Chapter 7 -

Very slowly, very gradually did the consciousness return to the hanyou as his mind worked furiously to overcome the agony that had so suddenly and overwhelmingly gripped his leg the instant he had been cast overboard. His dry, burning eyes eventually creaked open and he looked up at a stormy, purple sky as the spinning in his skull took its time to quell. Feeling rather like a sheet hung out in the wind, Inuyasha could only wait patiently as the feeling returned to most of his body and his muscles began to again obey his orders. He found that his head was heavier than a lead weight, his chest ached and his joints were stiff; but at the very least he was awake.

His foggy mind began to remember. He remembered the bay and being knocked overboard into it. He remembered a flurry of tackle, fins and scales. He remembered the debilitating sting of something sinking into his leg and slowly realizing that he was poisoned as he sunk still deeper. He remembered hands; he had thought to be Miroku's hauling him up. Then nothing; he'd blacked out and lost his vision and thought entirely.

As he rolled his skull around to look at what beach he had washed up on, the half demon found the dark sand unfamiliar, as were the crags on all sides and the placid waters that tickled his feet. Of course the surroundings weren't the only thing he noticed; looking down he realized that there was nothing to cover the lower half of his body and on top of that, a stranger lay between his legs. Immediately Inuyasha sat bolt-upright and scooted backwards in the sand, clutching at the ends of his now dry and crusted, scarlet robe to pull it down over his private genitals. He stared, sputtered, gasped and fought to swallow the pain that flared up in his leg as he failed miserably to come up with a thing to say to the sick lecher who would strip the clothes off an unconscious man and stare at his personals.

Of course the initial kind of shock didn't last long as he found the blonde man that had been basking between his feet very stunningly familiar. He suddenly registered the long, spotted tail, almost completely submerged in the shallow cove, and immediately recognized the merman that he had rescued from the beach only a day ago. That first shock dissolved away into gut-wrenching disgust and his look of fear folded into a scornful frown.

"You!" Inuyasha hissed, his ears folding backward as he brought his uninjured leg up to further shield his groin from the curious eyes of the ningyo. "You ungrateful pervert! What the hell did you do to me?"

Deidara blinked in utter astonishment, his face showing that he was greatly taken aback by the harsh, accusatory words of the man who's life he had just saved. Still he refused to make a sound, instead lifting himself up on one extended arm so that he sat up on what might have been his hip if he had been born with legs. Instead of arguing for his innocence aloud, the blonde male extended his free hand forward, gesturing first to the crimson hakama, folded neatly and within reach to Inuyasha's left, and secondly to the half-dried kelp leaves wrapped around the half demon's left thigh.

The hanyou could feel his own revolted anger ebbing as he reached out with one hand he could spare from holding his robe over his crotch to touch gingerly at the makeshift bandage. Though the entire leg still seared with pain, he could tell that there was an agent to the seaweed wrapped around his limb that quelled the agony. Another motion from the blonde caught his attention and he looked up to see the merman holding out a little blue bottle with a black cork in the open end. Carefully Inuyasha accepted the offering and turned the vial around in his hand before returning to look at the ningyo on the beach. Deidara was busy concentrating on tracing a clawed finger through the sand, eventually forming a Japanese character. It took a little tilting of his head on the part of the hanyou until he could make out the complex kanji "解毒剤" that represented the word "antidote."

Glancing back at the blue jar in his hand, Inuyasha nodded with understanding.

"So this is the antidote?" His brow furrowing, the silver-haired man turned his eyes back to the merman. "Hey wait… what's the matter? Can't you talk? I remember you said 'thank you' when I rescued you and… well, not gonna think about what happened before that… but you spoke… what's the matter now?"

Deidara smoothed his palm over the first set of characters and leveled out his writing surface before again running his clawed finger through the sand.

"ニード 水"

"You… need water?"

With a smile finally finding its way onto the ningyo's lips, he nodded a few times and suddenly let out an awful screech like the sound of a child in pain. Inuyasha's eyes went wide and his ears flattened back, the horrible sound shocked him and immediately made him concerned for the fish-man's health. A noise so terrible could only have come from a beast that was dying in the worst of agony, but how so, when the blonde was still grinning despite the sharp cry.

"Kami, are you okay? What's the matter now?"

Not wanting to confuse the silver-haired man, Deidara merely gave him a warm smile and tilted his head to the side just slightly. Carefully not to upset the characters he had written on the beach, the merman drew a circle around the kanji to reemphasize that he could not speak above the water. His brow rising, Inuyasha nodded slowly, gradually coming to understand that the vocal chords of merfolk did not function correctly in air the same way he assumed those of a human would not work underwater.

The hanyou was about to ask another question of the koi tail, but an outwardly extended palm prevented him. Without a word, of course, Deidara quickly excused himself, retreating awkwardly back into the water. To minimize how foolish he looked trying to maneuver in the shallows, the ningyo merely crawled out until he could bury his gills in the water and refresh the oxygen in his blood. For nearly two minutes he lay face-down, barely submerged in the shallows. Inuyasha would have said he was looking on the corpse of a drowned fool if he didn't know better. Eventually, the blonde hauled himself up out of the water again, lurching up the beach like a bloated sea lion until finally his dripping body came to rest where it had before and he gave Inuyasha a contented smile.

"So you've got to go take a breath every now and again I guess."

The ningyo nodded, pleased at how well the half demon was catching on so quickly even without being told.

"So do you save people often?"

Deidara looked down and shook his head somberly. Far too often he was far too late to save what humans he came across from drowning, but that wasn't something that could be readily helped.

"And… uh… well I don't know what to call you…"

Again the sands were wiped clean and the merman's claw wound through the shore.

"デイダラ"

"Dei-da… Deidara?"

Said man's mouth stretched into the widest of grins and he nodded vigorously to show he was pleased that the half demon understood his name. Gleefully his spine arched such that his beautifully colored tail curled up out of the water before splashing back with a loud slap. Suddenly Deidara held up his hand again to prevent himself from being interrupted as his free palm smoothed the surface he'd been using to write on. Working quickly, he sketched out a few more characters into the dark sand.

"居座る"

"Stay here?" Inuyasha smirked and gave a nearly sarcastic sounding snort, "don't worry, I'm not going anywhere with his leg."

No sooner had the words left his lips than again the ningyo had turned around and was struggling through the sand back to the crystalline waters. With a bit of thrashing from the elegant tail, Deidara managed to escape into the deeper waters towards the center of the cove. Trailing a hand out after the other, the hanyou would have called out to ask where he was going had he thought it would have done him any good. Like most people, Inuyasha was greatly opposed to the idea of being abandoned on a strange shore without any way to move or fend for himself.

Still, he did not fret too much as the merman never once left the inlet, signified by the way that he breached the surface several times as he dove into deeper waters. On more than one occasion the half demon found himself staring, watching with wide-eyed wonderment as the well-designed creature broke the surface and arched through the air, his skin and scales glistening in the pink light of the evening. It was like watching the majesty of nature at work, and ever breach was a marvel and a thrill.

Inuyasha's trance was finally broken as the actions finally ceased and again the blonde returned to shore awkwardly. Hanging by their tails from the ningyo's mouth were two moderately sized fish, perhaps three pounds each, one in bright red and the other in glittering silver. Careful not to let his wriggling catch graze the sand, Deidara hauled himself up to rest in an upward-facing-dog like position, tilting his head as if prompting Inuyasha to select his preference. In grateful astonishment, the hanyou brushed the gritty sand from his right hand to take a firm grip on the wriggling, silver fish. With yet another wide grin, the ningyo led by example, taking his catch and giving the writhing animals a sharp bite to the spine just behind its head. The fish immediately went still aside from its gills which still moved as an involuntary reflex even after the body was dead.

Glancing up, the merman checked to make sure that his charge was satisfied with eating fish raw, as he was, before beginning on his own meal. With a bit of a victorious snarl, the blonde began by using his strong teeth to strip the sharp fins off of his prey. When the spiny cartilage had all been torn away, the ningyo quickly devoured the fish whole, gulping the food down his wide gullet. Curiously Deidara watched the hanyou as he worked to eat his own meal, gnawing around the bones and discarding the least desirable of the guts that would leave a foul aftertaste if chewed. The merman watched Inuyasha eat with the same wonderment as the other man had been watching him hunt. It was strange, like the first meeting of two separate worlds and each was completely fascinated with the other.