---

“Sesshoumaru-sama, there is something I must tell you. Something terrible which I must confess. It concerns Kagome-sama.”

Silence looms, heavy, expectant. 

The rings of the shakujou faintly tremble. “Before Naraku’s defeat, before her marriage to your brother, an incident occurred…”

---

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

She was in love.

It wasn’t the bubbly lightness, the floating-on-air sensation she’d always expected it to be. It was darker, heavier. Burdensome, exhausting, and often just plain painful to bear.

Especially when she feared he didn’t love her back.

Sidelong she glanced over at him. Normally, he walked beside her, but today he was about as far away from her as he could get. Arms crossed at his chest, he was sitting Indian-style atop Kirara’s back. His golden eyes glared straight ahead. His jaw was tense, as if he were angry. But for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what in Kami’s name he had to be so tense about, considering how the two of them had spent the previous evening, after sneaking off alone together into the woods.

“He’s in one of his moods again, isn’t he, Kagome-chan?” Sango whispered to her aside. Next to the taijiya, Miroku rubbed his chin in thought, while Kohaku glanced away from them all with a frown.

Kagome grimaced. “Guess so.”

“Hey, Inuyasha, stop being such a sourpuss!” Shippou hollered from his perch on her shoulder, pelting the brooding hanyou with a magic top. “You’re bringing the rest of us down.”

Fangs bared, Inuyasha whirled. “Shuddup, you,” he seethed, massaging the knot on his crown. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

Normally, he would have leapt over, plucked Shippou from Kagome’s shoulder, and ground him face-first into the dirt. But it seemed maintaining this stupid berth from her was more important. Kagome couldn’t help but take it so personally, as the day wore on and Inuyasha continued to avoid her like the plague.

The moment they finally stopped to make camp, he took off with Kirara altogether.

“Where are you going?” she shouted after him, her fists balled and blood boiling.

“None of your damn business!” he snapped back, not even bothering to turn. “I’ll be back by dawn.”

Kagome knew where he was going. She always knew. Her temple throbbed, her heart ached at the knowledge. Furious at him, at herself, she snatched up her yellow pack and stalked off toward the forest.

---

“That night, Kagome-sama wished to be alone. Inuyasha had left again, and she was disheartened. The area seemed safe enough, so I did not deter her.”

---

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said.

Sitting before the burgeoning campfire, Sango glanced up from the scratch she was buffing out of Hiraikotsu. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll go with you.”

“That’s okay, Sango-chan,” Kagome said, mustering a smile. “I’d rather be by myself if you guys don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Miroku replied smoothly, curving a hand around Sango’s shoulder—a hand Kagome didn’t doubt would be venturing south in about thirty seconds. “Take all the time you need.”

As Shippou snorted and Kohaku shifted uncomfortably, Kagome rolled her eyes and continued on.

She’d just left the clearing when a loud smack sounded behind her.

---

“We—Sango and I—waited for a few hours before we began to search. It was in the river that we discovered her, floating. Face-down. We pulled her to shore and revived her.”

---

It was at least a two-mile trek to the closest bathing spot.

Kagome was sweaty and winded by the time she hiked down to the water’s edge. More of a river than a stream, the water cut through the land in a broad, dark swathe. The occasional frothy rapid roughened its glassy surface.

Pausing to catch her breath before she attempted to pick her way over to a calmer bend in the river, Kagome gazed out over the wilderness before her. The trek out here hadn’t done as much to clear her head as she’d hoped it would. She was still simmering with anger over Inuyasha’s callous departure. Still feeling wounded and second-rate.

Was it because she hadn’t slept with him last night that he’d left her? He hadn’t seemed all that put-out at the time—quite the opposite, really, as she’d wriggled around and taken him into her mouth instead. But maybe once the afterglow had faded, he’d considered it a rejection? He could be very prickly, and his temper could swing at a moment’s notice.

Of course, the issue of sex had come up between them before. Inuyasha grudgingly accepted that Kagome wanted to wait until marriage. It was important to her, for reasons even she couldn’t fully explain. It was just a feeling, an intuition she had, that once she’d given herself over in that way, something would irrevocably change.

She just wasn’t sure what.

She wasn’t sure, now, as she glared out over the churning rapids, whether she’d still be standing here alone even if she had let him have his way with her. Maybe he loved her as she loved him, maybe he didn’t. Maybe the specter of Kikyou would always be between them, even if the priestess herself were laid to rest.

Formless and obscure as the water before her, Kagome’s dark ruminations offered no answers she could readily divine.

---

“I do not know for certain what transpired between the time that she left us and the time that we found her. Kagome-sama herself does not profess to remember.”

---

As the chilly current closed over her head, Kagome held her breath.

Suspended in watery silence, she opened her eyes. The world around her was an eerie brownish-green. Tendrils of her hair drifted before her, dark and shimmering, her limbs ghostly pale in the gloom.

She enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness. Even her thoughts seemed less heavy, here, below the surface.

A part of her wished she could stay like this forever.

But already her lungs were burning. Straightening her legs, she pushed off from the sandy river floor. A gasp of pure relief escaped her at that first bracing breath, as though it were the first of her life.

Conscious of the waning light, and the long return trip she had before her, Kagome bathed quickly. With her soap and shampoo tucked to her chest, she waded back to the shallows and padded over to the steep, rocky bank of the river bend.

Even with dry feet, the climb over the sharp, granite rocks had been a challenge. Dripping wet and perhaps still a little soapy, Kagome began her ascent as carefully as she could. She’d made it about halfway, when the slab of stone she was stepping off from shifted abruptly beneath her, and she felt herself slip—

---

“We examined her, of course. There was a fresh cut on her forehead, as though she had lost her footing on the rocks and, rendered unconscious by the fall into the river, had subsequently drowned.”

---

Kagome’s stomach lurched.

The soap and shampoo clattered to the rocks below. Her arms flew out, pinwheeling in a desperate attempt to stabilize her—as her fallen foot landed on a sturdier ledge of granite just below. Bringing both feet firmly down onto it, Kagome clutched at her hammering chest, and waited for her panicked breathing to subside.

Crouching down, she picked the soap and shampoo out of a crevice nearby. More or less holding her breath the rest of the way, she managed to scale the bank without any further mishaps. At the top of it, she seized hold of her pack, shivering with cold and adrenaline as she extracted a towel and dried herself off.

Clothed, and wet hair combed, she shouldered her bag, took up her weapons, and set off toward the camp.

She only made it a few steps.

---

“But, there were other marks on her which troubled me, and there was the state of her clothing…”

---

Kagome cried out as she fell. The mountainous, wooded terrain blurred by her in a burnished, grey-green flash.

Almost head over heels, she tumbled down the steep, rocky incline, landing in a sprawl by the river bank once again. Hidden beneath a veil of pine needles, a smooth, weathered stretch of granite had caused her to lose her footing this time. Heaving out a sigh of pain and frustration, Kagome winced as she pushed herself upright. Her twisted ankle screamed at the motion.

“Great,” she muttered, giving it a useless rub as she took a mental inventory of all the scrapes and bruises she’d just racked up.

Finally mustering the wherewithal to climb back to her feet, she heard a sharp, foreboding shred as she stood. Cool air slashed across her ass cheeks. Releasing a terse breath, Kagome palmed at the back of her torn sleep shorts. Her fingertips came away bloody. Of course she would land in a briar patch.

Today was really not her day.

Giving her sprained ankle a testing step, Kagome grit her teeth at the flare of pain. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst she’d had. She could still walk, though she hoped there weren’t any wolves around—because she was going to sound and smell like a wounded deer as she dragged herself back through the twilit woods.

She was more sad about the shorts than anything—they were her favorite pair, and she hadn’t had the foresight to bring any others along with her. Her mother would be totally ashamed at this lack of preparation. Grinning a little at the thought, despite everything, Kagome was just crouching down, thinking to replace her thong with a proper set of full-bottomed panties—when a sudden deathly quiet stole over the surrounding forest, making the fine-hairs on her nape abruptly rise.

One hand buried in her yellow pack, Kagome froze. Her eyes lifted slowly to the shadowed tree line above her.

---

“It is my belief, Sesshoumaru-sama…it is my belief that she was attacked on this night.”

---

 

To be continued…

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 4/17/23

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