"Tensions are escalating at our southeastern borders." An aged, irritable inu youkai punctuated his words with a thunderous slam of his fist onto the floor, sending a tremor through the tatami. Seated around him on zabutons, the clan leaders exchanged uneasy glances, the flickering candles casting shadows that mirrored the room's growing unease.
"Inu no Taisho, this encroachment cannot go unchecked!" he bellowed, his voice resonating with a mix of frustration and urgency, drawing approving murmurs from his fellow clan heads.
At the room's forefront, Inu no Taisho, the venerable dog general, remained an island of calm amidst the storm. His gaze, icy and inscrutable, swept over his assembled lieutenants, each clamoring for war. The low rumble of discontent from the lords filled the room, turning the air thick with tension.
Seated at the sides of Inu no Taisho, Toga and Inuyasha observed silently. Though neither commanded troops, their presence was crucial. One would inherit the mantle of Taisho, and these strategic meetings were vital learning grounds.
As the discussions swirled around him, Toga's thoughts wandered. A war between the bakenekos and inugamis would inevitably spill into the mortal realm. This was no mere territorial skirmish but a potential calamity that could ensnare humans in its wake.
His mind lingered on Kagome. Was she safe? His attempts to glean information about her whereabouts from Kimiko had been fruitless. The Sesshoumaru clan, charged with her care, remained elusive, their mansion a fortress of silence. Yet, Toga knew the distaste inugami held for humans; associating with them was taboo, let alone offering them refuge.
A stray memory of Kagome occupied his agitated mind, her being splayed underneath him on the grass, begging for him to take her. Her deep chocolate eyes filled with denied lust they both shared. His face almost flushed, and he shook the image away, focusing instead on the cacophony of voices clamoring for Inu no Taisho's verdict on the bakeneko threat.
Toga's gaze drifted to Inuyasha. His brother had been oddly detached all day, his attention drifting to the dimming light outside the window screens. Toga couldn't be sure but it almost looked like there was a ghost of a smile tugging the corner of his brother's mouth.
By some stroke of fortune, Kagome had survived the tumultuous events of the previous night unscathed. Either Fuyuki hadn't informed Kimiko of her escapades in the great hall, or Fuyuki herself was too overwhelmed with other duties to administer punishment. Regardless, Kagome found little solace as she scrubbed the washiki, the mansion's commonly used lavatory, which had seen a heavy footfall the night before. Her fingers ached from the continuous scrubbing, and she could sense the approach of dusk, the day's weariness weighing upon her.
A sudden sneeze of hers broke the silence of the empty lavatory, echoing off the walls and startling her for a moment.
After returning from the prolonged clan gathering, which was set to continue the next day, Inuyasha's behavior grew increasingly odd. He wolfed down his dinner in a few hurried bites, nearly downing his chopsticks in the process, before abruptly declaring a need for fresh air.
"Inuyasha?" Toga called after him, puzzled by his brother's hasty departure.
Inuyasha paused, his impatience manifesting in a rhythmic tapping on the tatami floor. He was an open book, wearing his emotions on his sleeve, his inability to disguise his feelings a well-known trait.
"What's troubling you?" Toga inquired, sensing something amiss.
Inuyasha ceased his tapping, hesitating. "It's just... I'm not used to being cooped up indoors all day," he attempted to joke, his laugh unconvincing. "Too much time in the woods, I guess."
Toga knew better than to believe this excuse, but he also recognized Inuyasha wasn't ready to divulge the truth.
"I see," Toga replied, eyeing his brother with a mix of concern and curiosity, which Inuyasha blatantly ignored.
"Don't wait up for me!" Inuyasha called back, making a swift exit. Toga might have followed, were he not preoccupied with his own quest to find Kagome. A decision that did not lack in irony.
Kagome, having completed her final task of hauling waste to the compost, relished the lack of supervision. The sensitive-nosed demons were only too happy to leave this chore to her, not bothering to question her comings and goings. She took advantage of this moment, slipping into the night unseen.
Reaching the tree where they'd met the previous night, she paused, her senses acutely aware of the peaceful, albeit dark, surroundings. Suddenly, Inuyasha's voice broke her reverie as he landed beside her with a soft thud, the ground vibrating slightly under her feet.
"It's not very ladylike to keep others waiting, you know," he teased, his tone light despite the darkness looming heavily on them.
Kagome chose to remain silent, savoring the familiarity of his voice, the energy that mirrored her own Inuyasha's. Though she had caught only a brief glimpse of this Inuyasha, his resemblance to the one she knew was uncanny.
"Can you see me?" she asked, aware demons had vastly superior night sight.
"Yes." He replied softly, he knew she must have felt disadvantaged to not see him in the dark, but it didn't seem to scare her the least.
"The guards can see us as well, so it would be safer for us to continue this conversation on higher ground."
He pointed his finger at the top of the tree until quickly realizing that, of course, she could not see the gesture.
He walked beside her. "Can I..." Inuyasha carefully requested and wrapped his arm around Kagome.
Her heartbeat quickened suddenly. But it wasn't from fear, that much Inuyasha could smell. He tightened his hold on her waist, hauling them both up the tree with one effortless jump. She grabbed the front of his suikan and he kind of wished he would have climbed up slower.
Once settled on the branch, Kagome quickly distanced herself, the proximity to this Inuyasha who was yet not her Inuyasha disorienting her.
"Sooooo..." Inuyasha drew out the vowel, attempting to fill the growing silence.
"You still haven't explained how you know me. We've never met before, have we?"
Kagome bit her lip, deep in thought. Convincing this Inuyasha to help her was imperative, but the truth of her past was complex and tangled. She had spent so much energy hiding her real story from Toga, yet here, with Inuyasha's preincarnation, she sensed a need for honesty. Perhaps their meeting was fated.
"We haven't met, not exactly." She began an explanation that would take some time and some suspension of disbelief.
"I'm from the future, about 3000 years ahead. A curse sent me back 500 years, intertwining my fate with that of your future self and my own past incarnation." Her story unfolded, weaving the intricate tapestry of Inuyasha, Kikyou, Naraku, the time-traveling well, and the Shikon no Tama.
Inuyasha didn't interrupt her even once, but silently listened to her lengthy explanation.
"Hmm. So, if you're involved with my incarnation in the future, that must mean that I don't get to live to my retirement age," he mused casually, digesting his own foretold demise.
"You... You believe me then?" Kagome asked in disbelief.
Inuyasha just scratched his chin thoughtfully. "It all fits together," he admitted, a note of acceptance in his tone.
Kagome was dumbfounded at his calmness. "How? How does any of this make sense to you?" She questioned, wishing to have that same unfazed attitude.
He chuckled, a familiar rasp in his laughter that Kagome recognized. "I've seen a lot in my life, and trust me, this isn't the strangest shit I've encountered."
"But how can you be sure I'm not making this up? I can't prove any of it," Kagome admitted and began to wonder if he was the crazy one of the two for believing her so easily.
"You don't need to prove it," Inuyasha replied earnestly. "I felt something two moons ago, a surge of energy that seemed to resonate within me. No one else noticed it, but it was there. When you appeared at the party, and when you called my name, I felt it again." His voice softened, conveying a sense of wonder.
"What does all this mean?" Kagome asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Well, crazy future priestess lady," Inuyasha answered with mirth in his voice. "It means that our souls have a special bond. It seems that our reincarnations cannot escape each other even when separated by time."
Kagome's heart fluttered at the thought. She was beginning to like this rendition of Inuyasha. He had that boyish childishness to him, but unlike his future self, this Inuyasha wasn't bitter. Kagome's chin dropped at the realization.
Would this have been how Inuyasha had grown up to be if he hadn't been cruelly depraved of a decent childhood.
"So, to recap," Inuyasha interjected, breaking her train of thought. "Kikyou's gone, and you're stuck with my future self. Kikyou and he were lovers, but what about you and him?"
The expression on her face gave away her answer long before her words did. She bit her lip again and blushed.
"I... We... It's complicated," she sighed, the absurdity of her situation dawning on her. She knew he was staring at her, even though she could not see. This was probably the most surreal conversation she had ever had in her life. And she had had her share of those, running around three time periods, trying to obliterate talking spider demons, having a fling with her father-in-law, fighting with a dead clay copy of her soul, lying about her gout to her future friends trying to hide her demon hunting past-times and she was currently a housemaid to a near-immortal powerful demoness. Her life was a tapestry of the extraordinary and surreal.
"I'm not sure about his feelings..." Kagome silently answered and thought of Inuyasha. Her Inuyasha.
"Well then." The other Inuyasha chuckled. "Seems like reincarnating doesn't get rid of stupid."
Her blush only took a deeper shade of rouge.
Kagome had barely crossed the threshold when she was halted by Fuyuki, who stood imposingly beside the outer shoji.
"What the hell are you getting yourself into, princess?" the amami rabbit whispered harshly, her eyes darting around to ensure their conversation remained private.
Attempting to feign ignorance, Kagome stuttered, "What do you m-" but Fuyuki cut her feeble theatrics off.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You and Master Inuyasha. This is the second time you've sneaked out to meet him."
Kagome's heart sank. Any mention of their rendezvous to Fuyuki could jeopardize her plans of escaping and returning to her own time. She knew pleading or explaining the truth about time travel and reincarnations would either fall on deaf ears or brand her as insane.
"I... I..." Kagome struggled to fabricate a believable lie, but Fuyuki's piercing gaze demanded the truth.
"Master Inuyasha was exiled from this realm for fraternizing with humans. It never ended well for him, or for them," Fuyuki warned, her voice laced with a mix of concern and sternness.
Kagome absorbed this new information about Inuyasha's past with a growing curiosity, realizing how little she actually knew about him. They had spent the whole night only talking about her, but she really didn't know anything about the current Inuyasha. She had been too baffled by him actually believing her to ask anything about his life.
"Neither Master Toga nor Master Inuyasha are for you," Fuyuki concluded firmly.
Kagome stared at Fuyuki and matched the intensity of her eyes. It was all such a chaos. She didn't know down from up anymore. Her feelings were in a turmoil she didn't know how she could ever survive from. Her heart had no place.
"I know!" Kagome nearly cried out and startled the older woman. There was a world of hurt behind the blazing eyes of the human woman.
"I know." She repeated and pushed her way past Fuyuki, not wanting for the demon to see the tears that spilled down her cheeks.
Inuyasha tried to sneak his way back in, just as a precautionary measurement, even though he had used a great deal of his youki to mask her scent and he had rolled in some of the compost in Kimiko's garden. By the disgusted looks of Toga's guards and staff, his reputation no doubt would gain new dimensions with his choice of perfume.
He almost made it all the way to the bathing room until he sensed his brother's youki approaching with thunderous speed. Immediately afterwards, Toga appeared next to him in a state of great urgency.
"Inuyasha!" Toga appeared, panting and grabbing his brother's suikan, oblivious to its foul smell. "At the party two days ago... did you see a human woman?"
Inuyasha's eyes widened. Toga's voice was not berating like one would have assumed from the subject matter - it was desperate.
"What?" he asked for clarification.
Toga's grip on Inuyasha's suikan tightened with the haste of his words. "There was a rumor about a human causing a commotion at the party. Did you see her?"
Inuyasha stared at his younger brother, full awareness dawning on him. Inuyasha recognized the symptoms immediately, having suffered from the same ailment himself.
His brother was in love. With a human.
Inuyasha clenched his fists and cast his eyes away, a painful memory squeezing his chest.
Anything that was in his power to protect his little brother form the same ostracism he had had to suffer for so long, he would not shy away from doing. He would not wish the loss of a loved one upon even his greatest enemy – let alone unto his own flesh and blood. Humans, with their fleeting lifespan, only served to cause misery with their flickering love.
This was something Inuyasha had experienced firsthand and had severely been punished for.
"No, Toga, I didn't see one," Inuyasha replied calmly.
The persisting, madly glistening hope in his brother's would not die so easily, so Inuyasha decided to fortify his lie.
"I saw the servant in question who caused the ruckus. It was a kitsune, pretty fine looking one, I'll admit." He forced out a laugh, trying to sound believable. "Trust me, the lords and the ladies were so hammered by that time of the night that most of them couldn't been able to tell the difference between their thumb and their asshole." He paused for a new thought. "Not that they can distinguish the difference even while sober, either."
"What's that to you?" Inuyasha asked and leaned his shoulders against the wall. "That human."
There was one more connection Kagome shared to inu youkais she had clearly left unmentioned.
Toga remained quiet for a while before clearing his throat. He couldn't possibly admit the true state of things to his brother, a brother who had lost so much for his involvement with humans. It was like a cruel joke it was happening again in this family.
"I..." Toga began, not actually sure what to answer. A truth, a some sort of truth. "I met a powerful priestess in the human realm. She was supposed to work for Sesshoumaru. I owe her."
Inuyasha scrutinized his brother, sensing the untold story beneath his composed façade. He placed a reassuring hand on Toga's shoulder. "If it's important, I'll help you find her." He smiled reassuringly.
Of course, he had no intention to do so.
As Toga nodded in gratitude, Inuyasha's heart battled with mixed emotions. He told himself it was brotherly love driving him, but deep down, a flicker of jealousy gnawed at his core.
A/N: "What is this tragic backstory the author continuously alludes to?"
Veteran readers with three cigarettes simultaneously drooping from their lips: "You'll find out in the next chapter."