---

NOTE: This is an out-of-sequence episode. Shouldn’t contain any spoilers if you are up-to-date on the series thus far.

---

 

Slinging her bow over her shoulder, Kagome purified the dark demonic blood from the fletching of her arrow and set a course for home. Her miko duties had taken her farther from Edo village than she’d anticipated. Twilight had descended upon the land by the time the familiar sight of Sango and Miroku’s farmlands came into view. Kohaku’s small thatched hut loomed there like a purpling bruise. At the crest of the last hill, Kagome weighed her choices. Circling around through the forest would be even slower going now that the sun had set. Not relishing the idea of stumbling half-blind through the woods, she struck out across the fields instead.

As far as she knew, Kohaku was still abroad on an extermination mission. Even so, Kagome gave his home a wide berth as she crept along the marshy edge of a rice paddy. She had just cleared the hut when a dry voice addressed her from behind.

“Edo’s champion returns.”

Tensing, Kagome glanced back as Kohaku emerged from the shadows of the porch. His long raven hair hung loose about his shoulders. Foregoing his usual slayer attire, he wore a simple dark kimono instead. Between this and the indolent gleam in his eyes, Kagome had never seen him so relaxed.

Too relaxed, she decided narrowly.

“Have you been drinking?” she asked.

Leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, Kohaku smiled slowly. “Only enough to help me sleep, Kagome-sama. Why, would you like some?”

Kagome stiffened. “I don’t drink, Kohaku-kun.”

“No?—I suppose not, with your supplier absent these past few months.” As Kagome’s gaze sharpened upon him, Kohaku chuckled, drawing the reed curtain aside as he straightened. “Come inside, and share a cup with me.”

Kagome stared hard at him, deliberating. As indignant as she was that he knew about her little secret, she hadn’t had a drink in far too long. Not since before she’d learned the truth about Sesshoumaru. The hankering had been there, like an itch in her mind—though she hadn’t fully realized just how much she’d been missing sake until now, with the prospect of getting her hands on some dangling before her.

“Just one cup,” she said, stepping forward.

Though she’d striven to keep her expression neutral, as the slant of Kohaku’s lips steepened, her eagerness seemed to be on clear display. Suppressing her irritation at this, Kagome strode past him into the hut.

By the second cup, she’d forgotten all about her annoyance with him. By the fourth, she was laughing along with him at nothing, sprawled against his chest. His fingers carded through her unbound hair. As he raised yet another cup of sake to her lips, Kagome struggled to drink it neatly down. A trickle of wine spilled from the corner of her mouth. Before she could brush it away, Kohaku’s lips pressed swiftly to it, melding with her own.

Kagome sighed into the warmth of his kiss. Her fingers twisted in the dark, supple fabric of his clothes. As her tongue slipped out to glean the last traces of sake from him, he groaned and pulled back, cupping her cheek.

“Stay with me tonight,” he murmured, brushing his lips against hers again. “I’ll make you feel good, Kagome, I swear it.”

His hand smoothed down from her cheek to her throat. The tips of his fingers wedged beneath the collar of her haori. As Kagome’s skin heated beneath his touch, a sudden crash of thunder jolted her back to her senses. Unsteadily, she lurched to her feet.

“I should go,” she grit out, snatching up her sandals as she stumbled toward the door.

“Kagome, wait—”

Shrugging off his drunken hold, she continued on her way. Her head thundered to match the skies. As the rain began to pelt her, she clenched her teeth. All the blissful lightness she’d felt from the sake was leaching from her. By the time she’d sloshed blearily back to her home, she was soaked through and shivering miserably.

Curled up on a pile of blankets just inside the threshold, Kanako bolted awake as Kagome staggered past. Her sandals squelched as she kicked them off and trudged over to the wash basin. Anxiously, the waif trailed behind her.

“Kagome-sama, are you unwell?”

“I’m fine,” the miko muttered, raising a ladle of water to her lips.

Hovering beside her still, Kanako stared, her eyes round and unblinking. “Are you jar-bitten, Kagome-sama?” At Kagome’s flat look, the waif elaborated, “…Your breath smells of sake.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Kagome snapped, dropping the ladle with an angry splash. Suddenly, the air around her seemed much too stifling. “Go and sleep at the shrine.”

Clutching Kagome’s drenched sleeve, Kanako wailed, “But, Kagome-sama, it is raining out!”

“Then you’d better move fast,” Kagome replied, yanking herself free. As Kanako continued to loiter beside her, Kagome’s gaze hardened. “Go.”

With a pitiful whimper, the girl hastened away. Kagome exhaled heavily, in nausea and frustration. Swiping a hand across her clammy brow, she drank as many cupfuls of water as she could stand and divested herself of her dense, rain-soaked clothes. Leaving them in a dripping pile, she dragged herself over to her bed and collapsed naked upon it.

The ceiling was spinning above her, even when she closed her eyes. Her flushed cheeks burned like hot coals. Little beads of water tumbled down from the sides of her breasts and stomach and thighs. She should have toweled herself off. She should have done a lot of things, she reflected sourly. Taking in air in deep and measured breaths, she moved her eyes around to counter the spinning, until at last her wooziness began to subside.

She hadn’t been this drunk in more than a year, though it didn’t take her long to pin down the date precisely.

It had been the first anniversary of Inuyasha’s death, and she’d been attempting to erase the whole day from her memory. Amassing that much sake under Sesshoumaru’s nose hadn’t been easy. Of course her brother-in-law had never approved of her drinking—the same way he’d never seemed to approve of anything he didn’t expressly permit. Kagome scowled.

The first time he’d caught her with sake shortly after Inuyasha’s funeral, he’d snatched the bottle from her and poured out the rest of the wine on the ground—even as she’d cried out that it was a wedding gift and that he had no right to do so.

Inuyasha may have coddled you, he had coldly said, but I will not indulge you in your weakness.

Out of sheer spite as much as in pursuit of relief, Kagome had made it her mission after that to sneak sake whenever she could. As head priestess, she had an image to maintain, so she had to be careful how she procured it. Only once she’d enlisted Hachi’s help had she been able to find a discreet and halfway reliable source.

Still, securing the sake had been its own challenge. No scent trail was too faint for Sesshoumaru’s keen nose to miss. Timing was everything if she was going to steal more than just a taste.

In the months following the funeral, Kagome had dialed back her habit enough for him to lower his guard. As the eve of that dreaded day had arrived, she’d had a small collection of bottles stashed away in a wax-sealed pot, buried in the bank of a stream nearby. Under the pretense of going to bathe, she’d had the opportunity to break into her cache at long last.

About halfway through the final bottle, her recollections of that night and the whole day after had faded to black. She’d been so sick upon waking that Sesshoumaru hadn’t even needed to lay into her to convince her never to do something that stupid again. He had merely stood stonily by as she’d retched up what seemed like liters upon liters of scalding bile. But she had managed to fast-forward through that hateful occasion, to banish that day and all that it signified to total oblivion.

…Or, so she’d thought.

Maybe it was her current level of intoxication. Maybe it was simply the fact that she was focusing her thoughts so intently upon that forgotten night. Maybe it was both, or just a coincidence. But as if from the pit of her heart itself, fragments of memory were glinting back at her from the dark recesses.

And now she was starting to see—now she was starting to remember…

Just what had happened after she’d finished off that last bottle of sake.

…

She had scarcely drained it when she felt the full, thunderous force of Sesshoumaru’s youki bearing down upon her. As she turned with the empty bottle in hand, her brother-in-law stormed toward her. His eyes blazed with anger.

“You troublesome girl—can you not give me a moment’s peace?” Kagome winced as he wrenched her up by the arm, ripping the bottle from her with a growl. “How many of these did you drink?”

Hardly able to stand, Kagome sagged against him. Her voice and thoughts were hopelessly slurred. “…I dunno…a few…”

When her eyes strayed back toward the swift-moving stream, Sesshoumaru swore. Dashing the jar against the ground, he picked her up and returned to her home. After force-feeding her water until she gagged and wept, he made her change clothes and ordered her into bed. There, she must truly have lost consciousness for a while, because the next thing she remembered, she was lying on her side, somewhat more sober than before. Next to her, Sesshoumaru sat in steely vigil. Against the wall, his back was sword-straight, his jaw locked tight in silent fury.

Perhaps hours or only minutes passed as she stared hazily up at him in profile. A soft, guilty sigh left her lips.

“…Am I really such a burden to you?”

At first, Sesshoumaru didn’t answer. Hesitantly, Kagome slid her hand toward him, touching her fingertips to his own. His dark gold eyes slanted down at her then. Beneath the surface of his gaze shifted something darker still.

“You trouble me more than you will ever know.”

Kagome frowned. Yet after a moment, she felt some of the iron tension in him ease. Encouraged by this, she trailed her fingers along the tapered length of his claws. Her touch skimmed up over the cool, finely-boned back of his hand—a hand that felt so very much like her dead husband’s.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, sincerely.

Once again, Sesshoumaru didn’t reply. Pushing herself up on an elbow, Kagome bit her lip at the vertigo that washed over her as she moved to sit beside him. In the low light of the hearth, his pale form was haloed in white. One gleaming lock of his hair fell over his shoulder, too tempting in that moment for her to resist. As though in a dream, Kagome reached out, taking that stray tress of silver between her fingers—its silky strands finer in their texture and shade, but otherwise so similar to Inuyasha’s.

Almost greedily, she continued to touch him, combing her fingers through his lovely hair, slipping her hands beneath the loosened neck of his haori to feel his naked skin. Hard and smooth, the muscles of his chest were warm as sun-baked stone beneath her questing fingers. All the while throughout this exploration, her brother-in-law stayed still and silent as a statue—even the low simmer of his youki remained unchanged. At his total lack of response, something like anger flickered within her.

…Something like need.

Practically in his lap already, Kagome pressed closer to him still. Her breasts flattened to his chest as she leaned into him. Grazing her lips along the marble column of his neck, she breathed in his subtle, masculine scent. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was close—close enough.

“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” she murmured, running the pad of her thumb along a face stripe that seemed almost jagged to her in her wine-fogged state. “I always have been, haven’t I…”

Like hunger pains, the loneliness gnawed within her, filling her with desperation. The urgency to smother her grief, to feel that closeness again fully possessed her, setting her nerves aflame. Her voice pitched lower, her hand reached lower.

“…But I’m not a little girl anymore…”

As her fingers brushed the ties of his hakama, Sesshoumaru’s youki flared. Kagome gasped as her back hit the futon beneath him. Ivory claws bit into her arms. The weight of his body bore down upon her. His molten eyes scorched into hers as he ground his hips brutally hard between the spread of her thighs. Through the gap in her splayed yukata, his clothed erection bruised the bare tender folds of her sex.

“Is this what you want, Kagome?” he demanded.

Hot, frightened tears sprang to her eyes. As he thrust his hand beneath her sleeping robe and seized her naked breast, she cried out in pain and distress. Her nipple chafed beneath the scrape of his claw. His other hand gripped her under the thigh as he forced her legs apart even further and crushed the whole, terrifying length of him to her open core.

“Is this what you would have of me?”

His eyes glowed red above her own, his expression cloaked in shadow. Youki hung like smoke in the air around them, deepening its inky darkness. A low, gravelly rumble shook her through to the bone—a sound somewhere between menace and dark amusement. As knife-like claws scratched down the front of her body, Kagome flinched, whimpering in terror. When his hot fanged mouth latched to her throat, she clutched him by the shoulders and sobbed.

“Stop…please, stop…”

Her head and heart were pounding. The dark heat of him assailed her. Beneath her skin, her reiki scalded in response, coursing like liquid fire through her veins. Anguished, she shoved back against him with all her strength. Tears bled from her eyes as he drew back from her and clasped her wet face in his hand. His clawtips lanced into her stinging cheeks. His eyes had dulled to amber once more.

“I am not my brother,” he said to her then, releasing her harshly as he stood and loomed above her, glaring down. “Do not toy with me.”

…

With that, he had left her. Her consciousness had departed along with him.

Similarly exhausted and overwhelmed, Kagome presently groaned. The heel of her hand kneaded at the stabbing pain between her eyes. Her heart thudded in dread at these harrowing recollections. Dredged up from the muck and mire of that hellish first year she’d spent widowed, combined with the nightmarish reality of the present, could she even trust what she was recounting? Would she even remember it at all, after this night was through?

Or would these distressing images sink back down again, into the depths of her waking mind?

Too tired to dwell upon them any longer, Kagome drew the bedsheet over her like a shroud, willing the throbbing pain to subside. But behind her shuttered eyes it lingered. A dark threat searing against the edges of her senses. And between her clenching thighs it lurked, hollow and aching.

The emptiness. The greed.

The danger within.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 3/1/23