Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or its characters. They are the sole property of Takahashi Rumiko

-To Sip of Black Velvet-

Chapter 19: Sneaking Out

"Sing for me Kagome." His deep voice penetrated me even as I stood in utter darkness. The shadowed place of my nightmares was surrounding me and his voice echoed from everywhere.

I felt a hard bony hand plant itself on my shoulder and I ran. Or at least I thought I was running. I was weightless and the black world around me didn't move. There was no gentle breeze that ran across my skin, no sign to let me know my legs were taking me anywhere at all.

"You can never get away." I could hear him whisper in my ear as if he was right beside me. His warm breath played across the skin of my neck and I felt goosebumps line my insides.

I stopped only when my chest started hurting. My lungs were burning and I looked down to eye my torso. I saw nothing but I could feel something heavy pressing down on me. I thought that I heard a rib crack.

A close distance away I could see another figure and to my relief it wasn't Naraku. It was a little girl with brown hair and big brown eyes. Drips of blue fell from her long sooty lashes but my eyes focused on the drips of red that fell from her fingertips.

I stumbled forward and her big brown eyes blinked up at me. There were wounds so deep in her chest that the pressure on mine seemed to be nothing.

"Always and forever." Naruku promised and the child shivered along with me.

Gathering her into my arms I closed my eyes and whispered to her that everything was going to be alright, that she wouldn't hurt anymore, that I'd protect her. I promised.

"But who will protect you?" Naraku's voice questioned me.

And when I opened my eyes again and looked down to check on the little girl, I found my arms were wrapped tightly around myself, my nails digging into my arms and my arms going numb.

Something was oozing into the fabric of my sleeves, it was wet and warm and shocked, I released my arms. It came pouring then, from deep ragged gashes in my own chest, the viscous crimson fluid seeping out of me with the pulses of my heartbeat.

Frantically I snapped my head up to scream for help and Sesshoumaru was already standing there, gleaming, beautiful, and real.

Mindlessly I grabbed him, wrapping my arms around his neck, holding tight, crying into his silver hair the mantra of…"Save me… save me… save me."

I felt his strong arms begin to encircle my small frame and it felt like safety.

But the safety slowly twisted into something unrecognizable.

His arms grew tighter and tighter and his claws started to pierce into my back until I was sure he could have scratched bone. With my head buried in his neck, I witnessed the strands of his hair fade to black and I shuddered as his body temperature shifted from the heat that I knew so well to the deathly chill of ice. I didn't have to see it to know that his golden eyes were now ruby colored ones.

"We'll save each other Kagome." Naraku whispered in my ear.

..O..

"Kagome! Wake up!" Sango yelled at me as she threw a pillow at my face. "I swear I wish my old roommate was here sometimes. You are impossible to wake up."

"Ugh… what is it?" I asked Sango groggily, trying my best to shake off the nightmare. It was faint but I could still feel Naraku's claws deep in my back.

Staying with Sango for a few weeks after I'd been attacked had turned out better than I thought. It had somehow led me to break my lease and move in with her. And she'd been right about how easy it was to get rid of her roommate. It seemed the girl had already had one foot out of the door every since Sango had started bringing Miroku back to her apartment. I sometimes wondered how Sango could handle Miroku's wandering eyes but of course I was in no place to pass judgment. Resigning yourself to admit you'd never love someone more than you love a married man, kind of put a damper on judging anyone else's moral code. Besides Miroku was just a flirt, Sango was a lucky woman really.

"It's 8 o'clock, I don't even understand how you could be sleeping on our day off." Sango continued, while she searched through my things on the dresser. "Where's the perfume I let you borrow?"

"I dropped the bottle in the bathroom… it shattered." I answered truthfully. "Sorry." I added for good measure as I pulled the sheets over my head. The bright light of the room hurt my eyes after being trapped in the black world that was my nightmare and for a moment I recalled the image of Sesshoumaru. It may have seemed insignificant in retrospect to everything that had occurred in my dream but that one perfect moment of bliss where I'd felt safe in Sesshoumaru's arms was hitting me with a greater intensity than all the blood and gore had.

Sango sighed at the loss of her favorite perfume. "Well that's not why I was waking you up anyway. You have a visitor."

"Who?" I asked peering out from under the covers.

"Inuyasha."

"Inuyasha is always here." I remarked blankly. "He shouldn't even be considered a visitor anymore."

"You do realize that I can hear you Kagome?" Inuyasha's voice called from the living room.

"Good, then I can personally ask you to leave. I'm not exactly in the mood for company today." I replied back almost pleadingly.

Sango came closer and whispered so that Inuyasha couldn't hear. "I'm going out with Miroku tonight Kagome and you know that I don't like leaving you here alone, just humor him tonight…for me?"

Every since I'd let her in on my past or more specifically that the Naraku incident had not been a random attack, she had started going out of her way to make sure I was never left alone. In fact since I'd moved in two and a half months prior I'd probably had less than two days' worth of hours to myself. It had been a necessity to inform her since I'd been waking up in cold sweats or screaming from my constant nightmares. They were never so bad when I woke up from them in the daylight but if I woke up to a dark bedroom, I could almost feel Naraku's hardened rubies watching me.

I knew she thought that she was being a good friend and protecting me but being monitored so closely left me feeling stifled. The growing need to get away was making itself apparent more and more each day. But as she stared down at me with worry glazing over her brown eyes, I could not find it in myself to turn down her simple request. Inuyasha had become a constant figure in my life at this point anyhow. He hardly ever failed to show up at Sango's and my apartment, even if asked him not to.

Inuyasha sought after my companionship though I couldn't understand why he'd wish to be in the presence of someone broken all the time. He was great company and a loyal friend but sometimes the resemblance of him to his brother, which had ultimately began our friendship, would become too much for me. I'd find myself staring at him a second too long or absentmindedly running my fingers through his silvery locks. At first I didn't want to accidentally lead him on or cause any unnecessary difficulties between us so I'd tried to distance myself from him as well. But he'd never stay away. He was far more stubborn than anyone I'd ever met before and since he'd decided he was going to be my friend I'd just have to live with it. I learned quickly that living with it wasn't going to be that hard, I really liked him actually.

I didn't, however, inform Inuyasha about my past with Naraku. He seemed to have a particularly strong protective streak and I didn't want to get him involved in my problems. As far as he knew it was just some random occurrence, a night where he got to save a damsel in distress. But more importantly, I never told Inuyasha about my past relationship with Sesshoumaru. The two didn't get along, I'd known that before I'd even met Inuyasha. Once when he'd eyed the bracelet on my wrist he'd asked me what store it had come from. I lied and since it never came up again, I figured he didn't know because the two brothers were so emotionally distant.

Unwrapping myself from my covers, I stretched before walking out into the apartment, passing the living room and Inuyasha to saunter into the kitchen.

"Why are you even here?" I asked Inuyasha semi-jokingly as I looked for the ingredients to mix us some drinks. That was a definite upside to having a bartender as a roommate, we were never short on alcohol. Sango really loved her job and though she probably regretted it now, she'd even taught me a few things. Well she taught me how to make the one drink that really mattered.

Black Velvets had become what my singing had once been. I could no longer sing away my grief after finding something or rather someone better to sing for. But with the drink, I'd learned to drown all my worries away. Was I using alcohol as a crutch? Probably, but no one is perfect. The stress of moving into a new apartment could be enough to set others on edge. I had a sadistically obsessed Naraku, terrible nightmares, and a fragile broken heart to tend to in addition to that. And somehow Sesshoumaru's drink helped calm my nerves so I made sure to have one at least once a day.

Obviously Sango had noticed and disapproved since all the ingredients were, to my dissatisfaction, gone.

"What do you mean, why am I here?" Inuyasha asked faking a hurt expression.

"I sometimes wonder that too Inuyasha." Sango yelled jokingly from the back room as she continued to get ready for her date. "I mean don't you have some huge mansion or rooftop condo to go home to?"

"Both." Inuyasha admitted with a grin. "But neither one of those has got my favorite person in them." He looked at me.

"Oh stop." I said, giving up my search for the obviously disposed of ingredients. "I cannot possibly be your favorite person, we're just friends."

"We are." He added simply before his silver ears twitched and he turned towards the door. "Miroku's here!" He yelled. A few moments later Sango hurried out from one of the back rooms in a beautiful green silk dress.

"So how do I look?" She asked me, giving me a tentative glance and spinning a bit so that I could see her fully.

"You look great but you'd look even better if I'd had a drink." I stated accusingly.

"Your obsession with that drink isn't healthy." She explained, giving me a disappointed look as she went to open the door.

"She's right you know." Inuyasha added.

I ignored both comments and decided I'd have to go pick up the ingredients later or maybe go stop by a bar. In fact, it would be just the alone time that I'd been needing.

Miroku hadn't even made it up the stairs yet by the time Sango opened the door.

"Actually, I like you being here." Sango turned to Inuyasha before closing the door to meet Miroku in the stairwell. "Sometimes I forget that you're a hanyou, you're hearing comes in rather handy." She said good-naturedly, laughing as she shut the door behind her.

Inuyasha tried to hide it but I'd seen the flicker of some off-putting emotion at Sango's words. Even as an upperclass, highly paid business man he could not escape the shame he felt of his own mixed blood. All it took was the mention of hanyou for it to be written on his face.

I couldn't understand it. Even now it was rare for demons and humans to mate, I could only imagine what he'd gone through in his long life. I found nothing wrong with him, in fact I wished that fate would have been kind enough to put me in the position to have a few hanyous of my own.

"So Kagome…" Inuyasha's tentative voice pulled me out of my musings. "I've got a small favor to ask of you, a proposition really."

"And what would that be?" I asked making my way over to the living room. I lowered my languid body down on the couch and turned on the T.V.

I followed what Inuyasha was saying for a few sentences but his voice quickly became muffled in my ears as I listened to the news. Apparently, Naraku was still at large and they'd found the body of a woman police officer in some abandoned building. She'd been raped and brutally murdered. They didn't formally connect the two stories, but I did. I knew it had to have been Naraku. Shakily, my hand lifted the remote to turn the T.V. back off. Inuyasha didn't seem to notice.

"…so will you go with me?" I heard Inuyasha ask. "…as friends of course. Going to gatherings and rubbing elbows isn't really my thing but since Sesshoumaru isn't attending it's only right that I do."

I probably flinched visibly at the mention of Sesshoumaru's name. That coupled with what I'd just learned from the T.V. left me feeling uneasy.

I really needed a drink.

"I'll go with you." I answered hastily. No harm could come from it if Sesshoumaru wasn't going to be there anyway, right? I couldn't imagine facing him after so long. Getting up from the couch, I added. "But I'm going to get ready for bed now so you should probably get home." I hoped Sango hadn't given him any instructions to hover over me.

"Well that was far simpler than I thought it'd be." Inuyasha admitted rubbing the back of his neck as he rose from the couch as well, "I thought for sure I'd have to pull out the 'I saved your life and fixed your car' cards tonight."

"Save those cards for another time." I answered trying my best to work a believable smile on my face. It looked like Sango had forgotten to inform him."Goodnight Inuyasha."

I waited 15 minutes after Inuyasha's car pulled away from my building before grabbing a light jacket and exiting the apartment myself.

Sure, it was late… I was alone… and Naraku was out there somewhere lurking but I wasn't ignorant to his presence and I would be driving, not walking the streets this time. Besides, it would only be just one quick trip to the bar and back. No one would even know I'd ever left the apartment. Nothing was bound to happen, I assured myself.

Word Count: 2519

A.N: Sorry for the wait, hope no one forgot about this story. I don't particularly care too much for this chapter but the next one will be out soon enough and will have Sesshoumaru in it. I already explained in an A.N on another story but college, my dog (of 11 years) passing away, and many other real life occurrences all added up to delay this chapter. I hope everyone understands. My mood was up and down and also my muse wasn't really cooperating either. In the end, writing helped me feel better though.

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btw- it's Christmas Eve