Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha...
Sorry about the break in updates, AGAIN. I just lost my inspiration... I hope it comes back soon, 'cause I'm dying to write again.
Well, onto the story!
Closing the Back Door
Scared to Death?
By Sakura-chan88
He just couldn't hold it back, that feral growl that escaped his throat as he lowered his head to stare the teen in her gray-blue eyes. The flesh around the orbs moved back to more fully expose the white surrounding the striking swirl of colors. Fear swept into her scent, driving him to stalk forward, saliva dripping from his jaws, splattering on the ground and dissipating harmlessly, from the thought of blood as sweet as her scent.
He knew, somewhere in the back of his consciousness that had been tossed aside, that this was wrong, that he needed to stop.
But that was the part of him his good for nothing father had accidentally passed on. The same father that produced his own families disgrace with a filthy human bitch who wasn't satisfied with her own breed and had to have something more. The same father who died for what he called 'love', but how could you love something so pitiful, so weak. No human could win a real battle with nothing but their hands, no human could control the winds, no human was worth the air they breathed. Compassion for their pathetic lives was calling to him.
Sesshomaru refused to listen.
Kagome watched in fear as he moved slowly closer. His poisoned slobber was unable to penetrate and melt the holy ground, but it wouldn't fail to harm her. Sesshomaru's toxin was nearly as strong as Naraku's miasma and she new she didn't want another encounter with it.
However, the way he was going, someone was bound to see him from the streets. Plus, her family...
Her family!
'Oh no...'
"He's always been like that, all high and mighty because he was a full demon at birth... Now he'll probably think I'm some incompetent fool that can't even control myself when I'm a demon..."
Inuyasha had talked about Sesshomaru's control over his demon form compared to his own, pondering the thousands of possible reasons for the difference. That had been a few days after his massacre of bandits led by that horrid moth demon...
That could only mean that Sesshomaru was doing this on purpose...
'Falsely trust him, why don't you?' her mind asked sadistically.
"Please, stop this!" Kagome shouted, calculating her moves. If she could calm him... She took a step forward. Sesshomaru stopped his approach, hesitating from confusion. "Please, stop, Sesshomaru..."
The demon growled at the human who dared utter his name, brandishing sharp fangs glistening with poison-filled drool. He advanced once more, soon standing directly in front of, and over, Kagome, his head lowering slowly.
"Stop... Please," she plead in a whisper, her vision swirling, her need for air slowly burning her lungs...
She'd forgotten...
"Sesshomaru..."
Even though the poison didn't touch her-
She fell to her knees, her breath lost and her strength seeping lackadaisically away. A vision of her family formed before her eyes- no flashbacks, no white light... Just the smiling faces of her family being splattered with blood...
"No..."
Sesshomaru towered over the girl's body, watching her fall to her side as a single word was ripped from her throat, a helpless, resounding, "no..."
She had fainted...
He thought from fear...
Finding no fun in attack an already unconscious being, he turned away and trotted back to Goshinboku, lazily laying under its canopy. Even as he took in his surroundings - the scent of oil and gas, of metals and fire and other such noxious fumes - he failed to notice the fallen girl did not breath.
"Mama! Kagome and Sesshomaru were fighting and then Kagome just fell- Fell, mama!" Souta exclaimed. "She didn't do anything, just fell!"
"Souta, go to bed," his mother answered tiredly, rubbing sore eyes. "It's late."
"But-"
"Souta..."
"... What if-?"
"Bed. Now."
"..." Pouting, Souta made his way to his room, taking one last look out of the family room's window, finding his sister laying motionless on the ground and the huge demon form of Sesshomaru under the Sacred Tree. 'Wake up, sis,' he urged before turning away with a sigh. Perhaps he was just hallucinating...
Yeah, that was it... After all, Inuyasha's brother wouldn't attack his sister!
With this in mind, the boy smiled in ignorance of the truth and left for his bed to get some sleep.
"You know, for a miko, you sure don't know much about demons."
Kagome spun on her heel, or what would have been her heel if she had a body. She was surrounded by darkness, complete all-encompassing blackness. She smelled nothing, she saw nothing, she felt nothing...
... except uneasiness.
"..." Then it clicked. Inuyasha. Saying she wasn't good enough... "Do you always have to put me down?"
"Yeah, it's the only way for you to learn," the voice spat.
"Degrading me helps me learn, how?" Kagome hissed, glaring at the nothingness in front of her.
"You always tried harder when I said you weren't good enough, didn't you?" The voice softened. "Seems it pushed you away in the end..."
The silence was thick, leaving Kagome to ponder his words. They were true... utterly undeniably true. How could she not have seen it before, that him saying 'well, Kikyo could do better' or something like that always did make her work harder to become better?
Maybe it was the fact that it always hurt to hear it.
"... Inuyasha?"
"Yeah?"
"... Am I dead?"
"... Yeah."
Sesshomaru watched the girl with a baffled expression on his dog features. The lights in the house had been turned off hours ago, yet she still slept... Was the miko frightened that badly?
What was the saying - 'scared to death'?
His eyes widened a bit. Surely she wasn't... He took a deep sniff, locating her scent, finding exactly as he had thought he'd find. Death.
Now he saw the gremlins creeping around her.
'Some guardian,' his mind snorted as he reigned in on his youki, slowly transforming back to his humanoid form.
His hand fell to the hilt of Toukijin instinctively before moving to Tensaiga. Step after step, an odd feeling grew in him. It was... familiar, in a way, to the first time he had seen Rin. Then, he'd felt almost helpless, but now...
He just felt sorry, oddly enough. She had helped his family - Rin had been a daughter to him in so many ways, he realized as he approached Kagome - and he killed her without noticing...
'Great. I'm getting more like Inuyasha by the day here,' he mentally grumbled, his outer self betraying no change in his emotions. 'Next I'll be collared and helpless to this little wench who doesn't even have the sense to run when she's in danger.'
The thought of 'sitting' sent a shiver down his spine and made him rethink reviving the miko.
Did he really need her to complete his mission?
"Will I stay here?" Kagome asked, sniffling lightly.
"No."
"Where am I going, then? And where is this, anyway?"
"Back," he chuckled. "You're eighty years too early, wench. And this is... well... a waiting room, you could say."
Kagome nodded, finding it easy to understand something so vague. A waiting room for those who were to be reincarnated... So Inuyasha was here all alone since Kikyo was already reincarnated as her... "How am I... going back?"
Inuyasha was silent, his outline appearing in the darkness. A hand reached out to cup the side of her face, golden eyes flashing to life in concern and... was it love? Friendship? "... Kagome, watch out for him." It was barely above a whisper. "He needs you more than you think, more than he thinks."
And he slowly faded away.
Sesshomaru sat, his legs crossed Indian style as he waited for the miko to open her eyes. Her once stilled heart was beating once more, her breath returning gradually to a steady rhythm of inhale... exhale... repeat. A finger twitched, then a foot. Soon, her arms were moving to lever her up from her fallen position, her head raising to look him in the eyes... Slowly, the blue-gray irises appeared through widening slits.
She blinked.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Sesshomaru gasped in silence, trying but failing to keep the surprise from showing on his face. How could she know he had brought her back? Sure, he was right there in front of her, but she couldn't have known about Tensaiga...
Wait, she did spend some time with that coward Toutousai when he ran from him, so it was possible...
She thanked him, too... Why would you thank someone for reviving you if it's the same person who took your life in the first place?
How was he supposed to respond? You are welcome? 'I don't think so.'
"... Why didn't you run?" he asked, indifference coloring his voice. "That was a bit of stupidity on your part."
"If I had run, would my family still be living...?" She paused, then cast a glance back to the shrine house. "They... are... alive, right?"
"Yes, they are," Sesshomaru replied, thinking back to his blood lusting mind. If she hadn't died and he gotten bored of his prey... No, they wouldn't have lived... and she would have been torn to unfixable slithers. 'Maybe she is smarter than I originally thought.'
"And...? Am I still stupid for staying?"
He lifted his shoulders slightly and let them drop in a shrug, one eyebrow lifted.
"Right..." Kagome mumbled.
Sesshomaru looked back up at the sky, the light creeping slowly back into the blackened expanse. Dawn was approaching, slowly but surely.
"Just, don't do that again, okay? You frightened me... I mean, what was I supposed to do? You were growling and... and my family and the people on the streets and... Was I supposed to act like nothing was different? No, that wouldn't have mattered, right? My scent would still give me away..."
Sesshomaru watched warily as the girl stood up and started pacing, rambling on and on. It was nice to hear something so familiar in such a strange world with all of its' 'technologies' making a fuss in the background. He had a feeling he wouldn't be getting much sleep with all the ruckus the machinery made.
"Are you going to tell me about the job or not?"
Kagome paused mid-step, frowning, "eh? Job...?" she echoed. "Oh- that job! Right, okay, so..."
Sesshomaru soon found himself very, very confused and cursed himself a fool for wasting the oxygen to ask.
What the hell was a 'clock'? A 'bill'? A 'men-you'? He had to wear a uniform? He couldn't eat the 'patron's order'? Who's ordering him to do anything!? They'd pay severely! - What's 'yen'?
Okay, so more oxygen was needed to ask what he presumed sounded like ridiculous questions and getting answers that brought more questions that brought more answers that brought more questions that...
Well, it wasn't long before the sky was lightened by a raising sun.
She was having fun with explaining everything to Sesshomaru. It reminded her of Sango and Miroku, constantly asking what her world was like...
She felt a ghost of a hand touch her cheek, warming and comforting when she thought about her friends long since deceased. Thanking him for the support he gave her, she smiled and looked to the sky, barely registering Sesshomaru's next question.
"And I have to take 'orders'?"
Without looking away from the wisps of clouds above her, she responded, "Yes. 'Orders' are what the person asks for- their food and drink. Not like a command kind of order. See, you remember what the waiter you had yesterday asked you, don't you?"
"Yes. 'Can I take your-'..." Sesshomaru traveled off, gaining Kagome's attention and grayed gaze. "Oh... I see. So, in other words, I just do what the others do?"
"Unless you are at the register or in the back cleaning dishes, yes."
"'Register'?"
"It's where you take the costumer's money- the money you didn't pay yesterday," Kagome dead-panned. "You take the money, put it in the register, and give them back their change..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"... You do know mathematics, right?"
"..."
Kagome sighed defeatedly. "I'll talk to Mr. Go before sc- School! Oh no, I'm going to be late! Again!"
She was up to her room before Sesshomaru could blink to display his momentary shock of being completely ignored and left in the dust.
Souta grinned.
A/N: Sorry, everyone. I know it's been a while since I updated, and this isn't anywhere near enough to make up for it, but this is where I wanted to end it. To explain Souta- he's just grinning at his sister's blatant disregard for Inuyasha's brother and the fact that she was back to her old self- worrying about being late for school.
I hope you aren't too disappointed. Thanks for sticking with me.
Ja!
Sorry about the break in updates, AGAIN. I just lost my inspiration... I hope it comes back soon, 'cause I'm dying to write again.
Well, onto the story!
Closing the Back Door
Scared to Death?
By Sakura-chan88
He just couldn't hold it back, that feral growl that escaped his throat as he lowered his head to stare the teen in her gray-blue eyes. The flesh around the orbs moved back to more fully expose the white surrounding the striking swirl of colors. Fear swept into her scent, driving him to stalk forward, saliva dripping from his jaws, splattering on the ground and dissipating harmlessly, from the thought of blood as sweet as her scent.
He knew, somewhere in the back of his consciousness that had been tossed aside, that this was wrong, that he needed to stop.
But that was the part of him his good for nothing father had accidentally passed on. The same father that produced his own families disgrace with a filthy human bitch who wasn't satisfied with her own breed and had to have something more. The same father who died for what he called 'love', but how could you love something so pitiful, so weak. No human could win a real battle with nothing but their hands, no human could control the winds, no human was worth the air they breathed. Compassion for their pathetic lives was calling to him.
Sesshomaru refused to listen.
Kagome watched in fear as he moved slowly closer. His poisoned slobber was unable to penetrate and melt the holy ground, but it wouldn't fail to harm her. Sesshomaru's toxin was nearly as strong as Naraku's miasma and she new she didn't want another encounter with it.
However, the way he was going, someone was bound to see him from the streets. Plus, her family...
Her family!
'Oh no...'
"He's always been like that, all high and mighty because he was a full demon at birth... Now he'll probably think I'm some incompetent fool that can't even control myself when I'm a demon..."
Inuyasha had talked about Sesshomaru's control over his demon form compared to his own, pondering the thousands of possible reasons for the difference. That had been a few days after his massacre of bandits led by that horrid moth demon...
That could only mean that Sesshomaru was doing this on purpose...
'Falsely trust him, why don't you?' her mind asked sadistically.
"Please, stop this!" Kagome shouted, calculating her moves. If she could calm him... She took a step forward. Sesshomaru stopped his approach, hesitating from confusion. "Please, stop, Sesshomaru..."
The demon growled at the human who dared utter his name, brandishing sharp fangs glistening with poison-filled drool. He advanced once more, soon standing directly in front of, and over, Kagome, his head lowering slowly.
"Stop... Please," she plead in a whisper, her vision swirling, her need for air slowly burning her lungs...
She'd forgotten...
"Sesshomaru..."
Even though the poison didn't touch her-
She fell to her knees, her breath lost and her strength seeping lackadaisically away. A vision of her family formed before her eyes- no flashbacks, no white light... Just the smiling faces of her family being splattered with blood...
"No..."
Sesshomaru towered over the girl's body, watching her fall to her side as a single word was ripped from her throat, a helpless, resounding, "no..."
She had fainted...
He thought from fear...
Finding no fun in attack an already unconscious being, he turned away and trotted back to Goshinboku, lazily laying under its canopy. Even as he took in his surroundings - the scent of oil and gas, of metals and fire and other such noxious fumes - he failed to notice the fallen girl did not breath.
"Mama! Kagome and Sesshomaru were fighting and then Kagome just fell- Fell, mama!" Souta exclaimed. "She didn't do anything, just fell!"
"Souta, go to bed," his mother answered tiredly, rubbing sore eyes. "It's late."
"But-"
"Souta..."
"... What if-?"
"Bed. Now."
"..." Pouting, Souta made his way to his room, taking one last look out of the family room's window, finding his sister laying motionless on the ground and the huge demon form of Sesshomaru under the Sacred Tree. 'Wake up, sis,' he urged before turning away with a sigh. Perhaps he was just hallucinating...
Yeah, that was it... After all, Inuyasha's brother wouldn't attack his sister!
With this in mind, the boy smiled in ignorance of the truth and left for his bed to get some sleep.
"You know, for a miko, you sure don't know much about demons."
Kagome spun on her heel, or what would have been her heel if she had a body. She was surrounded by darkness, complete all-encompassing blackness. She smelled nothing, she saw nothing, she felt nothing...
... except uneasiness.
"..." Then it clicked. Inuyasha. Saying she wasn't good enough... "Do you always have to put me down?"
"Yeah, it's the only way for you to learn," the voice spat.
"Degrading me helps me learn, how?" Kagome hissed, glaring at the nothingness in front of her.
"You always tried harder when I said you weren't good enough, didn't you?" The voice softened. "Seems it pushed you away in the end..."
The silence was thick, leaving Kagome to ponder his words. They were true... utterly undeniably true. How could she not have seen it before, that him saying 'well, Kikyo could do better' or something like that always did make her work harder to become better?
Maybe it was the fact that it always hurt to hear it.
"... Inuyasha?"
"Yeah?"
"... Am I dead?"
"... Yeah."
Sesshomaru watched the girl with a baffled expression on his dog features. The lights in the house had been turned off hours ago, yet she still slept... Was the miko frightened that badly?
What was the saying - 'scared to death'?
His eyes widened a bit. Surely she wasn't... He took a deep sniff, locating her scent, finding exactly as he had thought he'd find. Death.
Now he saw the gremlins creeping around her.
'Some guardian,' his mind snorted as he reigned in on his youki, slowly transforming back to his humanoid form.
His hand fell to the hilt of Toukijin instinctively before moving to Tensaiga. Step after step, an odd feeling grew in him. It was... familiar, in a way, to the first time he had seen Rin. Then, he'd felt almost helpless, but now...
He just felt sorry, oddly enough. She had helped his family - Rin had been a daughter to him in so many ways, he realized as he approached Kagome - and he killed her without noticing...
'Great. I'm getting more like Inuyasha by the day here,' he mentally grumbled, his outer self betraying no change in his emotions. 'Next I'll be collared and helpless to this little wench who doesn't even have the sense to run when she's in danger.'
The thought of 'sitting' sent a shiver down his spine and made him rethink reviving the miko.
Did he really need her to complete his mission?
"Will I stay here?" Kagome asked, sniffling lightly.
"No."
"Where am I going, then? And where is this, anyway?"
"Back," he chuckled. "You're eighty years too early, wench. And this is... well... a waiting room, you could say."
Kagome nodded, finding it easy to understand something so vague. A waiting room for those who were to be reincarnated... So Inuyasha was here all alone since Kikyo was already reincarnated as her... "How am I... going back?"
Inuyasha was silent, his outline appearing in the darkness. A hand reached out to cup the side of her face, golden eyes flashing to life in concern and... was it love? Friendship? "... Kagome, watch out for him." It was barely above a whisper. "He needs you more than you think, more than he thinks."
And he slowly faded away.
Sesshomaru sat, his legs crossed Indian style as he waited for the miko to open her eyes. Her once stilled heart was beating once more, her breath returning gradually to a steady rhythm of inhale... exhale... repeat. A finger twitched, then a foot. Soon, her arms were moving to lever her up from her fallen position, her head raising to look him in the eyes... Slowly, the blue-gray irises appeared through widening slits.
She blinked.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Sesshomaru gasped in silence, trying but failing to keep the surprise from showing on his face. How could she know he had brought her back? Sure, he was right there in front of her, but she couldn't have known about Tensaiga...
Wait, she did spend some time with that coward Toutousai when he ran from him, so it was possible...
She thanked him, too... Why would you thank someone for reviving you if it's the same person who took your life in the first place?
How was he supposed to respond? You are welcome? 'I don't think so.'
"... Why didn't you run?" he asked, indifference coloring his voice. "That was a bit of stupidity on your part."
"If I had run, would my family still be living...?" She paused, then cast a glance back to the shrine house. "They... are... alive, right?"
"Yes, they are," Sesshomaru replied, thinking back to his blood lusting mind. If she hadn't died and he gotten bored of his prey... No, they wouldn't have lived... and she would have been torn to unfixable slithers. 'Maybe she is smarter than I originally thought.'
"And...? Am I still stupid for staying?"
He lifted his shoulders slightly and let them drop in a shrug, one eyebrow lifted.
"Right..." Kagome mumbled.
Sesshomaru looked back up at the sky, the light creeping slowly back into the blackened expanse. Dawn was approaching, slowly but surely.
"Just, don't do that again, okay? You frightened me... I mean, what was I supposed to do? You were growling and... and my family and the people on the streets and... Was I supposed to act like nothing was different? No, that wouldn't have mattered, right? My scent would still give me away..."
Sesshomaru watched warily as the girl stood up and started pacing, rambling on and on. It was nice to hear something so familiar in such a strange world with all of its' 'technologies' making a fuss in the background. He had a feeling he wouldn't be getting much sleep with all the ruckus the machinery made.
"Are you going to tell me about the job or not?"
Kagome paused mid-step, frowning, "eh? Job...?" she echoed. "Oh- that job! Right, okay, so..."
Sesshomaru soon found himself very, very confused and cursed himself a fool for wasting the oxygen to ask.
What the hell was a 'clock'? A 'bill'? A 'men-you'? He had to wear a uniform? He couldn't eat the 'patron's order'? Who's ordering him to do anything!? They'd pay severely! - What's 'yen'?
Okay, so more oxygen was needed to ask what he presumed sounded like ridiculous questions and getting answers that brought more questions that brought more answers that brought more questions that...
Well, it wasn't long before the sky was lightened by a raising sun.
She was having fun with explaining everything to Sesshomaru. It reminded her of Sango and Miroku, constantly asking what her world was like...
She felt a ghost of a hand touch her cheek, warming and comforting when she thought about her friends long since deceased. Thanking him for the support he gave her, she smiled and looked to the sky, barely registering Sesshomaru's next question.
"And I have to take 'orders'?"
Without looking away from the wisps of clouds above her, she responded, "Yes. 'Orders' are what the person asks for- their food and drink. Not like a command kind of order. See, you remember what the waiter you had yesterday asked you, don't you?"
"Yes. 'Can I take your-'..." Sesshomaru traveled off, gaining Kagome's attention and grayed gaze. "Oh... I see. So, in other words, I just do what the others do?"
"Unless you are at the register or in the back cleaning dishes, yes."
"'Register'?"
"It's where you take the costumer's money- the money you didn't pay yesterday," Kagome dead-panned. "You take the money, put it in the register, and give them back their change..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"... You do know mathematics, right?"
"..."
Kagome sighed defeatedly. "I'll talk to Mr. Go before sc- School! Oh no, I'm going to be late! Again!"
She was up to her room before Sesshomaru could blink to display his momentary shock of being completely ignored and left in the dust.
Souta grinned.
A/N: Sorry, everyone. I know it's been a while since I updated, and this isn't anywhere near enough to make up for it, but this is where I wanted to end it. To explain Souta- he's just grinning at his sister's blatant disregard for Inuyasha's brother and the fact that she was back to her old self- worrying about being late for school.
I hope you aren't too disappointed. Thanks for sticking with me.
Ja!