CHAPTER 16: EVEN LOVERS DROWN

"A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown."
(The Mermaid, William Butler Yeats)

Soft, pale light inching across her face is what wakes her. She murmurs sleepily, burrowing farther into the warmth beside her. She can feel how early it is, and wants nothing more than to curl into her sheets and pillows and soak in the heat from her bed. Her mind, still sleep-fogged and groggy doesn't find reason to dwell on the feeling of a hand slipping around her waist and tugging her closer. It's warm and welcoming and comforting. She hums appreciatively and snuggles closer.

There's a cold press of a nose against the column of her throat that makes her start to blink away the haze of sleepiness. Then soft, hot lips press against her skin, making her shiver, making her head tilt back in automatic abandon. She hums again, the sound pleasure-filled and interested. The lips trail up her pulse point, slow and methodical, until she is squirming against the solid wall of heat at her side. Hot touches trace her jaw, her chin, until lips meet lips. She sighs, fully awake and aware.

With a sudden motion, her body is rolled to the side and suddenly she finds herself sprawled across a wide, firm chest, her hair, which had come loose in the night, a curtain around their two faces. Sesshomaru in the early morning light is every bit as handsome as he is done up for a ball.

His hair is mussed and pleasantly bedraggled. It softens him, makes him look boyish and charming, the way she imagined he looked as a young boy. His features are softened with sleep, none of the haughty imperialness that she knows is just part of the part he plays as Lord of the Western Lands. She had not expected to like him so much, when she first walked through his door. Mostly, she was just hoping not to be murdered or horrifically maimed. But what she had contemplated (that a man who raised a small child couldn't be all bad) had been absolutely correct. She delighted in seeing parts of him that no one else did. The curious light in his eye when she spoke of something he'd never heard of. The crinkle between his brow when he tried to work out a problem. The soft glow in his eye when he watch Rin play. His head tilt when he worked out of to phrase something. The ghost of a dimple on his pale, striped cheek when she said something to try and make him laugh.

It all made him so much more than he seemed.

When she had first come to this Era, she had been so young. She was young now, but to the ways of the world, of men and women, of love. The only boy who had ever liked her was Hojo. She knew she did not like the way he treated her as if she were delicate and breakable. So she thought she loved Inuyasha, because he didn't. He was protective and brash, always wanted her near, like he, too, did not understand what he felt for her, like he was surprised by his own affection. She thought it was love, that feeling when she looked at him, like she wanted to save him from himself, like she wanted to be by his side. But the more time went on, the longer they traveled together, the more people she met, she became unsure. She wanted Sango to be her best friend for life. She wanted to save Miroku from the both curse that Naraku had placed on him and the high expectations he placed on himself.

She realized months ago that what she felt for Inuyasha was not love. It was friendship. Yes, it was a friendship that broke the bonds of space and time, but it was friendship nonetheless. She could only hope that one day he would see that.

What she felt here, now, for Sesshomaru, was not that.

She felt her friendship for Inuyasha and Miroku and Sanga in her heart, pulsing like radio waves or heartbeats in time with her own. She feels her connection to them like this is rope joining them together.

Her connection to Sesshomaru sits in her chest like a weight, like her very lungs are full of him, like she cannot catch her breath for want of something more. The connection between them feels like magnets struggling inevitably towards one another, no matter the time or distance between them. She feels it tingling in her fingertips, feels that if she opened her mouth light would spill out as a visible sign of her happiness.

"Good morning," she says, sotto voce, eyes crinkling as she smiles down at him.

He smiles back up at her, soft and beautiful, and it's like a supernova inside the curtain of her hair. She melts at the sight of it. "Good morning." His voice is gravelly with sleep still and she cannot felt following the sound with her mouth, leaning down to press their lips together. He rumbles approvingly, tilting his face up to the motion, hand traveling up the dents in her spine.

She pulls back with a profound sense of regret. Last night, she had never before dwelled on what was forming between them, tentative and hopeful, never expecting Sesshomaru to throw caution to the winds and kiss her. But sleeping on it has made her realize that she wants this, possibly more than she has wanted anything in her life before. But right now, she has something more important she needs to do.

So she pulls back. When his eyes open slowly, hazy with sleep and desire, she pecks a quick kiss on his lips just because she can. "I'm going to go grab breakfast, alright?" She kissed his the end of the strips on his smooth cheek, then kisses the spot on his ravaged side where such a mark would be. His eyes glow like molten suns at her. "Be back in a jiffy!"

She slides from his unresisting grasp and swiftly straightens her kimono. Hopefully there weren't too many people up this early to see her stumble from his quarters and down the halls in her clothing from the night before. Her hair had come loose of its up do sometime in the night and, without a mirror, she let it tumble around her shoulders and down her back, praying it didn't look too disheveled. She can feel his eyes on her the entire time and, when she glances up at him, Sesshomaru is propped up on his elbow, kimono come loose from his shoulder and revealing an expanse of skin that makes her mouth drool.

"Well… gotta go." Her voice comes out high and squeaky.

"Don't let me stop you." He is clearly amused by her reaction, but does nothing to cover up, just watches her, his longing for her to rejoin him clear on his face.

"Uh… yeah." She slams her eyes shut and spins around. "Bye!"

She hears him chuckling even as the door closes with a soft click behind her.

There's not really a point in tiptoeing down the halls with a house full of demons, but old habits die hard, and she finds herself tipping on light and quiet toes down the hall and down the stairs. There she pauses, because, while she knows this is probably her only chance to speak with Tetsu without Sesshomaru around, she has no idea where to find him. Taking a wild guess, she decides to check where she guesses there might be a lounge like there is in Sesshomaru's manor.

But when she opens the door, it's not Tetsu's foxy features she sees. It's that demoness from the night before, sitting elegantly in a wingback chair, flipping idly through a sheaf of papers. She looks up when the door opens and recognition fills her gaze. "You're Lord Sesshomaru's woman." Her poison eyes trail over Kagome's outfit and she frowns. "It seems you had an enjoyable night."

While she doesn't dignify that with a verbal response, her blushing face is answer enough. "You haven't happened to see Lord Tetsu anywhere, have you?"

"Not today." Akira turns back to the papers in her lap dismissively. Kagome sighs and turns to leave, but still when Akira's taunting voice calls out behind her. "I suppose if Lord Sesshomaru had to choose a human to save his title, you're at least attractive."

"What?"

She's turned around without realizing she's done it, to see Akira turn her head back towards her, with a feigned expression of surprise on her face, eyes wide and mouth parted. "Surely you know that he's about to lose his seat as Lord of the Western Lands to his younger brother?"

"Inuyasha? What does he have to do with – "

Akira waved her head dismissively. "He doesn't have anything to do with this, except that is Lord Sesshomaru isn't mated by his centennial birthday, then his title automatically reverts to the next heir, which would be that hanyou."

"I don't believe you." She tries to say it firmly, but her voice quavers unsteadily.

Akira waves the sheaf of papers lightly in the air. "I have proof, little miko, if you'd like to see it with your own two eyes." Kagome takes a few staggering steps forward, not close enough to take them from her hand, but close enough to read the writing that was displayed there. "Lord Tetsu gave this to me himself, just last night."

If, upon the sundown of my eldest son and heir's centennial nameday, he has not mated and named a Lady of the Western Lands, title and all subsequent powers related therein will transfer to the next closest available kin.

The world feels like it's falling out from underneath her. "But what do I – "

"Well, you don't think any demoness worth her salt would have him with that face, do you?" Akira laughed. "He looks like melted candlewax, we don't want a title that badly." Her face smooths out and she fixes Kagome with a pitying, haughty stare. "He needs you to keep his title, don't you see that."

"No. No, I don't believe you," she says, backing away and towards the door. "You're just jealous."

Another laugh. "Of you?"

"You're the one who burned his face – "

"I am." No shred of remorse colors her voice. "And I'm glad that I did, because he deserved it. Do you know that he and I were almost mated, he courted me for many months. Of course, I didn't know he just needed any old female at his side then, I thought he cared about me." The sneer on her face makes her look angry and ugly. "But when my father lost our fortune, Lord Sesshomaru told me he didn't have any more use for me. So I made sure no woman would have any use for him." Her sneer widened, twisting into something grotesque and vengeful. "You think he'd want a silly little human girl like you? You think he cares about you? He's just grasping at the last straw he has to keep his power. And when he has it and he's used you to stay there, he'll do the same thing he does to everyone else: he'll throw you away like trash."

Kagome is shaking her head in denial, but the words are coursing through her to sit in her stomach like leaden stones. Her breathe is frantic in her lungs. She doesn't want to listen anymore, she doesn't want to hear anything else that has the ring of truth in it.

She turns to flee the room, the conversation, and slams into a firm, unmoving chest. When she looks up, Sesshomaru's sorrowful face is staring down at her, paler than she has ever seen it, his expression broken. He reaches out for her, her name ragged on his lips. "Kagome."

But she doesn't want to hear him. So she shoulders past him and bolts with a wrenching sob.