Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
REVISED: format - 10/15/2006

Replaced Bride – Part V
It's Fate
(More Like: It's CJ!)

Kagome cracked an eye open as shouting made its way through her walls. The words were muffled, but for some reason she had the feeling that Sango was yelling at someone. Which was impossible, because Sango wasn't in Kirishima Sesshoumaru's personal home. Right?

After a moment she groaned and forced herself to sit up, brushing her bangs from her face in a tired movement. She'd stayed up late last night, though she couldn't exactly remember what she'd done. Oh. Right. She blinked a little, remembering the move of Kohaku and Souta to the new house. Surprisingly, Sesshoumaru hadn't objected to both boys coming with them.

Which wasn't such a bad thing, so she could possibly do with taking a step back and re-evaluating his character, but that had been quickly negated when he'd told the kids she'd been drinking. That was just… wrong. He wasn't supposed to tell them she was doing something she probably shouldn't be doing! Especially when he wasn't in charge of said kids. Frowning, Kagome slowly pushed herself out of bed, grabbing the robe that had been draped over a chair and pulling it over her with a little sigh. She needed to check up on Souta and Kohaku, make sure they were doing fine and not making a mess, or—

"Kagome-chan!" The door burst open to reveal a very frazzled, very messy Sango. Her eyes were a little wild, darting from place to place, her shirt buttoned wrong and her skirt backwards.

She blinked to make sure she was seeing things correctly just before her best friend tackled her. "Kagome-chan, you have to help me! You're the one that got me into this, so you have to! Just tell him to let me go!" she begged, pulling on her arm. "I can't deal with another night like the last one! I'll absolutely die!"

"Uh—" she responded cleverly, not quite awake enough to deal with… well, anything besides going to the bathroom, brushing her teeth and combing through her probably-worse-than-Sango-looking hair. "What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about?" She threw up her hands. "What do you think I'm talking about? White hair, golden eyes, rough hands…" Her eyes began to glaze over. "Long fingers, claws, fangs… God, those fangs. No! No, no, no, no, no!" She shook her head frantically. "You have to get me away, Kagome-chan!"

The other girl let out a little "Eep" as her shoulders were taken and shaken. "I-I don't know what you're talking about, Sang-Sang…" Why on Earth is she fantasizing about Sesshoumaru, anyway?

"My husband!" she yelled. "Get me away from him! He's going to drive me absolutely crazy!"

"Husband?" A familiar voice piped up in inquiry. Both women turned to blink down at the two little boys just inside Kagome's door. "Nee-chan, did you get married?"

"Oh—what are they doing here?" Sango squeaked. "Um… Kohaku… that is… yes, I did, but… um…"

"Oh! So Bankotsu-no-aniki is staying with us forever then?" Huge brown eyes widened in delight. Souta clapped his hands giddily at Kohaku's words.

"N-No, no, you see…"

"Come on! Let's get the Playstation running so Bankotsu-no-aniki can play with us!" Souta squealed, running out as fast as he could. Kohaku flashed his big sister a wide smile before turning to follow.

"Eh? What's this about Bankotsu?" a very familiar, very irritated voice growled. Kagome winced as she heard a petrified "meep" come from her little brother. Sango paled.

Inuyasha appeared in the doorway, little boy hanging from his hand. "Hey, Sango! The fuck you think you're doing, running off like that?" He was saying more than that, too, but Kagome's ears had shut off after she noticed how much disarray he was in. In fact, it reminded her very much of her best friend. Their clothes seemed to have been very hastily put on, and his waist-length hair was even more tumbled about than Sango's. And was… that scratch marks on his cheek? And a mark on his neck? She turned slowly to check her friend's neck. Yep, one there, too. What was going on…?

Ahh. So she wasn't fantasizing about Sesshoumaru earlier. Got it. Kagome struggled against the grin that was threatening to split her face apart as she re-tuned into the conversation.

"…you ever touch any of those boys again and I will cut off your hands and feed them to the sharks!" Sango shouted, stamping her foot.

"Keh! It wasn't my fault he ran into me and wouldn't move!" Inuyasha crossed his arms after dropping the boy onto the ground, who didn't seem to care. He was wholly involved in staring up at the stranger. "Besides, if you cut off my hands I wouldn't be able to t—" Somehow, his wife had managed to jump across the room in less than a second to slap a hand over his mouth.

"Don't say it!" she warned. He narrowed his eyes at her. She glared.

Kagome bit back a yawn and decided that she really didn't want to get into any sort of marital discussions between the two. Their glares alone were absolutely lethal. Which reminded her of Sesshoumaru, really, which was funny because, well, she should have been thinking of him in the first place—like before he, too, appeared in her doorway to scowl at the crowd.

"Good morning!" she chirped. Well, chirped as much as she was able, between yawning and fighting giggles at the yelling going on between her best friend and her best friend's husband.

"Not so very," he muttered, obviously taking her greeting seriously. "Inuyasha, what sort of idiot yells at his wife this early in the morning? Get the hell out of my fiancée's room—you shouldn't be in here while she's not dressed, anyway! Souta, Kohaku, don't you have games to play? Sango, I realize you are a very recent addition to the family, but I do not tolerate this." His coolly impassive, all-encompassing stare did nothing to deflate her temper, but the newly-wed woman muttered some sort of apology before flopping down on Kagome's bed, giving her husband a rather defiant look.

Inuyasha muttered a soft "Keh!" before departing with the children, who were excitedly now yabbering about some sort of game with fighters and swords.

"Out." Kagome raised her hand and pointed her finger imperatively to the door. Sesshoumaru gave her an incredulous look. "OUT!" She raised her voice, and he gifted her with a very flat look before sauntering out, closing the door firmly behind him.

"Now." She turned, crossing her arms and staring blandly at her best friend. "What on Earth is going on here?"

Sango blushed a little and grabbed a pillow, squeezing it to its doom. "Well…"

- - -

"Why are you here?" he asked bluntly, leaning back in his chair and staring at his younger brother over the top of his desk. Inuyasha scowled down at the buttons of his shirt, trying to fit them into the proper holes this time.

"My wife… you know, the one you made me marry? The one I didn't want to be married to? Yeah, well, she came over here and I followed. Got a problem with that?"

"Yes." Sesshoumaru tapped his claws against the desk. "Have you any idea how loud your infernal racket is?"

"Ooh, I'm so sorry," his brother sniped.

He tried a different tack. "Is that a bruise on your neck?" He knew perfectly well it wasn't—the slight addition to Inuyasha's scent told him as much—but the question would probably fluster him.

"Uh…" he shifted and concentrated harder on the buttons. "Something like that."

"So, she bit you?"

"Um… I don't think she realized what she was doing at the time," he mumbled.

"Did you mark her?" Of course he did. He'd smelled the change in that human woman's scent the moment she'd stepped into his house.

"Something like that…" he swore as he popped off a button and ripped a new hole into his shirt simultaneously. "Dammit."

"Something—ah." His brows rose, partly in amusement and partly in annoyance. "You made her your mate because you lost control?"

The color rising in Inuyasha's cheek answered that question wonderfully. He decided to take advantage. "Did she realize what you were doing?"

"She knows a lot about youkai," he bit out, shifting uncomfortably again in his chair.

"Really… now how would you know such a thing? From what I gather, you weren't doing very much… talking on your wedding night."

"We talked… a little."

"Hmm. Oh, I see. To calm her down before you pounced?"

"I did not pounce," he gritted out between his teeth.

"So what did you do?"

Inuyasha paused, before shifting again and slumping in his chair.

"You pounced, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

- - -

"So you… bit him?" Kagome blinked.

"Well… he bit me first," Sango defended herself, nervously plucking at the pillow. "It's, um, well, youkai mark their, uh, mates." Demon Education in the early morning.

"Okay." She bit back a smirk at her best friend's obvious discomfort. "So I guess he was good enough for you to—"

"Kagome!"

"—want him to stay in your bed night after night?"

"You don't understand! I don't… I need to get a divorce! Or annulment or whatever!"

"Well…" Kagome squirmed. "You can't… really do that."

"Why not!"

"You have to stay married so that I marry Sesshoumaru, and well… it's already a done deal and… um… he won't let you divorce Inuyasha anyway."

"What?"

"He's the one with all the power in the family, so you're out of luck on getting out of the marriage. By the way, congratulations."

"Thank—grr. Stop that! You have to figure out how to get me out of this!"

"Is he good in bed?"

Silence.

"On a scale of one to ten…"

"Fifty. Or so. But that's not the point…"

"Keep him," Kagome decided. "Much better than Bankotsu. You said he was an eight."

"Marriage isn't based on sex!" Sango yelled.

"Yours is," she pointed out, earning a bop on the head from the much-abused pillow. "Ow!"

"You deserved it!"

"I did not," she protested, outraged. "I was only telling the—ahh!" She jumped up and bolted out of her room, only to be chased by a pillow-wielding Sango. "I swear, don't hurt me! Don't!"

- - -

"Absolutely not," Sesshoumaru denied immediately. "Any judges you attempt to contact regarding a divorce or annulment will find themselves with a swift death in their immediate future."

"Sess—"

"No."

"You don't understand! We have nothing but sex in common!" Inuyasha muttered. "I wasn't even supposed to have a mate for another hundred years!"

"You're precocious. Good for you."

"Sesshoumaru," he growled.

"You'll just have to deal with it." He twirled a pencil idly between his fingers, tilting his head slightly at an odd sound his house had probably never dealt with before. It sounded like Kagome screaming for help and Sango threatening her. By Inuyasha's rapidly twitching ears, he heard the same thing.

And so it was without… much… surprise that Kagome burst into the study and jumped over the desk to land in his lap, clinging to his neck, with a furious Sango behind her, throwing her pillow with what could be deadly accuracy if it hadn't been so… well, so fluffy.

"She's going to kill me," Kagome moaned, tightening her grip on his neck. "You have to save me!"

Judging by the very nice move Inuyasha had executed—snatching the pillow out of midair and grabbing Sango's wrist to pull her into his lap—he didn't need to do much saving. "You're fine."

"You don't understand—she's never going to stop hunting me." She peeked a glance at her best friend, reassured when her death threats had been transferred to a new object of attention—her husband.

"Do you get off by scaring the wits out of me like that?" she was demanding, glaring heatedly at the younger Kirishima. "I could have died of a heart attack!"

"Die—hmm." A speculative gleam lit his eyes. "That's one way to get out of—"

"NO!" three voices shouted in unison. Well, two shouted, and one just… stated. Very loudly. Inuyasha blinked in all innocence at his brother, his wife, and his brother's fiancée.

"Now, what on Earth spawned that?" he pondered. Sango pulled on his forelock. Hard.

"Don't even think about killing me," she warned. He winced.

"You know, that feels much better when you don't yank it." Kagome was certain her best friend didn't realize that she was now threading her fingers absently through his thick silver hair, smoothing out various tangles. She was too busy yelling. Still.

Kagome tuned her out, turning her own attention to her robe, tugging the lapels together and blushing fiercely. It was too much to hope that Sesshoumaru hadn't seen much, by the odd gleam in his eyes, but still. She wasn't going to parade around half-naked.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. "I think their marriage is going off well, don't you think?" Warm breath tickled her skin, and she shivered involuntarily.

"Um… Yeah. Something like that," she agreed, focusing her gaze on some point over his shoulder.

"Your dress should be here tomorrow."

"Dress?" She blinked at him in confusion, noting how warm his tawny eyes were. Well, warm wasn't quite the word. Heated was more like it.

"For the wedding."

"Wedding?" she repeated stupidly, wondering at the small scar arcing out from his left eyebrow. Cute scar. Sexy scar. Very nice… matched with his crescent mark.

"Where we get married?" he prodded helpfully.

"Oh… that." Her fingers twitched. She wanted to… touch it. Touch the pretty scar, Kagome. No. Had to keep her hands to herself.

His gaze fled from her to focus on something behind her. She didn't care, completely and totally absorbed in… the scar. God, she wanted to… to touch it…

"If you two could leave your marital bliss to your bedroom, I'd be forever grateful." His dry voice barely made it through the haze in her mind. When it did, Kagome turned sharply to stare at a sight that would be forever engraved on her mind.

Sango had been thoroughly shut up in what had to be a very… well, very fun way. Inuyasha's hands were all over her back and thighs, and she was kissing him with very appearance of enjoying it to the fullest. She grinned. It wasn't hard to figure out how they'd spent their wedding night.

They also didn't seem to be hearing Sesshoumaru's words. Which wasn't so bad. He turned his chair—Rotating chairs! God, these are fun!—and stared down at her. She stared back.

"Hi?" she offered tentatively.

"Aren't you supposed to greet me with a good morning kiss?" he asked, his lips twitching slightly. Is he… is he smiling? She blinked, her gaze moving unerringly toward the scar. Pretty… touch. Want to touch it. I'll call it Fluffy and it will be mine. Yes…

"Not until we're married." Good line. Very good.

"What a pity," he murmured, running his fingers through her hair. Very tangled hair.

"Ouch."

"Calm down, I'm getting the tangles."

"Oh." She reached up to touch the—no. Ears. Ears are safer. Not the scar. The very sexy, very alluring scar.

"Don't—oh. That's nice." He arched his neck slightly as she rubbed the sensitive spot behind his ear. "Um—breakfast. We're going out."

"Hmm," she agreed, still staring at the scar. Then…

"So cute!" Sango gushed. "Inuyasha, they're going to be a perfect married couple!" She turned a sharp smile in her husband's direction. "Unlike us."

He muttered something under his breath as Kagome hid her face in her hands and Sesshoumaru simply stared at them both with an utterly bored look on his face. "You might want to get dressed. We're going out for breakfast."