We are here with another chapter!

We had a lovely sweet romance that went on about a dozen chapters longer than I expected it to, but we have business to get down to, and that business is finally starting to rear its head in this chapter.

As usual, I'd like to say that while I do try and get this story updated once a week, I can't always make it happen, but I do have other stories for you to read if you're interested; namely an Inuyasha fic called Catch The Rain, a Koga fic called In The Jaws Of The Wolf, and a Bankotsu fic called Perfidious. I try to get an update for at least three of these stories once a week. If I can't get an update out on one, it's likely that one of the others will be updated at some point that week instead. There's always something to read here if you want to try something that isnt Naraku

With that said, onwards!

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
- Jean Racine

Naraku emerged from the shadowy brush and came to kneel in the dirt beneath the veranda.

The more I watched him as I stood and skirted around the injured woman at my feet, the more I was convinced that he was okay. He didn't look hunched over in pain or injured from what I could see. His pelt was as pristine as it ever was. I could see that clearly as I knelt at the edge of the veranda, looking down at him.

So why was he so late?

"Well?" I demanded as Kagewaki joined me, knelt at my side, also interested in hearing what his adviser had to say.

"As you commanded, Lady Masanori, I rushed to the village to notify them of the terrible development," he began. A good start, but not necessary. I was there when I told him to go. This was the part where he started giving good reasons if he was a smart man. I'd always had faith that Naraku was a smart man. "But the village had already been annihilated."

What? Annihilated? How? Why?

Kagewaki found words where I couldn't. "Tell us everything you saw at the village of the Slayers."

What could possibly annihilate a whole village of Demon Slayers? Whatever it was, it had to be strong and dangerous. Had Naraku confronted it, or just watched from the shadows? Would he have gone after it even if he was strong enough to defeat it?

Would we be sending Sango back to that danger when she was healed? I couldn't do that. She was just a child. A teenager. Sending her back into any sort of danger, no matter how wounded she was, couldn't be an option. I couldn't let her go and get hurt facing something that had killed her family and friends. Was there a place for her here? If there wasn't, I could probably make one. A position here at the castle to keep her busy and safe while she went through her recovery and potential rehabilitation. That wound on her back hadn't touched her spine, but that didn't mean she was totally out of the woods yet. I wouldn't know until she began to heal whether she would be totally okay.

She could be in for a long, long recovery.

Naraku's voice cut through my worries. "The slain bodies of countless villagers and the half demon that attacked them."

"Half demon?" I questioned. A half demon had destroyed an entire village of Demon Slayers? How could that be possible? They were trained to fight all kinds of demons, weren't they? How could a half demon best an entire village of slayers? Was he really that powerful?

"His name is InuYasha," Naraku responded, the monkey head tilting towards me. "InuYasha seeks the power of the Sacred Jewel to transform himself into a full-fledged demon."

"The Shikon Jewel," Kagewaki responded.

I knew that phrase. I'd heard of the Shikon Jewel before. The jewel of four souls...

When I was younger, we had always gone to my father's home in Kyoto for holidays and festivals. The first year after he died, the year I moved away from the family, we went to a shrine in Tokyo rather than Kyoto for the New Year festival. A little shrine owned by the family of one of Ayumi's friends. I'd been so distracted by the thought of entrance exams to Todai that I'd barely been present for the duration of the holiday, in any way but physical.

I did vaguely recall mention of the Shikon Jewel, though. Holding Ayumi's hand as the old priest of the shrine told us of legends of the area. The Jewel of Four Souls that you could make a wish on. I'd off-handedly wished for the world the change.

I'd forgotten that. Those months had all been a blur, between entrance exams, my father dying, being accepted into such a prestigious university and moving out of my family home, I had lost a good few months to stress and grief. New Year amongst those times.

That shrine...

Nausea rolled in my stomach. I remembered the shrine. It looked very different, dressed up for New Years, but it was the same one. I was sure of it. The same shrine that I had visited recently. A little shrine owned by the family of one of Ayumi's friends. How could I have forgotten it? It was how I had gotten here, wasn't it? Holding that pretty shard of crystal.

Was that... a shard of the Shikon jewel?

Was that even possible? The legend... It had been shattered, hadn't it? Hundreds of years ago.

Hundreds of years ago... Like now.

If that crystal fragment was a shard of the Shikon Jewel, then that meant that I was also wearing a shard. I kept my hands gripping my thighs rather than letting them reach up to touch the hairpin keeping my long hair up out of my face. Naraku had gifted me a shard, and I had already decided long ago that he knew that the shard was embedded in the pin. Why, if it was that power, powerful enough for demons to destroy entire villages for, had Naraku gifted me one? Why did I have it?

He had many. I'd seen them. I could see them even now, glowing under his pelt.

If they were so coveted and he had so many, why was he just giving them away to people he had so little connection to? I wasn't going to fool myself into thinking that I was important to him. So why give me one? I didn't understand.

My head snapped up when the sliding door behind me was shoved open, breaking me from my thoughts. Sango was leant against it heavily, using it to hold herself up, looking equally exhausted and furious.

I was on my feet before I could even really process the sight, reaching out to steady her and help hold her up. She shouldn't be up. She'd just gotten out of surgery less than two hours ago. She was absolutely still high as a kite. I was surprised she could even find her legs, let alone use them right now. That at least cleared up any worries I had about paralysis, though. She wasn't paralysed.

She was a monster, though. She had to be to be up and moving so well after such a strong dose of opium that it knocked her out enough to perform surgery on.

"You really shouldn't be up right now."

Sango was on a mission, though, and her doctor's advice wasn't part of that mission, apparently. She was too busy staring a hole right through my husband. "Return my weapon." She winced in pain, clinging to the doorframe to keep herself up. "And my armour. I shall avenge my village and destroy this InuYasha who has slain my kin."

I let out an exasperated noise. Did I have a single good patient here in this time?

"Yeah, no. Not a chance. That's an astronomically bad idea when you're in this state." If she thought that I would let her go out there to hunt down a demon that had killed her entire village when she was recovering from a surgery I had spent all morning performing, then she was absolutely crazy. There wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell I was letting that happen. Like ever. "We need to get you back into bed."

She shook her head stubbornly.

Teenagers.

"I cannot rest, knowing the murderer of my village is still alive."

A true avenger. Touching.

"This isn't rest. Trust me, this isn't going to be as easy as lying back and watching the day go by. This is recovery. You can't avenge anyone if you're dead." Surely she saw that? A need to kill someone that had killed her family was understandable. Likely even encouraged in this time period. But not when she could barely walk. If this InuYasha had killed an entire village, one broken little girl wasn't going to stand a chance against him.

"I can't stop. Not while he still breathes."

I let a rough sigh out of my nose. "Okay, so this is how it's going to work. Look at me. Look at me."

After a beat she did, brown eyes glaring hard.

It would have been chilling if I hadn't already seen her so weak. Two hours ago, I had my hands inside her body. There wasn't a lot that made someone scary when I'd already had their life in my hands.

"Yeah, no, sweetheart. I'm not going to combust from a glare, trust me," I assured her, then held up two fingers. "You have two options to pick from. Option one: you walk yourself back into bed right now. No fighting, no avenger talk. You spend the next week healing, then we look at your progress and decide what happens from there. I take out your stitches, you get your weapons back."

Her sour expression told me she really didn't like that idea.

She was going to love option two.

"Or option two: I get Naraku here to drag you back to bed and babysit your ass until you're totally healed. He won't let you so much as breathe without my permission, and you'll be in bed until every last scab has healed over, whether that takes a week or a month. I'll make sure you're stuck here with only the baboon for company until you're back in tip-top condition."

Naraku made a noise behind me, and I silently apologised for bringing him into it. The threat of him should have been enough to deter her, at least. It was an extreme option, but it was the only way I knew how to get through to teenagers like this.

Teenagers were a pain in the ass, and if I ever had one, so help me they were going to learn the hard way not to go against mom's orders.

She stood as firm as she could, glaring up at me, but she wasn't winning this one. I wasn't ever going to let this situation go down in her favour. I wasn't in the business of giving in to people's suicidal tendencies. I'd saved too many lives, sewn up too many slashed wrists, to give in to this one girl with a more elaborate suicide mission.

She must have seen that in my eyes, because after a long stare-off, she lowered her head and slunk back to her futon with a face like thunder.

I didn't care if I was liked, as long as she was still alive.

Boy was it exhausting fighting with someone.

I rubbed at my eyes and turned back towards the door myself.

"I'm going for a nap. I'm glad you're back safe, Naraku," I threw over my shoulder.

When I awoke from my nap, it was to a hand playing through my hair, loose from the bun it had been in when I'd laid down.

There was only one man I knew brave enough to crawl into my bed and start playing with my hair while I slept. There was only one man I knew that I would curl into as easily as I had during my sleep, too.

"Naraku?"

A deep hum of confirmation sounded from the man laid beside me.

I scooted just a little closer, burying my face into the fine silk of his kosode, enjoying the heat his body gave off in my hazy half-awake state. His fingers still stroked through my hair, teasing it idly away from my head.

"You were late," I accused sleepily, voice muffled by his clothing. I had no intention of moving away from him yet, even as consciousness was starting to come back to me again. I just wanted a few more minutes of comfort before I had to face the world again. Naraku gave me that comfort better than anyone else.

"Were you worried?" There was that same everpresent mocking amusement in his tone. Maybe I should have been annoyed by it - it was like he was mocking me for daring to care about him - but the tone just proved to me that he truly was here and safe. If he could tease me, Naraku was okay. That was all I needed. I could take all his teasing knowing that.

That didn't mean I was going to let him get away with teasing me totally. "I just wouldn't want that pelt getting damaged. A poor rare animal had to die for that," I threw at him, smiling to myself against his clothing as my hands found the tie of his sash at his waist.

Naraku let out a deep chuckle, the kind of dark low sound that had me shivering in my place. He truly had a magnificent voice. It was the kind of voice that could get me to do just about anything it wanted as long as it was whispered quietly in my ear. No one man should have that power, but Naraku did, and he knew he did. He'd used that power often enough on me in the time we'd been together. I was a victim to it, and all I could do when all was said and done was thank him.

But his voice and what he could have me do wasn't the only thing on my mind. The more awake I felt, the more thoughts came flying into my head. "That half demon... Did he hurt you?"

His fingers stilled in my hair. "No."

So he'd either kept to the shadows or managed to get away before the half demon got to him. Good. "I'm glad. You'd have had a hard time if he'd noticed you."

His sash loosened enough for me to slip my hands underneath his kosode and begin working on the small ties holding his hanjuban closed, but his long fingers curled around my wrists, gripping hem tight and holding them captive, hard enough to make me mutter quietly in pain. That didn't seem to bother him as he glared down at me, though, red eyes sharp. "What makes you think a half demon could have that power over me?"

I tried to pull my hands back, but Naraku wasn't letting go for love nor money. "Ow, could you let up? You said he was after the Shikon Jewel earlier, right? This InuYasha? If he'd seen you with all those shards, he wouldn't have let you go."

InuYasha was trying to get the Jewel to become full demon. If he knew Naraku had shards, he wouldn't stop, would he? I wouldn't in InuYasha's shoes. I knew better than many that people would do anything if they were desperate.

"All those shards?" Naraku questioned, his grip loosening enough to stop the ache, but still not letting my hands free. "What do you know about them, girl?"

His voice had been harsh in a way I hadn't heard from him before, even during the little tiffs we all had during meetings with Kagewaki, when none of us could agree on a solid plan. He pushed me onto my back, snatching my hands upwards over my head so I was pinned in a very familiar position. I didn't feel so excited right now as I usually did when Naraku had me pinned like this under him. I'd surprised him, rattled him in a way he wasn't expecting with what I'd said, and he was lashing out. I could see that so clearly in his eyes. It was the same expression my little brother wore when anyone rattled him.

"Not much," I admitted. "I heard about the Jewel as a kid. A priest told me some stories about it when I visited a shrine once. I'd honestly forgotten about it until now. The shards that you carry around. I didn't know what they were until today. You mentioned the Jewel of Four Souls when you were briefing us. That's what they are, isn't it? Shards of that jewel."

When I pulled at my hands this time, Naraku let them free, then pressed his palms to the futon on either side of my head, holding himself up. With my freedom, I reached up to pull apart the kosode hanging loose around his frame and pulled out the small pouch he kept tucked inside it. He didn't so much as flinch as I did so.

"The glow... That's the magic it has, right?"

I loosened the bag and plucked one of the many shards within from it, holding that shard up between us between my fingers. Its points were sharp, but I paid no mind. Its glow was a beautiful deep, dark purple.

"The glow," he repeated. "You can see the aura of the shards?"

"Well, yeah, I-I guess?" That confirmed my theory that not everyone could see them the way I could. What did that mean about me, though? Was it a good or a bad thing that I could see the shards glow? Was there something wrong with me that made me able to see them? Was that a medical issue? Yes, doctor, I can see glowing when no one else can. Hallucinations were never a good sigh.

I wanted a brain scan.

The only way I'd ever get a look at my brain here would be if it was separated from my skull. I wasn't in a rush for that at all.

Naraku's tense expression melted away. He let out another chuckle, a quiet sound at first, that mounted the more he laughed, until he was cackling. His head bowed, face burying into the crook of my shoulder. His body crushed my arm between our chests. I curled my fist around the shard to keep it safe. His hot breath flowed over my skin in moist bursts. I'd never seen him quite so... wild before. Yes, that was the word. Wild. He'd laughed in my presence before. He wasn't an emotionless man. Not like this, though. This laughter was almost unhinged.

It sent a chill down my spine.

What... What was so funny?

The more he laughed, the more unnerved I felt.

I was totally on edge by the time his laughter died out and he moved up again, showing me the smirk on his face, looking a lot less unhinged than he was just a moment ago.

"You delight me at every turn, don't you Masanori?" His head ducked again, nose brushing lightly over my own, then trailing my jaw. The movement was so gentle, so affectionate. Naraku knew how to be gentle. There were some nights we laid together and just existed, cuddled in my futon, trading light conversation and little kisses. But today his words made the gentleness fall flat. "To think I've had this skill under my nose without knowing it."

It felt like he was trying to sweet-talk me to do something for him.

That low rumbly voice was working dammit. He had far too much power over me.

"Naraku, what-"

"Shhh," he hushed me quietly. I fell silent as his lips brushed my jaw, kissing my skin so gently. "Shhhh."

Information Time

Hanjuban - The hanjuban is a piece of underwear worn under the outer kimono. Unlike the hadajuban and nagajuban, the hanjuban stops at around the hip. It's worn under shorter kosode that are worn with hakama. That's Naraku's usual style. You can see the white juban under his outfit if you look at what he's wearing

Review Corner

AmorDellaLuna - It'll be an interesting reaction, for sure. Not one many people will be expecting, I think. I don't plan to deviate too much, honestly. I try to keep my stories as close to the core plot of the stories I write from as possible, and this story is no different. There'll be a lot of things that'll put up a lot of conflict for Naraku and Nori, and a lot of things he'll try to keep her in the dark with. It'll lead to some not very pretty moments

I just love moments with Naraku. There's still no real love between these two, but the affection gets stronger every time they're together, and now he knows she can see the shards. What's going to happen next?