Chapter Four

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Others were arriving for the briefing Buffy had planned on the Unseelie threat -- she heard voices in the lobby as she and Xander climbed the stairs from the basement. Louder than the casual conversation of arriving Slayers and support staff, she also overheard:

"Am not ..."

"Are too!"

It sounded as if Kagome and Inuyasha were at it again. Apparently, they'd come down to the lobby after fixing Inuyasha's arm. Xander gave her a look of bemusement, obviously recognizing their voices. Buffy rolled her eyes in response. "So far, he hasn't bitten anyone."

"Bad joke, Buffy," Xander said, with a frown. He'd trained some of the girls that the hanyou had killed.

The argument abruptly stopped as they emerged from the hall and into the lobby. Inuyasha, nostrils flared, gave Xander a short, sharp look. Buffy remembered Spike telling her that Inuyasha's sense of smell was so good he could practically read minds -- or at least, emotions -- with it. Kavan, behind them, glanced quickly back and forth between them, but said nothing. Buffy made a mental note that she needed to interrogate their latest refugee from the forces of evil in the very near future ... she was just so damned busy, and he was being so nice and quiet and unassuming.

Maybe she'd let Andrew conduct the briefing with Kagome and several other newbies, and go have a chat with Kavan while Andrew filled them in.

Inuyasha's ears slowly went flat, and he gave Xander an unreadable look before turning his back to both of them. With a graceless thump, he sat down, arms folded, facing the doorway, at Kagome's feet. Kagome met Buffy's eyes, vented an exasperated groan, then reached down, grabbed Inuyasha by the elbow, and adroitly yanked him back to his feet. "Inuyasha, be polite."

"Feh." Inuyasha apparently felt that his point was made, though he gave Kagome a very dour look. And Buffy couldn't exactly blame him for the attitude; she'd heard that Xander had said some insulting things while Sesshomaru had been holding her captive. He might be rude, crude, and violent, but he's not an animal. And Xander managed to imply that he was -- and insult Kagome in the process.

"That goes for you, too," Buffy said to Xander, because she could practically feel him quivering with a desire to make a cutting remark. "Be polite."

Probably, I should make sure that Xander and Inuyasha are not left alone in a room together. Because Xander still, after all these years, says insulting things before he thinks -- and you can't get away with that with Inuyasha.

Except ... Buffy found she couldn't actually visualize Inuyasha turning on Xander with claws and fangs over a rude remark. Instead, the image that came to mind was Inuyasha snorting, and turning his back, and summoning a great deal of dignity and outsized pride. Maybe a cutting remark in response. But not violence, not in response to just harsh words.

Is that right? Buffy wondered. Kagome had seemed to think that Inuyasha didn't respond with violence unless sorely provoked. And she'd seen Inuyasha grin in response to being sniped at by Kagome.

Gotta admit, we did provoke him.

"Riiight," Xander drawled out, in response to her order. That got an ears-pinned narrow-eyed look from the hanyou, and a snort, before he again turned his back. This time, Kagome didn't make him turn around again. Instead, she glared at Xander before she squeezed Inuyasha's shoulder gently.

"Thank you for this," Kagome murmured to Inuyasha, too low for Buffy to hear, but she could read Kagome's lips. "I know this is hard."

"Feh." The half-demon snorted. "Harder for Xander than me, apparently. He's the one who's got a problem. I am behaving, as you put it."

Kagome's face was turned away from Buffy when she responded, but whatever she said made Inuyasha's ears relax a bit.

Buffy sighed too. It was going to be a long briefing, and she'd just decided that Kavan would have to wait ... she didn't want to risk Xander unsupervised by herself or Willow, in the same room with Inuyasha. And if that was Inuyasha on his best behavior, she hated to think what he was like when he wasn't making an attempt to 'behave' ...

Then Kagome did something that mystified Buffy at first. She asked, "Do you have anything planned for dinner?"

"Probably order pizza," Buffy replied, somewhat blankly.

"Inuyasha will fetch." Kagome said, which Buffy realized got the hanyou out of the hotel for at least half an hour -- and when he returned, it would be bearing food, something inclined to make at least some of her people friendlier towards him. Brilliant, Buffy thought. "Inuyasha?"

"Fetch?" Inuyasha lifted an eyebrow at her.

Kagome groaned at the inadvertent pun he'd pointed out. "It's a figure of speech, dog-boy."

"Don't want to leave you here alone," Inuyasha grumbled, glancing over his shoulder at Buffy and Xander.

"Don't insult us," Xander said, almost a growl of his own in his voice. "If we wanted both of you dead, you'd be toast."

"Didn't succeed before," Inuyasha gave him a contemptuous look. "You tried for three years."

"That," Xander said, "Was because we were distracted by other big bads and we didn't actually realize what we were facing in you. Figured the first couple of times you killed our squads were flukes -- inexperienced Slayers who weren't as good as we thought they were. We won't make that mistake again ..."

"Some gratitude I get for saving your leader's ass from my brother," Inuyasha said, with narrowed eyes and quite a bit of anger in his voice.

"Inuyasha," Kagome said patiently, "If they kill me, you have my full permission to get Kirara and Shippou and anyone else you want to round up -- Sesshomaru might even help on general principles -- and have a little Slayer hunt. 'Kay? But I don't think that's going to be necessary."

Buffy realized that the girl had a sneaky sense of humor that made Buffy actually look forward to working with her. She assured Inuyasha, "It's not going to be necessary. I promise, Inuyasha, she'll be fine."

"Feh. Kagome could kick your butt again if she had to."

"Inuyasha?" Kagome said, sweetly, but with warning in her voice.

"You're getting rid of me again." He turned amber eyes on her, frowning, arms folded.

"Damn right I am," Kagome glanced at them, then turned around, put her hands on his shoulders and said loud enough for Buffy to hear, "They've got far more of a problem with you than you do with them. I know you can mind your manners and you've been doing a good job and I'm really happy about that. I'm just trying to get you out of here so that Buffy can sort out her people with you out of the way."

"Feh. Okay. Pizza?" He sounded soothed, somewhat.

"Hey, I can behave too!" Xander protested.

Kagome gave him a look that was almost exactly matched by Buffy's skeptical look. Buffy fished in the inside pocket of the jean jacket she was wearing, pulled out a wallet with a few credit cards and cash in it, peeled six twenties off a stack of mostly smaller bills, and stepped closer to the hanyou. He turned around at the noise of her footsteps, and she extended her hand out with the money in it. In the calmest, most matter-of-fact voice she could summon, Buffy said, "Can you get eight large pizzas, four dozen wings, and five or six two-liters of cola?"

"Uh." Inuyasha took the money. His fingers brushed hers; his hand was warm and felt perfectly normal -- any person's hand, if you didn't look at the claws. With a blink at her, he said, "Any preference on toppings?"

The conversation suddenly felt so mundane it was surreal. She was giving a pizza order to the guy who'd killed twelve of her girls as if he was just one of the gang. It was absurd. Buffy said, "Nobody here's fussy. Four pepperoni, two cheese, two veggie, I guess."

"Okay." He headed out the door, pausing twice to look over his shoulder at her. She guessed he was still reluctant to leave his fiancé. Mistrustful. And she really couldn't blame him for that.

Kagome turned angry brown eyes on Xander when Inuyasha was gone. "Do me a favor, Pirate-boy, and don't provoke him deliberately."

"What, is he gonna kill me?" Xander said, challengingly. Buffy winced at the 'Pirate-boy' crack ... Xander had it coming for being an ass, but still. He was sensitive about his missing eye.

Kagome said, coldly, "No. But I have to listen to him bitch later about how unfair it is that he can't beat you up. And if I get tired enough of listening to him, I may decide to look the other way. Y'know what I mean? He is being good." Kagome's lips pressed together until they were a thin angry line.

"He just turned his back on me. I assume that was an insult," Xander said, with equal tension, and a tone that could only be described as condescending.

Kagome suddenly sighed, ran a hand over her face, and, at Buffy's guess, forcibly reined her anger in. Buffy, after three years of leading her own kind, had learned that 'Slayer' and 'hot temper' were almost synonymous and she recognized the look of frustration on Kagome's face rather well. Finally, Kagome said, "Look, Xander, that's just idiot-boy's version of counting to ten before speaking. He's trying not to mouth off at anyone."

"That's ... dysfunctional." Xander snorted. "He's kinda weird."

Kagome was again silent before responding; Buffy thought that perhaps Inuyasha wasn't the only one to count to ten before speaking. "One thing you need to know about Inuyasha is that his social skills are really lacking. I used to get horribly mad at him before I started to figure that out -- and then I learned that once you understand where he's coming from and treat him with some respect, he's really a nice guy. You guys have no clue what he's really like. Just -- you have to realize -- the things that we do to relate to people that are second nature for you or me are almost impossibly hard for him."

"Because he's a demon?" Xander said, then seemed to fall silent, as if he was thinking.

Heh. Buffy glanced at him, wondering if his thoughts had suddenly gone in the same direction that hers had. Buffy could name another demon with very poor social skills -- one who Xander had truly loved. Kagome might not realize it, but she'd just given Xander some serious food for thought, somewhat accidentally -- Buffy recognized a generic rant when she heard it. Kagome had been stewing on this issue for awhile, and Xander was just a convenient target.

Idly, Buffy wondered what Anya would have made of Inuyasha. Or vice versa.

Kagome was much calmer when she answered, perhaps in response to Xander's silence. She had his attention. He was listening. "Maybe a little of it is because of that -- his youkai half is strong and it does influence how he thinks, because he behaves a little differently when he's fully human. He's calmer, more sensitive to his own emotions ... However, I think most of his ruder behavior is because he pretty much raised himself from the time he was four or five years old -- his mother died and he was tossed out by her family, and then he was almost entirely on his own for a century and a half. I've met plenty of youkai -- Shippou is one, and Myoga, and even Koga -- who have far better manners than my Inuyasha will ever have."

She lifted a shoulder in half a shrug. "He had no friends for over a century, Xander. No parents. Nobody to tell him what was right, or what was wrong. Nobody who loved him, nobody who would even talk to him. He was very different and very alone ... Humans thought him a monster; youkai think he's an abomination and a weakling -- at least, until they meet his claws. Is it any wonder he finds friendship and basic social skills difficult? He may be seven centuries old now, but he spent the equivalent of almost two human lifetimes and almost all his childhood alone." She glanced in the direction that Inuyasha had gone. Her eyes had softened as she spoke of him, "He was so much worse when we first met, you know. He was betrayed by the first person in his life that he loved, much less trusted ... I ... I made a connection with him. And there were other people, good friends of ours, who helped him too ... and then after I was gone, I think Amelia helped him a lot too."

Kagome looked up at Xander, eyes very soft now. "But Xander, Inuyasha is always going to be a little bit ... harsh. A little different. It's simply who he is, and after seven centuries, he's not gonna change. You can either take him as he is or not, it's simply up to you. On the whole, I love who he is. But then, I've taken the time and made the effort to win his trust and get to know him."

Laughter rang through the lobby doorway, ending Kagome's speech abruptly. She turned, and Buffy looked up, to see a pack of young slayers enter the lobby. There were half a dozen of them, all her new recruits -- none of them were older than mid twenties, and all were lean and beautiful and lively. Slayers lived -- that was something that Buffy had learned by observation of many of her kind. With uncertain futures, death surrounding them and often dealt by their own hands.

She knew all but one of them -- the new girl was Japanese too, a little younger than Kagome, and -- where had they found her? Oh, yeah, Kyoto. Buffy brightened a bit. The girl barely spoke any English, but Kagome was fluently bilingual. This would work out nicely, having both of them working on this problem together. What was her name ... Hanako? Yeah, Buffy thought that was right.

"Kagome, can I introduce you to someone?" Buffy said. "She's a newbie, she's, like, totally having trouble with English and nobody around here speaks Japanese but you and Andrew. And I suspect she's getting tired of having only Andrew to talk to ..."

"Aa?" Kagome breathed out, in an odd tone of voice. She was staring at the new girl, mouth hanging open.

The new girl looked at Kagome, then looked at her, frowning, eyes narrowing.

"Do you know each other?" Buffy asked, curiously.

"Aa ... no! She just reminds me of someone." Kagome had gone pale under her olive skin; she fidgeted in place. "Reminds me of someone a lot, actually." Under her breath, she muttered something in Japanese; Buffy caught the name 'Kikyo' which she knew from her earlier research was Kagome's past incarnation.

Kagome smiled -- it was an odd smile -- and said something in Japanese to the girl. Hanako promptly grinned an enormous grin, hurried over, and the two bowed at each other -- and then both launched into excited Japanese. Buffy didn't have a clue what they were saying, but apparently, it was friendly greetings because both girls were soon grinning and giggling.

Still, there was something very odd in Kagome's expression -- a distance in her eyes, and a faint smile playing around her lips that had nothing to do with meeting a sister Slayer who was -- by all evidence -- very happy to be able to communicate clearly with someone.

"C'mon," Buffy said, finally. "We've got a briefing for you and the rest of the newbies down in the basement. You two can have a slumber party or something later."

Kagome snorted, suddenly. Cryptically, she said, "I think we've had a few slumber parties already, in a past life ..." then she shook her head, "Y'know, Buffy, sometimes the hands of fate are cruel. And sometimes ..." she glanced at Hanako, who had her head tilted to one side and who was studying Kagome rather curiously. "... sometimes, the hands of fate are just cool."