XCIII

Ratum Tantum

Kikyou wakes up all at once. A haze of yōki lies heavy over the main room of her sister's house, and a lingering, spectral separation weighs down her finer senses. Like the dream she'd had, the feeling is fading but still tangible despite the dawn. It wasn't a dream; she knows it. Or rather, it was and is a dream, but also something more.

A soot-stained paper, the title to Inuyasha's inherited estate, is still sitting by the hearth, weighed down by an ink stone that wasn't there when she went to sleep. Neither was the jade brush above it, held in invisible hands and writing out words on a hovering scroll of bridal-red silk. Each time the characters are crossed out or changed, the golden ink fades without a stain. Twice, the brush moves sharply across the hearth, as if jerked from one person's hands to another's.

Kikyou looks at her sister, frowning and muttering in her sleep. She looks at the substanceless darkness squirming midair across from Kaede, which blacks out a shadow on the wall in the shape of the Inu no Taisho. She looks down at her own legs, wrapped in iridescent silk embroidered with a forest of trees, and then she climbs out of her futon.

Barefoot and smiling, she steps outside without looking back again and takes a deep breath. A married woman. She'll be a married woman, one of the things a miko can never be. Her heart is pounding; she feels lightheaded. A contract, she thinks, will tie us together. But logic deserts her then, because she is equally certain that this is what it's like to be free.

Suddenly she wants to run, just for the sake of being in motion. And didn't Father-in-Law say to go and find his son? She says the words out loud, just to hear herself say them, just to hear how they sound. "Father-in-law told me to find Inuyasha." She catches herself laughing breathlessly as she reaches the edge of the village.

If anyone is outside to hear her, surely they'll think she's gone mad. As this occurs to her, Kikyou realizes she doesn't care, anymore, what the villagers think of her. And not just the villagers, either. What would they say, the priests in their red-painted temples, the ones who had raised and trained her, if they knew that she was going to marry this General's son? What about the other miko? What about the emperor; what about the gods?

Her smile is shiftless. She only surprises herself a little. Did she ever care, really care, about any of those things? About the children, yes. About healing and fighting real evil. About helping the ones who can't help themselves. But where is the shrine in my village, and what was it built for? Who was there to help me with my charge? She'd been given promises of aid, but never real power. Even her own fellow students had cursed her for her gifts. And for that, she was supposed to be grateful. For that, she had sacrificed her entire life – and now should continue to sacrifice this new one?

No, for those things, those rules, those pretenses, she finds she can't care at all. After all, what is pure? What is impure? Who decides, and where and when were those lines drawn? There's something to be said for the truth she experienced in her former life, the way her power began to fade and change when she fell in love. How glad I was to have an excuse, to blame it on a curse, to think about how soon it wouldn't matter, because Inuyasha would be human and the jewel would no longer exist to draw so many demons dreaming of conquest. That was the only freedom I could think of, then.

But she has seen Kagome now. Kagome, with her Kouga. Kagome, who has crossed all the lines in every direction, crossed them so far and so often that her soul should be darker than her Wolf's. Have not the rumors come down the Tokaido Road? The wolf and his woman. The woman who holds his leash. But Kagome, as Inu no Taisho had said, stands in the light. Kagome shines like a blinding star. Kagome doubts everything but herself and her feelings, her love, even if she still hasn't admitted it yet.

Kikyou smiles to herself, remembering the strangeness of it, Kagome's embarrassed flush as they'd sat together in hot water. How odd to look at the brightness on cheeks so like her own, in eyes so like her own, but still making up a different face. She wonders what Kagome would think of her, of her decision. What kind of things would she say?

"Are you sure? If you love him, what's the problem? I'm so happy for you! When's the wedding?"

Yes, it would probably be something like that.

The problem, she thinks, had never been her love. It had been her own doubt of it, her own shame, her own hand over her eyes. It hadn't been her feelings that held her back, but the fierceness of them. Not that she wanted to love Inuyasha, but that she hadn't been willing to actually fight for him. She had been fainthearted, and afraid of judgment. She hadn't been willing to make the leap, to try and face the world beside him.

Instead, she had tried to balance on a tightrope, when she had never even learned how to crawl. "I wasn't one thing or another. I wasn't pure." But now… yes, she knows better now. Has she cared about what anyone thinks since she came back to life? Since she returned with Inuyasha from the sunless tomb? Since she kissed him, and knew the villagers would see?

Perhaps there's only her sister whose opinion she values now, and that because Kikyou owes her and loves her. Because they should do well by each other for as long as they can.

"But no one else matters now but you, Inuyasha. What you want, and I do." Saying it out loud settles her restless thoughts, and she takes a deep breath and looks up. The earliest blue, still nearly black, colors the pre-dawn sky, and the morning moon is bright near the horizon. It paints a path of glow across the grasses, leading up the hill away from the village, right to the forest's edge.

Kikyou stares at it, just for a moment, then picks up the hem of her kimono and follows it, running as fast as she can. She waits until she's over the hilltop, panting a little bit, but far enough from the village that no one will hear her. Then she calls out to him, even as she's still running. "Inuyasha!" Suddenly, she can't stop laughing – why can't she stop laughing? Her face hurts, unaccustomed to her smile. "Inuyasha!"

He comes running, as if afraid there's danger, then stops and stares at her. He lowers the sword he'd started to draw back into its sheath, and she hears the sound of bells, then sees them. Dozens or more, bound to the sheath of the sword by golden wire. The sound of them reminds her, not of her time as a miko, not of the kagura dances, but of Inu no Taisho, the steps he had woven around Kaede's house and the suzu ringing in his spell.

"Inuyasha…" She doesn't know how to say it, how to tell him, how to ask him if he knows, but he holds both her hands in his one and squeezes her fingers almost too tightly. She doesn't ask him to let go. "Right now Kaede is-"

"My old man said he'd-"

They speak together, stop together, laugh together. Their eyes meet, and they blush at the same time. Kikyou has the slightest advantage, because he can't take his eyes off her, keeps looking her up and down as if he can't believe what he sees. It isn't a lustful look; his gaze catches on her obi, on the hem of her kimono with its heavy embroidery. Has she ever dressed any other way for him than as a miko? Has she even owned other clothes for as long as she's known him?

"You look beautiful. Different, I really… I like it." His faint flush darkens, and she smiles at him. "But where did you get the kimono?"

"I don't know. I'd never seen it before I went to sleep." She looks down at it, at the gold glinting in the obi's embroidery, then back up at his face. "I think I brought it with me out of my dream."

"Your… dream?" His voice is oddly hoarse, and she frees one hand from his grip.

Kikyou touches his face, his parted lips, and then, because she wants to, the soft triangle of one of his Inu ears. He makes a little sound, very startled, but she just traces the shape of it with her fingertips, then runs her fingers down through his hair and rests her hand against his face. "It was a good dream, Inuyasha. My sister is still in it, writing a marriage contract with Inu no Taisho. I don't care what it says; is that wrong? The most important thing was already written when I woke."

"What's… what's that?"

She looks down at their entwined fingers, and has to force herself to meet his gaze. "Your father says I will be Yashamori no Kikyou from now on." She sees his mouth move, shaping the syllables of that name. "I said yes, Inuyasha, when he asked if I would marry you. I said I would be your wife, because it's what I want to be, and what you want me to be. The rest doesn't matter."

He stares at her, and stares at her, and says nothing, and doesn't move. Did he really think she would say no? Did he not understand what it was his father had intended? Did saying yes break him? She uses their tangled fingers to move his hand to her waist, then follows the line of his arm to his face with her other hand and touches his cheek gently. "Inuyasha, I think you should kiss me now."

Suddenly his hand tightens, then slips around to the small of her back, dragging her against his body. His grip is possessive in a way she's never felt from him before, as if what she's said is all sinking in at once, along with what it really means. He drops his lips against her mouth, and she licks them, obeying the first wicked thought that comes to her. She touches her tongue against his tongue when his lips part, startled.

Kikyou wants the kiss she saw the Wolf give Kagome, the kiss she thought she would never have herself. She takes it from Inuyasha, takes it with her hands in his hair, and the eager press of her entire body against him. At first tentatively, she touches the tip of her tongue against the points of his fangs, and finds that what Kikyou, shikon no miko, might have been afraid of, Yashamori no Kikyou wants. Needs, maybe. Loves.

The more deeply she kisses him, the more clutches at her, groans and gives in to her. The sound curls her toes against the grass. How blasphemous, how precious – why had she been so stupid that it had never occurred to her things could be this way? And all the time, the sound of his breath is near her, quick and heavy in her ears. The drum of his heart beats loud enough for both of them.

Inuyasha lets her do what she wants, being as uncertain and inexperienced as she is, and more than willing to let her take the lead. He echoes the touches of her tongue, and her eager exploration of his mouth, and finally bites her bottom lip, startling a moan out of her. The half a smirk he manages disappears as she stands on tiptoe and returns the favor, and she is pleased by the immediate fire in his eyes, by the sudden jerk of his hips against her body.

His lips leave her mouth, and she lets out a soft hmm of pleasure, entirely happy with the mad way he kisses the corner of her lips, her jaw, her neck, her throat. She feels his hand pulling at her obi, loosening the knot, and then his teeth seize the layers of her kimono, pulling them aside with one rough jerk to expose her shoulder and the tops of her breasts.

Her hands are on the back of his head, encouraging him, and somehow even preoccupied with tasting every inch of her he can reach, he manages to lay her gently on the ground. His mouth finds her nipple, and a jolt of heat shoots from the crinkled peak straight to her belly. Instinct wraps her legs around his waist, but he stops then, and draws in a long, shuddering breath.

"Kikyou. Is this what you want, to do this here on the grass? I don't know what – I never thought I - you have to tell me what you want."

"What I want-" She hesitates, just for a moment. Why does it feel like, having let herself want one thing, now there are so many things she desires? But in this moment, most of all Kikyou wants to believe in the promise of her dream. She reaches for the ties of his haori. "I want to feel your skin against my skin."

He's growling right next to her ear in the next moment, holding her against the ground just long enough to snatch her up. They're already hidden by the shadows of the trees at the edge of the forest by the time she hears a burst of rough laughter, and the sound of human voices in conversation.

Inuyasha must have heard them before she did, and she's grateful for the escape. There are men climbing the hill, farmers moving towards their fields as the sky brightens toward dawn. The things she wants to share with Inuyasha aren't things she wants to share with them.

The sounds of their voices disappear before she can catch any words; Inuyasha is already snatching her away again. The wood blurs to green shadows around her, until he sets her down on her feet in the clearing before Goshinboku. "Somehow we always end up here, huh? But no one else comes this way."

He kisses her again, rough and thoroughly, and then he steps back. "Kikyou, if you want I'll – whatever you want, I'll do it. But won't you let me do it right? Marry you in front of all of them, first, the way it's supposed to be." Again, he kisses her, a little bit savage, a little bit sweet. "That'd shut them up for once, wouldn't it? Show 'em they can take their rumors and go to hell."

The interruption has calmed the first, heady rush of her desire, and Kikyou shakes her head a little, but smiles and puts a finger over his lips when his ears droop. "That's not me saying no, Inuyasha. It's just that marrying me in front of them won't quiet them, it will give them something to talk about for a year and a day."

"That long, huh?"

"Probably longer." Probably a hundred years. But she doesn't say that. She steps closer, and leans her head against his chest. "If it's what you want, it doesn't matter. That's what we'll do. Didn't you know one of the things I want is to make you happy?"

He blinks down at her. "You… do?"

She can't laugh at him; his surprise is too honest, and too serious. "Inuyasha, that's half of our marriage. The other half is you making me happy. Of course it has to go both ways, or how would we live together, plan a future together, raise children together?"

"Raise… children?" He looks even more staggered than she'd thought he would, his eyes very wide and his ears stiffly at attention. "You… you wanna have kids with me?"

"Someday. Is that not something you want?" She is watching him very closely, wondering, but he shakes his head quickly.

"No, I just never thought about it." His flush is adorable, but also sad. "Who would ever want to have kids with me? Especially you, I didn't think…"

She shushes him with her fingers on his lips, then slides her hand up to his cheek. "You should have, even back then. Before I died, I just wanted to be a normal woman, to do all those normal things. Why else did you think I wanted you to be human? To be my husband? That was the only way I knew how to build a life."

He shakes his head a little, back and forth, and doesn't meet her eyes. "Honestly I kinda thought it was because I was there, and-"

"Inuyasha." She kisses him to shut him up. "You are loved, Inuyasha. You were loved then, even if I wasn't as good at it, even if I was afraid of it. And you are loved now. I love you better now, and I'll love you better still." And this time she does laugh, just a little, because she's laughing at herself. "I forgot. Forgive me? I forgot that I love you wasn't one of the things I said. And you were wounded and in pain, then."

"Kikyou?"

She holds his face in both hands, and this time her kiss is the slightest brush of her lips. "I should have said, when I told you I would help you fight Sesshomaru, that it would be you and I together because I love you. Not for any other reason. Not because your brother is evil, though he is. Not because he's a bastard, though he is that too. But because it's what you want, what you need to do, and because I love you."

He leans toward her, and she completes the kiss when he hesitates, tugging his forelock. "This at least I thought I made clear that I wanted. This at least you have to give me." She touches his cheek, then steps closer to lean against his chest. "I will wait, Inuyasha, so that you can have your moment. I will wait until we have our ceremony. And if you want to laugh at the people in Edo, smirk at the shocked faces they make, I'll laugh with you. But not for too long."

"Not too long?"

Kikyou shakes her head. "No. Once we're married, Inuyasha, I want you to take me away."

She expects him to ask where, but instead he says, "To Kamakura?"

"If you like. I only want to be anywhere that isn't Edo. Anywhere that can be ours." She closes her eyes and wraps both arms around his chest. "Anywhere that people might know my name, but not my face. Where they won't have expectations, until we give them something to expect. I don't mind Kamakura, if that's where you want to go. Did your father tell you…"

"Yeah. Doesn't matter to me, but that's where the old man said my mother's estate was. But don't get too excited, people will see I'm hanyō and expect something from that, I guarantee it. Doesn't matter where we go. And it won't be anythin' good-"

"Maybe not. But Inuyasha, that's no different from here, so do you really mind? Does it matter?"

He snorts, shrugs awkwardly and rests his forehead on her shoulder, so that his breath tickles her neck. "No, I guess not."

"So we'll go to Kamakura, and if it's troublesome, we'll go somewhere else. I refuse to believe that there's nowhere and no one who will see all the good things in you, all the things I see. The things I've always seen, even when I most thought you were dangerous."

"Kikyou."

"You always said I was good. You, and many others. But do you know, Inuyasha, that I first loved you because I couldn't look at you without seeing how alike we were? Alone, and strong, and hating it. Neither of us really human, because neither of us was able to live a human life. So if I am good, then you must be, too. Even when you had no reason to, you were good to me." Steadily, she meets his eyes. "But for a long time we were still alone even when we were together, weren't we?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He stands straight again, but he stays very close to her. "I didn't know how to be anything else. Still don't, really, but I'm not stupid enough to waste a second chance like this one. I'll do anything to make you happy, Kikyou."

She feels very sly, looking up at him from the corners of her eyes. "Even tell me you love me?"

He smirks at her, just a little. "I already did that."

"When it's a not a new moon night? When you're not afraid you won't get to say it again?" She closes her eyes, looks away from him, puts her nose in the air; she can't help the smile on her lips, and decides she'll have to practice teasing.

But Inuyasha tugs her close and presses his cheek against her cheek, speaking with no hesitation so his words fall right into her ear. "I love you, Kikyou. Kikyou, woman who will be my wife. I love you so much you couldn't even kill it with that arrow. I'll love you even after I die." She can't tell if it's his breath on her skin or the words themselves that give her a shiver, but he nudges her back a little bit, and crouches in front of her fingering the hem of her kimono.

"You know my old man's a twit, but I –" The sword at his waist rattles in its sheath, sets the bells ringing, and Inuyasha scowls down at it. "You might'a been his fang, but you're my sword. Get used to it."

Kikyou catches herself laughing again, almost smirking, but she covers her mouth with her sleeve. Inuyasha quirks an eyebrow at her anyway, and thumps the hilt of the sword with his hand. "As I was sayin', I like the name he picked for you. Yashamori no Kikyou, did you notice yet?"

Her eyes are drawn to the embroidery where he's holding her hem. Very small amidst the towering trees, a single purple bellflower is embroidered, and the front half of a white dog standing guard over it, while the rest is hidden in the shadows of the trees. "Oh, I – hadn't seen. Maybe I didn't dream this kimono, then."

"Nah. Bet the old man did it. But it's just right, you've always been the prettiest flower in my forest."

She takes his hand, and puts it in the small of her back again, looking into his face. "I still want you to kiss me, Inuyasha. Especially when you say such lovely things."

He scoffs. "Lovely things? I don't-"

"The most beautiful flower in your forest? Inuyasha."

"What? It's just true."

"Then what else is just true?" The words slip out on their own.

"Lots'a stuff." He brings her hand to his lips and kisses the tips of her fingers, the middle of her palm, the pulse beating in her wrist. She stares at her own hand, confused, in wonder; where did that come from?

At first it's like he doesn't notice, doesn't care. He only blinks at her lazily, moving his lips up her arm until he can't push her sleeve any farther. "Stuff like how the smell of your hair does me in like sake. How I can't even think breathing the scent of your skin. Did you notice when you're close to me like this, when you're most being a woman, it's just like you're human again? But don't worry, I don't care what you are. I don't care as long as you're here with me. I just missed this sound."

He's very still, listening to that pulse at her wrist. She can feel it beating in her breast, too, and in her throat and the tips of her fingers. "As long as I can hear it, you're safe, and I don't have to worry about anything."

She remembers her own thoughts of the night before, how much she'd wanted to hear anything like this from him. How she'd never thought he could say anything half as sweet. Is he just like her, thinking that the promise of their marriage makes being this vulnerable finally safe? Has he been swallowing back all these words for fifty years? "Inuyasha, why did I agree to do what you want? Kiss me, kiss me like you did before; now, and every night, and every day."

"Gonna make me regret waitin' as much as you do, huh? I see how it is." But he grins at her while he says it, and then he obeys.

A/N: And lo, I was not dead, but it was a close call this time. The ICU is not a fun place to be, and breathing is required to live. Random throat infections (they still don't know what or how I was infected, yay) are not conducive to breathing! Who knew? I'm still half dead from all the pills I'm on, but I'm home now, so I thought I'd reassure you poor noodles that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth again, and post the first part here, which was almost done.

This week's chapter title, "Ratum Tantum", means "a marriage confirmed, but not consummated". The new name Kikyou has been gifted with, Yashamori no Kikyou, basically means "bellflower of the demon forest". Of course, in this case the yashamori in question is Inuyasha's forest.

Also, a final note: This is only HALF of the Ratum Tantum chapter, the second part of which will be out as soon as I have enough strongth. Probably late Sunday, assuming all stays well. So, look forward to that, glorious beings, and if you have a fun thought…

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