After losing their jobs in a freak fire, Kagome and Sango find themselves desperate for work. When they take on jobs as assistants to InuYasha and Sesshomaru their convinced that this is a stepping stone on the way to the rest of their lives. After all, Sesshomaru is cruel And InuYasha is eccentric, at best, even if they didn't miss animating, those brothers are too much to handle. However, all hopes of flying under the radar are dashed when Sango and Kagome are attacked outside of their apartment. A fight InuYasha and his family had been silently waging for decades now digs its claws into Sango and Kagome, two people who don't remember anything about the way they once stood tall against these entities. If they can't work together they risk losing their souls once and for all, but can they unlock the warriors they once were or are they destined to fall again and again at the hands of their foe?
Kagome sat at the table, fidgeting with her pen as she scanned the newspaper in front of her. Once upon a time, her grandfather would sit her down and remind her that there was beauty in traditionalism. He rejected modernity at every turn, and when the world was still new to her young eyes, she'd been more than happy to accept his take on things. After all, there was no one better equipped to guide her through life than her doting grandfather.
Besides, the smell of the newspaper reminded her of the days she would spend sitting at her grandfather's feet, listening to him read about the state of the world. He'd groan about foreigners and whine about taxes, but when she didn't know any better, that had been comforting. Sometimes she was glad that he'd died before she'd grown old enough to disagree with his grumbling. There was no telling if she'd remember him so fondly if he'd lived long enough for her innocent questions to turn into barbed accusations.
"There's an opening at Old Lady Kaede's herb shop." Sango's words were a welcome distraction from her thoughts. There was no sense in worrying about how her grandfather would have felt about her or her 'liberal' views, not when their counters were piled high with bills and overdue notices. "Minimum wage."
Once upon a time, Kagome said it would be a cold day in hell before she took a job with a salary so pathetic. Now, she was considering it– crunching the numbers and running them again– wondering how to stretch numbers that wouldn't stretch.
"You're right," Sango sighed. She threw her head back against the couch, raising her phone to her face again. "Anything on your end?"
For a moment, the only sound to fill the room was the sound of rustling paper as Kagome looked over the jobs she'd tentatively circled. "Dog walkers and…." She hesitated to even speak the words out loud, but Sango was already staring at her just as desperate as she was.
"Cashiers."
"I'll keep looking."
"Sango–."
"When I said they could kiss my ass all those years ago, I meant that." The couch squeaked when Sango shifted, trying in vain to find a more comfortable position when scrolling.
"It was one bad manager."
"I'd rather be homeless."
"We will be if you don't lower your standards."
Sango settled in amongst her pillows. She had a terrible habit of shutting down at inopportune moments, and Kagome knew she'd have an easier time arguing with a brick wall than trying to convince Sango of anything. So she contented herself to reread the classifieds, knowing nothing would change, but too defeated to check anywhere else.
Despite spending their lives crafting critically acclaimed cartoons, somehow, in the course of a few months, they'd become completely unhireable. Being the only two surviving employees, they were viewed as bad omens by animation studios everywhere, and they lacked experience in any other department. The lives they once cherished had gone up in smoke, and fighting to regain their independence felt like pushing a boulder uphill. There was only so much mindless positivity one person could have, and Kagome was at her limit.
"Maybe I could ask my dad for the rent?" Sango sighed finally. Her phone bounced onto the floor with no small amount of frustration fueling the cry that followed. "If I ask him now, he'll probably have it by the first." She looked miserable suggesting it, but their options seemed to be few and far between.
There was nothing Kagome wanted less. Mr. Takeda didn't have much. Not a year had passed since they paid his mortgage and sent him on vacation. To take from a near-empty bucket felt sleazy, and they both spent a moment basking in the self-loathing that came from having to consider something like that. "Let's hit the streets again."
Sango was more than willing to agree to that, diving for the pile of CVs they couldn't seem to give away. One quick change later, they were running out of their apartment with grim determination making hard lines between their brows.
They took the stairs two at a time, sneaking past the front desk and out into the open air. While their landlord -an elderly, flea hearted man with a weakness for beautiful women- first heard about their company burning to the ground in a freak fire, he'd been sympathetic.
All of that went out the window when his hand found itself somewhere it didn't belong, and Sango's foot found itself somewhere else it didn't belong. Ever since that day, he'd been aggressively sticking pale pink warnings on their door.
He wanted two months of rent in two weeks, or they were as good as homeless. So, instead of facing him and his scathing comments, they took the stairs during daylight hours and slipped out the back.
"Ideally," Sango began, and she held her phone up high, stretching to catch the fading rays of WiFi, "we should have some kind of plan. We only have so many CV's, and we can't exactly afford to make more."
"We also can't afford to be picky," Kagome insisted. Lately, she'd been the only one being reasonable about their finances, and there was no point in taking a job if Sango didn't. One meager paycheck wouldn't cover half their expenses. More and more it felt like she was in a never-ending loop, screaming into the void in vain as Sango dug them into a deeper hole. But Sango was always at her side, blazing a trail forward without a thought for right or wrong, and so, when in doubt, Kagome tended to defer to her judgment. "A coffee shop paycheck is better than no paycheck."
Or maybe she deferred to Sango because Sango was thick-headed.
"A coffee shop isn't going to keep Old Myoga from sticking those stupid notices on our door." She seemed to come to a decision before the sentence was fully out in the air because, not a moment later, she began in an arbitrary direction following the swirling arrow on her screen.
"There's nothing for animation or design that's hiring nearby, but there's a law firm nearby looking for 'punctual, detail-oriented, thick skinned' assistants."
Thick-skinned? She'd never seen that on a wanted ad anywhere, and even if she had…she wouldn't say they fit the bill. The last time a man hurt Sango's feelings, she flipped him over the WacDonald's counter and threw her hat and badge down at him. If Kagome were being honest, she'd say that there was exactly one thing Sango was not, and that thing was thick-skinned.
"I don't think–."
"The pay is double what we made at the Studio."
"What does it matter what I think anyway." She laughed. The idea of real food made her giddy. " Lead the way."
Mikadzuki Law was a grand building that stretched to meet the burning July sun. Dozens upon dozens of large, brilliant windows lined the structure beautifully, and Kagome felt crumpled and thrown away in the face of it all. She'd been out of shampoo for a week now, and her can of dry shampoo hissed in defeat when she slammed down hard on the nozzle earlier, so her only option had been to throw the oily mess into a severe bun and wash her bangs with hand soap.
Honestly, the only reason she didn't run off with her tail tucked between her legs was the firm hand gripping her wrist as if it were all that kept her tethered to this plane. The screaming coming from inside -however- didn't help matters.
"I quit!" A woman's voice had gone so shrill that it was difficult to make out whatever she'd been saying. "Do you hear me? I quit! You can kiss my pale ass–."
Sango hesitated with her hand on the handle, squinting at the foggy glass as if she could somehow see through the stained entryway before she finally decided that no amount of crying or ranting could stop her from crossing that threshold. She followed behind Sango as she marched up to the receptionist, keeping her gaze straight forward –the same way one would when avoiding a crackhead outside of a gas station.
"We saw your posting." Sango began. In theory, Kagome was better suited for this part of the job. Her best friend was a go-getter, a woman with a motive, but she wasn't a smooth talker. Requests sounded like demands when passing her lips, and honestly? They likely were. But! There was no stopping her once she started, and so Kagome watched the ex-employee rant and rave. She threw his papers across the floor and screamed that he was cruel, emotionless, beastly– and his obvious disinterest did nothing to dissuade her. When he brushed past her, ignoring the fists that rained down along his shoulder, his coworker followed behind him.
It was him that intercepted the resumes as Sango moved to pass them to the receptionist, and they should have taken it as a sign when she shrank away from him, almost desperate to be far away from his calculating gaze.
Sango turned to begin her spiel again, but something went wrong. Her eyes met his and it was like someone flipped a switch. Whatever pleasantness she'd been forcing into her demeanor fell away as hatred as brilliant and unwavering as the sun itself warped her expression for the worse. She drank him in, seeming to memorize his features as her fingers twitched at her side, balling and flexing as she struggled to decide how to proceed. And he was no better. That polished demeanor crumbled, and disinterest gave way to horror or, maybe, surprise…? He faltered when trying to regain control, too busy gazing at this stranger as if he'd waited his entire life for this moment.
"Are you okay?" Kagome's hand on Sango's jolted her back to life. She took three hasty steps backwards, choosing to watch the resumes flutter to the ground, expertly evading his attempt to gather them instead of staring at him a moment longer.
"I'm fine." But her voice sounded distant, and her jaw was tense. Somehow, in a moment, what looked promising had been reduced to silence. Even their ex-employee, for all of her earlier ranting and wild gesturing, had fallen quiet.
"Stop staring, S-." He bit down on his tongue, glaring daggers as Sango cocked her head at him, just barely managing to snuff out whatever he'd been prepared to say. "Woman."
"What were you going to call me?" Sango snatched their resumes from the ground, holding it so that her name faced her chest.
Without missing a beat, he hissed, "Stupid." That was enough for Sango to decide she'd rather be homeless. Any plans of 'holding out' for an animation gig went up in smoke, and he was more than happy to see him go.
It would seem that it was up to Kagome to get the ball rolling again. She grabbed their CVs from Sango's iron hold, digging her fingers into her friend's wrist, and passed them to him. They needed each other, and he seemed to realize that as his ex-employee threw her badge at his head and stormed off. His moment of hesitancy faded, and his professionalism returned.
"We are detail-oriented, punctual, dedicated–."
"And thick-skinned?" His eyes were on Sango again, boring into her as she looked anywhere but up at him.
Kagome glanced between them, utterly sick of being out of the loop. "Do you guys know each other? Should we…'' Neither of them were meeting her eyes, and she felt like she'd been pushed on stage without a script. "Should we go?" She was spared more awkward silence by another man entering the lobby with a handful of crinkled papers and a stained paper cup of something that she would bet had long since gone cold.
"Sesshomaru, you bitch. What did you do? I get this long text message from Hina about how she has to quit because she can't take it anymore, and then neither you nor her say another word about it?" He cast his suitcase on the counter, and Kagome itched to stack the remaining pages he sent flying across the once tidy surface. "Who are they?"
"Applicants." Sesshomaru passed the forms over, pulling out his phone but never gazing at it. It would be inaccurate to say he was distracted— not when he was staring through that shimmering mane at her best friend.
The second man -the hot mess- extended his hand to both of them. When Kagome's hand was in his, it was hard to be too judgmental of the staring contest between Sango and Sesshomaru. Maybe they felt the same jolt that ran along her arm when her hand was in his. "I'm InuYasha, and this is Sesshomaru." Or maybe it was just her. There was no sign that he'd felt it at all, or maybe he was too busy bouncing in place to notice. He burned with an impatience that felt almost identical to Sango's.
"Which of you is the most organized?"
All plans of being sent away with a halfhearted promise to arrange an interview flew out the window, and Kagome scrambled to salvage this meeting.
"I am, sir."
The words hardly left her lips before he was speaking again. "When can you start?" He switched papers with Sesshomaru, ignoring the thinly veiled panic that flashed behind the other man's eyes, and beckoning her forwards.
"Whenever you'd like."
"InuYasha–."
But it would seem that InuYasha's listening skills were only so-so, because he was already dragging Kagome down the corridor, a cheerful, "Be nice to your new assistant, you old dog!" floating behind them as he dove into the elevator and forced it shut.
"Are you guys related?" Unique hair and eyes aside, she couldn't imagine someone as stuffy and unyielding as Sesshomaru allowing his colleagues to run circles around him–not without some serious, extenuating circumstances.
"Brothers." He leaned against the wall, taking the moment to simply be. They'd only been acquainted for a few minutes, but Kagome couldn't help thinking that he didn't get much downtime. Even this brief reprieve seemed to wash away the tension in his jaw. Talking about his brother, however, brought it right back. "He's a real pain. Chases off his assistants and then runs mine into the ground, then we're both up shit creek without a paddle, because he's got major attitude issues." The door chimed, and he was moving down the hall before she could exit the elevator. If she didn't know any better, she'd say he was sprinting. Nowhere in the job description did they specify cross country as a necessary skill. "I warned him that I wouldn't share with him again if Hina quit, but does he ever listen? No. Because he is the king of the universe if you didn't know, and he can do as he pleases to whoever he pleases."
Kagome hovered outside of the door to his office. This brother of his sounded like a real tool, and she hesitated to move forward if this man was as much of a maniac as her new boss insisted he was. "Is Sango gonna be alright?"
He snorted, glanced at his phone, and then brought his shoulders to his ears. "Probably."
Inspiring. For a moment she can feel her temper ignite, but there'd be no point in getting upset. Her grandfather's voice echoed in her head against her will, and she was reminded that she'd catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Maybe, if she approached the situation with a bit more caution, she could get him to tell her what he was really thinking.
She still needed him, after all. Shoving him in the direction she wanted wouldn't help anything, especially now when her position there wasn't quite guaranteed.
"Probably?"
"Probably."
It would be her unfortunate luck that he was smarter than he looked.
"Your job will be to make this—." He motioned towards his office, showing off piles of unbound papers and haphazard stacks of books with destroyed covers. Every spare surface was coated in or piled high with something — every spare surface, of course , aside from the shelves. Those were bare. Dusty even. "Look like this." He held out two photos of an office so picture-perfect clean she was inclined to believe it was a stock image. "Hina tried to organize it, but she wasn't great at it. I'm pretty sure it's Sesshomaru's fault somehow." Kagome would not believe that this level of destruction was not a multi-person job. Everywhere she looked there was evidence of his thoughtless rampage, but when he turned around and asked if she was up for it, the lies flowed off her tongue too easily.
"Of course." When he raised his eyebrow, she motioned him forward. "I've seen worse." Which was another lie. She'd never seen anything so heinous in her entire life.
Somehow his personal nook was worse. It made the outside area look like a library before restocking— this, however, was more than she could bear. Some pages were dog eared, some unstapled. It was a nightmare, in the most conservative sense of the word, and for a moment she thought about begging to switch with Sango. Sango had more of a tolerance for mess and disorder, and Kagome had more of a tolerance for blatant disrespect.
The words were on her tongue, but she let them die there after a bit. She knew better than to make a fuss— knew how it would make her look, but the sticky surfaces and half-eaten ramen cups were giving her hives.
"You can take a seat while I find these papers." And in that moment, every fiber of her being screamed at her for going so far as to look for the chair.
"I don't let the janitors in here." He admitted from beneath the desk. "They always mess up my piles." She crept around the room while he searched, trying to see beyond the mess. His wall was lined with awards, ornate certificates that lauded him as sufficiently smart, and decently clever.
Kagome rounded the desk, looking for photos or keepsakes that would give any iota of a clue to what kind of person he was. She didn't know why she cared, honestly. This was a gig— a stepping stone— as they found their way back to where they belonged. It didn't really matter what kind of person he was.
No amount of repeating that made her investigation less thorough.
A downturned photo caught her attention, and, in reaching for it, her hip bumped a precariously stacked column of notes. Everything went everywhere, and she scrambled to put everything back where it belonged, but he was shouting for her to leave it, going so far as to brush her away from the fallen pillar.
He slammed his head on the desk on his way up, and Kagome found that she was struggling not to laugh. She was offended for a moment, sullenly thinking that she could throw it back together with more integrity than he'd stacked it with. But his hands weren't as quick as he thought they were, and suddenly those large golden eyes seemed doe-ish and whatever unnamed animosity she'd harbored dissolved.
"You like cartoons?"
She took great pleasure in watching him turn an uncomfortable shade of red and tried not to laugh when he cast the doodles beneath a book at random.
"Mind your business." It would be foolish to pretend to be surprised by his brash nature. If there was one thing her grandfather was right about, it was the inherent ill-tempered nature of youkai and hanyou alike. So, instead of rolling her eyes, she found a place to lean and pulled her stamp from her bag, ready to stamp the paperwork and be done with this affair.
InuYasha was kind enough to take her to Sesshomaru's office a few floors up— even if he whined that he had better things to do. His brother was standing in the corner, his thumb plainly blocking his nose, as if something smelled terrible.
It was clear as day that they were both painfully uncomfortable, but neither seemed willing to acknowledge it. His too big office felt cramped with their energy flooding hatred swelled like hot air, growing so large and unmanageable that Kagome felt like she was choking.
"Your signing bonus may be used however you see fit." Sesshomaru slid an envelope across the table, continuing as if nothing happened when it skidded off the side of the desk, and the bills spilt and scattered. "Although I will advise you to put it towards a new wardrobe. And a different perfume. Whatever you're wearing now is headache-inducing."
Kagome could feel Sango about to throw the envelope back in her face. It was written in her eyes, and so she rushed to collect the money and placed it in Sango's hand, adding a reassuring squeeze in hopes that whatever was on her tongue died there. They needed this money. Combined, these bonuses would put them in good standing with their bills.
"We'll see you Monday," Kagome called after her, damn near dragging Sango away from the object of her frustration. She tried to sound cheerful, but Sesshomaru waved her off like she's nothing more than a fly buzzing too near his head, and it was a fight to keep her smile in place.
They headed back down the way they came, leaving the rude brothers to their own devices, and they were barely out of the building when thick tears began to paint Sango's face. One after the other, they ran along her cheeks thicker and quicker, stealing her breath and forcing her to curl in on herself as the moments passed them by. Her garbled explanation was indecipherable, and she was inconsolable, but Kagome's efforts to drag her to the side failed. Sango refused to stop and get it together, refused to spend so much as one more moment in the shadow of that glass prison. They went all the way home with Sango wiping tears and snorting snot, and when they got up to their apartment, Sango locked herself in her room and refused to come back out.
Thick-skinned. Kagome could almost laugh. Sometimes, even Sango was delusional.
Monday came too soon, and Kagome was afraid that Sango wouldn't be ready to go in. She spent all weekend swaddled in a large blanket, eating ice cream bars and watching sad movies. But once Kagome's alarms went off, and she was just crawling out of her bed, Sango was already up, sweaty from the run she'd gone on.
She rooted around the kitchen as if she hadn't spent the weekend with red rimmed eyes, and Kagome could hardly believe her eyes.
"Care to explain yourself?" Kagome has been sitting on this question for days now, and she couldn't bear not to ask now that the air felt so much lighter.
"Stress, I guess." Sango shoved half of a banana in her mouth before continuing. "Dude has a weird vibe, and he's rude, and I think all of that combined just…didn't work for me." Kagome was standing in the kitchen, staring incredulously at the wall long after Sango was gone.
Neither of them was looking forward to their forced day, but their conversation came to a forced end when they got to InuYasha's office. He was already inside, old cases stacked beside him as he searched frantically for the exact reference he was looking for. Using the internet would have been quicker, easier, and more efficient, but it's not her business. Not really. All she needed to worry about was alphabetizing the information that he left everywhere.
"I'll see you after work?" Kagome had planned to offer something inspiring, maybe a quote from an anime they worked on together, or a hug for good luck, but Sango's mind was already miles away, and she waved goodbye to Kagome without much more than half a smile. She wished she could help, but at the end of the day, everyone had their own battles.
It's all she can do to be there for her.