– 3 –

Sea

“Kami…Jesus Christ…”

Kagome groaned. She prayed to every deity she could think of as she flopped over onto her side. The antique bed creaked in time with her stiff joints. She could feel the waistband of her jeans cutting into her, the straps and band of her bra also. She wished to God she’d had the wherewithal to shuck off her clothes before she’d passed out. She was going to have the ugliest, reddest grooves in her skin for this.

At least Sesshoumaru had taken off her boots and coat—

“Sesshoumaru!” she gasped, lurching groggily upright.

Her bleary eyes glanced around the room, but he was nowhere to be seen. Reaching out with her senses, she couldn’t detect him either. He must have left the cottage, gone back to…well, wherever it was he went when he wasn’t being her babysitter.

Letting out a sigh, Kagome slumped. She felt shitty to say the least. Hangover and embarrassment made for a dreary cocktail.

Downing the water he’d placed for her by the bed, she dragged herself out from under the quilts. After stripping off yesterday’s clothes right in the middle of the room, she trudged into the shower. Hot water sluiced over her, punishing in its scald. Through the shower curtain she leaned her pounding head against the wall and groaned again.

Bits and pieces of the day before came glaring back at her through the fog. She’d really made a mess of things, she figured. Getting sloppily drunk in public was bad enough, but to jump to the wrong conclusion about him putting her to bed, only to turn around and admit her attraction to him in the next breath—

Well, that was downright mortifying.

Not only was Sesshoumaru no longer here, he was probably a thousand miles away from her by now. Who could blame him?

Kagome shut off the water and clambered out of the tub. Drying off her dripping hair for a second, she plodded out of the bathroom with the towel only haphazardly flung around her, and almost had a heart attack.

“Y-you!” she spluttered, scrambling to cover herself as best she could with that slip of seashell-embroidered cloth. “You’re still here?!”

Sesshoumaru’s measured gaze took her in. As he crossed the bedroom toward her, Kagome retreated a panicky step. Still scrabbling at the skimpy towel, she was torn between shielding her upper-half and lower. Her heart ran off the rails as he closed the short distance between them. Frantic, wild thoughts swirled through her beleaguered brain. All she could think as she backed into the wall was that she hadn’t brushed her teeth yet!

About an arm’s length from her, Sesshoumaru stopped. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand. “You should take this.”

In the center of his open palm was a little white pill. Kagome stared at it, then at him.

“Aspirin,” she said lamely, as she took it from him. “…Thanks.”

Without thinking, she popped the pill into her mouth—only to spit it right back out into her hand again, when she realized she didn’t have anything to wash it down with. Cheeks flaming, Kagome slipped around him and fled back into the bathroom. With a grimace, she popped the bitter, soggy pill back into her mouth and chased it down her throat with a few cupped handfuls of water. Catching sight of Sesshoumaru’s reflection in the vanity mirror, Kagome gasped and whirled to find him regarding her impassively from the doorway, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Then again, maybe for an inuyoukai it was. His concept of personal space seemed quite different from hers. The way he casually tailed her around seemed almost…well, doglike.

“U-um!” she said, clutching at the sink behind her. “Would you mind, uh, waiting downstairs?”

After another long, inscrutable glance, Sesshoumaru nodded and withdrew. Kagome exhaled, sagging back against the sink. Only then did she realize her towel had been gaping open from breast to hip all the while.

…

Maybe it was the adrenaline, the aspirin, or some combination of the two, but by the time Kagome was decent again, she was feeling much improved. With almost frenetic energy, she bustled around the kitchen, cooking bacon, toast and eggs while Sesshoumaru watched her sidelong from the bar where he was leaning. He was a little in the way, but he didn’t seem to notice—or to care. And Kagome didn’t bother to ask him to move, secretly enjoying the incidental contact as she brushed by him on her way to and from the dining nook.

When she sat down at the scrubbed table, he sat down beside her—not opposite her, she noted. She offered him some of her breakfast, but as expected, he declined. He did accept coffee though, interestingly enough.

Sipping on her own cup, Kagome realized aloud, “Oh no—the pub bill! You must have covered the whole thing…I’ll have to pay you back.”

“No need,” Sesshoumaru said, his lashes lowered as he drank.

“No, no, I insist. It must have been a lot, the way we were drinking.” At Sesshoumaru’s cool glance, which said quite clearly you, she fidgeted a little. “Anyway, how much was it?”

Sesshoumaru shrugged. Kagome’s face fell.

“You…didn’t pay it, did you?” Sesshoumaru seemed so totally nonplussed by the concept, Kagome could only ask, “Do you ever pay for anything?”

Setting down his cup, he fixed her with an imperious look that took her back five hundred years in an instant. “Why should I?”

Kagome gaped, vaguely affronted by this attitude, which ran so counter to her own moral principles. But then, she really had to ask herself, why should he? It wasn’t as though anyone could make him. He was an immortal demon who could melt people on the spot in the worst case or simply vanish into thin air in the best case. And these days, anyone who clamored about either would just be considered a lunatic.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Kagome insisted, but this plea sounded weak even to her own ears.

“The ‘right thing.'” Sesshoumaru smiled at her, mirthless and thin, before his gaze slid past her, toward the rising sun. “Rin once said the same to me. Yet I have learned since that your human precepts are a mire, ever-shifting. How you worry over trifles and commit atrocities without a care.” In the glare of his eyes, she saw the fires of war reflected, before they dulled and she remembered then how he had set Bakusaiga aside. “What would she have said to me, I wonder, after I delivered the last of her descendants from that nuclear blast only to watch them wither away before my eyes? On what grounds would she have defended the moral superiority of your race to me, then? For all that I’ve killed, such sadistic weapons I could never contrive, let alone wield with such wanton disregard. So spare me your self-righteous platitudes. I will do as I see fit.”

Kagome was quiet for a while. Heart heavy, she stared down at the black, grainy dregs in her cup.

“After the bombs dropped,” she asked, “was that when you left Japan?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “There was nothing to hold me there. There has been nothing to hold me anywhere.”

Their eyes met as he said this, and Kagome’s heart seemed to falter. The rich gold of his gaze arrested her, the sharp solid lines of his face. So close, she could feel the heat of him bleeding into her, the weight of his presence. How pale a shadow of himself he had seemed at the ruins of that castle, compared to how real and alive he felt to her now.

Kagome thought she was beginning to understand what he’d meant, when he’d spoken of youkai fading away. There was more than death that could make one disappear.

“I didn’t forget you,” she wanted to say to him. “So please don’t go.”

It was something her old self might have said, but it didn’t feel quite right to her now. Or maybe she just wasn’t bold enough to say it.

“I should head back to town,” she said, collecting the dishes as she stood, “pick up my bike if it’s still there, pay that tab at the pub…” Pausing en route to the sink, she glanced back at him. “Care to come along?”

“It will be a long walk for you otherwise.”

Kagome smiled. “Hey, you said it, not me.”

…

The bike was still there, exactly where she’d left it: unchained and leaning against the wrought-iron railing. This quaint Irish village was a nice and honest place. It made Kagome feel that much more guilty as she returned to the pub to settle her bill, after more or less dining and dashing the day before.

The bartender, good-natured as he seemed, clearly wanted to give her a stern word over it—but whatever look Sesshoumaru must have been giving him over her shoulder caused the man to clam right up. With a big smile and an even bigger tip, Kagome managed to smooth the whole thing over. The bartender even held the door open for her on her way out.

“See?” she said to Sesshoumaru as she wheeled her bike through the square. “‘Right thing’ aside, a little money goes a long way with people.”

Sesshoumaru made a noncommittal sound. Happening to glance back toward the pub, Kagome saw the blinds drawn shut and a sign saying ‘Out to Lunch’ swinging from the front of the bolted door.

…

Returning the bike to the woodshed, Kagome grabbed a bite to eat from the kitchen while Sesshoumaru looked on as usual. Though it had only been two days, she felt like she was starting to get used to his strange ways. That arrogance and alien aloofness about him still remained, as much a fixture of him as she could remember, but subdued, somehow, as though time had matured him, smoothing down the sharp edges in his personality a bit. Very likely, she supposed, this was exactly the case. Or maybe she’d grown less prickly herself over the years. Gods knew she had no right to lay into anyone. Her own past had worn her down in that regard.

Whatever it was, the traits she’d once categorized as ‘hostile’ in him now seemed merely enigmatic. Bemusing, even. He was a curiosity, to be sure. And her fascination with him gave her fresh enthusiasm. Being around him made her feel like she once had, bright and peppy and inquisitive. Like the world was a vast and interesting place, full of wonders yet to be explored. She didn’t realize how stale her outlook had become up until now, but the contrast was startling. Who would’ve guessed that being around a centuries-old relic of her past would have made her feel less jaded?

But here they were.

“Let’s go down to the sea,” she said, and so they went.

Kagome could get used to fast-travel, she thought. Though it still made her stomach drop and her eyes hurt, that orb of his was pretty damn convenient.

They alighted on the shores of a steeply-walled cove, which would be difficult, if not impossible, for one to reach by foot. Even with a boat it seemed dicey—against the knife-like rocks offshore, the waves broke in great frothing bursts of foam. Shielded from worst of the high winds, Kagome’s face still misted with the spray. Her tongue tasted salt with every inhale. Glad for her sturdy Wellingtons, she roamed about the shoreline for a while. Sand, stones and shells crunched under her soles, crusted her rubber boots from heel to toe until the occasional ambitious wave raced up to wash them clean again.

Across the distance, she saw through the boiling grey mists a white lighthouse perched on an islet of dark rock, its pale glow straining against the gloom. The sight made her lonesome, in some indescribable way.

Kagome looked back to Sesshoumaru, who had seemed to be studying it as well. His gaze was so faraway it was hard to tell for sure. When she approached him, his mirrored eyes refocused upon her with a flicker.

“Where to now?” he asked her dryly, as she stepped right up into the circle of his arms.

Tucked against his chest, Kagome closed her eyes, slow to answer as she breathed him in. “…Someplace bright and warm.”

…

He took her to an open field, a flowering dale nestled between the sloping, tree-smattered hills. These were old farmlands, it seemed, perhaps abandoned for years, with only the wandering sheep to keep the greenery in check. The grass was as high and fragrant as the blooms. A flock of grazing sheep munched through them indiscriminately, as seemingly indifferent to the cuds they were chewing as they were to Kagome, who patted them on their coarse woolly backs and curly-horned heads.

Toward Sesshoumaru, however, they maintained a wide, baa-ing berth. Feeding one of them some tender green shoots, Kagome tossed him a grin.

“Animals are pretty smart,” she said. “They listen to their instincts.”

Sesshoumaru met her eye. “They aren’t capable of higher thought.”

“Sometimes that’s for the best. People tend to overthink things.”

“People,” Sesshoumaru asked, “or you?”

Kagome’s smile slipped a little. “Both, I guess.”

The wary sheep withdrew like a wave as Sesshoumaru stepped toward her. Plucking a buttercup from its stalk, he slipped it behind her ear. Wonderingly, Kagome touched her fingers to its silky, sun-warmed petals.

“What’s this for?” she murmured.

“Don’t overthink it,” Sesshoumaru said.

…

Twirling the buttercup in her fingers, Kagome walked alongside him down the winding dirt trail. It felt a little like one of her old adventures, rambling across the open country with her companions, never sure what they’d encounter along the next bend.

Maybe for him, it felt a little like that too.

“I was depressed for a long time,” she said out of nowhere, “after the well shut and I was cut off from Sengoku Jidai. It had started to feel like my life was more there than here, and it just didn’t seem like I’d ever adjust. Mama convinced me to go see a therapist, but what could I say? The truth would get me put away in a straitjacket.”

“But you went anyway,” Sesshoumaru said.

Kagome nodded. “Yeah, I went, and I kept going. More for the routine of it than anything. Routines can be helpful, when you don’t have anything else.” She held the flower to her nose, savored its softly wild scent. “I think it was more the ritual of therapy that helped me than anything. To be honest it was exhausting, maintaining the better part of the lie under the nose of someone who’s trained to sniff them out. Tens of thousands of yen, just to feel like you have some structure. It’s pathetic, really.

“But it got me out of bed. It got me back in school, and when I had school, I didn’t need therapy. And when I had work, I didn’t think I needed anything. I threw myself into work because it seemed like there was never an end to it. But there are still lulls, and the higher you climb at the firm, the less legwork you do. When I wasn’t running myself ragged, I felt those black thoughts crushing back in on me. I had to fill every hour, no matter what, or…”

Kagome realized she was nibbling on the flower, and stopped. Sesshoumaru was looking at her, looking at her mouth. She flushed.

“I’m rambling a bit, aren’t I?” she said, smiling slightly. “I guess what I’m trying to get at is, this is the first time in more than a decade I’ve felt anything like real closure, because you’re the only one in the world who can truly understand where I’m coming from. And I think that’s all I’ve really needed this whole time. So, anyway…thank you.”

“For what?” Sesshoumaru asked, his eyes glinting in the waning light.

Smiling crookedly, Kagome slipped the flower back behind her ear. “Just for being here with me, that’s all.”

…

The stars were just coming out, setting the night sky aglitter in a way Kagome hadn’t seen on her side of the globe in half a millennium.

In the hills by the road, a particular arrangement of standing stones caught her eye. It looked like a crude sort of altar—a broad slab of stone leaning on stout, pillared legs below. The perfect platform for stargazing, she thought.

Vaulting the low rock wall, she scaled the hill to reach it. Sesshoumaru followed soundlessly after. The standing stones rose higher than she thought, but with a bit of less-than-graceful scrabbling, she reached the top and sprawled on her back over the weathered face of the slab. Near the foot of it, Sesshoumaru lingered—loomed, rather. Greenish-gold eyeshine limned his gaze.

A shiver ran unbidden down Kagome’s spine. Absurd images rose to her mind before she could tamp them back down—images both mythological and mundane. Images of beasts and lovers, both hungry and intent, closing in on the prone maiden who lay before them.

…Must be the primal setting, Kagome reasoned, against the dark heat that simmered low in her belly.

She raised her hands to the sky, held as many stars as she could between them. But for all the ones she held, there were a multitude more glittering outside her reach.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “it feels like I’m trying to piece something back together that’s shattered beyond repair.”

“Why did you come here, Kagome?”

It was the third time he’d asked her, and she realized that each time he did, it was getting harder for her to lie.

“Because I’d given up,” she said, pushing herself up onto her hands and sliding down off the rock.

When she hit the ground and looked up, he was all that she could see.

…

Back at the cottage, Kagome whipped up some pasta carbonara and uncorked a bottle of wine. To her surprise, Sesshoumaru had drunk half of it before her dinner was even on the plate.

“Trying to head me off?” she asked him wryly, pirouetting her fork through the shimmering linguine.

They were sitting by the fire. Kagome lounged at one end of the sofa in a t-shirt and sweatpants, while Sesshoumaru occupied the other, still impeccably dressed as ever. Even as she asked the question, he took another long drink from the glass.

“Someone must.”

Kagome feigned exasperation. “Look, even the great Shikon Miko can’t handle getting that shitfaced two days in a row. Trust me, I’m not going to overdo it tonight.”

Sesshoumaru’s look was the epitome of frank disbelief. Kagome huffed, digging into her pasta with vehemence.

Just as she was finishing washing up, the phone rang. Gritting her teeth, she ignored it. When it rang again, Sesshoumaru picked it up.

“It’s from Tokyo,” he said. “Himura Akito.”

But Kagome already knew that. The cleaned cutlery fell back into the sink with a clatter. Shoulders square, she strode into the den and snatched the phone from his hand.

“Yeah?” she spoke into the receiver. “What do you want? We’re supposed to be communicating through attorneys only.”

“Cold as ever, I see,” Akito said. “We’re both attorneys, so let’s cut the litigative bullshit. I heard you’d skipped out of the country and wanted to check in. Forgive me for treating you like a human being. But I should have known better. It’s not like you ever paid me the same courtesy.“

Kagome released a terse breath. “Akito—”

“You there with a man?” he guessed, and when she hesitated to answer—for many reasons—he scoffed. “Of course you are. You don’t waste much time shacking-up, do you, Kagome? Tell me, are you feeding him the same sob story you used to hook me? The damaged woman bit must be getting old at this point. Face it, you’re a drunk and a slut, and all your problems are self-inflicted.“

“I’m hanging up now,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Go fuck yourself,” he shot back, and the line went dead.

Kagome dropped her phone on the counter like it was burning a hole through her hand. The cracked screen splintered further. Stalking over to the bar, she poured herself an extra tall glass of wine and promptly drained it. Sesshoumaru didn’t say anything. She poured herself another.

“I guess you heard all that,” she snapped, almost as if she was blaming him, though they both knew she wasn’t.

“Yes,” he said. “I heard.”

Kagome took a gulp of the wine and frowned. “He’s right, you know. I’m screwed-up. I like to drink, and I like to fuck. I like to get obliterated, as a matter of fact. So, yeah, you should probably just leave.”

Sesshoumaru stayed right where he was and stared her down, unflinching. Kagome glared back. But deep down, she respected him more than she could say.

“Come here,” he said. Kagome slunk over with wine glass in hand. “Sit down on the couch.”

Kagome sat down like a lump. A bit of the dark wine sloshed over the rim, staining the pretty patterned carpet. Sesshoumaru seated himself on the couch beside her. When he took the glass from her, she didn’t resist him. Mournfully, she looked up at him instead.

“Four marriages in twelve years,” she confessed. “The first lasted four, the second two, the third just one, and this latest one, not even six months. The half-lives of my relationships just keep getting shorter and shorter. I’ve been in arbitration with Akito longer than we were married. So, I’m done. I think I’m just done.” Her mouth twisted at his stony expression. “You think I’m a failure, don’t you?”

“I think you are deeply unhappy,” Sesshoumaru said.

Somehow, this assessment cut Kagome through to the bone. She stood from the couch and stormed away, clutching her arms about her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know…It’s like I told you, when I’m not working, I feel this emptiness. So I try to fill it with men. I convince myself I love them, and maybe I do, for a while. But it never lasts. I tell myself I don’t need them. A big case comes up, and I push them away. I throw myself into the quest, you know. And then I don’t feel so lacking. Then I don’t feel so…”

“Lonely,” Sesshoumaru finished for her.

“Yes,” Kagome said, her voice breaking as she pressed a trembling hand to her chest. “I feel like I’ve been running from that loneliness since the well shut. So this time I thought, fuck it, I thought…”

Crossing back over to him, she plunked herself down on the couch, right beside him. Knees to her chest, she took his hand in hers and held it to her lips. Against them, his skin was smooth like marble, but ever so warm.

“Why did you come here?” he asked her again.

“To throw myself off the cliffs,” she answered without thinking.

“I would have caught you.”

“You did anyway.”

She took his finger in her mouth, and he was on her so sudden it made her head spin, though for her she’d hardly drunk anything. Beneath his weight she sank down into the plush velvet cushions, her wrists pinned above her head as he restrained her. Restrained them both.

“You should go to bed,” he faintly growled.

“You should go with me,” she said, rolling her hips up into his.

Sesshoumaru’s jaw locked tight. Hard—as hard as he was between her legs before he drew himself up and released her with a shove.

“Go to bed,” he said again. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m always drunk,” Kagome muttered.

But she peeled herself off the couch and stomped up the stairs all the same.

…

Upstairs in the loft, Kagome stripped herself naked with a seething vengeance. Yanking on the slinkiest negligee she had, she threw herself on top of the quilts. In the chill of the room, her nipples peaked, chafing at the flimsy silk that scarcely covered them. Between the splay of her legs, her wet sex steamed in the open air.

Spitefully, she thought about pleasuring herself, loudly and enthusiastically, either to rile him into coming up here or to leave him stewing down below. But her hands felt leaden. She was just too tired, or too tipsy, or both.

…

In her dreams, she felt herself being pierced, torn apart from within. Her desire broke from her, bloody and round and glistening, and burst into a trillion pieces before her eyes.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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