INTERLUDE 4: BLOOD AND BONE

"In plays and poems someone understands
There's something makes us more than blood and bone
And more than biological demands.
For me, love's like the wind, unseen, unknown.
I see the trees are bending where it's been,
I know that it leaves wreckage where it's blown.
I really don't know what 'I love you' means.
I think it means 'don't leave me here alone.'"
(Sonnet, Nikita Gill)

It's a whirlwind few hours, getting ready to leave. Kagome has never been to a ball, has no clothing besides her school uniform and some pajamas. Rin tells her to trust Lord Sesshomaru because he told her he was going to take care of it, so she does. Instead she straightens what she has come to think of her room, showers, and does her best not to think of the journey there. They'll either be on Ah-Un or on Sesshomaru's cloud, and both of those things involved being closer to him physically than she thought she might have the wherewithal for.

When there's finally nothing left for her to fret over, she sighs and heads downstairs to where everyone is waiting for her in the foyer. Sesshomaru looks up from Rin and some of her hesitation must show on her face, because he frowns. She smiles to alleviate the motion, but her body still jangles with nerves the entire time they make their farewells.

In front of the gates is Ah-Un, head tossing and bits jangling, a gleam in his eye like he is aware of the eyes on him and of his own importance. He is harnessed into a beautiful gilded carriage, the likes of which she has never seen before. Wheels like moons, white paint shining like starlight, slashes of red across the sides. The half-moon crest that has grown so familiar to her over the past days is emblazoned on the doors in stark relief. "Oh." It is all she can saw when confronted with such finery. "Oh."

"We had assumed you would be more comfortable traveling in this manner." There's the lightest inflection at the end of Sesshomaru's voice, making it just barely a question.

"It's beautiful," she breathes out earnestly, and can almost feel the tension leave his body beside her, though his expression never changes.

With a smooth, practiced motion, he opens the door and, making her heart flutter in her chest like a caged bird, gestures regally on a courtly bow. "My lady," he murmurs, his voice low and velvet. There's a fire in his eyes that she has never seen before. As if they are lit from within with some internal flame. It thrills her in a way that makes her feel warm and languid and shivery all at once.

She is smiling at him as she answers and steps inside, "My lord."

Miles and miles away, someone else is preparing for a journey. But there are no peaceful butterfly fluttering in their belly, no blushes or twinkling eyes. There is only a jealous rage that encompasses everything, hazing eyes red and violent, making knuckles crack as the bones bend into fists.

Inuyasha is not pleased.

He is not pleased to return the village and find that, not only is everyone gone, but Kagome has not returned.

He is not pleased that Kikyo did not meet him where she was supposed to.

He is not pleased that that mangy wolf sprinted into town telling him that he left Kagome at fucking Sesshomaru's castle and then dipped and that she refuses to leave.

He is not pleased at all.

He is pissed.

"That wench. How dare she… she… go shack up with my brother. Should let him kill her, probably thinking I'm going to come rescue her whenever it gets too dangerous." He's flying through the trees at a breakneck speed, but even so he knows it will take him over a day, maybe two to reach the seat of the Western Lands. He's never been to the castle, his mother wasn't the lady there. He holds not love for the place and isn't looking forward to going somewhere where his brother has the homegrown advantage.

Even with a missing arm, Sesshomaru is powerful. The thought flickers through the bloodlust fog in his mind that maybe his brother wants Kagome to find him the shards of the Shikon no Tama. Maybe he wants his arm back. Maybe he wants to be able to wield Tetsaiga, just to spite Inuyasha, even though he has that damned demon blade Tokijin. Maybe he just wants to take something from his brother just because he's spiteful and older and just because he can. But whatever way it was, Inuyasha was not going to let that happen.

"I'm going to kill him." His voice has gone graveled and deep, like sandpaper dragging across his throat. His claws, always sharp, have grown jagged and lethal, his fingers twitching as they imagine a pale throat gasping for breath underneath them.

"Kagome is mine and I won't ever let anyone take her from me." Kagome belongs to him. He will not give her up, not for anything, not for anyone. Her soul is Kikyo's soul, and that belongs to him, so, in his animalistic mind, that means Kagome does, as well. They are connected across time, there is no arguing with something as clear and visible as that to him.

To him, it does not matter what she wants, what others think. Kikyo and Kagome are two sides of a coin. They are both his. She can run home to her own time and he will follow her and drag her back. She can try and flee to his brother's castle for protection but he will track her there and take her back. She belongs beside him and no one else. Koga can spout poetic all the nonsense he wants about her being 'his woman' but Inuyasha knows the truth to the very core of his being. He knows it in his very marrow, feels it roiling beneath his skin like blood, like history, like fate.

She belongs to him.

And he will kill anyone who stands between them.