Lead Me Down the Garden Path

The World Beyond the Wooden Door

Kagome forced her body to follow the lead of her right foot. Slinking through the small opening she made between the door and the door frame, Kagome's breasts indented, almost painfully, as she slid through, fearful for how much space she should take up.

Closing the door quietly behind her body, Kagome kept her fingers squeezed around the doorknob, relishing the cool nickel in her palm.

Taking a deep breath and allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, the first thing Kagome noticed was the heat emanating within the area. The air felt dense and oppressive.

The second thing she noticed was the mess.

The overturned bed.

The torn curtains.

The shredded pillows.

The broken window.

Then, finally, her eyes found him, crouched in front of the leftmost window with his back to her. It looked like he was cupping something in his hands.

"In—"

Kagome licked her lips in hopes it would clear her throat. She could feel the lingering rage like another presence in the room; it wafted from Inuyasha's body like a dark miasma. She tried to call to him again but her vocal chords wouldn't produce a sound. The humidity, plus the aching of her fearful heart, pounding within her frame, made her voice give out before she could fully speak his name.

"Inuyasha," she tried again.

She blinked rapidly at hearing how his name felt violent breaking the silence, a rape of the quiet.

"Don't come near me, Kagome," he called several seconds later.

Kagome gulped past the lump in her throat.

His whispered words of warning were cautious, pleading, as if the weariness of his actions had finally caught up to him.

"Are you okay, Inuyasha?"

Gesturing with her foot to take a step closer to him, Kagome felt her hand tear from the doorknob like new Velcro; she had been gripping it like a lifeline to the other world beyond the closed door. She was here now, with him now. A part of her knew there would be no going back from this side of the door.

Kagome watched Inuyasha's body tense as she took a shallow couple of steps towards him. Cautious of the mess on the floor, her eyes observed the down feathers that crinkled and flattened underneath her bare feet. She felt a tug then to look over her shoulder at the doorframe she just left. The simplicity of that world was calling to her. She felt a long ways away from Sango and Miroku who stood just feet from where she was now.

But her desperation for answers and genuine concern for Inuyasha's wellbeing presented themselves in the forefront of her mind and the world beyond the door was long gone.

Stepping over mangled sheets and pieces of wood from the broken bed, Kagome continued closer, slowly, to Inuyasha.

"You don't listen very well, do you, Bitch?"

The glib tone in his voice was lost on her. Kagome's eyes had caught sight of the broken wooden headboard and torn duvet, and her eyes began to water.

She didn't want to believe that the words she had spoken minutes ago drove Inuyasha to this. How was it possible someone could have experienced so much pain that merely referencing it could instigate such violence? In a brutal rage, Inuyasha had trashed the simple, grey room Kagome had briefly glimpsed earlier in the day.

However, now, standing in the humid aftershock of Inuyasha's violence, the solace of Inuyasha's simple bedroom no longer existed. The room felt like a battleground, and Kagome was idiotically wading right into the middle of it with nothing but her stubbornness for armour.

"Why, Inuyasha?" Kagome uttered, her body overheating with shock.

Her eyes trailed from the goose feathers, splayed and hanging like guts out the duvet, to the glass shards on the floor beside Inuyasha's body.

"What could I have possibly said to drive you to this? Why didn't I know how badly you were hurting? I mean, to do all of this?" She concluded with a hand gesture to the vast space around her.

"Why didn't you tell me you carried so much on your shoulders?"

Inuyasha merely grunted in response, angling his back towards her as she continued her slow encroachment towards him. She wanted to be careful not to get a splinter or shard of glass in her bare feet. Her eyes kept yo-yoing between Inuyasha and her path to him.

Pausing, Kagome narrowed her eyes at his hunched form, his upper torso bookended between protruding knees on either side. The moonlight gently glinted off the broken ends of glass sharply pointed in the frame and the shards on the floor. In her peripheral vision, she could almost make out the soft golden hue of the backyard patio lights around the side of the house, reflecting off the darkness of the trees in the distance.

Focusing her eyes and her thoughts back on Inuyasha, on wanting to comfort him and to get him to a state of calm so they could talk amicably, Kagome shook her head of her distractions. She needed to be in the moment, fully present in the now so she could react appropriately when Inuyasha did.

Because if he was anything right now, it was reactive.

Narrowing her eyes at him again, she saw that his back was close enough to her that she could touch his shoulder if she bent over. Kagome furrowed her eyebrows. Why was he turning his back like that to her? What was he hiding from her?

"What are you holding?"

Inuyasha didn't respond. His silence was loud enough of a response to her question.

"Inuyasha?" Kagome prodded, annoyance evident in her tone.

Reaching down and resting hesitant fingers on his shoulder, Kagome's entire body flinched when Inuyasha shook her touch away.

"Don't, Kagome."

She opened her mouth to take a deep breath. Her body felt so uncomfortably warm she could feel the humidity coating her skin like a latex.

Stubbornness and concern sitting heavily on her chest, Kagome brushed her bangs away from her forehead and then reached down again, this time wrapping her hand around Inuyasha's shoulder.

He sighed in frustration at her touch; however, he didn't shake her off this time.

"Are you okay, Inuyasha?" she asked, her tone laced with concern. She slowly lowered herself to his level. When he didn't reply to her she added, "I'm worried about you," in as quiet a tone she could muster without her vocal chords giving out.

Fully on her knees, Kagome sat back onto her calves and placed her other hand on his other shoulder. Feeling his body begin to tense under her touch, Kagome could instinctively feel him preparing to push her away. Not giving him the opportunity, Kagome quickly closed the distance between their bodies. Resting her forehead against the spinal disc at the base of his neck, Kagome wrapped her arms around his chest, squeezing him as she did so.

Suddenly, her mind was temporarily transported elsewhere.

She didn't know what made her think of it. However, feeling Inuyasha's shaking, balmy body against hers, Kagome suddenly remembered the time when Buyo had escaped from the Shrine. She was maybe eight or nine years old when it happened. Souta had been a mess from the situation: Buyo was missing for two days; their grandfather had tried to convince the children the cat was never coming home. However, Hojo and his father had miraculously found the cat hiding underneath the jungle-gym in the local playground. They had showed up just after dinner, the cat in Hojo's arms. Buyo was soaked to the bone from the earlier storm. Kagome would never forget how dazed his wide teal eyes had looked.

"Wrap him tightly, Kagome," Mama had told her, tightening the swaddle Kagome had made out of a bath towel. "When animals are scared, they like to be squeezed. Like this. It helps them feel better, feel safer."

The memory melding into Kagome's present, she felt her body autonomously react to her mother's words as she squeezed Inuyasha into herself, ignoring the sweat beginning to pool at her tailbone and between her breasts. Making Inuyasha feel safe was her only priority.

Tears brimmed her eyes at feeling how his body shook against hers. A gentle, pained vibration that Kagome knew was involuntary. She knew it was his body's response to the anger that stormed through him like a hurricane. His body was suffering the aftermath and exhaustion of trashing his room.

Placing a gentle kiss against the back of his neck, Kagome rested her cheek against his sweaty skin, feeling the salt of his sweat sting the cracks of her dry lips. In an effort to comfort him, Kagome whispered, "I'm sorry," as if her condolences for whatever pain he felt would make him feel better.

Inuyasha straightened his back immediately following her apology, as if he was trying to slide Kagome's arms off him.

"I don't deserve this, Kagome," Inuyasha said slowly, almost like a sigh.

She gripped her fingertips together. It felt like he was trying to emerge from her arms like shaking off a coat. She refused to let him. Pressing her forehead into his back, she continued to squeeze him tighter until her arms began to shake with exhaustion.

"What are you talking about?" she muffled into his back, his shirt soaking up the incredulity of her words.

"This life; it's not mine to live. Who am I to pretend everything is fine? I had a path carved out for me but I ran from it. Like a fucking whelp with my tail between my legs. And now, because I was too stupid to be a man and deal with it, it's caught up with me. And I—Fuck!" Inuyasha swore, his voice cracking, pounding his fist against the wall.

Kagome jumped in fright but quickly resumed her grasp around Inuyasha's upper torso. Her mind was racing, trying to parse through the enigma of his words.

"I should have killed that motherfucker when I had the chance. I was, no, I am, such a fucking weakling!"

"Are you kidding me?" Kagome chastised. "Inuyasha, you're the strongest person I know. Don't," she paused to catch her breath, to iron out the shaking in her voice, "don't talk like that."

"Just leave me alone, Kagome," Inuyasha's darkened tone replied. "I don't deserve to be comforted. Not by you. Not like this."

Kagome scoffed angrily.

"You have no idea the things I've done, Kagome," Inuyasha responded to her non-verbal cue. "I've blackened my own soul with the shit I've done. I don't deserve nice words and apologies and everything's going to be fine," he mocked. "Nothing's going to be fucking fine."

"I don't care what choices you've made," Kagome argued, her eyes stinging as she pressed her cheek into his back. "I'm here for you regardless, Inuyasha. I want to help you. Tell me what I can do. Please?"

Inuyasha sighed and straightened his back again. Kagome kept her hands locked.

"It's not just my life that I'm fucking up. I've ruined yours too, Kagome." Kagome felt the ends of his hair tickle her arms from his down-turned head. "You've lost everything you own because of me. Everything would have been better for you if you just never got mixed up with me."

"I didn't choose to be involved in anything I didn't want to, Inuyasha," Kagome reprimanded. "We can't help what's already happened. We have to make decisions based on the present; we can't change the pa—"

"Maybe Miroku is right," Inuyasha's ramble continued, his tone laced with self-defeat. "Maybe I can't protect you from them. Maybe it is best if you go."

"What? I'm not leaving, Inuyasha," Kagome cried, lifting her head up from his body. Her fingers indented his shoulder as fear and vexation coursed through her veins. "I'm going to help you. You can't just shoo me away, Inuyasha. It doesn't work like that."

"Don't be a fucking idiot, Kagome," Inuyasha snapped, using his one hand to pry her fingers off his body. "You have no fucking idea how deep in this shit I am."

"Then tell me! How many times do I have to tell you, Inuyasha, that I want to help you? That I'm not going anywhere! Get that through your thick head already!"

"God dammit, Kagome!" Inuyasha roared, "You don't fucking understand!"

He lunged upwards with such a force it propelled Kagome backwards onto the floor. Clambering to her feet moments later, Kagome watched him loom above her, his brow so dark she couldn't see his eyes.

How could she look at his face, though, when she finally saw what he had been clutching to his stomach, hiding away from her sight?

The length of his hand, from his pinky to his wrist was gaping open. His forearm was coated in dry and semi-dry blood. Kagome's stomach lurched. She could picture it now: Inuyasha smashed his fist through the window. Inuyasha then cut open his hand when retracting his fist back into the room, the length of his fist making contact with a broken spike remaining of the window.

Kagome watched with horrified eyes as blood drizzled in a steady stream to the floor. Wiping her teary eyes and cursing herself for being a baby and responding with waterworks, Kagome slowly raised her eyes to try to find his. However, her visual assent stopped when she saw just how much blood had pooled and stained the midriff of his shirt, where he had been housing the wound.

"Inuyasha, my God, your hand!" Kagome choked, unable to hold back the tears. She felt so out of her depth then, completely overcome by her uselessness.

"Just go, Kagome," he snapped.

"I'm not leaving you like this!" she retorted angrily.

"I'm not giving you a fucking choice, Kagome. Get out of here! I don't want to see you anymore."

"What—" she sobbed, "—what are you saying? You don't mean that."

"I mean it, Kagome: I don't want to see you anymore! It's better for both of us if you just pack up your shit and get out of here. Tonight. I don't want to think about what would happen if you don't. You need to leave."

Kagome watched as he turned his side to her, angling his face away so he didn't have to see her cry. She angrily wiped her tears from her cheeks. Her brows were so furrowed her forehead hurt.

"You don't get to just send me away!" she shouted, gruffly reaching for his elbow and forcing his body to face her. "If you think for one second, Inuyasha, that I will listen to you when you're acting like this, you're the fucking idiot here! Now, please, we need to get your hand looked at, I—"

Inuyasha tore his body away from her, creating several steps of distance between them.

"Just stop!" he bellowed. "Kagome, please, I need you to stop. For your own good, just fucking—ugh," he sighed, his voice hoarse. "Just please listen to me. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Inuyasha," Kagome sighed in distress, closing the distance he had created, "nothing is going to happen to me! Why do you keep saying—"

"—They prey on weakness, Kagome, alright? I've seen the shit they've done to people in order to get what they want. I've done so…" his voice wavered, "so much shit for them, like a fucking puppet. And right now, I'm their number one target. Understand, Kagome? They want my head on a silver platter, and you're the ticket they need to get it."

"Me? But, why would they—"

"I can't stand thinking about what they'll do to you," Inuyasha croaked, turning away to cup his bloody hand in his other palm. "They'll use you to get to me. They'll torture you, Kagome, until they get their revenge."

"Torture? But, but, that's not legal," Kagome cried, her eyes wide with horror. "They can't do—"

Inuyasha's impertinent laughter stole the words from Kagome's mouth.

"They can do whatever the fuck they want to do, Kagome. They own the whole damn city."

"Who does?"

"The Family."

"Your family?"

"For a while, yeah, I guess you could say they were my family."

"No one can own the city, Inuyasha; it's run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. It's—"

"They're everywhere, Kagome," Inuyasha interrupted. "They have their hand in every bank, in every stream of government. They're the dirty cops, the corrupt governors. They may as well own this place."

"But how? Who are they?"

Inuyasha sighed before lowering his body to the floor with a grunt. She could tell just from listening to his strained breaths that he was exhausted. Part of her just wanted to encourage him to rest, to take him by the hand, lead him to bed and put him to sleep. However, the other part of her, the part that wanted answers, was on the edge of her seat.

To Kagome, it sounded like a sigh of surrender. She was on the verge of answers. Her stomach felt queasy with a combination of anxiety and keenness.

"I'm warning you again, Kagome," Inuyasha groaned, inspecting his wound. "You really should leave."

"And I'm telling you again, Inuyasha," Kagome bickered, sitting down beside him and cradling her knees to her chest, "I'm not going anywhere, so you may as well just tell me so I can figure out how to help you."

Inuyasha snorted and shook his head at her, his eyes looking tired and distant.

A few moments of silence lapsed between them then. Kagome presumed Inuyasha was taking this time to determine what he was going to tell her. Inching her bottom a few centimetres closer to Inuyasha, Kagome wanted her body closer to him. Their shoulders gently touching, Kagome could feel the heat radiating off his skin and bathing hers. Despite the humid stickiness of her own skin, Kagome liked feeling his warmth. And she wanted him to feel hers. She knew he wasn't in a place where he could understand her words of comfort. She just hoped her actions could verbalize to him what her words couldn't.

Leaning into her body, Inuyasha sighed and rested his cheek against the top of Kagome's head.

"You're too stubborn for your own good, Kagome."

Kagome released a gentle laugh through her nose and allowed herself to close her eyes for a few moments. It was the gentlest exchange they'd had all evening. She didn't want to allow herself a distraction from her pursuit of the truth; however, at the same time she acknowledged that Inuyasha needed the space to organically tell his story. She would be patient and happily accept any and all information he shared with her. Even if it turned out to be information she really didn't want to know.

At the end of the day, she told herself, no matter what he could say to her, he was still Inuyasha.

Her Inuyasha.

"I'm not nearly as stubborn as you," Kagome argued playfully, nudging him in the side.

Inuyasha laughed.

"If the Kuzawari allowed females into the Family, I'm sure they would have liked you. Stubbornness is one of the traits they look for in their kobuns."

Kagome separated their bodies then, raising her head to look up into Inuyasha's eyes, dull with exhaustion yet still brilliantly golden, with a look of inquisitiveness.

"Kobuns?"

Inuyasha nodded. "The children or apprentices of the Family. Protégés, I guess you could call them."

"Protégés for who?"

"The oyabun, Naraku, and his First Sons."

"I don't understand," Kagome cried, her expression pleading for Inuyasha to stop being so cryptic with his responses. However, from the blank look on his face she could tell that his mind had gone somewhere into its recesses. Inuyasha's presence felt more automatic then than it did aggressive. It was clear to Kagome that the miasma of rage had dissipated through the broken window since the time she first entered the room.

"Naraku is the head of the Kuzawari Gang, Kagome."

"A gang?"

"Yeah—one of the more corrupt offshoots of the Yakuza. Naraku, the oyabun, he…found me…when I was just a kid."

Her brown eyes bore up at him. "What do you mean 'found you'?"

"Kidnapped, I guess you could say," Inuyasha sighed, rubbing his neck. "Kobun can't have a family of their own when they're brought into the Family. As I got older, I realized that me and the other kids were all just manipulated little shits, tricked by Naraku and his First Sons into thinking our real families abandoned us. I guess it's easier to trick people into being your slaves when they think they have nothing else going for them."

"Inuyasha, I don't know what you mean by oyabun and kobun. You're talking about a gang, your family? There were parents and children?"

"The Kuzawari is based on the traditional dyadic structure of parent and child, Kagome, where the oyabun is the family head, the First Sons, his underlings or supervisors—we used to call them our big brothers—and then the kobun, the kids collected in order to continue the work of the oyabun."

"The work? What work?"

Inuyasha hmph'd. "Drugs, sex trafficking, illegal firearms. You name it; Naraku had his hand in it."

"But, how did you get mixed up in all of that? How did Naraku find you? My God, Inuyasha, I—I can't believe this."

Inuyasha snorted. "Luckily for me I wasn't a normal brat like the others. I was handpicked by the oyabun himself." He rolled his eyes. "It was like being royalty of the fucking underworld. People would shit themselves over one cross look from Naraku. Then he finds himself a hot-tempered, cocky little shit to do all his bidding? I liked fucking people up, Kagome, and Naraku knew it too. It's like he could sense that anger in me. He used it to his advantage.

"Shit," he sighed, covering his eyes with his hands. "It took years before I saw the Family to be the sadistic fucking plague that it was. Young boys duped into loyalty to a corrupt, anti-peace gang. I saw boys who I grew up alongside and considered brothers killed for trying to escape from the Family. The oath the kobun make to the oyabun is one of life, justice, and duty. The Family is life, Kagome. Once you make that oath, there's only death if you seek anything other than the Family."

"What the hell does that mean?" Kagome cried with bewildered eyes. "An oath?"

Inuyasha nodded. "When the boys reach their second year with the Family, they have to prove their allegiance to the oyabun and gratitude to the First Son who adopted them. You don't join the family a kobun, you have to take the oath to prove that you're man enough to do what the Family needs to you do."

Inuyasha sneered. "I guess you can say that having the head of the Family as my adopted father just made my work cut out for me more than the others."

"So, Naraku and his followers just went out and collected little boys?" Kagome felt nauseated. "How is that even possible? That would have been all over the news! People would have known or suspected!"

"Oh, really?" Inuyasha patronized. "You think the news covers every single runaway boy situation in Japan? Who really cares about how many bratty kids go missing a year? Ever notice one thing in the news, Kagome? People don't give two shits about little boys. The second a little girl goes missing the world gets their panties in a twist. But not little boys; they're on their own from day one."

"But your family must have been beside themselves, Inuyasha! I mean, what happened to your mother or your father? You clearly reconnected with Sesshoumaru at some point. What happened?"

Inuyasha's face went dark and he retreated into himself again. Agonizing minutes passed in the silence before Kagome licked her lips and forced the silence to end. She felt sweat drip down the bridge of her nose from the heat of her churning thoughts.

"So Naraku is the head honcho, and then there are the boys, or the kobuns who pledge themselves to do whatever Naraku wants them to do. Who are the First Sons? I don't get how they fit into the picture."

"They're Naraku's initial followers. His main cronies. I guess you could kinda think of it like the Prime Minister and his cabinet ministers. The First Sons were the ones who kept order, who stole most of the boys. It makes me sick to think I used to refer to some of them as big brother. Actually, now that I think about it, Musō was one of them."

"Musō," Kagome repeated. She felt lightheaded at how quickly all the loose ends were being tied.

Inuyasha nodded.

"You said his name in your sleep when you," she paused, "when you had that nightmare."

"Probably," Inuyasha sighed, turning his attention to his bleeding hand temporarily. He tried to flex his fist but then winced and dropped his hand onto his lap again.

"What happened with him, Inuyasha?"

"He's the first man I ever killed."

The silence that attacked Kagome following those words was too overwhelming. Tears plummeted from her eyes. Her stomach churned with nausea.

"Does that upset you?" Inuyasha asked, his golden eyes turning to focus on her face, to observe her reaction. His tone wasn't mocking it was…empty.

"You saw how I dealt with Suikotsu on the Expressway, Kagome. I know that you know I killed Ginkotsu that night during the break-in. You can't pretend like this is the first you've heard of me killing people."

"You don't need to be so macabre and okay with it, Inuyasha," Kagome snapped. "You're talking about taking people's lives like it…like it's nothing!"

Inuyasha snorted again. "I did take people's lives like it was nothing. I participated in three blood oaths before Naraku was satisfied that I was untouchable."

"Blood oaths? My God, Inuyasha, you had to take a blood oath to pledge your allegiance?"

"Oh, it wasn't my blood I made the oath with. You had to bleed the others without killing them. It showed that you were strong enough to maintain control of a situation without being weak enough to fear injury or death. Dying for the Family is considered honourable. Allowing yourself to be injured is nothing but weakness."

"Are you kidding me? Inuyasha, oh, Jesus Christ. That's—I—how old were you?"

"Eight? Maybe nine. I was ten when I finally became Naraku's kobun. The Blood Oaths were supposed to be the kobun initiation, but most times it just felt like the First Sons gambling over the weakest kids, placing their bets on which ones weren't gonna make it."

Kagome's eyes felt raw. "Did children die?"

Inuyasha nodded.

Kagome's mouth dried up entirely. "Did you kill children, Inuyasha?"

He nodded again.

Jesus Christ, I think I'm going to be sick, Kagome lamented, closing her eyes to try and control her breathing. Her head was spinning.

"How old were you when—" Kagome paused and took a laboured breath, "—Musō died?"

Inuyasha snorted again. "Eight or nine, I think. It was his own fault too. He tried to stand up for me against the oyabun. Hmph, fucking idiot. You so much as look at Naraku the wrong way and it's a Burning Ritual. Fuck, I still can't stand the smell of fire."

Kagome's back straightened with a snap and she turned round, quaking brown orbs to meet Inuyasha's emotionless gaze.

"B—burning ritual?"

Inuyasha nodded. "Naraku always had a point to prove, and he believed that burning a man alive was the closest thing to playing God."

"No," Kagome cried in a hoarse whisper, tears cascading her cheeks. "No, Inuyasha, please. Tell me he didn't…you didn't…"

Inuyasha sighed and gazed down at his hand. He couldn't allow himself to give into Kagome's vicarious pain.

"I did," he confirmed quietly. "I was the Ritual Leader for Musō. Naraku wanted me to be his greatest weapon, believing that the more Burning Rituals I led, the less weakness I would have, the godlier I would be."

Inuyasha's face darkened. "And I guess you can say that sick fuck was right. The more men he had me kill the emptier I became. The kobuns who did their work in the drug trade used to pass around all sorts of shit to help us suppress our guilt, to help us sleep, to help us stay empty.

"Actually, that was where I met Bankotsu."

Bankotsu? Kagome's mind shouted. Where have I heard that name before?

"Why do I know that name?" she asked, verbalizing her thoughts.

Inuyasha snorted smugly. "He was my lead singer."

Kagome felt her mouth drop. "One of your band members was a kobun too?"

Inuyasha scoffed at Kagome's naivety. "Not just Bankotsu, Kagome. All of us. The entire band was made up of Naraku's kobuns."

"But—but, how is that even possible? It can't be a coincidence?"

Inuyasha shook his head. "Long story short, when I was a teenager, I had had enough of Naraku's shit and I ran away from the Family. There was," Inuyasha paused, "that is to say," he stopped to sigh. "I thought I found my mother."

"Your mother?" Kagome echoed. "But how? Where did you find her?"

Inuyasha's eyes looked blank as he stared into the torn grey sheets before him.

"I had only been gone for a few days before Naraku sent First Sons after me and, well—I, uh, didn't end up leaving like I wanted to."

Kagome's eyes bore into him for answers. "What happened?"

Silence answered her.

"So fast forward a few years," Inuyasha finally continued, not pausing to answer Kagome's question, "I'm a drugged-up uncontrollable rage of fury and want nothing more than to kill Naraku. That was when I found out about my real father and everything changed."

"Your real father?" Kagome gasped. "How did you find him? What happened?"

Kagome felt her heart thudding. Why did it feel like Inuyasha was only giving her part truths? How did he find his mother? What happened to her? How did he just stumble upon his real father after all those years being an abandoned child, like Naraku said he was?

Weren't kobun not supposed to have a real family? Wasn't that the point? They needed to shed their old family for their new one. Kagome felt like Inuyasha was censoring his story.

"My father was a well-known political figure at the time," Inuyasha began, leaning his head against the wall. Kagome couldn't help but stare at his Adam's apple as he spoke. "I didn't know this at the time, but my father had his own personal dealings with Naraku. That was how he eventually found out about me. I was Naraku's errand boy.

"It was weird at first, realizing that not only I had a real father, but that Naraku knew about him and did business with him.

"That was when my father made a new deal with Naraku: I would go to Naraku whenever he had work for me to do, but I got to leave the kobun dojo to live with my father and Sesshoumaru, my half-brother, here at Sengoku Manor."

Inuyasha sighed. "I still don't know what the deal was that my father made with Naraku, but all's I know is that it was dirty, real dirty. Several kobun got involved and died because of it. Shit," Inuyasha swore, "I didn't care at the time though. All I knew was that I had finally gotten out of that shithole."

Kagome could barely keep her wits about her. How was Inuyasha's background so grotesquely complicated? This whole situation felt surreal. It was almost like she wanted Inuyasha to burst out in laughter and tell Kagome he had been pulling her leg this whole time.

"So Naraku made the deal? Even though you weren't supposed to have another famili?"

Inuyasha licked his lips. "He didn't go for it right away. I think for the reason you're suggesting, Kagome. It took some time before Naraku grew to trust my real father enough to allow me to leave the dojo.

"Eventually, though," Inuyasha exhaled, his tone changing, "Sesshoumaru found his way into the public eye and it grew more difficult for me to be Naraku's errand boy."

Kagome tilted her head to the side in confusion. "How so?"

"Same hair," Inuyasha stated, grabbing a handful of his tresses in his uninjured hand. "I got mistaken for my half-brother once and that was all it took for the media to freak out about the silver-haired Taisho men. That was when Naraku kept his distance from me for a while and I got sucked into an unwanted fame. But that was what made me really start to want out of the Family so badly. I got my first taste of real freedom."

"What happened with your father?"

"He died," Inuyasha said coldly, turning his bleeding fist over in his hand. "Then he left this dump to me and Sesshoumaru grew so pissed over it that we stopped talking."

Kagome played with the hem of her shirt uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry."

Inuyasha shrugged. "Feh, no skin off my back. He's an asshole anyway."

"There's one thing I don't understand, though, Inuyasha," Kagome began after a moment of silence, hugging her knees to her chest. "How your band was made up of kobuns. I thought you said you got out of the gang?"

Inuyasha shook his head. "Even though it felt like I was a free man, I was still a kobun. Naraku just smartened up that he couldn't use me like he used to because people knew my face now. He needed to be sneakier than that. So, essentially, Naraku started to use my fame to his advantage instead."

"Use your fame?"

Inuyasha nodded. "Private planes meant no airport security checks. I could get private access to anyone in the world that I wanted to: the Premier of China, the Hell's Angels in LA, any other celebrity. My entourage was made up of kobuns for a while.

"But it became more difficult for me to go where Naraku needed me to go. So, what better way to ensure I got to frequently travel the world than start a band, make me the manager, and have us go on tour?"

"I can't believe that," Kagome gasped, licking her lips. "Naraku just proposed you and some of the other kobun start a band?"

Inuyasha shrugged. "It was exactly the kind of circumstance Naraku wanted. We had spilled blood in oath to him not to betray his trust, so that asshole had us entirely in his palm. We had unlimited access to the world. It was flawless. We met who he wanted us to meet. We could transport who he wanted us to transport.

"Bankotsu was always humming, whistling, or singing some song when we were kids. It used to annoy the shit out of the rest of us. But the jerk could carry a tune, I'd give him that. I wouldn't be surprised if he put the bug in Naraku's ear about it."

"So the band just kept doing Naraku's work the whole time they were together?"

"Mmhmm. For all four albums. If there was some especially dirty work that needed to be done, one of our entourage did it and we just reported its completion. Naraku checked up on us periodically." Inuyasha's face winced in memory. "It was a sorry reminder that I couldn't enjoy the experience like I tried to pretend I could. I was living a lie that I desperately wanted to believe was true." He sighed. "Even though I was Inuyasha Taisho of 'The Band of Seven,' I was just as much Naraku's puppet then as I was when I was an eight year old brat."

"Is that why you still keep mementos of the band?"

Inuyasha turned a raised eyebrow to her, his golden eyes alarmed.

"I mean," Kagome continued, "if you try to forget about why the band came together in the first place, I'm sure there were times where you really enjoyed yourself. Hearing my brother talk about all your shows, that one drumstick on your wall in the frame, seeing all the pictures, reading all those blogs. People worshipped you, Inuyasha," Kagome said with a sad smile. "I don't blame you for being a little nostalgic about those times. There are little memories that are kind of a silver lining of those times."

"Feh," Inuyasha snorted. "I keep that shit up to remind me not to forget where I came from. That, and when I have reporters and shit randomly pop up, they expect to see shit like that. I'm supposed to be proud of my old band. Besides, there were no good times, Kagome. I was a prisoner the whole fucking time. If I put one toe out of line, any one of those douchebags in the band would have sold me out to Naraku."

"So," Kagome stated, her shaking voice shattering the silence between them, "what happened with the band?"

Inuyasha's brows furrowed. "What do you mean what happened?"

"What happened between you all that, now that they're on bail, they're coming after you?" She gulped. "Or coming after me to get to you?"

Inuyasha released a lengthy exhale and scratched at his chin.

"I double-crossed the Family. Technically speaking, that sort of shit is supposed to guarantee my death. The band, the other kobun who are still loyal to Naraku, plan to kill me for my betrayal."

Kagome shuddered. "Does that have anything to do with what I overheard you talking about with Miroku? Naichō or whatever they're called?"

Inuyasha gave Kagome an unimpressed look and she shrugged her shoulders at him in apology. Scratching at his head in irritation, Inuyasha eventually sighed and got to his feet without answering Kagome's question.

"Inuyasha?" Kagome called, watching him head towards his bedroom door. "Where are you going?"

Inuyasha gripped the doorknob in his uninjured hand and turned to face Kagome at the same time he opened the door. Kagome could feel a vacuum of cold air sail into the room and she got to her feet.

"You know enough of the story that there's no point in hiding the rest from you," Inuyasha remarked ambiguously.

Stepping into the dark hallway, he turned around and opened the door wide enough to signal Kagome that he was beckoning her to follow him. Widening her step to avoid the remnants of disaster on the floor, Kagome tried to keep her eyes off the bloodstain on Inuyasha's stomach as she walked towards him.

"So, where are we going then?" Kagome asked, stepping into the coolness of the hallway and fighting down the uncertainty rumbling in her stomach.

"To go find Miroku," Inuyasha responded. "Considering that pervert represents the good guys in this tale, he may as well tell you his side of the story."

Author's Note

So, I'm not gonna lie. When this story started out, I didn't plan for it to be so dark. But Inuyasha's origin stories just came to me in a dream and one day I madly captured the whole story in a note app on my phone, and here we are. I think there's a part of all of us that loves a troubled past in Inuyasha and a redemptive story arc thanks to Kagome bringing out the best in him.

What were your initial reactions to his tale? Shock? Did you see it coming? I love all of you and all your thoughts.

You beautiful readers make me push through those moments of writing ennui. Your reactions and reviews are always so appreciated. Keep 'em coming! 3