Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or anything to do with that company's marketing. Thank you.

Author's Notes: Sweet, the third chapter has arrived! Ok. This was fairly difficult to conduct because I wrote two different versions of this chapter, ended up liking something from each, and spent awhile pulling the two together. So, I'm sorry if it seems a little choppy here and there.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. Keep up the great work and I'll do the same (although greatness is subjective in my case). I'll be gone for 6 weeks with NO INTERNET CONNECTION! So, you'll have to forgive another huge gap in updates. I hope everyone's having a great summer so far!

Chapter 3, Minuet

Way back in junior high, I used to hang out with this girl named Romi. Romi was pretty with purple and white streaks in her short black hair. She always wore make-up to school even though it wasn't allowed, and used to fight with our teachers about it. I think that's why I wanted to be her friend: I admired her spunk. She used foul language, reeled in the junior high boys like they were the catch of the day, and was never afraid to speak her mind. She also used to smoke.

I remember standing with her after school by the vending machines down the street and watching her light up. I loved watching her, because she had such a gentle, feminine way of lighting her cigarette. I couldn't explain it to you if I tried; it's too complex. Then we'd stand there and talk about teachers, or classmates, or tests, or nothing at all.

Most of the time, I'd just stand there and breathe in the smoke's heady fumes. One time Romi asked me if I wanted to try a puff. I did, and I coughed for fifteen minutes straight afterwards. Romi laughed I told me I wasn't supposed to swallow the smoke. She demonstrated, then offered her cigarette again, but I didn't want another go. I never smoked again after that.

Romi got accepted into Tokyo's top high school. I went over her house to celebrate with her, but her mother told me she hadn't come home yet. I waited for an hour or so, and then left. The next day I learned that a car had hit Romi on her way home from the library.

I went to the funeral. They had to keep the casket closed because Romi wasn't in any condition to be seen. Her mother cried through the whole ceremony while her father sat close-by, his face devoid of emotion. The whole time, I kept thinking about a conversation that Romi and I had shared when we first started hanging out together.

"Romi?"

"Yeah?"

"You know, smoking's really bad for you. You can get cancer. Doesn't that kind of make you want to quit?"

Romi looked at me, and slowly she began to laugh. She took another drag on her cigarette and then threw the butt away. She watched it as it arched through the air and hit the cement. "Cancer? Nah, I'm not going to die of cancer. Something's going to get me long before cancer can develop."

"Oh," I said, looking at my feet. "How can you tell?"

Romi winked. "Because I can tell the future, my friend."

I made a face. "Nah, you can't do that."

Romi smiled indignantly. "'Course I can! And I can tell you right now, Kagome: you and I are different from other people. We're meant for the lives of the fast and furious. We're like wildfire-- we blaze brightly, changing the world that surrounds us, and then we're gone. Gone, just like a puff of smoke on the wind."

I've always loved the smell of smoke. It was this smell that I woke me up after my first encounter with Inuyasha. "Hello?" I asked. My voice fell flatly on the air, and vanished shortly after leaving my lips.

A stream of smoke issued forth from the shadows in the far corner. "Hello?" I questioned the thick shadows. "Is someone there?"

There was no answer.

"Hello?" I called a little louder, panic tickling my arms and legs and forming goose bumps. Could this be a Government detainment center? The mere thought was too terrifying, and I pushed it away. "Please, is anyone there?"

"Goddamn it, woman, why don't you scream a little louder, huh?" said a voice from the shadows. In the shadows, the end of a cigarette lit up, illuminating a face framed by silver hair. Two golden eyes shone brilliantly in the fickle light, and then dulled as Inuyasha stepped out of the darkness. "Do you wanna wake up all of Tokyo?"

"Inuyasha…" I said sighing in relief. So it wasn't a Government detainment center after all. "Where are we?"

"You're in the basement level of MIS Hospital, Tokyo," he explained with a casual flick of his cigarette. He blew a stream of the suffocating smoke into the air, trying to, and succeeding it, looking pretty cool.

"H-hospital?" I repeated shakily, a tightness forming in my chest.

"Yeah," Inuyasha replied, raising an eyebrow at my unusual reaction. "After you passed out, I brought you over here to have my buddy take a look at you. She founded the place, and she's the best doctor I know of. Anyway, your injury turned out to be worse than I initially thought, and you had to get a bit of surgery."

"Surgery?" I squeaked.

"Stitches."

I felt as though a bucket of ice water had been poured over my head. I had an extreme fear of hospitals, and more specifically, the operating table. I had watched my father die on an operating table, watched the heart monitor slow, watched his eyes lids flutter rapidly until they closed forever. As if sensing my distress, Inuyasha stepped forward and knelt beside me. "Hey." He extended a clawed hand to examine my forehead. "Are you ok?" He checked my pulse, which by that time was most likely racing. "Sango!" he called in a loud voice. "Sango, get your butt in here!"

Immediately, the shoji slid open and Sango entered. It occurred to me at the moment that she was ghastly pretty. She had long brown hair that she wore in a ponytail on top of her head. Her scrubs fit her feminine frame in a very flattering manner, accenting her wide hips, tiny waist, and broad chest. She cut the air as she crossed to my bedside, moving like a falcon through high winds. She knelt down beside me and pulled out a syringe. I screamed—more than anything, I am deathly afraid of needles.

Inuyasha quickly covered my mouth. "Whoa, girl. Calm down."

I struggled against his hold, and he was forced to hold down my arms and legs so I couldn't hurt them. I was scared as shit. Sango grabbed my left arm forcibly, and turned it up. The syringe got closer and closer to my arm, and I struggled ever harder.

"Sh," Sango soothed, stroking my hair. "This won't even hurt, Kagome-chan, and in a minute, you'll be asleep."

If she meant that statement to be calming, she was going in the wrong direction. I have a chronic fear of mood-changing drugs, and I can't stand the thought that some medicine can knock me out like a light whether or not I want it to. I screamed again. The syringe pierced my skin, and a moment later, my limbs were numb and useless.

Inuyasha sat back in relief. Sango sighed and retracted the syringe. I couldn't feel anything, but I was still shaking. Sango touched my forehead and whispered something I couldn't understand. Inuyasha answered in his gruff tone. My head felt like a balloon, and I fancied I could lift off the ground and fly away into the air. I went up and up until I was in space.

When I came to, Sango was sitting beside me, cleaning her hands. They were full of blood, my blood. I wanted to throw up, but my stomach was empty. She noticed the direction of my gaze, and quickly hid the offending limbs.

"How are you feeling?" she asked after her hands had been cleaned.

I shrugged. I felt like shit, to be frank, but I didn't want to offend her. My side did, admittedly, no longer pain me, so what did I have to complain about? "What's your prognosis, doc?"

"Sango," she answered.

"Hmm?"

"My name is Sango, if you please."

"Oh, yeah, ok, sure," I said quickly, coloring. It had been extremely rude of me to address her in that manner, after such a brief acquaintance. "I'm Higurashi Kagome, but Kagome's fine. Or even Kagome-chan," I added, recalling that she had referred to me in that manner while trying to calm me down.

Sango smiled. "And you may call me Sango-chan, if you should so choose." I smiled in response, though I knew it would be difficult to refer to someone several years my elder in that manner. As if she were thinking of the same thing, Sango asked, "How old are you, Kagome-chan?"

"Fifteen," I whispered. Fifteen was a magic number in Tokyo. In other parts of the world, fifteen was a time for fickle crushes, for getting driving permits, for discovering the joys of adolescence, but not here. No, where I'm from, fifteen is the last year a girl is allowed to live with her parents. On her sixteenth birthday, she is turned out to fend for herself.

She can continue in school if she should choose, and the Government will pay a small annual fee for that. In return for paying tuition, the girl is then entered in the Government's service as soon as she graduates from high school. If she is lucky enough to get married, she is absolved from such duties, and allowed to live under her husband's protection and income.

For boys, the magic number is eighteen, and then they are all expected to serve two years in the Government's army before they are released back into the world. I suppose this is a way that the blasted Government controls the population, as many of these young men and women die in a world that is uncaring for their troubles. It is also a great way for them to recruit people into their service, and the boys who prove themselves most capable are taken into one of the seven sectors and honed in ancient arts.

I closed my eyes because my disgust for the Government at that particular moment was overwhelming. When the wave had passed over me, I looked again at Sango. "How old are you, Sango-chan?"

"Seventeen," she answered, looking away.

I was astonished, as I was sure she had to be older than that. A doctor so accomplished, how could she possibly be so young? And I knew that she could not be affiliated with the Government, or else Inuyasha would never have brought me here. "You're married then, are you?"

Sango blinked, looking as though she was trying to hold back a wellspring of emotion. "No," she answered in soft, shaky voice. "No, I'm not married." She collected her supplies and moved toward the door. When she reached it, she looked back at me. "Your prognosis: You shouldn't leave this room yet, but I suspect you'll recover enough to move around freely in a few days time. Your stitches have been removed, and all that you require is time to recover." She paused momentarily, her eyes traveling to the impenetrable shadows to her left. "You may direct the rest of your questions at Inuyasha." With that she left.

I was confused momentarily, until Inuyasha emerged for those afore mentioned shadows. "Hey," he grunted.

"Hi," I said uncertainly.

"Well."

"Yeah?"

"That was quite some fright you gave us before. You were acting like a justifiable loony, you know."

"My dad died on the operating table," I explained.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

It was one of those awkward conversations, and Inuyasha was eager to break the rhythm of it, as was I. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. A thick stream of smoke escaped from his lips, obscuring all his features with the exception of his golden eyes. I momentarily had the impression that he looked an awful lot like one of the dragons that appeared in my grandfather's art collection. Inuyasha coughed, and I spared myself a silent chuckle, recalling my first encounter with a cigarette. He saw my look, and, misinterpreting it, offered me a cigarette. I shrank away from it. "No, thank you," I said softly.

Inuyasha shrugged and put his pack of cigarettes away. "So," he said, sitting down beside my futon.

"So, what happens now?" I asked. "Don't forget our promise."

"Of course," Inuyasha answered immediately. "That's why I've been thinking a lot lately. I've been trying to decide what you can do."

"I'll do anything to help," I said quickly.

Inuyasha shook his head. "Be careful of comments like that, girl. They can get you into trouble someday."

I disregarded this statement, my mind on the more imminent issue of what I would be doing in order to help my family get free from the Government. "So, what can I do?"

"Nothing yet," he admitted. "You're going to need quite a bit of training before we can get you out onto the field. I know just the man for that…" He let the comment hang, and his eyes flashed to my face, piercing yet comforting at the same time. "What we need to decide now is how to keep you from sharing your family's fate."

"Oh."

"You're not going to be able to go home again," he said softly. "And we'll probably have to change your name."

"Like an alias?" I asked, dodging the emotions tied to his first statement.

"Probably something more permanent…and legal…"

I raised an eyebrow. Permanent? Legal? "What are you talking about?"

Inuyasha sighed and rose to his feet. He began to pace. "You're fifteen, right?"

"Yeah," I said slowly.

"Got anyone in mind? Are we going to be hearing wedding bells soon?" He asked, his golden eyes fixed on my face, waiting for an answer.

"Certainly not!" I exclaimed, thinking at once of marrying that bumbling idiot Hojo. The very thought of it gave me a headache. "Not that it's any of you business anyway!"

"Then were you planning on continuing high school and joining the Government's forces afterwards?" He continued, ignoring my outburst.

"It was only going to be for a little while…" I said. Now, what had seemed like such a good idea made me ill. Working for the Government? For the very people who had taken my family from me? Never. Never again.

"I suppose that idea's been scraped."

"I should say so," I said at once.

"Then, you'll have to get married," he pressed.

I froze. A trap. The Government had put me in a trap. I obviously couldn't work for them, but it was true that I had no plans for marriage in the hear future. They must have known that when they attacked my house. If I didn't get married, they would find me on the street, and if I went back to school, I would walk right into their hands. And a marriage would only be a surer way of securing me. It wouldn't be very hard for them to enlist agents for me to meet while shopping or walking: charming, attractive men who would sweep me off my feet and carry me right into the Government's clutches. I would never be safe from the opposite sex ever again. "Inuyasha!" I gasped, overcome with sudden terror for my plight.

"Calm down, girl," he said. "We're not about to let you marry a Government agent."

"Then…how?"

Inuyasha screwed up his face and looked away from me. "Well, you could marry me."

My eyebrows shot past my hairline. "You!" I exclaimed before I could help myself. His eyes shot to my face and I quickly fought to regain my calm. "Marry you?"

He pursed his lips, threw away his cigarette, and lit another. "It would be a business arrangement only," he said in a very calm voice that discouraged any emotion. "I would never take advantage of the marriage bonds, and once this whole ordeal is over, you're free to marry whomever you so desire."

I could hardly breathe. This is preposterous, I kept telling myself. Marry Inuyasha? Accept the wedding vows and enter his house under his name? At the same time, I was humbled by the proposal, however unconventional it was. Inuyasha was offering me the ultimate form of protection from the Government: so long as I was with him, the Government couldn't touch me. How could I look such a gift horse in the mouth? "I accept," I whispered with a dry throat.

Inuyasha didn't say a word. He looked me over once with those beautiful, luminous golden eyes, nodded, and then walked from the room. Alone at last, I sighed and shrank into my futon. Rolling over, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about all that had happened since my family had been taken. I wondered what my family was doing at that moment. I wondered if they knew that I was going to be a bride, even though I knew that that was impossible. I wondered if my dad was looking down at me from heaven, and knew how frightened I was. I fell asleep imagining I could feel his arms around me.

I don't remember much about the wedding. It was a traditional Japanese wedding. I wasn't permitted any guests, as Inuyasha wanted to sever all of my ties to that other life. Sango was there, along with a handsome young man with jet-black hair and amethyst eyes. The man introduced himself to me after the wedding, but I couldn't remember his name by the time we got back to Inuyasha's apartment.

As we opened the door to my new home, I stopped in the doorway. Inuyasha, noting my hesitation, turned to me.

"There's no food in the house," I said in a voice that sounded very weak and even alien. "I'll have to go shopping. What would you like for dinner?"

Inuyasha shrugged. "Whatever you feel like cooking."

"Ramen it is," I said, forcing a smile. I turned away quickly so Inuyasha wouldn't see the tears that had begun streaming down my cheeks, but I know that he did. As I reached the top of the stairs, I crumbled against the wall and began bawling. If someone had told me a week earlier that I would be crying on the stairs after marrying an indifferent stranger, I would have laughed in their face. Right then, all I could think of was much I wanted my mother.

Twenty minutes later, Inuyasha came out of the apartment, scooped me up, and carried me back inside. We had ramen for our matrimonial feast and I fell asleep in Inuyasha's room while he slept on the couch in the living room.

- Ichimu