Chapter Four
Kagome stared down at Inuyasha. He sat there on the floor with his arms crossed, a brooding expression on his face.
"You don't have to hide yourself away in here, Inuyasha." Kagome said softly.
It was dark outside, the darkness seeping in through the window Inuyasha had propped open. He didn't look at her, just sat on the floor with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked so vulnerable sitting there—so human.
"I'm not hiding." He muttered beneath his breath, but she heard him anyways.
Inuyasha thought of it as a curse on the nights that he turned human. How was being a human a curse? He was weaker, but that didn't make him any less a man. She was human. She may have strange powers, but she was still human. Miroku and Sango were human, but Inuyasha still knew what real power felt like.
"We all know you turn human, Inuyasha." Kagome tried again, sighing softly.
He didn't reply, just sat there stubbornly. Was Inuyasha so scared of the outside world as a human? She'd survived easily enough without his effort. They argued like this every time and every time he won. Most of the time she ended up leaving him to his pity and spending what remained of the night at the lake or chatting with Sango.
Some nights she was tempted to just drag him out and show him that being a human wasn't that bad. The dim sense of smell, not having to hear every cricket that sounded from miles away. That's what he was afraid of, though. Not knowing what was going on in the world around him.
That was the beauty of it, though. Finding. He had other people to look after him. As a human she had Inuyasha looking after her, Miroku and Sango. She even had Kouga looking after her, whether she wanted him to or not.
"Please, Inuyasha, for me?" It was never good to hide from what you feared. Inuyasha needed an out from his insecurity. He'd been going through this his entire life—how could he not have accepted this part of his life?
"Go to bed, Kagome."
She hated it when he did this. When he closed himself off from everyone and everything around him. Including her. She almost laughed at the idea of an intervention, which would have been done in the modern era.
She opened her mouth and then closed it. She touched his shoulder. "We can go to Kikyou's grave." She offered softly, though in all honesty it was the last thing she wanted to do.
Inuyasha lifted his head at that and the action hurt her more than she wanted to admit. He didn't get up, though. "Go to bed, Kagome." He murmured again.
"You went for Kikyou." Kagome didn't know why she said the words. They came and she couldn't stop them, because they were the truth. He'd done that for Kikyou. She hadn't let him hide himself away from the world. But she'd only wanted the human part of Inuyasha, hadn't she?
She saw the way his shoulders tensed but he didn't move from his position. He was going to sit there all night, she knew. He never could sleep on the nights he turned human. "Don't." Inuyasha shook his head.
"Don't what?" Kagome asked, daring him to say it.
Inuyasha shook his head again and turned to look at her finally. "I can't sense anything, Kagome. Do you know weak that makes me feel?"
She felt relief that he didn't say what she didn't want him to say. "Actually, I do. There's nothing wrong with being human, Inuyasha. It's a part of who you are, whether you like it or not."
"How can I protect you, really protect you, if I can't sense when dangers coming?"
"I can sense evil, Inuyasha."
"So could Kikyo."
Her heart twisted. He'd just compared her to Kikyo. Kikyou hadn't been able to defend herself against the greatest evil the Feudal Era had seen—and Inuyasha had always compared her to that, even if she HAD defeated that great evil in the end. He cared for her, she knew, otherwise he wouldn't be scared.
"I'm not Kikyou." They'd had this conversation before, though it had been shorter and less to the point. But it was growing harder and harder to ignore the the comparison. "You've seen the world as a human before, you don't have to hide yourself away every time."
When he didn't respond, Kagome dropped her hand away from his shoulder. There was no use in arguing with him. Inuyasha was stubborn and he'd made it clear he wasn't going anywhere. She wasn't even sure why she wanted to get him out so desperately. She sighed in defeat and stepped outside.
She wondered what Inuyasha would have done if he'd been able to sense her emotions. Would he have been able to stay away? Would he have comforted her? What would it have been like to experience a true Mating?
Inuyasha would known how much his choice to stay inside hurt her. When she'd brought up Kikyou, he would have known how much the truth of that had hurt her.
She could hear the crickets in the distance. At least it wasn't completely silent. She crossed her arms and started down the pathway, leaving the hut and passing Sango's along the way. The last place she expected to find herself at was the place she ended up at. The crystal lake was both a place of peace and misery. She stared up at the archway of wood of Kikyou's resting place and the roses that grew over the surface.
She was here. Again.
God, she hated Kikyou. What Kouga had said was closer than any truth she'd heard. Kikyou still managed to haunt her even in death. Kikyou.
She wanted to wipe the memory of Kikyou from the face of the earth as if she had never been there. Kagome knew that if there was any great evil still present, they would have seeped into her heart and stolen what light she had. Just from the single thought. She was stuck with the sense of unfairness and anger.
Kagome lifted her hands over her head and jerked the vine of tangled roses down. A few petals rained down over her head while the rest bunched in her hands, the veins following the downward pull. She felt the mild sting of the thorns dig into her palms but ignored the sensation as she dropped the roses. They landed at her feet and she stared at the rose vines.
She reached up again and jerked at the vines covering the side. Rose petals cluttered around her feet and green leaves. She inhaled hard and blinked at the stinging in her eyes.
"Stop, you're hurting yourself." Kouga said gruffly and spun her around in his arms, latching onto her wrists.
Kagome jumped, her heart leaping when Kouga appeared out of nowhere. "What are you doing?"
"I think that's what I should be asking you." Kouga said and turned her hands over palm up. Rose thorns stuck out of her tender skin. He cursed beneath his breath and started picking them out one by one. "What are you doing?"
She looked angry and unless his sense of smell was waning, he was sure he could smell the salty tang of her tears. She wasn't crying, but he could smell them.
"I don't know." That was the truth. She hadn't come here to desecrate Kikyou's gave and memorial. The emotions had just poured from her and she hadn't been able to stop the onslaught. All the roses that she had planted with careful hands for Inuyasha were now a tangled mess behind them. She should feel guilty, but she didn't. She felt...relief.
She winced when Kouga plucked out another thorn, his thumb smoothing over the sting left behind.
"Sorry." Kouga muttered, holding her hand still when she would have jerked it away from the pain he was sure she was starting to feel. Thorns were like splinters. He plucked them out as gently as he could. "What are you doing out here by yourself?"
Her fingers twitched when he yanked a thorn out of her thumb. "...I don't know."
"Or maybe I should be asking you why you're tearing apart Kikyou's grave."
He never had been very fond of Kikyou, but he respected her to an extent. It wasn't like Kagome to desecrate something...sacred. But here she was. The Priestess wasn't even buried here, but still.
Kagome found herself blinking her eyes again. "I can't seem to get away from her."
Kouga held her hands and lifted them to his face. Her hands were red and a few tiny pin pricks of blood welled up. He sank down to one knee and pulled her with him. He dipped her hand beneath the water. "She's dead." You couldn't get any further away from a person than in death.
Kagome stared at their joint hands as he poured the water over her throbbing hand. "Not to Inuyasha."
Kouga looked up and paused for a brief second before he took her other hand and repeated the measure. He didn't say anything else.
Her hands throbbed dully but he finally released them. She hadn't even realized what she was doing until Kouga had stopped her. She looked up and could make out his stern features in the semi darkness. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, but there was a darker spot on the left side of his jaw. She frowned.
"What happened?" Kagome asked, reaching out and touching his jaw.
Kouga returned the frown and then rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Sango broke my jaw earlier today."
Sango had what...? Kagome stared, but his jaw didn't look broken. There was nothing but a bruise. But he was a full demon. It probably would heal quickly, wouldn't it? "Sango isn't strong enough to break your jaw."
Kouga winced and dropped his hand. "She is if she uses that weapon of hers."
Ah, that made sense. She could do a lot of damage with that boomerang of hers. But the question still remained... "What did you do?"
Kouga took her hand, careful of her palm and helped her to her feet. "I did nothing. I was helping one of her kids train with Miroku and she came at me with that weapon. Said I was an idiot."
"I'm sorry." Sango rarely did anything without a reason, though. Kouga had to have done something to piss her off.
"You didn't do it, the crazy slayer did."
"I can talk to her if you'd like."
Kouga shook his head with a wry smile. "Don't worry about it. I've had worse and as you can see, I'm nearly healed." He folded his arms and the smile dropped away. "The Kagome I know doesn't go around trampling roses. Why are you so angry with a dead woman?"
She knew Kouga meant no disrespect towards Kikyou—he was stating a fact. Kikyou was dead. He'd found her ripping the roses apart and down and hurting herself in the process. He'd want to know the reason, wouldn't he?
"We had an..." It hadn't really been a fight. An argument? "...argument."
"Who?"
"Inuyasha and I."
Kouga sighed. Inuyasha was the fucking idiot here, not him. "About Kikyou?" He asked cautiously. It couldn't have been about anything else. Because it was Kikyou Kagome was taking her anger out on, whether it was warranted or not.
Kagome didn't respond at first. She didn't want to indulge too much into Kouga. She'd already said too much to Sango. She frowned at the thought and looked back up at him. "Sango didn't mention anything when she, ugh, hit you? About me, maybe?"
"No. Why would she?" That would have warranted a jaw breaking, but he hadn't done anything to Kagome. Had he?
Why was she discussing this with him? Him—Kouga, of all people? He was the last person on earth she should be discussing any personal aspects of her life with. She looked away from his searching face and towards the disregarded roses. "Do you think I'm a good person, Kouga?"
His eyebrows snapped down at her question. "You are one of the most sincere people I know, Kagome." He'd never met anyone as true and pure hearted as her. "You know this, Kagome. Why are you asking me this?" He had never, at any time, said anything less or given her reason to think anything else.
Kagome shrugged. "Nothing."
His eyebrows stayed down and he asked her the question he'd asked her at this exact spot before. "Are you happy, Kagome?"
Because staring down at her, she looked anything but happy. She looked distraught. She looked confused.
She looked broken.
It wasn't his business. Nothing between her and Inuyasha was. He respected a Mated pairs status—but he'd kill if Kagome wasn't happy. "What'd mutt face do?" Inuyasha had done something. He'd said something and Kouga would bet his tail it had something to do with Kikyou. The dead priestess had no excuse to be brought up whatsoever—she was in the past.
"Everything. Nothing." Kagome shook her head. "It doesn't matter what I do, Kikyou is just...always there." Kagome bit her lip, awkward when the words came past her lips. That wasn't something she should be saying to Kouga.
Silence surrounded them before Kouga spoke. "All you have to do is say the words, Kagome." He murmured softly.
How was the conversation taking a turn so intimate and unthinkable?
"There's nothing to say, Kouga. You know that. You're just...easy to talk to." Emotion flickered through his eyes, something she hadn't seen in a long time. She looked away.
Kouga gave a wry grin. That was nice to know, he thought sarcastically. He lifted her hands again and pressed them together. He brought them to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "Go home, Kagome." He didn't know where the action came from. He just wanted to do it. He wanted her gone because he didn't want to be the person she told her problems to. Not when they involved Inuyasha.
Kagome stood there when Kouga turned and started in the opposite direction. She wrapped her arms around her middle and the sudden chill. "She's always in the way. I can't even be Marked."
Kouga didn't stop, just kept going. But she saw the way his shoulders visibly tensed before he disappeared into the tree line.
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