Title: Work-A-Holic
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: I have created a mission. It is to cover the entire FF world with HieiKago love and then when I have massed an army of HieiKago fanfiction, we will march on to rule the UNIVERSE! Bwahahaha! (I still don't own.)

Chapter eleven: Dog

"Kagome…wait…" the voice growled again inside her mind. She was slowly going mad, she thought. The footsteps in the snow continued to pad after her. The wind that tore her hair out of its perfect bun was icy. Her throat burned with the increasing effort to breathe.

Against her better judgment, she looked behind her. A mangled and bloodied, three legged dog struggled to keep up with her pace. She slowed at the sight of it, relieved that at least she wasn't going insane. Memories continued to flood her mind at the sight of that dog.

"You cannot keep up with me any longer… I shall dispose of your filth…" said the man as he looked at her with stunningly cruel golden eyes. He raised his right arm, two fingers extended. A green glow formed between the two extended claws.

"You gave me your word…" Kagome remembered how her voice sounded more like begging than anything else. She remembered feeling pitiful and weak when faced with the powerful demon who ruled the Western Lands five hundred years ago. "You said if I gave you what you wanted, you would release me from the slave pens to return home."

A smile curled the corner of his lips, making her shake with fear. She didn't like to see that smile. She knew he smiled to unnerve her. "I said I would release you from the slave pens… I never said I would let you live. Are you not happy you will not be a slave any longer?"

Kagome watched the dog warily as it approached. It left bloody footprints in the snow and finally crumpled at her feet. She glared at it with a cold look on her face. How dare he come to her now? After all these years, when she had almost suppressed her memories completely, everything was tearing her past forward to the present.

Her life was colliding into itself, and she didn't like it. She didn't like it one bit.

"Kagome…" the voice said in her mind, seeming exhausted.

"Not liking your body yet, are you?" she asked the dog. One gold eye stared up at her, enshrouded in the red of a popped blood vessel. "You shouldn't have come near me." She warned him. "You said yourself, Toshiro will find me if we are close."

She nudged the half-dead dog with her foot and he struggled to rise. "Toshiro left to find you eight years ago… with my permission… but he has not returned…" the dog's voice rang in her mind. The implications of what the dog spoke to her struck fear in her heart, though at the same time she questioned why she should care.

"Why?" she demanded, kneeling before the dog to look into its eyes. She grasped the dog's chin in her hand, feeling the caked blood crumbling. The dog didn't fear her or her power, but she supposed he wouldn't. "You made me swear on my blood that I would stay away from Toshiro. You made me swear… Why did you tell him where I was?"

The dog's strength wavered slightly and he nearly tipped over again. "Kagome…" His eyelids fell to half-mast. "He wanted to meet his mother… I could not say no… he would have gone with or without my blessing. I only hoped he had found you and stayed with you."

"No, I have not seen him… Is this why you come to me? You were at the shrine, weren't you?"

"I was for a while…"

Kagome crossed her arms over her chest, feeling absolutely no urge inside her to help the man-dog who was about to collapse. Why would she? He put her through hell, literally. She was obligated to no one to help him. "Why would you wait eight whole years before searching for him? That was your lack wit mistake, LORD Sesshoumaru."

She was mocking him and she was enjoying herself. "I didn't think he wouldn't return, so I waited." The dog's voice spoke in her mind still. She felt the dawn approaching before it would come and knew it was four in the morning. She'd woken up so many times to the clock at this hour…

"You didn't think…?" she scoffed, wanting to kick the broken dog, but knowing his demon instincts would kick in even while he was injured and in dog form. He would bite her, and who knew if he had any diseases these days?

"That's right," Sesshoumaru the dog growled, clearly not liking her tone of voice. Well, that also brought up the question, did she care what he liked? Not particularly. "Toshiro was no pinch cheeked boy. He could take care of himself. But that he did not find you like he intended, and that he had a direct way to get straight to you… and that you have not seen him… I must admit I am worried now."

"How did you get so injured?" She demanded. Early morning joggers skirted around her and the dog, giving her pale glances as if disapproving of her talking to a dog like he would respond.

"A car—"

She didn't even let him finish before she found herself holding her sides, laughing so hard she forgot to breath and it became mere wheezes. Sesshoumaru was run over by a car? The once-great dog-demon of the west was humbled by a car? More-over, by the creation of mankind?

Perhaps there was hope for the demon race after all? Humans could teach them humility… to be humble… to bow before their superiority…

"Not likely," Sesshoumaru growled, clearly reading her mind like she was an open book. "Humans are as pathetic now as they were then. These wounds will heal… if it were you, you would have died instantly."

She waggled her finger at him in rebuke, still amused. "Now, you know that isn't true at all. If it were me, I wouldn't have wandered into the road to begin with. Besides… how many times…" she trailed off, pushing the memory away that wanted to surge forth. Her breath caught in her throat, a gasp at a pained memory.

Sesshoumaru limped toward her on his three legs, a low sound coming from his throat that she considered a laugh. "A pathetic existence for the priestess?" he whispered in her mind, the memory dragging back up with more force. He was assisting that, wasn't he? Why couldn't people just let sleeping dogs lie, no pun intended? "How did you get into the slave pens, priestess? Why did your existence come to my eyes? Why did I taste that immense power that was unrelenting?"

A memory… A pain…

"Naraku, you bastard! You hurt Kagome! I'll kill you for it!" A young man with puppy ears and silver hair floated in her vision, his face filled with rage. Kagome remembered the arm wrapped around her waist, the soft lips that pressed against hers, the barrier that surrounded the two to protect them from harm momentarily.

Tetsusaiga turned a bright scarlet; Inuyasha had full intent to attack the barrier with his trusty sword. Those lips pulled away from hers and Kagome found herself staring helplessly up into the eyes of her enemy; a whore, she remembered thinking, was what she was. A whore who had a sudden burning desire for power and to master that power.

"Face it, Inuyasha!" The clay impersonation of a long dead priestess yelled across the battle field, raising her bow at Naraku. "She has betrayed you, and Naraku is using your love for her against you. Kill her, or he will ask her to kill you!" Kikyou had said 'ask' not 'demand'. Kagome remembered that much.

How fair could it be that Kikyou knew Kagome would do it if she were just asked… Just for the power she could possess…

"Kagome! I love you; what more can I give you? I know I don't deserve you! I know I can't give you everything you want like that idiot Hojou back in your world… I know I can't be perfectly open like that ass Kouga, but I… I don't want to lose you…" Inuyasha had fallen to his knees. Tears streamed from his eyes as he looked around the battlefield.

There was the giant hole that Miroku's wind tunnel had created when it ate him alive. Miroku's gravesite. There was Sango's body, a slash across her front extending from her left shoulder to right hip. It had been from a sword wound. She was killed by… No, Inuyasha couldn't admit it… he couldn't admit that Kagome had done it…

But Kagome knew. Her mind knew.

"I can't lose you…" Inuyasha continued. Crimson eyes swam in Kagome's vision. "Kagome, please, snap out of it… You once told me no matter how many times I betrayed you, you would wait for me… Well, I'm waiting for you!"

"Heh… You killed them all. Betrayal… a sweet betrayal… like I did to you… and you did to me. It is give and take in this world, is it not?" Sesshoumaru's voice in her head knocked her out of the haunting memory. She found she had backed herself into a wall. "How does it feel to know you have blood on your hands that will never wash away?"

"Go away!" Kagome hissed at the dog finally. "Before I use every ounce of myself to curse your pathetic being!" She didn't want these memories. Why did she have to deal with it? Why couldn't Toshiro just be happy not knowing her? She brought tragedy to everything she touched.

A little voice in the back of her mind objected to that notion. If she brought tragedy to everything, then why would Terrence want to see her again? Why would Jillian be so happy to see her every day that she would come into work? Why would Souta be happy that she was staying in Tokyo with him instead of returning to Saiza?

"You already cursed me once," Sesshoumaru laughed. "Just doing that caused such a rebound that you took on my personality for a very long time. Do you dare to see what the next rebound causes, untrained priestess?"

"You assume I'm the same as I was back then!" She reasoned with herself that the threat wasn't a bluff. "I've trained myself to perfection."

"Have you? Have you really? So you accept the truth of what happened in the past?" She fell silent, pressing herself against the wall further. She wished it would just absorb her and she could become part of the stone. "I thought so… You long for the death I could have given you back then… But now not even I could kill you completely, could I? You've been absorbed, just as you absorbed the power of the Jewel."

"…What do you want from me?" she demanded, trying not to cry, but failing. The truth was hard to accept, and she wasn't going to try. She pressed the memories down. Maybe if she just walked forward a few steps… There was a car coming toward her direction at high speeds…higher than the posted speed limit…

"Your assistance finding Toshiro…" The dog's strength wavered a little again. He was losing blood. Not even demons could fight the extreme loss of blood. He would need help very soon… help she would not give. She was a doctor, not a veterinarian. Oh how she hated dogs so very much. Couldn't she just shoot this one?

Problem one: no bullet. Problem two: no gun with which to use non-existent bullet. Problem three: he would probably just get annoyed and bite her before dying a miserable death, thereby giving her rabies or some equally vicious disease which may or may not be fun to get over.

With a sigh, she responded, "I have a lot of work to do. I have debts to pay off, bills to continue paying, and I have to take care of my brother." That was a lie. Souta didn't need taking care of, but she threw it in there anyway. "I still don't have a job yet, and I already know the collections agencies are coming next month to start repossessing my family things."

"I'll pay you." Sesshoumaru reasoned. "Name your salary. Toshiro is your son."

"I don't even know what he looks like!" Kagome snapped. "You want me to care for someone I never even got to see or hold after I gave birth to him?" Another couple of women jogging by looked at her with wide eyes. She blushed and forced a smile. "Sorry, rehearsing for a musical…"

The ladies seemed to accept this and continued on their way. However, Sesshoumaru was still in front of her, laughing in her mind. She wanted to kick this arrogant dog demon. "You've finally lost it. You're talking to a dog."

Kagome shot up in bed, gasping for breath. What a nightmare… A knock on her bedroom door turned her eyes to the left. "Aiko?" called her brother's voice. "Aiko, there's someone here to see you. He said he has official business to discuss…"