A/N: I do not own Inuyasha or Goblin: the Lonely and Great God

Chapter Eleven

They sat facing away from each other on a park bench while fluttering fall leaves fell around them. To be honest, Kagome was as speechless as her companion at the current moment. She had no idea how to begin, or what to ask, or even what to say. So many things bothered her on so many levels at the current moment, it was so confusing.

"Your silence says that you have many questions," Sesshomaru finally said, his voice as monotone as ever.

She didn't answer him right away, dipping her chin down to rest on her chest as she tried to think of a good way to start the conversation that didn't start with the words 'what the hell'?

This time it was the white-haired male to remain silent, his own body language showing confusion. In his own mind, he tried to go over time and time again the moment he had been around others while he teleported. None could follow him once he disappeared into a flurry of power and tendrils of steam. It wasn't possible. Not even youkai or daiyoukai could follow where he went…

Neither could the dead.

"Would it be easier for me to ask what exactly you are, if not an Inu?" the miko began softly, her eyes still cast to the ground.

"Not entirely," he sighed, folding his hands neatly one over the other as he contemplated the question. "I myself have only come to this conclusion in the past four hundred years. It took this one a century to understand."

The crowds around them seemed to add an ambience to their conversation. There was laughter and good cheer. Vendors tried to sell their wares while children and young adults flocked around the stands ogling the goods. With all the chipper attitudes, it made their conversation seem satirical, a not so serious thing even though it was. The both of them felt it, shifting slightly to look each other in the eyes finally. It was as if they were having a normal conversation between two normal people. As if things could be normal between them.

"Perhaps...a better start might be when did this happen?" She reached out, almost touching the soft bangs of his silvery hair, before remembering that he was no ordinary man. That he could cut off her offending hand with just a stroke of his will. Instead she decided to gesture roundly, making a circular motion to point to all of him. It was better, she figured, than out right touching him without his permission.

He gave her a suspicious look, his delicate eyebrows arching slightly, one raised higher as he acknowledged the fact that she almost went through with her first action.

Smiling sheepishly, Kagome shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweater, trying to keep the skin in her hands warm.

"It began," he finally conceded, his breath exhaling in a short puff of frozen air when it escaped his lips. "Thirty years after your departure, this Sesshomaru supposes, from our time to return to yours."

"Thirty?" She echoed.

"Indeed," Sesshomaru nodded. "Rin had already matured into a woman, and your idiot hanyou companion had started his path to become a strong youkai like our father."

Blinking, the girl double took. He would have never acknowledged his relation to Inuyasha through their father willingly. At least not in the past. Had five hundred years really changed him enough to do such a thing? It seemed impossible. Although, he had hated humans once too, and presumably talking, but now here he sat holding a conversation with her.

"So...what started everything?" She questioned.

"An uprising between the North, East, and South lords," he sighed, eyes narrowing and pupils growing raged. "They betrayed both this one and the hanyou. Through some sort of black magic they controlled him and exiled myself. It was a dishonorable act they committed."

A hatred filled quiet settled down between the two. And now looking at him, the young miko could see something in the way Sesshomaru carried himself. It seemed as though he had a yoke upon his shoulders, weighing him down and making him burdened. Suddenly she realized it wasn't just his hair that made him seem old, he was old. He was old and troubled by some sort of obstacle from four hundred and seventy years ago.

"How could they banish the great Sesshomaru?" She asked, trying to lace a bit of humor in her tone to lighten the mood. "He was too stubborn to budge from his western lands."

There was a cruel smile on his face and he snorted. He actually snorted.

"That was what they needed Inuyasha for."

A pit in her stomach formed and she felt for just a moment her voice drop into her belly with a worried sickness. "Why was that?"

"To cast this one into the Meido."

She felt even more sick now, a nausea sweeping through her mind. "How long...how long were you stuck there?"

A wistful smile pained his lips. "Fifty years."

A rush of terror swept through her at that moment. Memories of being trapped in the unending darkness, with only the taunting voice of the jewel filled her sense. Her hands flew to her throat and she found that she couldn't breathe. Tears filled her eyes, and the cold salted water trickled down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth where they stained the edges of her lips. She had been trapped there for only a few hours, a day at most. It had been hell. She had wanted to beg the jewel for Inuyasha to rescue her. To beg that he come to her when she need him most. But she could not have made that wish. But thanks to fate, he was able to rescue her anyways. To save her and kiss away all her fears like she had prayed he would. But Sesshomaru.

Sesshomaru.

She fell from the bench, her breath rushing from her lungs as the icy touches of the Meido clenched her skin. Thousands of pins and needles poked at her pores as the frozen nothingness tapped at her, trying to eat away her senses to try and send her into despair. She had barely been able to last the time that she was in the damned black hole, saved only by her love for the hanyou. She gasped and tried to suck in the air that she needed. She was safe. She was in the normal world.

The softness of something beneath her head brought her back slowly, and she opened her eyes, the world's spinning finally slowed down for her. She fell back into reality, realizing that she had relapsed. Her time stranded in the Meido because Naraku had pushed her in still triggered her from time to time. The attack this time had not been so bad.

When she looked up, she realized that she was staring at the underside of a sharp jaw looking away from her, the gentle Canadian breeze sifting through the strands of his short hair. His gold eyes looked upwards, their memory seemingly far away and elsewhere. It took Kagome a few seconds to realize that her head was pillowed on the softer part of his lap. While his hands remained on her shoulders as if to steady her. Had this been any normal time, she would have screamed and pushed the once was youkai away. But instead, she watched him, memorizing every detail of his newer, more humanized form—trying to remember the demon that had been there instead. It was so different from what she had remembered. So un-Sesshomaru like.

Did he become this way because there was no love to have rescued him from the pit of the Meido? He must have been stuck in the stifling solitude of the darkness, hearing the whispers of how unwanted he was, for so long.

a/n: hello lovelies! So it slowly begins to unravel, what exactly is Sesshomaru? WE know he's a Goblin? but what does that mean? Poor Kags, she doesn't even know he's a Goblin yet.

To be unveiled soon!

Leave a review if you liked this chapter, let me know what you thought^^

Arigato and takk fyrir friends!