Chapter 27: The Aftermath
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Sleep held the girl in its clutches, a dreamless affair that allowed her body the time it needed to repair, but the feeling that she was forgetting something picked away at the drowsy fog around her.
Something- important. Important enough that it tugged at her unconscious mind, demanded immediate attention.
She tried to remember what had happened, why her body felt as though it had come out of the woodchipper.
In slow polaroid pictures, Kagome flipped through each event as though it were just that, pictures of places and things she had no connection to.
Inuyasha in a black and white screen, slouched on the concrete floor, the only color in the frame was the red from each wound.
Jii-chan in a chrome background; first, his grayish-blue spirit came to frame. The other slides were of him growing in size, towering above the cemetery, each picture showing his subtle changes into a beast.
The last portraits were of herself, in a grain filter; each slide displayed her ranging emotions. From shock, to determination, casting all the colors of her fear.
And at the very end, one more frame in too vivid coloring; a gentle face and wide-appreciative eyes, the mystery man posed, his arms outstretched. He was waiting for her.
Kagome woke with a jump, regretting the sudden movement almost immediately, "Ite!"
"Hey, hey, hey. Take it easy kid!"
He was there, hovering above her form with open palms, Inuyasha.
'He came for me.'
She struggled to sit, and he was there for that too, easing her into a sitting position. He looked a mess, with ruffled hair, and the same wrinkled suit he wore last time. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and the hardness over his eyes, told of the harshness she escaped during her sleeping hours.
For once, he looked like the wreck, somehow this made him look even more like her salvation because of it.
"Water" she croaked, surprising herself with the sound of it. When she lifted a hand to her throat, Kagome spotted the bandages that ran from her wrists, down to her forearms.
Water was offered to her in a glass cup, and she greedily took it, draining the cup before wiping the excess on the back of her hand.
"More?" Inuyasha offered and she gave an eager nod.
He reached beside her, filling her cup with a plastic jug that sat on the bedside table.
"What happened?" She groaned, barely able to follow his moves with her tired lids.
Inuyasha glanced at her from the side of his eye, "You were out of it, kid. It's been two days," then his gaze snapped away, focused on pouring her another cup.
While he did this, Kagome took the time to register her surroundings; she wasn't back at the apartment, that much was for sure. Although this room was just as lovely as that one, with the same decorative touches one might find in an upscale hotel.
If anything, it was just smaller in size, no room for an unnecessary formal lounging area.
No room for a grand piano either, but it would do.
If it hadn't been for the extravagant touches within the room; the Queen size bed with silk sheets, the large plasma tv, and high ceiling windows that gave a view of the ocean. She might have worried that he'd gone back on his word, taken her to a hospital, when she had been so happy to come back under his protection.
The monitors beside her filled her with doubt, already she could feel the many wires and tubes that hooked themselves to her, so that anxiety began to bloom within.
"Here" more water was provided, and she gingerly drank it.
He sat beside her on the bed, waiting for her with uncharacteristic amounts of patience.
"Ugh... I feel like I've been run over by a train"
Inuyasha didn't smile like she thought he would. Instead, his face had a haunted shadow over it, one that didn't fit the natural scape of his face. Going on instinct, Kagome tried to sit up, gasping softly as her sides pulled painfully.
"What are you doing? Stay down you idiot!"
She might have listened, the pain was certainly nothing to sneeze at; but something about the way in which he hovered, but did not touch, that gave her a funny feeling.
"Just-" she hissed low, closing her eyes to stop the threat of tears, "give me a second, okay?"
It took longer than either party would have liked, but eventually Kagome could breathe easier, able to uncurl her spine. She took in his tense brooding form, his hands clenched on either side did not escape her notice; with a great deal of effort, Kagome hit his stomach in a quick slap from the back of her hand.
"What's with you?"
Inuyasha grunted, his hand lifting to cover the area on impulse; but no growl came, not even a snap, and suddenly she was very worried.
"Okay, seriously. What's up?" his gaze lowered, staring absently at the crease in the sheets, making it clear he wasn't going to answer. With an angry huff, Kagome pulled forward, forgetting she was strapped down.
The wires yanked and dragged her back down, her soft yelp the only sound that escaped her before his trance was broken.
Inuyasha snarled at her, his hands there, easing her back down to the mountain of pillows.
"Watch it, woman! Can't you sit still for one God damn minute?!"
His gruffness elated her, his hands fussed around her form, pulling the wires out of her way. When her hand reached up to dislodge the breathing tube from her nose, he swatted them away.
"Stay the fuck still, I mean it wench; you don't know how bad you look right now."
"Gee thanks" her tone was sour, doing its job in masking the wave of relief when he snapped back.
Too many times it felt as though she would lose touch with him if he stayed within his void for too long.
"I mean it, Wench. I don't know how you made it out of there alive, but-" his eyes took her in, from her curled tangled hair to her heart-shaped face that sported the evidence of her endurance, "you never seize to amaze me."
Whatever she had expected was not that, her heart was the first to give a reaction; it thumped inside her at a frantic beat, embarrassing her further as the damn machine tattled on her with its incriminating beeps.
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Inuyasha smelt her embarrassments but didn't understand it, moving closer to her on the bed, he had the insisted urge to clarify it for her.
"Woman, I don't think you get what just happened to you. By all accounts you should be ten feet under, if not turned into a pile of mulch."
"Again, thanks for the grim reminder."
Shaking his head, he went on, "No, no. You're not getting it, Kagome" he was leaning over her now, peering deep into her eyes, "I knew you were determined, if not to say stubborn, and that you were a smart one; but I underestimated your strength. You did good kid, real good."
The machine beeped quick short burst, doing a fantastic reenactment of what her heart was currently doing. So that to distract them from the awkward noise, she innocently said, "If you think I'm smart, wait till I take my tests, you'll be surprised."
It was a wonder to Kagome that he could move her so fast, at the same time, while being so gentle with her. The look of outrage flashed across his face, pulling her up into a seating position in a blinding rush, somehow his quick moves didn't pull on any of her sensitive areas.
"Bitch, I'm going to assume it's the trauma talking, or that your ass is still in shock. Cause you did not just insinuate you'd put yourself in plain sight, after the shit you just went through!"
When she just shrugged her shoulders in response, he felt the first waves of his repressed emotions slip, coming out as it normally did, in a fit of rage.
"Woman! You have got the damn preservation senses of a fucking squirrel!"
He had turned fully on the bed when he grabbed her, so that now he was practically on top of her, still this little fact seemed to escape him. Kagome, however, was not so lucky.
His hands gripped her shoulders, his face hovered angrily just inches away from her own. His breath hit her face, his eyes bore down into her own, and the damn machine spoke as though the demon softly growling couldn't already hear her frantic beat.
She could get lost in moments like these, unfortunately for him, his anger was tugging at her own. Making it impossible not to answer his growl with one of her own, no matter how weak the sound was.
"What do you expect me to do? Freak out?"
"Yes!" his growl rose to drown hers out, oblivious to the fact that he had crawled onto the bed to properly glower at her, his focus set on the bandaged and bruised human. "When a blood thirsty Demon takes you; the correct response is to Freak the fuck out!"
Kagome dislodged his hold on her, ignoring the uncomfortable stab of pain from her sides, too busy pulling herself out of the silk sheets to kneel on the bed as he was.
"If I didn't freak out the first time a demon kidnapped me, what makes you think I'm going to do it now?!"
She rose on her knees, as tall and as straight as she could manage; they traded logs of fire, stroking each other's anger into higher ranges.
"Because- you Idiot girl, I would never actually hurt you!"
The silence stretched on following his declaration, the wind being taken from her comeback at his open show of emotions.
He was shaking, with rage or something else, neither of the two could tell. Inuyasha just stared at his hands, his voice thick with his growls and barely repressed emotions.
"I might talk a big game, but I would never... I could never..."
Her hands landed softly over his own, drawing his eyes back to those crystal blues. She gave him the purest smile he'd ever witnessed, ever deserved to witness, after he had failed to protect her.
"Inuyasha... I know that already, you're good Inuyasha." She was prepared when his nose twitched ever so subtly, knowing now he could quite literally sniff out her lies, Kagome concentrated on the feeling she had when he had come into view.
Looking like her guardian angel, finding her amongst the crowd, his presence enough insurance of safety to allow her to break down.
His nose finished its assessment, his face grew annoyed, then he snatched his hands away as if she had hit them.
Crossing them over his chest, he simply growled out- "If you know that, then you should know- Naraku ain't like me, he'll-"
"Hunt me down and kill me, yeah I get he's a different type of bad, you can tell that from being in the room with the guy for five minutes." When his face pulled into that mixture of confusion and anger, she went on "Inuyasha, it's fine, really. I'm fine... well not fine, but close enough.
Look, I wasn't kidnapped out of whim, Naraku he-"
She paused to wet her lips, "he asked me to save him, no; he demanded that I did or else he'd kill me. Inuyasha, Naraku was dying, he would have tortured me if I didn't do something about it."
"Was? You telling me the bastard ain't dead yet?"
Kagome shook her head, unable to meet his gaze as she fought hard not to think about the other man, "I don't know, one minute he was there, and the next he was just gone. I hope he's dead though..."
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Inuyasha couldn't blame himself for leaning closer, entranced by the way in which her eyes filled with a silent rage.
Humans were weak, not by fault, but by genetics.
They often fell easily into their own fears, whims and vices. Those who could escape those voids struggled their entire lives to keep from them.
When her eyes lifted to lock with his, their fire and resilience had him reevaluating what he thought he knew.
"Inuyasha," her soft voice drew his attention, but the sudden plea in her face kept it, "there's more."
Kagome drew a steadying breath, knowing he had every right to know, his life was just as endangered as was hers.
"Naraku wanted me to save him, he asked me to- asked me to-"
"To heal him" Inuyasha finished, her eyes widen in surprise, "I figured the bastard would do whatever it took to save his own ass."
"B-but how did you-?!"
"We know a lot more than you think, Woman. Naraku's gun is serious business, you don't just walk away from one of those bullets; I took three to the chest, I might be strong but I ain't 'that' strong."
"You mean to tell me; you knew all along?"
He rolled his eyes, "No, we didn't know. Sesshomaru suspected, and when I was able to remember you had shot Naraku, he wanted you off the streets asap. It wasn't confirmed until the day at the cemetery, seeing the dead is just another sign of laten talents, healing the unhealable is another."
Kagome huffed, rubbing her face in agitation, "This entire time, I have been driving myself crazy, thinking if anyone found out what I did that night-" she stopped, taking her hands away from her face, a humorless smile taking over, "I told myself that if people knew all the crazy Shit that happens to me, I was on a one-way trip to the loony farm."
Inuyasha's eyes widened, hearing the girl curse for the first time since he met her, this too somehow managed to amuse him. Turning his face, he hoped to hide the teasing smirk from her; her sudden smack on his arm told him he had failed.
"Can you not laugh at me? This is serious, Inuyasha!"
"I'm sure 'You' think it is, Woman. But it's not that big of a deal, trust me."
"How is healing demons, and seeing the dead, 'not' a big deal? I'm practically a freak!"
Inuyasha laced his fingers through his hair, distracting her ire for a second, as Kagome imagined what the difference in texture might be between brown and silver.
"How can I explain this..." he rubbed the back of his neck, aware she was inching closer to him in her eagerness, having waited far too long for a glimpse of the truth. "It won't make sense, I ain't good at explaining things."
"I don't care, tell me anyway!"
"Okay, geez, calm down.
I guess first, you have to know that back, some hundreds of years in the past, demons and such weren't the myth they are today. In fact, they reined by the thousands, not just in Japan, but all over the world too.
During that time, some humans were blessed with spiritual powers; maybe it was Kami's way of giving the humans a fighting chance, not that it helped much. Demons back then didn't have the restrictions they do today, and they had no problem hunting these humans down to extinction, you can imagine what types of hell that was."
Kagome absorbed his every word, elated that he was sharing so openly, she had a million questions already but held them in for fear of stopping this stream of information.
"We're talking hordes of them, all hungry for blood and power too, and willing to do anything to get it. If they weren't taking their hunger out on the humans, they would turn against each other; each demon for themselves type deal.
Even the strong ones felt the pressure from it; Sesshomaru's land was the only place where demons weren't tearing each other limb from limb, that's just cause the bastard wouldn't put up with that shit. Eventually, the weaker demons died off, the stronger ones got smart; and the humans stopped breeding those with special abilities.
Now and days, it's rare to find a human with anything more than your average heightened intuition, but not completely unheard of. In a crowd of hundreds, a few would walk out with that 'it' factor, even then the most a human can do is play Psychic.
So, yeah, kid. We knew, but we didn't know where you fell within that range."
She sat quiet, taking in everything he had said, 'So, the weaker demons died off, the strong ones stopped hunting humans, and humans stopped coming out special, huh? I wonder if those things are connected somehow.'
Kagome had to leave it for a time when she could really think it over. Instead, she focused on the next big question in her mind.
"Does that mean, you know where I fall now?"
"More or less," Inuyasha scratched the bridge of his nose, trying to find a way to explain something he'd never thought would need explaining, "It ain't like there's a scale for this type of stuff; hell, most people don't ever awaken that part of them."
"Then there's me." Kagome muttered, distracted by the idea that the gift her grandfather thought she had, might be nothing more than a statistic.
"Yeah, there's you, alright. As if things weren't complicated enough."
"What do you mean?"
His sigh spoke volumes, that tired look over his features multiplied, to where Kagome wasn't sure if she wanted to know anymore.
"It was already going to be hard to try and get you home, back when all you were was a witness. Now that we know you're... more, I just- I don't think I can help you out here, kid."
Kagome assessed his words; hadn't she known there would be no going back? They practically had drilled that bit into her skull. She was being kidnapped, held against her will, kept under protection, under a 'special' type of witness relocation program.
Whatever way in which they broke the news to her, it was all the same, and her response remained the same.
She shrugged her shoulders, "S'long as I can take my test; I don't care."
His growl rose again, forcing her eyes back up to his, "Woman, have you not been listening?!"
"Haven't you? Why do you keep bringing it up like there was ever a chance of me going back to the whole 'Average schoolgirl' bullshit!?
Inuyasha, I've just been kidnapped and toyed around with by the demon equivalent of Tsutomu Miyasaki. Even before then, with you and the whole shooting thing; I've already made peace with this shitty situation, why haven't you?"
They glowered at each other, deep blue narrowing on brown, and vice versa.
"Because!" He snapped, radiating frustration, looking as if he were at the end of his ropes, "-Because, you weren't supposed to get hurt..." Her eyes widened at his declaration, but there was far too much that he needed to say to give way to her reactions.
"Naraku had a problem with me, not you, me! I could've played this better; instead, I just got you in deeper shit than what you were already in."
Inuyasha clenched his fits, the anger that had overthrown him, had stayed even after sunrise. His demon had been livid beyond all measures, and not even the weakening of his blood would settle the beast.
"It was my fault..." it had taken Sesshomaru, and his team of elites, just to 'find' the girl. While he had been unable to move, crippled by the violent edge of his demon, "If I hadn't made you leave..."
Had he sought Sesshomaru out from the start, had he gone with them to ensure she was safe, if he had sent someone better, "I knew Naraku was waiting for an opportunity too..."
Naraku had been on the outskirts, waiting for the smallest opening. Always just below their radar, watching, always watching.
Inuyasha had assumed it would be the girl's doing would she ever be caught, but it had been him all along, "Practically handed you over on a silver fucking tray!"
"Inuyasha, it wasn't your-"
"Don't you fucking tell me that shit is not on me! I mean it Kagome, just don't. I was supposed to keep you safe; I was supposed to- to-"
His demon howled inside of him, angry and restless despite the moon's long descent. He was supposed to be strong enough, keep her safe, but he had failed as he always would.
He didn't notice when his claws had pierced his flesh, only realized what had happened when Kagome had given a startled cry, that noise seemed to be engraved inside his mind like her own personal brand.
"Inuyasha!" She admonished, her hands balling up the sheets just to press them down on his palms; he would have told her how useless her plight was...
But the warmth from her hands had captivated him, and when she finished, her hands held his loosely despite her work being finished.
"Look it here, I'm only going to say this once, okay?" She pulled on his hands, so they rested on her lap, too determined in getting her message clear to notice things like the steady flush across the man's face.
"Naraku was going to find me, and get to me, regardless; alright? Nothing you, or anyone else for that matter, could do to stop that. And need I remind you, you never promised to keep me safe?"
"It doesn't matter!" Inuyasha protested, his attempt at pulling his hands back halfhearted.
"Yes. It does!" She held strong, refusing to let go, "Why would my safety be on you? You barely know me."
"I owe you my life!"
"And I, you! So we're even, okay? Besides-" Kagome smiled tenderly for him, forcing whatever sour taste he had in his mouth back, "Naraku isn't only after you, the creep told me so himself. He's after both of us, so the way I see it, we can either keep pointing fingers here. Or we can band together, the whole 'join forces' thing, he can't get both of us if we stick together."
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His jaw went slack, mind unable to comprehend her words, her motives. Once again, he tried to sniff out her lie, already knowing what he would find long before the first whiff.
Inuyasha fought his smile back, her words had reached something inside of him; and although their knees touched, hands folded over one another, the urge to get closer to her pushed at him.
Allowing himself the freedom to give into his urge, Inuyasha leaned forward, bumping his forehead against hers before simply resting there. Her natural scent was drowned out by medicine, but her sweet breath upon his face made it all better, urging the hanyou to simply sit there and let it wash over him.
"Keh, stupid girl. As if you could ever protect me, but just in case; we can stay together for just a little longer."
His ears picked up her heart's thunder before the machine did, being as close as he was to her now, there was very little he did not notice about the girl.
Too enthralled in the blues of her eyes, the softness of her hands, to keep his guard fully up; the steps that came towards them went unnoticed, until a single knock on the door came.