjoy!

Chapter 15

Hanyou met pavement as Inuyasha plummeted face-first into the ground, the sound of Kagome's voice still ringing in his ears even as the beads around his neck hummed in dutiful obedience. Instantly, rage and indignation swept through him at the act of being "Osuwari"ed, and as soon as the spell faded, Inuyasha was jumping to his feet and staring with wide, rage-filled eyes as Kagome, still sprawled on the ground from where she had been attacked, glared back.

"What the fuck was that for, bitch!"

Kagome promptly ignored him and stood up slowly, brushing off the wrinkled and dirty business suit that she was wearing and looking around for the briefcase she had dropped, her brow creased in what he had come to identify as irritation. The motion only managed to make his own anger spike even higher, and he stomped his way over to the silent miko who insisted on ignoring him.

"Oi! Wench!" She turned away from him without acknowledging him and began to walk. Inuyasha was stunned. "Where the hell are you going?"

"I'm going home to relax, look over my work, make myself dinner if Mama hasn't already, and then take a nice, soothing bath before bed, all of which DOES NOT INCLUDE YOU!" Kagome, who had continued to walk in a calm and steady fashion up until that point, abruptly stopped, causing Inuyasha to stumble over his own feet in his haste not to run into her, and she shouted the last part of the sentence at him, her eyes flaring dangerously. He felt his eyes widen at the outburst, rendered momentarily speechless, and Kagome took the moment to "humph" and continue on her way down the street.

Inuyasha stared dumbly after her before gathering his wits and following after.

"Oi! You shouldn't go alone! It's dangerous around here at night," he shouted at her back, cautious about following too closely this time.

"I'm sure I can manage to defend myself against all the nasty, evil demons, Inuyasha."

He scoffed. "Keh, like a minute ago when I saved your stupid ass?"

She spun and shot him with that infamous baby-killing glare, and this time Inuyasha stopped well beforehand, scowling right back at her. She seemed to appraise him as they stared each other down, until, finally, Inuyasha saw the look cool into one of bitterness.

"I'm sure you have better things to do than protect the cold-hearted bitch who ditched all her friends five hundred years ago. I'm just like Kikyou, aren't I?"

Her words stung him, throwing their argument from a week ago back in his face, as well as rubbing salt into wounds that were centuries old.

Why did she have to mention Kikyou after all this time?

Before Kagome had left and sealed the well, they had all watched as Kikyou had died in the final battle with Naraku. With everyone working together, the undead priestess had sacrificed her second life in order to purify both the completed Shikon Jewel and Naraku at the same time, and had died cradled in his own arms, turning back into the grave soil from which her false body had been created. Kagome had said little about the miko from that time onwards, and had refrained from mentioning her up until she had left for the final time by way of the BoneEater's Well.

Even so, Kikyou was always a fragile subject wherever Kagome had been concerned. It was like her secret weapon against Inuyasha, to even mention his actions or feelings towards Kikyou in the three years of their journeys.

Inuyasha stared numbly after the retreating form of the dark-haired woman, unable to respond.

Had he truly hurt her so badly with his words?

"Kagome," he called, his voice sounding foreign even to his own ears. Thankfully, something in the air halted her steps, and she waited for him to speak, her back turned her him and her head down. "Let me take you home."

He waited, and was rewarded with a slow, reluctant nod. Stepping forward, he said nothing as he picked her up bridal-style and leapt onto the rooftops, heading in the direction of the Higurashi Shrine.

She had not meant to be so cruel to him, but the moment she had acknowledged his presence Kagome had felt her own emotions spin out of control. It was like lighting a fire beneath her, she had discovered. Even since his sudden resurfacing within her life, she had been almost infuriated by his presence. Even the few times in the past two weeks that they had spoken in a civil manner, the feeling had been short-lived and she had felt a grudge begin to harden in her heart.

…Perhaps, his words to her had simply given her suppressed anger some much-needed justification.

She had not meant to sit him, or to even mention Kikyou, but she had wanted to get away from him so badly for just that moment; hurt him as much as he had hurt her the week before. Did that mean she was a horrible person?

Now, she was cradled against him like a child, her head leaning against his chest and her fingers wrapped up in the soft cloth jacket he was wearing. He had not spoken since their departure for the shrine, and Kagome doubted he would want to talk to her after the cruel way she had treated him. He had saved her unknowingly and she had thrown it back in his face over a grudge that was much, much more than a week old.

Kagome knew, in a more rational part of herself, that over the past four years she had been secretly preparing herself for such a confrontation as she had had with Inuyasha; not because she expected to ever meet him again, but because she was still waiting for some descendant to confront her with the truths of why she had suddenly disappeared from the Feudal Era one day, leaving her precious friends behind. Another part of it had simply been the guilt and contempt she held for herself. She admitted, quietly and only internally, that the things that Inuyasha had accused her of had been the same things she had been questioning since the first moment she had jumped through the well: Why had she been so eager to leave Japan behind? Why had she never even attempted to go into the well again? Why had she been so eager to push everyone aside in her mind?

Why? Why? Why? They were questions that had plagued her daily, and even in her dreams. She had woken at night, fearing that in some other time all her friends were laying dead in their graves somewhere. In her last year of high school, she had been close to nervous breakdowns out of guilt and anxiety for the people she had loved so dearly, and it had been all she could do to simply keep going. She had abandoned the people she had cared for and loved the most as an extension of her own family, and now it was coming back to bite her in the ass.

What kind of idiot was she?

"I'm sorry." Her voice cracked, and the words were so soft that even Kagome was not positive she had actually spoken them, but Inuyasha faltered at that moment before quickly regaining his step and continuing on. When he did not reply, she looked up at him, tears suddenly pooling in her eyes. "Inuyasha?"

He frowned, a gentle change in his face. "Keh… You've got nothing to apologize for."

"Yes I do," she admitted, gripping his jacket a little harder. "I've been horrible to you since… since I came back. I didn't know what to do when I saw you, and you'd been gone so long… I thought I'd never see you again after I sealed the well, and then you were there again, and I was just so angry at myself and at you suddenly reappearing back in my life, and I made you angry so that you said those things, and you were right! I was so afraid everyone was dead, and that I'd never see you again, and so I just told myself to forget everything, but you were right! I was too eager to get away. I left everyone behind! And I just- I just-" She was rambling and suddenly crying as well, and she felt his arms tighten around her, their movement slowing to a stop upon a nondescript rooftop where he lightly set her on her feet. "You never came to get me…"

He was gentle as he drew her away from his chest, clawed hands holding her shoulders firmly but carefully. Her hands continued to grapple with the fabric of his clothes, but he made no move to untangle her fingers, ducking his head into her line of sight so that she was unable to look away.

"I'm as much to blame as you, so don't go taking all of this for yourself. I was… pretty horrible to you too… I owe you an explanation, more than the ones I've given." She nodded to him, but the tears continued to flow and she stifled a sob. She could feel his fingers tense upon her shoulders. "Damnit, Kagome! Stop crying!"

Her face flushed a deeper red than her tears caused and she looked up in defiance. "I'm not crying!" Unfortunately, the words only made the tears come faster and harder, and, not knowing what else to do, Kagome threw herself at his chest and buried her face in his jacket, sobbing for all she was worth after four years of trying to put all of the pain behind her.

He was back with her, finally, after all this time. He had finally come back to get her, after all the years.

And he held her.

Kagome was asleep by the time Inuyasha arrived back at the shrine, secure in his arms as he landed on the familiar grounds. She had cried until eventually passing out in his arms, body going limp from what he could only assess as exhaustion and leaving only his own strength to support her from falling. He had been shocked with the outburst, to say the least, but had dutifully held her and carried her the rest of the way back home.

His first instinct was to jump up to her window on the second story of the house as he had always done, only to find that the window was securely locked. He reasoned that Kagome would not appreciate him breaking her window when the lights of the house were bright against the night and the television was so obviously blaring from the presence of someone in the house, so Inuyasha opted for knocking (or banging with his foot since his arms were occupied) on the door and waiting for someone to answer.

He glanced down at her in his arms, the tears still evident on her cheeks where they had tracked down and her eyes puffy and swollen even in sleep. Her braid from earlier in the day had long since fallen out since the attack, and her hair covered part of his shoulder and arm where her head rested, her face half pressed into his jacket. Unconsciously, she had kept his coat in a deathgrip since she had first latched onto him, and seemed content now to press into that very spot, drawing on his warmth during what was becoming a chilly evening. His eyes softened.

Kagome…

Inuyasha's head snap up as he heard footsteps, the door opening a moment later to reveal Kagome's mother. She stared in confusion. "Inuyasha? …Ah! Kagome!" Her eyes locked on her daughter a moment after she noticed him, and she quickly ushered the hanyou inside, shutting the door securely behind them before aiming a worried gaze at the unconscious form of his daughter. "Did something happen? Is she alright?" Brown eyes not so different from Kagome's rose to meet his own, but Inuyasha found he could not look the older Higurashi in the eye.

"She's not hurt or anything. She just fell asleep," he half lied, hoping the explanation would suffice. There was a critical pause of silence as he could sense the woman sizing up his response, before she sighed, shaking her head.

"Thank you for bringing her home, Inuyasha. Please, take her upstairs to her room. I'm sure she's exhausted."

Inuyasha nodded and obediently walked to the stairs, Kagome securely in hand, climbing them slowly and smoothly so as not to jolt his cargo. Kagome, for her part, was fast asleep, and did not appear as though she would be waking any time soon.

He carried her to her room and allowed her feet to touch the ground in order to free a hand to pull back the covers of her bed, then scooped her back up and laid her gently down, removing her shoes and pulling the covers up around her before he retreated from her side. He paused at the doorway, glancing back, then flipped the light switch and closed the door behind him, walking back down the stairs to set her shoes in the front hall. There, he saw her mother still standing by, apparently waiting for him.

"Would you like something to eat, Inuyasha? I'm sure we have some Ramen in the cupboard." The invitation was unexpected, but Inuyasha found himself dumbly nodding in acceptance and following the softly smiling woman into the kitchen.

The house had not changed in the four years since he had been there last. Everything was positioned almost exactly as he remembered, with only a few new trinkets here or there, and the kitchen was still laid out exactly as it had been. At the prompt from the elder Higurashi, Inuyasha seated himself and watched as Kagome's mother bustled about the kitchen, preparing Ramen and making tea for herself. He fidgeted uneasily in his chair, not used to being in the house without Kagome being next to him, and furthermore uncomfortable by the presence of her mother.

"She has not done that in quite a long time… Cried herself to sleep." The words put an abrupt halt to any and all movement on his part, and Inuyasha found himself suddenly listening intently as the woman before him began to speak quietly, her back facing him.

"That first week when she was suddenly home all the time, I was so worried. She refused to eat, and she only slept when she was so exhausted from crying that she was unable to stay up any longer, only to wake screaming in the night from nightmares. At the same time, she would not tell anyone what had happened, and she refused to go to school. It was Souta who first suspected that something had happened… back then. He realized that you, Inuyasha, had not come by for a visit in all the time since she had returned. When I asked her about it, she just broke down and cried even more until she fell asleep in my arms."

She paused, her usually kind face twisted into a look of sadness.

"It is a hard thing for a mother to see her child like that, especially someone like Kagome, who is usually so energetic and determined. I could tell she was hurting, and that she missed you and her other friends very dearly, but there was nothing I could do to ease that pain. I'm sure that is a feeling we can all relate to at some point in our lives, don't you agree?" She smiled at him with that same heart-broken expression, Inuyasha's ears drooping with each word. "But, I think you can understand, then, why I chose to push her towards school. The next day, I made her go, even though she got angry at me and looked at me with tears in her eyes, asking how I could force her to go when she felt the way she did. But she went, and she came back with a few less tears in her eyes at the end of the day.

"I made her go every day, even when she did not want to, and I watched her to make sure she did her school work because I was her mother and it was my responsibility to lead her towards a better future. After awhile, the crying stopped and she was sleeping through the night without having to exhaust herself. She finished school as best she could, but it was enough, and so when she told me that she had her heart set on America – that she needed to be away from Japan, I let her go." She turned away from the stove, Ramen and tea in hand, and placed the former before him on the table. But Inuyasha simply stared at her; distress painted clearly on his face, and ignored the beloved meal before him.

Kagome had gone through all that?

Of course, Inuyasha had been present when she had come back through the well for the last time, had seen her stand outside the well house for almost fifteen minutes before moving slowly inside, but he had not allowed himself to get close enough to see her face, and the tears he had detected he had guessed were only the remnants of those from saying goodbye to them all. Afterwards, he had made it a point to stay away from almost a month so as not to gain the urge to suddenly show up and disrupt everything he had been working so hard to accomplish. He had not seen any of what her mother had just described.

Afterwards, when she had gone to America, he had wanted to follow so badly that it had taken Sesshoumaru to stop him, using force and reminding him of the duties he had to the people of his modern life. To many humans, he was now Mori Kawa, and the main source of employment for many humans and youkai alike. The people who followed him depended upon his judgments and his presence in order to decide what to do next in their line of work. For him to leave for America would have been to betray all the people that depended on him to lead. Even for Kagome, he could not betray that, and in the end reason and Sesshoumaru had won out against his will to follow and protect her.

But, now…

"I don't suppose she'll be the easiest person to get through to these days. She's built up a great deal of guilt towards herself over what happened when she sealed that well between your time and ours. I imagine it will take some time before she can really appreciate that the very things she thought were lost are actually right in front of her." Kagome's mother shook her head ruefully, her smile warming despite the gesture as she turned her gaze on him. "Please be patient with my daughter, Inuyasha. She's still a young woman and she has already done one of the hardest things she will ever do in her life. It takes a strong will to say goodbye to one's friends for the sake of others, and I do not doubt that this all still weighs heavily upon Kagome's heart. I've done what I can as her mother, I hope that I can leave the rest to you?"

It was a request, a question. Would he protect her from now on?

He looked away from her gaze, glancing out a nearby window where he could see Goshinboku in the distance against the background of the night. The great God Tree seemed so much more significant these days when he looked at it. It was the source of everything he had known for the past five hundred years, and his reason to keep living even when so many youkai and humans alike had tried to kill him off and beat him down. Once, long ago, when he had been condemned to an eternity of sleep against that tree, a 15-year-old girl from another time had come and saved his life, waking him from that sleep to a future he had never dreamed about.

Inuyasha smiled, a small quirk of the mouth.

"Keh… She never could do anything without me."

That answer seemed to serve as satisfactory, the conversation shifting towards much lighter subjects.

"So, this is where the miko lives," a voice drawled out, a figure shifting somewhere in the shadows beyond the Higurashi shrine. From where it stood, the shadow could make out figures in the brightly lit household: a woman and hanyou sitting in the kitchen, taking over food and drink, the girl resting upstairs in her bed where the same hanyou had placed her not so long ago.

"There is a powerful barrier around this shrine. It would be foolish to try and break through for the time being," another voice spoke up, lower than the first. Both glanced at the house once again, then to the massive tree in the distance that acted as guardian over the shrine itself.

"No, not right now. But there are ways to weaken barriers, and there are tricks to lure prey away from their havens. For now, it is better to bide our time while the taiyoukai and that filthy creature he calls 'brother' are still ignorant to our intentions. Hatsugaya was foolish to leave one of the youkai alive that he attacked earlier this week, so we must take advantage of the time we have left. Already now, the suspicions grow with each day, and our time draws short to move without notice. We must take advantage of that."

"Understood. Shall we go then, Daishou?"

"Yes, Let's." With that, both figures turned and leapt onto the nearest rooftops, blending instantly with the shadows of the night and disappearing as silently and invisibly as they had come.

(Okay, I lied, she ran into his arms.)

Next Chapter: 16, Little by Little, Kagome has finally apologized to Inuyasha and it appears that they've come to a small truce. However, other factors are working behind their backs while the two struggle to come to a true understanding with each other and the past.