May 07 2007: Author's Notes: Cause I do really know the year. Last chapter was a typo. As it is 2007 - I'm just a couple years behind lol. Anyway, moving right to the next chapter. This is a combination of my former 9 and 10 chapters.

Summary of Chapter six: Kagome and Sesshomaru while sleeping…ended up sleeping together. Both not really in control of themselves at the time but falling into the seduction of each other regardless - either unwilling or unable to completely fight the mysterious force compelling them.

Chapter Seven: Embrace the Darkness or Earth Diving Again?

It was quiet and warming up again when the two woke up from their deep slumber, tangled in each bodies while they slept and drowsily pulling themselves back to consciousness before they instantly pulled away from one another. Kagome grabbed her bra and shirt, trying to put them on as quickly as possible as her cheeks lit up red.

Sesshomaru was reacting more coldly than embarrassed as he also moved to put his pants at least back into place. It was difficult for him to dress alone but he managed to be decent by the time that Kagome was, she numbly moved to start a fire and cook herself food - her stomach rumbling even if she didn't feel like eating she needed something to preoccupy her time with.

"Whoever cut into you probably did the same to me." Sesshomaru spoke first, his voice the perfect silken frigid thing it always was - as if he'd been unaffected by what had happened. "I would assume that they can use whatever they did to control us slightly."

"Slightly! SLIGHTLY!" she nearly shrieked as her voice jumped in pitch, breaking as she tried to cry but couldn't manage to make the moisture in her eyes fall. "They used my body for…to…"

"I should have realized it sooner." he seemed to be admonishing himself but he was usually impossible to read. "My apologies."

Her brains train of thought paused when he said that. "Wait…apologies? From Sesshomaru? He didn't want to do it either- he hates humans…even if I'm not fully one I'm probably lucky he's not killing me. He must actually feel bad for losing control like that. I just wish my first time hadn't been stolen from me…not that it was all bad…but does that mean it will keep happening? What is it someone could want from…from stealing my virginity? From having us…"

She shook her head, fighting the tears that were threatening now.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" he asked, remembering that things had gotten rather rough at a couple times…it's rare that even a partial human would survive such a time with a demon.

"I don't know." she answered honestly. "Everything at least seems to be back in my control."

She was still on the verge of tears and wasn't really seeing the noodles she was stirring nearby.

"Are you hurt?" he repeated with a little more stress to draw her back to answering him.

She thought about that before shaking her head in the negative, she was a little sore but her body actually felt amazing other than that - apparently she was fully healed outside of that one small thing.

"She's not taking this very well…" he figured as he watched her not really paying attention to her cooking. "…not that I am happy about it but it's not her fault. At least she isn't a full human…it could have been worse on either end. Are humans this emotional about everything? It wasn't as if I'd been unpleasant with her. She seemed to enjoy it rather heavily after…that's it…she hadn't ever been with someone intimately before last night."

"It wasn't your fault Kagome." he said in a rare show of kindness. "You can't let it get to you so much, you weren't actually willing so don't think of it as being real."

"But…but it was." her breathing was uneven and she was still fighting the act of sobbing. "What if I'm pregnant?"

That made him laugh a little, shaking his head at her and realizing that it wasn't the best idea to seem amused at her expense. "Don't worry about that. You haven't been and still aren't in heat. I would know if you were in such a state."

He touched his nose in silent explanation before she asked him and she nodded a little, seeming to lighten considerably and he silently had to agree with that sort of relief - he wouldn't be feeling well either if she was with child.

"After you eat we should head on our way. I think I know the tunnel that will lead us closer to the surface, it's taken time to recognize some of the subtler scents but I believe it will take us closer to our destination of reaching the surface again. Then we can start to find out just what might have been done to us." He explained, rising and moving off to bath in an area away from her. "Try not to take too long."

He figured if he kept her mind busy it would be easier on her than dwelling on what had happened, as irritating as it had been there was little that could be done about it now but finding the cause and stopping it before it happened again.

Kagome ate in silence and let him bathe, lost in thoughts of her own of how she would ever explain what had happened, she hadn't really wanted to sleep with him…had she?

She was turning herself in circles and was rushing to try to think of it as little as possible though by the time they left she'd put herself back into a confused and much more dreary mood than usual for the bubbly girl.

They walked together for a while before finally Sesshomaru seemed to lose patience and turned toward her.

"We need to move faster." he pointed out. "Come here, I'll carry you."

"What?" she blinked in shock. "We shouldn't do that. I think it's a bad idea."

"You move too slow, we need to get out of here before too many more nights pass." he pointed out, that much making her accent to the request though she didn't really want to.

She felt guilty when she found herself feeling secure as he held her body against his while he ran, wanting to be back with Inuyasha, to have him carrying her instead. She knew they were covering more ground and agreed that they needed out of this strange situation as soon as possible but she was questioning so much of what she was feeling that she didn't enjoy being carried by him either.

Though her troubling mind kept her busy enough that his long run to an intersection had passed much more quickly than expected, settling her down so she could back away and stretch while he sniffed at the passages.

There were still small crystals that were lighting their way but they only continued down one of the two possible passages, the left one - the other would drop Kagome into blindness. She frowned some as a single phrase haunted her at the comparison.

"Embrace the darkness."

"Left I think." He said. "It goes toward the surface. The air is a little clearer, I'd say from here we probably have about a day before we'll reach an opening."

"I think it's a trap." Kagome said bluntly. "It's the easier path, it's lit like that. I think we should go the other route."

"The other path has several more scents and most are difficult to distinguish from here. That makes it the more dangerous of the choices." He answered without seeming to be convinced at all by her words.

"It seems lucky to me." she hoped he would buy the lie she was giving, she needed to listen to what her gut was telling her - and hope it wasn't whatever was controlling her last night.

"You aren't telling me everything." he observed, seeing through her nervousness much more easily, she wore her emotions on her sleeve enough that he could read them like a book. He narrowed his eyes on her enough that she was instantly more nervous.

"I…had a dream when we first woke up here…" she blushed as she explained. "It told me I needed to 'embrace the darkness' or that I would be consumed by it."

"People have been giving us dreams and controlling us." Sesshomaru reminded her. "It seems unwise to continue on such a belief."

"I really think we should follow it though." she argued in annoyance of his not listening.

"And that seems heavily like control." he pointed out coolly, starting down the lit path.

Kagome followed and then jumped as she felt the ground shift, jumping forward to grab Sesshomaru's arm as he fell into a pit that had been an illusion before they'd reached it. Shattering when they stepped near and her arm was pulling out of her socket from the weight as she tried to hold up the heavy demon.

"I told you…" she grumbled through clenched teeth before she fell back onto her ass from his sudden weightlessness, clouds seeming to gather at his feet as he floated back to floor level and stepped back onto solid ground no worse for wear, raising a silver brow at her.

"You were saying?"

"Oh shut up." she snapped in annoyance at his 'holier than thou' demeanor. "We should go the other way. This one could be littered with more traps like this."

"So could the other path." he reminded her but sighed. "It's nothing worse than here, but you won't be able to see."

"That…is okay." she nodded to him. "I think this is what we need to do."

"You are a strange part human." he commented. "Shall we go then?"

She nodded a little, accepting his grip as he picked her up again to start running.

"Why…did you call me Kagome before. You never did that until this morning." she asked him quietly as they moved.

"I just did." his retort was fast and cold.

"But you never had before…" she pointed out. "would…would you keep calling me by my name?"

"I suppose so…" he answered her with a small nod. "Kagome."

"Sesshomaru." she was surprised to hear herself say his name without anger in it. "Who do you think did all of this?"

"I can't be sure." he replied calmly. "It could be any number of things that came after us."

"Well, what about my back? It feels a lot better now. You might be able to read more and get an idea of what else is happening." She pointed out, reminding him of the circles that had been carved into her skin there.

"I imagine I could, but it might not be the best idea." he warned her as he took a jump over a pit she couldn't see and somewhat smiled when she gripped onto him more at the motion. He liked her near him more than he wanted to admit even to himself.

"Why?" she asked naively, unable to see what was happening now that they'd gotten so far away from the lights of the strange crystals.

"Nothing." he said after a moment, in a way she realized wasn't true. "I will check it when we stop for rest."

It took her a few more moments before she realized why it might be a bad idea and she blushed when she thought about it. After the problems before it made a lot of sense why he might not want to be super close to her bare skin, but they had to know.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully and mostly in silence before they reached a platform that seemed secure enough were they could rest and there were a few of the illuminating crystals so Kagome was offered a little bit of vision. She ate a granola bar that wouldn't require her cooking as they didn't have the wood or other kindling that they would need for a fire.

After she ate she waited a while before she was reminded that Sesshomaru needed to see the circles to read them. She moved closer to them and after a long moment of hesitation she pulled her shirt up to show him the circles - her bra discarded a bit ago as he'd made it worthless the night before by cutting through it.

He narrowed his eyes on the strange mystical writing and traced a finger over the soft skin on her back, it was still subtle even when it was scarred and he had to remind himself to pay attention to the circles and lettering instead of her body. He could smell her flush and hear her heart rate quicken as he did what he could to decipher their only real clue to the puzzle.

"This outer one, it is a binding circle of some kind." he explained as he ran a finger lightly around it, making her twitch a little from the gentle tickle. "From the look of the wording in it's interior it is a binding circle for demons…normally these are used to trap the demons inside the circle, making it impossible for them to leave…however it's slightly broken and would be useless anyway considering it's placement. Yet it holds another circle inside it."

He repeated the touching of the correct scars to show her as best he could what she couldn't see.

"This center one seems to be a circle within a circle…a rare form of warding used to bind two circles together…a sort of fusion to ward off both targets at once. It's hard to complete successfully. The strange thing is, it's to ward off humans. So the placement would have nullified any magic immediately. As you are part human."

As he finished the explanation he helped pull her shirt gently back into place before his mind wandered further than he wanted it to. He wouldn't allow himself to lose his control as he did the night before, not again, not now that he knew for sure what it was.

"So why carve it on me at all then?" she asked as she turned around.

"It's a different level."

"Huh?" she asked in confusion.

His velvet voice explained coolly, "Another level of deception. Everything that continues to happen with us are different parts of the web of the weaver. Each level is a new level of deception. It's just another tool to make us glance about as we get caught by more and more sticky strings. The idea is to build enough possibilities that we can never track down the true center of the deception until it's too late. The spider wins."

"Naraku." Kagome more stated than guessed as he mentioned a spider.

"A strong possibility." he agreed. "Though we should rest for a while before deciding on the path we'll take next."

"Right." she wasn't going to argue, even if he'd carried her most of the day she was exhausted. She pulled her blanket out and blushed when Sesshomaru lay his tail out for her. "…are you sure?"

"You'll freeze without it." he shrugged. "We haven't much choice."

She nodded with a small sigh, smiling a little tiredly and laying down on the fluffy tail drifted off to sleep before very long.

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"Inuyasha?" Kagome thought groggily as he pushed her awake.

"Come on." the half-demon's voice reached her as he shook her again. "You've already slept enough lazy, we need to get back on the road."

"Huh?" She blinked at him in disbelief, her eyes adjusting to the light of the late afternoon. "Inuyasha!?"

"Duh." he retorted with his usual wit. "hurry up Kagome, I'm hungry. You did bring Ramen this time too right?"

"But…" she protested a little with confusion, looking around the forest. "Was it all just a bizarre dream or nightmare?"

"But what? What the heck is wrong with you now?" he asked rudely.

She scowled at him in return for the lack of kindness, huffing. "I was having a dream."

"About what?" he raised a brow at her suspiciously. "You sure were blushing and muttering a lot. You certain you're as innocent as you act."

"Sit boy!"

The command sent Inuyasha face first into the dirt, muffled cursing reaching her ears as he pushed himself back up from the ground with a small glare toward her.

"Fine. Well get to cooking then…I'll wait over there." he pouted before he jumped off into some trees nearby.

Kagome mostly ignored him as she reached up to touch the shards that were hanging safely around her neck, gently sparkling in the bottle in which she kept them. "That had to be a really vivid dream."

"Wait. Inuyasha?" she called after him. "Come back. I have a question."

She started digging out cups with noodles to fix while she looked around at the forest. It was green and alive, fresh and beautiful and bright; a complete contrast to the caves she thought she'd been traveling in for days. She took a deep breath to enjoy the air. "But…I wasn't really there…"

"Now what?" the half demon demanded as he landed again, not looking at her and still with wounded pride thanks to being sat face first into the ground.

"What happened after the battle with Sesshomaru?" she asked as she started water to boil.

He jumped over to her, sniffing at her and eyeing her curiously.

"Are you sure you are okay? How could you forget that? All the rest didn't stop talking about it for over a week. You killed him remember? Twisted the arrow right into his heart cause you are a crazy woman that can't mind your own battles. You aren't going to feint again are you?"

End Chapter

Whew, I had a lot to fix over those two chapters and still ended up extending them by quite a bit. It was fun but after this I'm gonna go pass out for a while. I'm up way later than I should be working on this. But I wanted to hit over 10,000 words on my re-write and was less than one hundred away after I posted the last chapter so I put up this one.

-Aura

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