Kagome is eighteen years old when she has the last conversation with her mother. The last hurt. The last pity. The last love. She can't tell when I love you has become something else, corrupted by all the lies, the tears, the promises, the bruises. It has only gotten harder and harder to believe there's some sliver of truth until she can no longer hide behind the phrase.
Her mother lies sobbing on the bedroom floor while Kagome speaks. She tells her that she's passed her university exams, that she'll take Sōta with her when she leaves, that she hasn't done so before only because of law technicalities. If she calls social services then her mother's drug addiction, her chronic depression, her violent outbursts, her mental instability will be known and she may be separated from Sōta. Not anymore. She's an adult. Kagome has legal rights to assume guardianship, has already filed the petition.
That's when it comes…that loathsome phrase. Softly spoken, pitifully. Kagome doesn't know what hurts more. The realization that it has been her drug of choice all these years or that she has grown immune to it now. She kneels on the floor, cups her mother's cheeks, fingers scalded by the salt-heat of tears, eyes empty but mouth full of words. All she sees is death and void and pity. She resents her – her existence, which is the physical manifestation of pity, that she's been used and abused and addicted just like her, that I love you which is antithetical to its nature.
Her eyes slash through her mother with the cutting end of that resentment. Kagome promises her that if she gets herself cleaned up and seeks professional help then she'll allow her to visit Sōta – but to her…she is dead. It's not the first time they've had this kind of conversation – but it's the first time she ends it with these words. Slim fingers coil around her neck then, weak constriction and please don't do this and you don't mean that. Her mother isn't trying to strangle her but there's not much difference, not enough breath in Kagome's lungs. She peels those shaky, clammy hands off of her and rises, leaving her mother a broken mess on the floor and reaching for the pills on her nightstand.
The morning that comes is the last time Kagome sees her. Eyes glassy, dead brown, pupils constricted. Skin cold, pulled tight around thin bone, rigor mortis spread through muscle tissues. The autopsy results list drug overdose as cause of death. Kagome has another word for it. Phonetically pleasing, insidious, something that palliates the meaning of murder.
Matricide.
The alley is silent and she's slowly going insane. Perhaps that is the price she has to pay for sheltering something inhuman. Perhaps it is because those fingers are pretending to be something they can't be – Kagome can't name the impetus behind the need but she needs to feel him. It's not enough that his fingers are long and strong and unlike her mother's. He isn't trying to strangle her and the sensation is eerily similar to that wretched memory. The frontiers separating past and present are blurred, and in between, madness guzzles reality, reshaping flesh, obscuring the distinction of gender.
She's under the rush of fear and out of her mind, choke-full of adrenaline and controlled by visceral impulse. Her heart is racing with an irregular rhythm as if it will rip through and leap out of her chest any second now. It's only the flex of sinewy muscle as she drags her fingers high up his arm that gives her a lick of sanity – and when she reaches the base of his neck, she pulls him down on her. Hard, fast. There's a low grunt, hotness and teeth grazing the juncture of her neck and shoulder, something solid and unmovable that she barely manages to move – and he feels like a man. That is all she needs. To wake her from this mindfuck. This silence, this madness.
The muscles in her thighs blaze hot, hotter than blood flowing in swollen veins, burn with the urge to lash out. Kagome can't tell that she actually has until the pressure of his hold leaves her neck, swaps places on her body. In a split moment, and through the flaming haze, air deluges her lungs and fingers are gripping her calf before her knee can collide with his ribs sideways. She's breathless and shaking with spasms, staring into his eyes as he pulls back but stays close. Close enough to map the expanse of his body with her own. Sweat trickles down the line of her spine and she arches on pure reflex. He twists her leg to curl it around his hip, grinds against her in the heat of the motion. It extinguishes the vestiges of what can't be. He's definitely a man.
His words crawl out of the recesses of her mind then, climb up to the surface. She licks her lips, one sweep of tongue and teeth sinking in the wet flesh. It draws his eyes, that unfathomable black. Kagome searches for some trace of gold but all she finds is variations of black and human eyes. Nothing but illusion. He can't be human…only something that masquerades as one. She sees it in the dilation of his pupils, the lithe poise of his body. The way he has her pressed against that wall, the way he traces the curve of her mouth as she gasps for breath. Primal and raw. He can't be anything other than what he claims to be.
"You're…Inuyasha's brother." It slithers down her tongue and surges out of her throat on panting breaths.
He keeps quiet, even though his fingers uncoil, slacken, languor in his grasp, in his strokes – but his eyes are sharp, shadow of glaring edge. Her knee is being uncurled, lowered, nails scraping high up her thigh…then he leans closer. His scent inundates the air she breathes. Smokiness, notes of bergamot, and underneath that, something wild and heavy soaking through her skin. Kagome swallows, tastes the man with each shallow intake.
"What are you?" His voice is hard metal and cuts deep.
It's the epitome of irony, that he is the one to ask this question, that he asks what instead of who. Her lips quirk wryly and his eyes narrow by a margin.
"Kagome." She gives her name because it's painfully obvious to see that she is human – but she is her own person…not her whole species.
And sometimes, she doesn't even feel human.
Inuyasha is asleep in his room with Buyo curled near his feet above the blanket. There has been no cake baked, no blowing out candles, no hugging and kissing, only the promise that they'll do all that tomorrow and more. The boy hasn't made the slightest fuss after his brother has walked past the threshold. Just a timid murmur of niisan colored with all the things that pass through his voice each time he says it. She has tried hard to decipher what they are all these months but still doesn't know even half of them. No matter how much coaxing she's done. It doesn't matter now. His brother is here and she can just straight-out ask.
Kagome sits across from him on the kitchen table, and in the middle, one bottle of Jameson 12 Year Old Special Reserve, two whiskey glasses, and a stainless steel ice bucket. She isn't one for drinking, but when she does drink, she wants quality, rich, smooth taste, creaminess melting on her tongue and wet fire down her throat to settle in layers of heat and satisfaction low in her belly. She pours herself a drink and leaves it up to him whether to partake in it or not.
Her story has been summarized in one sentence that spans less than thirty seconds: I found him in an alley over four months ago and took him in. Nothing more, nothing less. He seems to like the brevity and simplicity of it, judging by his subtle nod and the fact that he pours himself a drink.
Kagome waits for him to share his side of the story and observes him quietly. Closely. Eyes black, hair black, skin pale. No fangs, no claws, no animal ears. He can pass for human. Easily, terrifyingly so. But what strikes her is the differences between the siblings. His bone structure is more refined, his eyes more slanted, his build more sinuous. He is all angles and leashed aggression. He seems like the kind of man who hunts in the dark, who takes rough and hard and silently…and that's an awful derailment of thought.
What has happened back in that alley is still fresh-wrought in her mind. Maybe she shouldn't drink – but the rim of the glass is already touching her lips. Cold-hot-ecstasy. Minutes pass by and he still doesn't talk or drink. She watches him from across the table – watches as he gives his glass a slow twist, and another, feeling his way around the crystal texture, the iced surface. What kind of thoughts cross his mind? What kind of images? What –
He drains his glass all at once. The sound of glass hitting wood is deafening in the thick silence. She can't take it anymore.
"You don't look like him." More challenge than statement.
His eyes pierce right through her, flash an unnatural gold, like ichor, immortal blood and slick venom and lethal to humans. It is over in an instant. A tsk echoes and she huffs.
"I guess he took his personality from his mother." Two pair of lips twitch. Two glasses are being refilled. She holds his eyes, black clashing, sizzling with tension. "Is she dead?"
"Izayoi died five months ago."
It hangs in the space between them shimmery and haunting like fog, one answer that births so many questions. The first to fall off the seam of her mouth is stony and tinged with accusation.
"Why didn't you look for him sooner then?"
"I only learned she died today."
There's harsh truth in his tone. It slays her momentum, and she can only hum an ineloquent oh. He doesn't stop there either.
"I visit them once every five years on Inuyasha's birthday. When I visited today…all that was left was her corpse."
Shock is too mild a word for what lances through her at the grisly reality his words evoke. Her mouth opens and closes but no words come out. Kagome downs her glass, hisses through gnashing teeth and denial.
"How can –" She still can't bring herself to form the question but he seems to know that.
"They lived alone in the mountains since Inuyasha can't conceal his features. No visitors but me. He probably didn't know he had to bury her."
It makes sense, but somehow, when he presents the facts in such a sterile, detached manner, the morbidity is amplified tenfold. Kagome latches onto what doesn't make sense even if it feels like she is digressing.
"Why only once every five years?"
"That was the deal we had." His voice grows deeper, heavier. "You know he's hanyō. Did you also know he's an illegitimate child?"
It shouldn't surprise her…but it does. "No."
The puzzle is rearranging itself in her mind with the addition of the missing pieces – she abhors the end picture.
"Izayoi wanted to raise him until his coming of age, and that was fine by me. But my mother would only have Inuyasha in her home under the condition that he came alone."
She has figured it is something along those lines the moment illegitimate has slipped past his lips. But the coming of age…that is unexpected.
"When would that be?"
"In human years, that would be fifty. Only he'd look like he's twelve."
Another thing she has guessed by simple calculation. It's what follows by natural progression that rouses speculation. "And then?"
"Then we'd take him in, teach him our ways, his powers." Matter-of-fact, beyond dispute or even debate.
Kagome doesn't like the connotations, but she'll let it slide until she has gained all the answers. "How to conceal himself like you do?" One slant of his neck. She hums, satisfied for now, changing the focus. "What about his…your father?"
"He died before Inuyasha was born." It isn't merely cold – it transcends that, plunges in abysmal waters and the monsters dwelling within.
Shivers erupt, sensational explosions all over her body, rush from her arms to her abdomen down to her toes, skin damp with cold sweat and gooseflesh. She doesn't want to touch that.
"Okay." A sigh writhes across her tongue, rolls off weary and defeated. There's only one thing left to ask at this point. "So what now?"
His eyes bore into hers, keen-edged, impenetrable. "We'll take him in."
Kagome sucks in a sharp breath, lips thinned, knuckles white and curling around her glass. It isn't anger but something else – dark matter, far-spread and living deep inside her, its tendrils wispy but thorn-vined. It is barely below the surface, still visible, easy to pull out and watch it writhe and die, but Kagome pushes it deeper, gives it more and feeds its hungers. She'll be damned if she lets such a sweet boy suffer through even half of what she imagines he will. When she can respire again, she pours herself another drink, and glares at him, openly, disguising nothing.
"Look, no offense…or hell, take all the offense you want, but you don't seem eager to raise him. As for your mother…like you said, he's an illegitimate child."
"He's blood. Nothing else matters."
There is such absolutism in his tone, such sovereign, that it takes all of her restraint not to hit him. She loathes that sort of stereotyped reasoning. It's nothing but gilded varnish to excuse what is inexcusable.
Kagome grits her teeth and speaks past the rage. "And if I wanted to keep him?"
"Izayoi was human – but she was his mother. You're nothing to him." It is too casual, plaited with indifference. She has never heard someone utter such things in such tones, that she is more than stunned, more than speechless. "And you're what?" He leans back in his chair, appraises her slowly. "Thirty?"
Kagome's eyes glaze for a quiet moment, then search for the whiskey bottle, still needing, still craving, but the emotions behind it vastly discrepant to what they have been before he thrusts those words in her face.
"Next year." She grins a mocking grin, raises her glass then empties its contents in one gulp.
It doesn't faze him in the least. "You'll probably die before he comes of age. Do you want the same thing that happened now to happen then?"
Kagome wants to argue, so very badly. But the possibility is undeniable. She tilts her neck far back until she is nothing but a baring of throat and guttural sounds. A growl. A groan. A hiss. A sigh. Need a fucking smoke. She rises to her feet and returns with an ashtray then rummages through her purse for her cigarette pack.
Coiled tension, spirals of smoke, silence.
"That –" His voice drips across the silence, heavy and silken. Perhaps amused. "– is a slow and painful death for humans."
She spares him one glance, eyes narrow, growing narrower when he lights one up himself. What the fuck? It hooks on the tip of her tongue but what she throws at him is a gust of smoke. One twist of his mouth, and he is making some kind of raw-throated sound, on the precipice of laughter. It will kill you. Not me. She sees that and more in the dark lush of his eyes. What that more is…burns.
"Izayoi died of lung disease."