A/N: Thank you so much for all of your lovely reviews. Like always they made me so extremely happy. Thank you to AnuBis25 who nicely pointed out that my spelling of Haori. It was indeed wrong, a bit silly of me. And I do indeed agree with the assessment that Sesshomaru is an arsehole. He was one at the beginning of either the manga and the series, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. He hurts, kills and pushes whatever or whomever to get what he wants.
Chiharu's life doesn't mean a thing to him. At most he finds her annoying. Anyway, enjoy this new chapter and leave a comment. Your thoughts and support are the best gasoline ever^^
o.O.o
Chapter Four, Lady Kaede
'Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.' — Arthur Rubenstein
Slowly, she opened her tired eyes to look around her. The dark haze slowly lifted from her vision and with that she became aware of a searing pain that engulfed her body. Every part ached and even breathing seemed to be a problem.
His face seemed amused, and then he twisted around, appearing in front of her. Chiharu yelped, her heart thudded, her mouth sandpaper-dry and her mind a choppy sea of fears. Sesshomaru slapped the bow out of her hand, snapping it in two as well. She was terrified when he twirled her around pressing her back against his front and dug his left hand into her hair, craning her neck painfully. "Last chance, little brother."
"You wouldn't!" Inuyasha hissed with certainty.
From somewhere close she noticed the sound of water dripping, splashing onto a wooden floorboard creating a strange hollow sound. Eyes burning with tears, she inhaled sharply, ignoring another wave of pain searing through her limbs. The scent of wet earth met her nostrils and she slowly turned her head to the right.
"Your choice…" he muttered, before yanking at her hair, baring even more from her neck. Chiharu's scream died in her throat as his fangs sank into the pale unyielding flesh of her throat. She trashed against his form, his left arm winding around her waist, keeping her from falling. Her breathing laboured and her eyes rolled back into her head. She heard someone scream and the Hanyō cursed foully.
Her neck started to feel numb and her heartbeat had ceased its rapid rhythm. If anything it started to slow down and Chiharu tried to keep her eyes open, even if it was just a little. She could faintly feel the steady beat of Sesshomaru's heart (if her head had been any clearer she would have been surprised he even had one).
"Stop!" she whispered weakly, only half aware that the air whisked past her. "P-please stop! You're going to… kill me!" He disengaged his fangs and loosened his hand onto her hair.
"Careful child," a woman whispered. Her voice was unfamiliar, but her face was not.
"Kaede-baasan?"
"Yes," she whispered stroking her fingers gently through Chiharu's hair. "It's me. Do you remember what happened?"
Chiharu squinted her eyes in thought. She was with Kagome, following after her strange dog-demon friend. She didn't really understand their relationship and then— the crease between her eyebrows deepened— then nothing.
"I don't know." She whispered softly, unsure what the loose fragments of her memory meant. "Did I get hit? Was there another attack?"
"Yes," Lady Kaede whispered. "But not on the village…"
Chiharu wetted her lips, before lifting her hand to her neck. Her memory failed her again when she tried to think about what had happened. Flashes of the silver-haired man she'd met, just before she ran into Inuyasha, didn't make much sense. It was burning and it was annoying. A bandage was wrapped around it and she frowned. "What happened here?" she asked softly, starting to panic when she noticed someone's feet crunching the leaves outside. "My ears." She whimpered.
"She's not doing well," another voice said, male, also outside.
"She's awake?"
"Yes," the male voice said slowly, and the footsteps neared.
The mat in front of the door moved away and Chiharu's eyes widened when her sister entered the hut.
"Kagome-neechan?" she mumbled, before her older sister crouched down beside her and hugged Chiharu's aching body to her chest. She couldn't help the grimace as pain shot through her.
"I'm sorry." Kagome whispered before slowly laying her back. Chiharu smiled watery at her older sister and tried to slowly sit up.
"You shouldn't," Kagome muttered.
Lady Kaede pressed a hand to Chiharu's forehead and shook her head. "Yeh burning up, my child."
"You look horrible." Inuyasha told her bluntly and Chiharu chuckled, completely ignoring Kagome's annoyed look at the comment.
"Then I look the way I feel." Chiharu told him and Kagome glared at her friend angrily.
"Inuyasha…" she hissed threateningly and Inuyasha's ears flattened against his skull.
"It's fine, Nee-chan." Chiharu whispered. "Please tell me you have acetaminophen!"
"Oh, yes, I do." She whispered. "We should go home…"
"No,"
"What?" Kagome whispered, her eyebrows knitting together. "What do you mean; 'no'?"
"Mum will freak, and grandad will forbid us to return." Chiharu whispered, easily understanding that what ever happened was bad. No worse than bad. Those grim faces did not bode well for her. Why else would they not just tell her what had happened? "Don't deny it. He will. I'm not a doctor, but even I know that I'm doing far from good. What if the doctors can't do anything?"
"But what if they can?" Kagome countered stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Chiharu chuckled lowly, before shaking her head. "Can someone explain to me what happened? That makes deciding on our next step of action much easier."
"What do you remember?" Kagome asked unscrewing a water-bottle and offered her the earlier requested painkillers. Chiharu pursed her lips against the taste, but swiftly swallowed them down.
"What I remember," she mused softly before batting the hands that tried to help her sit up away, and leant her back against the hard wooden wall. "We were filling you in about the fight with Yura, tending to Inuyasaha's wound, when Sesshomaru-Sama came…"
"He would love to hear you use his honorific." Inuyasha hissed, stamping further into the hut and sitting down cross-legged, next to Kagome. Chiharu absentmindedly plucked her fingers at the gauge around her neck, unaware of the stares of sympathy she got.
"How did I get this?" she asked, reiki pressing against something intruding. Something from within, that shouldn't be there. Her body shuddered and the hairs on her arms and legs stood on edge. Almost tearful Kagome clasped her hands together and looked at the Hanyō, who was uncharacteristically silent.
"He— he came after you when he thought you were— erm— my female…" Inuyasha explained awkwardly.
Chiharu never felt more stupid in her life. They all seemed to understand that sentence, while it made absolutely no sense to her. Sensing her complete lack of understanding, or simply correctly interpreting the clueless look on her face, Inuyasha pointed at his fangs. A heavy sense of understanding settled into her stomach.
"He bit me?"
"I'm sorry Chiharu… We… We didn't know what we were supposed to do." Kagome apologised as she made fists on her knees and bit her lower-lip to keep from breaking down into tears. "You got some kind of seizure, so we brought you here… and—"
"Why?"
"Why we brought you here?" Inuyasha asked, an imperious eyebrow raised, resembling his brother in an uncanny way.
"No, why did he bite me?" Chiharu stressed. "What— the consequences… What are the consequences of a Yōkai biting you? Obviously there are consequences."
"Biting on it self doesn't have consequences, Chiharu-sama." Myoga suddenly piped up. "It's the Youki that has."
"You-ki?" she whispered, straining in terror at the implications of the words. She wasn't completely stupid. Youki was a dead opposite of her reiki. She couldn't imagine it was going to mix well. It was probably why she felt like her body was being destroyed from the inside out.
"She's going to freak." Kagome muttered matter-of-factly. "I mean it, she's going to freak."
"I know I would," Inuyasha supplied not-so-helpfully.
"Child, you are lucky to be alive." Kade spoke in a heavy sigh of fact, her one good eye centered on Chiharu's neck. "If your powers had been any more trained then the Youki would have immediately killed you from the inside out."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Chiharu whispered, the level of panic spiking into her blood.
"We need to get her body-heat down." Kaede said, obviously used to deal with sick people and Chiharu was unceremoniously hoisted over Inuyasha's shoulder. "If she gets sick on you like that, than yeh only have yehself to blame." The older priestess warned and the Hanyō grumbled, pulling Chiharu snugly against his chest and stepped outside.
"Where are we going?"
"The river." Kaede answered stiffly and Chiharu knew immediately how they were going to attempt to lower her body temperature. As long as they were not going to bleed her out like they did several places in the world at the sixteenth century than she wouldn't mind.
Kagome trudged after them, her jaw jutted in that stubborn way of hers and her arms crossed over her chest. "I still think we should take her home."
"You idiot!" Inuyasha snarled, his arms tightening around Chiharu's limb body. "Even your grandfather would sense the hostile youki radiating from her. It wouldn't end well."
"But she needs her family!" Kagome said and Chiharu felt her heart constrict painfully. Did her sister really think she didn't want to curl onto her mother's lap and cry? "And it's not like you helped."
"I tried!" Inuyasha snapped back before sitting her down onto the riverbank. Chiharu absentmindedly stirred the water surface with her fingers.
"I'm nog going naked," she suddenly told them, interrupting the arguing couple. She was too tired to focus on their pointless arguments and truly didn't want to know how Inuyasha had tried to help her — after all it hand't worked, so what difference did it make?
Kaede held her head, as Inuyasha (softly complaining to himself) lowered her into the water. Kagome rubbed her hands together and stared at her younger sibling.
"Kagome-neechan?"
"Yes?" she whispered, trying to smile reassuringly, but failing miserably.
"Can you get me my pyjama from home?" Chiharu asked, just needing an excuse to make her sister leave. She wanted to weep, but not when Kagome was around. The girl had the knack to blame herself for everything that went wrong.
"Sure," Kagome muttered, quickly getting to her feet. She seemed to be just as happy to leave as Chiharu was to see her go. As she watched her sister go, she started to shiver. The cold water prickling her skin. It was no longer pleasant.
"All right, can you get her out, Inuyasha?" Kaede asked.
Inuyasha nodded slowly, before hoisting her up on her feet. Chiharu moaned and trembled uncontrollably, just as she was pulled out of the water. Water which was so cold that her heart had nearly frozen. The boy tightened his hold on her and placed her on the shore.
"All right, sweetheart," Kaede whispered, sliding an arm around Chaharu's back and lifted her. "Try and drink this." She continued, pressing a cup with a green liquid into her hands.
"It hurt so much!" she whimpered, opening her eyes, which contained to her surprise and shame tears. They fell down her cheeks and she hiccuped pathetically. Kaede slid a hand under the back of Chiharu's head to lift her into an upright position, rubbing her back comfortingly.
Chiharu's breathing turned laboured and her soft hiccups turned into sobs, while hot tears ran down her face. Kaede made sympathetic sounds and put the drink down onto the forest-floor, while mopping Chiharu's face with a piece of linnen.
"It's okay," she coed softly and Chiharu struggled to hold back more tears, pressing her lips together to choke the sobs down that still shook her chest. "It's all right to cry."
"It hurts so much." She mumbled and sniffled into the older woman's collar. Chiharu felt Kaede gather her hair into her hands, rubbing it dry. Then, starting with the last few inches of her thick hair, she began to tease out the knots, brushing a comb through it with practiced ease. Kaede hummed softly, before pulling it up in a thick, damp ponytail and tied it together with a ribbon.
"Your hair reminds me a bit of that of my late sister's."
"Really?" she mumbled, not really caring.
"She looks less like Kikyo than Kagome…" Inuyasha muttered, and Chiharu was unsure if she should have heard that.
"Can you stand?" he asked suddenly and Chiharu blinked away the teardrops before nodding determinedly.
"Yes," she mumbled. He gave her a hand and pulled her to her feet. Chiharu swallowed the pained groan and the aching heat that travelled through her arms and legs made her fingers tingle. She had to bite down onto her cheek so hard she tasted blood, but she actually managed to walk herself back to the village. She didn't doubt for a second she was going to die. The gloom expressions she saw on the others' faces only confirmed that.
I-I. ⌡. Γ┐
Hours had turned into days and days turned into a week. Chiharu lived. She sat by the fire with a bottle of cold water. The wind blew in gusts against the windows and the flames threw strange shadows round the dimly lit room. Her body was still aching, but at least it was manageable now (she was getting used to it, the way you could get used to a stomach ache when you were distracted). Still, she wasn't doing well by any means.
A cat came into the room and wound itself around her feet, purring softly. Chiharu smiled slightly and slowly bent down to scratch it behind its fluffy ears. She slowly, silently lifted the cat up onto her lap and listened to the wind howl outside.
She heard Kaede before she saw her. The old woman was carrying a pot of tea, the strong fragrance of turmeric tea met her before the woman even entered the hut. Chiharu grimaced, she didn't like the poignant smell or the taste of it.
"I'm going to die, am I not?" she whispered softly, as the old Miko entered. She hadn't been able to keep anything down and therefore had lost a lot of weight, making her look fragile and sickly.
"Kagome-chan is getting medical supplies from your home." The old woman evaded softly. That somehow made it worse. How everyone tried to placate her with empty promises. Kagome had brought several different kind of medicines back. From acetaminophen to morphine (which you needed a prescription for, so how Kagome got that, she had no idea).
"Won't do me any good," Chiharu mumbled tiredly. She had refused to go home and almost had to threaten her sister from telling their mother and grandfather what had happened. Chiharu didn't think they would let Kagome return to where she was needed if they understood their youngest (grand)daughter was dying. So as far as they were concerned she was still missing.
"How are they faring with the Shikon-no-tama?"
Kaede smiled before sitting down in front of her. "They found two more shards in the last two weeks." She explained.
"That's good." She whispered.
Chiharu exhaled softly, before glancing at her reflection in the mirror. Biting down onto her lower-lip she slowly pulled the collar of her Haori aside and glanced at the faded pink scar in the shape of the Daiyōkai's teeth marks. It had healed quite nicely, although still somewhat red and angry, yet it was still sore and felt sensitive to the touch. The constant pain was somewhat manageable. The painkillers from her time made sure she could function, but didn't do anything for her appetite.
She slumped back against the futon and curled her fingers. She wanted to take a walk outside. Lady Kaede pushed a dark lock of hair behind Chiharu's ear and the old lady left the hut. Chiharu slowly scrambled to her feet. Her footing was steadier than it had been before and she gratefully walked outside. A strange burning sensation curled from the bandaged mark down her spine, as if something, or someone was beckoning her. She ignored it.
Chiharu carefully wound around the villagers. Most of them shot her worried glances. She ignored it. It felt good being outside. The initial reaction to wound a thick scarf around her face against the several scents and senses assaulting her had lessened. She still jumped when a football hit the ground or a bird chirped loudly or any other sound suddenly pierced the air, but at least she could give them a place. She understood what the sounds were, although the knowledge that half of the time she shouldn't have been able to hear them, made her feel wary.
Wisps of smoke were rising from one of the fires and she sniffed carefully, putting the dark smell away, categorising it in her mind. Sengoku period wasn't a clean area. Although the sky was probably much less polluted, personal hygiene was at its lowest. She didn't like the smell of mankind much.
"Kaede-Sama?"
The old Miko turned slowly to her, eyebrows risen and head cocked to the side. "Chiharu-chan, how can I help you?"
"I was wondering, could you help me with my archery?" She asked slowly. "I know the basics, but I could really do with the help."
"Of course," She conceded and Chiharu smiled. The first real smile since she woke up in pain and spent the rest of day accompanying the older woman doing her rounds through the village. She hadn't lied when she'd told Miko Kaede about knowing the basics of the healing properties of several plants and she listened interestedly as the older woman explained about the abilities and properties of several berries, leaves and roots.
When rounds were finished, Lady Kaede led the young girl out to a clearing. Chiharu closed her eyes. There was a waterfall nearby, pouring down into a strong river. They were far enough away from the villagers for the human stench to be lessened, but close enough she could still hear them busying about. She took the old worn bow offered to her and Lady Kaede smiled.
"This was my first bow when I reached adult hood." She explained evenly, her one good eye glazing over as if remembering. "You know the basic stance?"
Chiharu nodded, traced her fingers over the strong and surprisingly smooth wood and carefully drew the string back and found it made drawing back easy. Years ago she'd once accompanied her grandfather to a Traditional Archery store and there she'd traced wooden patterns on a delicate historic bow. It felt somewhat the same. The older woman nodded approvingly before taking one arrow out of her quiver and showed it to her.
"There are many different arrows. The ones we use have a armor piercing bodkin. These work for Yōkai too. Many of us use an armguard, to protect the forearm from the string of the bow as it is released. Considering you're age and skill level, I'd recommend it."
Chiharu nodded, tapping her fingers against the leather protection strapped to her forearm.
"When you notch an arrow you should feel the string."
"What?"
"Draw the string back, notch the arrow on the nocking point, the leather strap in the middle of your string and keep the bow close to your body. Lean your thump against your cheek, yes just like that." The older woman nodded. "My sister used to support the arrow, as well as give it direction, by pointing her index finger at the target."
Chiharu followed the directions. Aiming at one of the trees, she let the fingers of her right hand trace the turkey feathers and waited. Lady Kaede corrected the pose, pushing her elbow more in line with her arm and circled the young girl. "All right, exhale softly and release the arrow. Make sure to push your fingers out of the way of the bowstring, when you let it leave your fingers."
She did. The arrow lodged itself in the tree, two meters above the intended target (a notch in the tree bark), but at least she didn't miss the tree.
"Have you ever followed a course before?" Lady Kaede asked. "I know things are different from where you come from…"
"I did, when I was younger. My grandfather took me to a special archery shop and that's where I learned the basics. Everything else I know I learned through practicing."
"When you were on the run?"
"Yes,"
"It's not bad. Does need some honing though. Yeh should do fine with some practice."
Chiharu hoped so. She didn't want to rely on lucky shots the rest of the time she would have to stay here. Ignoring the tingles going up her arms, she notched another arrow. When the sun sunk below the horizon and darkness seeped over the land, Lady Kaede returned to the village.
The day was humid and stifling. Her lips parted in a quick breath and she started down the path to the Bone Eaters Well. Chiharu lowered the bow and refastened the quiver on her shoulder and sighed. She was exhausted, tired and her body was hurting. She sat down on the lid of the well and watched down in the deep recesses quietly.
It was sudden. The mark on her neck burned and her breath hitched. She grabbed at the lid of the well with one hand and her bow with the other. It tingled with the sudden, inexplicable urge to follow the pull it gave. A prickle traced down her spine and she gasped. Gripping at the bow until her knuckles turned white. Every muscle in her body suddenly screamed murder and she forced herself walk on until she could slide back against the rough bark of a tree. Tendrils of youki extended outwards from her skin and she pressed her head between her quivering knees. She ignored the dark hostile tingle brushing against her, like a finger trailing down her spine and waited until it passed. She shut her eyes and shivered.
"Honestly, what do you want from me?" She whispered softly, blinking against the shameful burning of tears.
Her hand carefully clasped around the prickling bite on her neck. If she only knew what it meant…
To be continued…
A/N: Although the problems Chiharu has and will have with the mark are important, I will speed through it a bit, because I do think it will get a bit boring. This chapter covers two or so weeks. Anyway, next chapter will be released next Thursday^^ Stay tuned.
I do have a bow. It was a present from my aunt and uncle many years back, yet I have no idea what qualities it might, or might not, have. Therefore the whole lot about archery is made up. I know some basics and that's it. Anyway I tried^^
Let me know what you all think! I want
Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi