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

-To Sip of Black Velvet-

Chapter 24: The Reflection in my Vanity

A.N. Firstly, this happens to be a slightly shorter chapter but I couldn't have you guys waiting any longer right? =)

Secondly, TSOBV was nominated for three categories in the 2011 4th quarter Dokuga Awards and WON joint third place best Sesshoumaru portrayal! I'm so happy =D. Thank you to everyone who nominated and voted for it! I love you guys.

Thirdly, Warning: Dark content and sexually explicit content (although hopefully not in incredibly descriptive detail) is in this chapter.

"What do you mean you forgot?"

That was the first thing to manage to get even remotely under my skin since my night with Sesshoumaru. Two weeks had passed and for the most part I'd found myself still living blissfully content in the days since, though maybe a bit more tired. I sighed, for all the good heart Inuyasha had, he could be such a bother sometimes.

"Inuyasha you've been in and out of this apartment in the last two weeks and you never even brought it up again. How could you expect me to remember?"

He turned away from me making a dismissive noise in his throat, crossing his suit-clad arms as he continued to stand in my living room stubbornly. Apparently he wasn't willing to budge, insisting for me to accompany him to a function I barely even remembered agreeing to go to. Inuyasha could be much more than a bother actually but he had still been a great friend when I'd been going through everything that I had been and I knew I owed him a lot.

"Stop your huffing, I said that I'd go and I will," I said getting off my comfortable couch, wearing my comfortable lounging clothes. I'd been looking forward to a calm relaxing day to rest my bones. My new schedule was hectic but it seemed that it just wasn't meant to be. "You really should have reminded me though. You're lucky I didn't have to work today," I smiled at him.

"Yeah… well, my driver's waiting downstairs for us so hurry up." Even as he said it I could catch the tension leaving his body, the small grateful smile the flickered on his lips. I guess he really didn't want to go alone. I gave him one last reassuring smile as I headed into my bedroom to change clothes. I supposed that I 'd have to wear makeup and do my hair nicely too.

When I opened my closet I remembered exactly what kind of function I'd agreed to go to and groaned. I didn't even have to glance very hard at the clothes inside to know I didn't have anything nearly nice enough to wear. 'Why did I agree to go to this thing again?'I asked myself as I rummaged through the less-than flashy items. 'I'm going to look like a poor girl on a rich man's arm and of course Inuyasha would forget to remind me… I would've saved some money from my paycheck to buy something nice.'

Sighing, and just about ready to skip over picking out my clothes to instead attend to my hair, my eyes caught on to pale yellow silk hanging discreetly behind the jumble of other less-expensive fabric. Pulling out the dress slowly and running my hands over the smooth cloth, I placed it on my bed and continued to just stare down at it.

I'd forgotten about it. I guess I'd tried to forget about the day it had come into my possession in the first place. It was the one that Kagura had bought me, the dress that Sesshoumaru's wife had purchased. I couldn't possibly wear it though… could I?

Turning my back on the dress for now, I walked over to sit down at my vanity. It was the most beautiful furniture that I had and I ran my fingers over it longingly. It was a cherry wood piece that was crafted lovingly by my father for my mother, and one of the only things my mother had refused to sell before we'd been forced to move into the shrine of my grandfather after my father's death… murder, I mentally corrected.

Sitting down, and staring into the vanity mirror I grabbed my eyeliner and began encircling the water-line of the pools of blue that stared back at me. I couldn't help reflecting on how they'd served their role in aiding the destruction of my youth. They were the first things that Naraku had noticed about me.

..O..

I was 15, naïve and overly-optimistic when I had the displeasure of setting my eyes on Naraku Nigamura, or rather when I'd had the misfortune of having his eyes set on me. I was at my father's shop at the time, helping him set up. It was his new business; he'd always enjoyed crafting, building things. And while he'd practiced as a lawyer for much of my life, he'd always spoken so fondly of the times when he was young, when he and his father had handcrafted most of the furniture at the shrine he grew up at. He'd said that crafting reminded him of simpler times. He'd said it was the one thing that while doing it, he was completely at peace with himself, it was the one thing he loved to do as much as he loved my mother.

He was always saying things like that. About how much he loved us, my mother, little brother, and me, giving me advice, and urging me to go for my dreams. It was part of the reason that my priestess powers had gone untrained, because my father didn't want my future to be made up for me. He didn't want for his little girl to feel as though she had to become a part of the special department of monks and priestesses charged with keeping the peace between humans and demons. But I guess he'd finally realized he couldn't really ask me to follow my dreams when he hadn't followed his. After a small move and a long talk with our family, he quit practicing law and opened up his store. I'd never seen him more content. We were all happy that he was happy.

To this day I cannot fathom how incredibly wrong it was for Naraku Nigamura to have been one of his first customers. How twisted and upsetting it was for him have taken such a keen and dark interest, in what my father purely made.

I'd walked out of the backroom only to be halted by a shiver that ran up my spine, by a mental cringe I had no control over. I dropped one of the tools I'd been carrying, the loud clang bringing attention to my presence. I scurried to try and pick it up and get out of sight but it had already been too late. My fate had already been sealed… my father's too.

My father's eyes shifted to me but those were not the eyes that forced my body into tensing in apprehension. Naraku's crimson orbs were hard and heated. The gaze he leveled me with, full of intrigue.

I was holding my breath as my father smiled and introduced me as his daughter, as he introduced his new customer as Mr. Nigamura. Naraku wasted no time placing himself further into my father's good graces.

"If you're going to be making such a special piece for me Higurashi, you can surely refer to me as Naraku," he stated without ever taking his eyes off me. He finished the statement with what I was sure was meant to be a smile but only seemed to me to be a predatory grin. His voice, and that smile…I felt my stomach flop, my organs twist deeply in my gut, as an urgent foreboding crept it's way to settle down in the back of my head.

I could feel my powers flaring already, powers that for most of my young life had stayed dormant, not that I hadn't met youkai before, I had. I suppose I'd just never met one like him.

It should have been a bigger warning than I'd allowed it to be but I was young and incapable of forethought. I didn't want to upset this man who was taking an interest in my father's work, no matter how uneasy I felt around him. I struggled to stamp down my powers as he offered his clawed hand to me in greeting.

I know I burned him, saw the blood red of his eyes flash darkly but he merely smiled that un-smile a little wider before letting go and turning to my father again.

"You're daughter has such strange eyes," Naraku's dark voice said as though I wasn't still standing there. "From your wife's side I presume?"

My father proudly explained about our bloodline of monks and mikos, and how the blue of my eyes was an inherited trait passed down through generations to those of us with power. Naraku nodded as if I hadn't just burned him, as if he hadn't already learned what I was. It was like he wanted me to know of the deception, of his game.

Before leaving and taking his sinister aura with him, Naraku spoke again of the dark oak chest he was commissioning from my father. He said that if he was happy with it he'd surely be coming back for more pieces in the future. His red eyes flickered to me once more before he left and somehow at that moment I knew that he'd be coming back again in the future… despite how he felt about the chest.

I was right. Naraku kept coming back, kept making more insistent appearances, and while I tried to avoid him by lessening my time spent at my father's shop, it became hard when he began getting closer to my father outside of his business.

Before long he was coming to our house, eating with my mother, my little brother, my entire family for dinners. He loved settling his blood colored, blood chilling eyes on everything in our home, especially me.

No one else could feel it, could feel the darkness that poured off of him behind his false facade, that threatened to strangle me and smother out my light. No one could sense anything… except for me and him and I think that was part of his game too. Part of the thrill he felt in pressing his dark aura against me as he conversed innocently with my mother.

I should have told then, should have let someone know. I wonder how differently things could have turned out I had. But I didn't. And then it was too late.

I remember waking up abruptly to something clasping over my mouth, sharp pains prickling in my cheeks.

"I've been watching you," I heard a deep voice in my ear, and finally registered the shadowy form bearing down on me. I was in my home, my bedroom, my little brother one room away, my parents only three doors down as Naraku's hungry red gaze burned into me.

"I'm tired of playing Miko," he whispered to me, the words curling in my ears. "I can't take you teasing me anymore."

My eyes grew wide and I could just make out his grin as I tried to force him off of me, tried to scream, tried to squirm out of his grasp. But his body was too heavy, the clawed hand over my mouth too strong and muffling my cries.

My powers flared strongly and he groaned as he started slashing down my night clothes with his other hand. Where he slashed, his claws caught my skin, and my powers would surge again as I screamed behind his firm fingers.

When he felt I was bare and bloody enough to his gaze, he stopped and my powers receded back.

"I loved that Kagome," His voice came out breathless and husky and I whimpered and tried to shake my head no as I felt his claws grazing up my inner thigh. "I knew you were perfect. I knew it would feel like that."

He wasn't gentle. His claws tore into me, his fingers shifted and grew until a tentacle covered in my blood served as his treat. He didn't completely take me that first night though I could feel him grow firm against me during the struggle.

When he was finally done with me, he whispered in my ear that I was special and told me that I should never tell, threatened to slaughter my family one by one. He stroked my hair gently as he smiled genuinely while speaking of defiling my mother and slitting my little brother's throat.

He said he'd make sure that my father watched before he killed him too. And then he said he'd just take me away with him anyway. He said that I was his little miko.

When he finally let me go, I curled up in my bed and cried until the sun came up. I didn't even notice him leave. I can't really remember what excuse I used to explain away my visible bruises, my unsightly scars.

It increasingly got worse after that and I didn't work up the courage to tell anyone for over two years. By that time I wasn't the naïve overly-optimistic girl I had been anymore. Naraku managed to make good on one of his threats by piercing my father through the chest with a miasma filled tentacle when he tried to protect me. I didn't even know what miasma was. The only thing I knew was that the monk and priestess that were waiting for him to come for me like he usually did, the monk and priestess that were a part of the same group that I could have grown up to join, didn't act quick enough. My father died as Naraku was being sealed.

It wasn't until later that I found out about the bodies. About the other girls that weren't "special" enough for him, the girls that eerily resembled me in one way or another but were powerless.

He had stuffed bits of them in the special dark oak wood chest that he had my father make him. I remembered vomiting at the news.

..O..

"Are you okay?" Inuyasha's voice pulled me from my memories. I had been unconsciously finishing getting ready, it seemed. As I looked into the vanity I could see that my makeup was complete and my hair done up in an elegant chignon. I'd even put on the yellow dress. My eyes were still glistening with the telltale sign of unshed tears though.

Quickly I shook off the past. I'd been dealing with the nightmare that had been my life for over 5 years, partially through singing, an activity that had seemed to do what crafting things had done for my father. I had finally overcome it and had finally moved on from that horrible hand that fate had dealt me and on to a new hand, much different but still full of it's own strife in falling in love with Sesshoumaru. Being with Sesshoumaru had given me a sense of peace that I hadn't felt sense before Naraku.

Now I could only hope that Naraku would continue to fail and make another appearance in my new life since things with me and Sesshoumaru seemed to be getting better, now that I was able to hope for a happier future.

"…Kagome?"

"Sorry." I turned to Inuyasha, giving him a smile. "Yeah, I'm okay."

He smiled gently back at me before coming forward and pulling me into a strong hug. It felt a little awkward, but reassuring all the same.

"You look too beautiful to be smelling like tears." He stated and I smiled again, drawing back from him a bit.

"Thanks, Inuyasha."

He dropped his arms from around me, perhaps realizing the awkwardness and I watched him run a nervous hand over the back of his neck.

"If you really don't want to go, you don't have to." He assured me.

"You would say that after I've already gotten ready, wouldn't you?" I joked.

"Yeah, whatever," he stated, obviously happy that I changed the mood of the atmosphere. "So you're done then?"

"Yeah, I guess I am," I stated, looking myself over in the vanity mirror once again and trying not to dwell too much on where the dress I was wearing came from.

"Alright then, let's go," he said, looping my arm in his before ushering me out the door.

Word Count: 2663

A.N: I hope this chapter didn't seem too rushed or anything. I had to beat my muse into giving me something and it insisted that I delve back into Kagome's past a bit more. With a bit of luck the next chapter should come both swiftly and smoothly but until then how about you leave me some reviews ;)?

And thanks again, to everyone who voted for this story!

-E.C.