Disclaimer: I Do Not Own Inuyasha.
Chapter 23 – Refiner's Fire
"Do I ever eat all the pear ones, Kags?" Micah asked.
"You did that one time!" she accused groggily, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Her movements were slow, letting all who watched her know that she was in pain.
"That was because you ate all the root beer flavored ones first and didn't leave me a single one!" he retorted.
"Oh yeah," she mumbled. Sesshoumaru was shocked that they would be bickering so childishly. Well, he could believe it of Kagome without hesitation, but the fact that Peters was arguing like a two year old was new to him. He was about to tell them to grow up and get down to business when Kagome suddenly became quite serious.
"Are we secure?" she asked quickly.
"Completely, full head count," he assured her.
"Shippou?" Kagome asked, her eyes taking on a far off look.
"He's fine," Micah replied. "He's just…"
"Downstairs, west wing, in the music room with Rin and Kohaku." Kagome sighed with relief. She filled her aura with a burst of affection and reassurance so that her kit would be able to feel it.
"He knows," Micah smiled softly. "He's been quite the trooper."
"I had four daggers on me, where are they?" Kagome asked, getting back to business now they she was sure of her son's welfare.
"In the drawer of the nightstand along with your training outfit," Micah replied. "Jackson will be pleased to know that you still use the one he crafted for you."
"Is he heading ops in you absence?"
"Yes."
"Is the team running on code G-7?"
"Of course."
"Gonzales in charge of infantry supply?"
"Yes, she said to tell you hello by the way."
"Did you fly a jet here yourself, or did you let Turner pilot the leer?"
"Turner, he said he wanted some good sushi."
Finally, Kagome looked down and notice she was wearing silk pajamas. A look of terror came across her face. "Who changed me?" she demanded, causing Miroku and Inuyasha to smirk.
Sesshoumaru shifted almost imperceptibly, annoyed that she thought he would let anything indecent occur in his home. Micah caught the movement, and reading his thoughts decided to mess with the taiyoukai.
"I did," he said, smirking. "And I must say, I miss your henna tattoos, Kags."
Without even blushing she replied, "Well, as long as it wasn't someone like Miroku or Sesshoumaru or Inuyasha, although I hardly think my sister would have let him," she chuckled.
The others were shocked speechless, and in Sesshoumaru's case, horror-struck.
"Too bad I know you're lying though, Micah. If you had changed me then you would have noticed that I do have a tattoo or two that you would definitely have commented on," she grinned. "You're a rotten liar; you know that, don't you?"
"Only when it's you, love, only when it's you."
Suddenly, Kagome squealed and leapt into Micah's arms. "I'm so glad you came!" she said, her face buried against his shoulder.
"As if you could keep me away!" he chided while hugging her. When he tightened his grip to assure himself that she really was there, he immediately released her as he felt her flinch and gasp in pain. "What hurts?" he asked quickly, noting both tears spring into her eyes and how her skin felt hot to the touch.
By now, the other six had entered the room and taken up positions in various chairs, or in Sesshoumaru's case, along a far wall. He didn't trust himself to come any closer because watching the scene between Kagome and Peters was having an unpleasant effect on him. However, when Kagome's knees buckled, he was very near to coming to her aid, had Peters not caught her first.
"Kags," Micah prompted again, "tell me what hurts."
Kagome would have answered but her eyes swept the room, taking in everyone else's appearance; especially her sister and Inuyasha. "Holy shit it worked!" she practically screeched as she cried some more.
"Yes it did," Kikyou replied, her own eyes welling with tears.
Inuyasha, upon hearing her sound as if she was surprised her endeavors had succeeded was sorely tempted to start shouting something along the lines of "You didn't KNOW it was going to work!", but the sight of sobbing females stilled him. 'No,' he thought. 'Kami please no; anything but crying!' Besides which, he too was still in awe over the love he felt from Kagome the day before, but unlike Sesshoumaru, he wasn't frightened by it. Merely amazed, and secretly thankful, that he'd gotten to feel it.
Kagome made her way towards the couple, and inspected both. She turned them around, traced her fingers along theirs, and was reaching for Inuyasha's ears when he stepped back, blushing. He would never admit to it, but he was still bashful about his ears, and he happened to know, courtesy of Kikyou, that these new ones were just as sensitive.
"I'm so sorry," Kagome murmured, having stepped back away. She lowered her head and spoke quietly. "I had planned to offer it as a kind of wedding gift. I had every intention of asking you two what it was that you wanted, giving you time to think and all that…but I had to act. That dark miko had already torn your souls apart so much that your bodies as they were didn't have the strength to be put back together, unless I let loose what she was trying to take. Kikyou, you would have had no miko powers, and Inu, you would have been turned human. In fact, I don't know if either of you could have even survived. I had to do something, I had to!" she plead with them to understand.
Micah was rubbing small circles on her back trying to comfort her, but it wasn't until Kikyou's now delicately clawed hand grasped her own that she released any of the tension she'd been holding.
Kagome looked at her sister, taking in the now slightly more defined features. Her gazed then traveled to her sister's eyes. They were still the same deep, coffee brown as before, but now they were shrouded by much thicker and longer lashes, and their piercing gaze was different. They held a kind of agelessness that comes only from having lived a very long time, or from being something akin to immortal. They were the eyes of a youkai.
"It's okay, dear heart," Kikyou said softly to her younger sister. "We understand."
"You're not angry?" Kagome asked. She looked over at Inuyasha. His cute dog ears were gone, as he too now had the slightly elongated and pointed ears of a full youkai. He was also taller now.
"Keh, as if!" he teased her. "Though, come to think of it, I ain't so thrilled that you didn't know exactly what you were doing."
"Inuyasha!" Kikyou snapped. "Be nice!"
Kagome, who had blanched a little at Inuyasha's teasing, suddenly grinned when she heard the growl in her sister's voice.
"You said you had planned on offering to change them into full youkai," Sesshoumaru interrupted, unable to keep silent any longer. "That would mean you were, to some degree, aware of and able to control this power?"
Kagome nodded.
Sesshoumaru glared at Micah, once again angered that this had been withheld from him.
"Don't look at me like that, Sesshoumaru; I knew nothing about this," Micah said defensively. "Besides, you're not allowed to do the talking, remember?"
The man-demon's taunting made Sesshoumaru glare.
"Why isn't Sesshoumaru allowed to ask questions?" Kagome asked confusedly. "I mean, I tricked the guy, paralyzed him, and borrowed his blood without asking. Not to mention this is his house, I think he kind of has a right to be demanding right now."
Her statement was met by astonished gazes. No one had expected Kagome to be so willingly open with the taiyoukai. Micah recovered first and waved his hand in dismissal.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "We had a bet as to who would be able to wake you up, the loser having to back off while the winner got to be the one to ask the questions. I won, so he has to sit there and be quiet and think about how he needs to learn to listen to me when I warn him. Hopefully that burn you gave him when you punched him in the jaw will help in the process."
"Micah, you twit!" she scolded. "You deliberately took advantage of that situation…wait a second, did you just say I…" she looked over at Sesshoumaru and noted the blistering burn on his jaw, and then the rather large hole in the wall. "Oh no! I am so sorry Sesshoumaru! I didn't mean to, or at least, I don't think I did," she wavered. "Please let me heal it? That kind of burn will last for a while, Micah can attest to that, but I can get rid of it in a second."
Kagome was once again surrounded by incredulous gazes. No one had expected her to offer to heal him, let alone apologize. In fact, the last that they had heard Kagome was working on a plan to digitally alter photos to make them appear as if Sesshoumaru was at a fertility/impotency clinic.
"Since when have they been so chummy?" Sango whispered to Miroku.
"I dunno, but it looks like Kagome has finally started to crack," he muttered in reply. "Either her or Sesshoumaru, that is."
Across the room, Sesshoumaru nodded his assent to Kagome. Normally, he would have taken it like a man, or in his case youkai, but it really stung worse than anything he'd ever felt before, even that flour she'd charged with holy powers. Plus, the thought of her being nice to him in front everyone gratified him greatly.
Kagome left Micah and her bed and made her way carefully over to Sesshoumaru. She stumbled and cried out in discomfort but he was able to catch her before she fell. He was about to tell her not to use the energy of healing him as she was in so much pain when he felt the soft and strangely hot touch of her hand brush against his stomach. Bewildered, he was going to ask what she was doing when she grasped the edges of his shirt and lifted it up.
"I see this is still here," she remarked, seeing the burn on his chest from the day before.
Not that it ever would, but if in fact hell did freeze over a loud 'EEP!' would have erupted in Sesshoumaru's mind.
She reached out to touch it, but as her fingers grazed upward along his stomach he grabbed her hand with on of his and yanked his shirt back into place, glaring at her fiercely. "Uh, sorry," she murmured as she blushed and averted her gaze.
If she hadn't looked away she would have noticed his skin shiver where her fingers had made contact.
Nearly everyone else in the room was speechless, although Miroku decided to add a bit of humor to the situation to try and lighten things up a bit.
Clearing his throat while waggling his eyebrows he called out, "My my, Kagome, would you like us to leave so you could continue?"
Micah grinned, Kagome blushed, and Sesshoumaru glared. Unfortunately, Miroku was unable to enjoy their reactions as Sango had once again slapped him upside the head.
"Does that mean the other one is still there as well?" Kagome asked, deciding that ignoring Miroku was the best thing to do.
"Hai," the taiyoukai replied, his face completely emotionless. "You will want to shut your mouth, monk, if you value your appendage's current state of attachment to your body," he said coldly when he noticed Miroku was about to ask where the other burn was.
"Uh, right, well…I don't have to touch all of the burn sites to heal them, just some patch of skin."
She reached up and placed a hand on the injured cheek, and a soft glow emanated from her palm. The burns immediately healed but apparently at great cost to Kagome. She shuddered as tears once again appeared in her eyes and beads of sweat formed across her forehead.
"What's happened? Why is she in pain?" Mia asked, her voice laden with worry as she came to be by her daughter.
"It is due to the fact that her body has begun to change itself. She used so much power in the effort of transforming Inuyasha and Kikyou that as it flowed through her it altered her physical form. The process is known as the Refiner's Fire."
"Sesshoumaru," muttered Kagome, "please don't explain right now. I want to hear it and I won't be able to focus when I'm like this."
Sesshoumaru felt odd, holding Kagome gently so as not to aggravate her pain, seeing the tears in her steel eyes as they'd yet to return to brown. Hearing the gentle pleading in her voice…it stirred something inside him. The fact that she was showing her weakness to him, that she had healed him even though it hurt her, and that she was clinging to him made him feel, well…it made him feel.
Add to that the way his skin trembled at her touch…
"Hando, you should be laying down," he stated. She needed rest. She needed peace. He'd put her back to bed and kick everyone else out.
"No," she said. "Not the bed, it hurts to have my weight resting on anything solid."
"Then what do you suggest?" Mia inquired.
"Micah?" Kagome called, holding a hand out to the blonde, "I feel freeze dried…"
"And fat fried?" he asked with a smile as he came toward her. (A/N: I don't own James Taylor or the song those two lines come from either…)
Kagome nodded and then transferred her arms to around his neck. Sesshoumaru released her, very reluctantly, and Micah scooped her into his arms and carried her out the door.
"Where you takin' her?" Inuyasha demanded.
"She just asked to be taken to where there's water," he replied knowingly. "Where do you want to go, Kags? The lake outside?" She nodded into his chest and sighed.
"How did you know that's what she was asking?" Inuyasha questioned again.
"Because I know Kagome," came the pious, yet nevertheless arrogant, reply. "And that was an inside joke. She always likes to be in water when she's banged up, and if the pressure of touch hurts her and she feels as if she's on fire, then letting her float in cool water will help."
"And did Hando often get 'banged up' while in your care?" Sesshoumaru growled lowly. Inuyasha suddenly turned to look at him, cocking his head to one side in question, but he was ignored.
"Are you implying I don't know how to protect those close to me, Taisho?" Micah asked, bristling at the thinly veiled insult.
"Okay, first of all," Kagome cut in, "I can take care of myself. Second, Sesshoumaru, you might have noticed that despite the best efforts of highly talented and skilled people, I have a tendency to get myself into interesting situations."
"That's for sure!" Mia piped up, coming to aid in her daughter's attempt to keep an argument from erupting. 'Sesshoumaru-sama is being rather…protective. Hmm, I wonder.'
"If the rest of you will please come, I'd like to find out more of what is going on," Kagome requested, finalizing that the previous issue was dropped. No one disagreed, they were all as anxious for answers as she was. Suddenly, she stiffened. "That toad thing has just entered the music room, and I don't think Shippou likes it." She looked questioningly at Sesshoumaru.
"That is Jaken, my steward. He frequently looks after Rin. The children will remain unharmed."
"Oh good, as long as he's okay," she sighed. Then she smiled and looked up at Micah. "Although, something must be wrong with him if you got that bag of jelly belly's past him."
"There's nothing wrong," Micah chuckled. "I brought a separate bag to distract him with."
"You've spent way too much time with us Micah m'dear," she chuckled.
Sesshoumaru silently agreed.
Once again he found himself marveling at the closeness the two seemed to share. He did not approve. He did not like that Hando was draped in Peters' arms, nor that they had inside jokes, nor that he knew her healing process or could make her laugh so readily, her favorite candy, and especially not that he knew how to wake her up and about tattoos she'd had. The implications of those last two disturbed him particularly.
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A/N: Thanks again to my bodacious beta Angel who reminded me that I was being negligent in my updating. Thanks also to my many lovely and loquacious reviewers; I hope you all will continue to let me know what you think, or what you want out of this story. I only have a few more chapters planned out, so any and all input will be considered for future use; although, there are certain things I know will happen in the story so if what you want goes against this I won't be able to do it.
NEways, onto the spoilers for Chapter 24: Alchemy for the Errant Miko! (This is my favorite part of posting a chapter…)
-"Hey! I'll have you know that my head is perfectly proportioned to my stunningly impressive 6'4 frame, and so is every other part of my body, as you may well remember." Micah waggled his eyebrows. Inuyasha made a disgusted face. Sesshoumaru clenched his fists to the point where he was nearly snapping the bones in his fingers. Miroku looked on appreciatively, thinking about how well he and this man would get along.-
- Five sets of eyes widened. Even Mia and Kikyou had not expected this. Miroku, though, was smirking pleasantly. He definitely liked how this Peters guy operated.-
-"Hanyous," Kagome went on, "are typically more powerful than humans, but do not possess the same kind of soul like Sesshoumaru. Their souls are not as complex, or as deep. You," she said to Inuyasha, "on the other hand seem to be an exception.-
-"Sesshoumaru insulted her intelligence and her intentions because he's too thick to see she hides her modesty under humor and sarcasm," Kikyou growled. "Besides which, Kagome should have earned his respect with what she has done. None of us would ever be able to do what she has, and just because he cannot understand he chooses to attack."-