Adult-FanFiction.org : Inuyasha / Yashahime

The More Things Change	By : inumom Category: InuYasha > Het - Male/Female > InuYasha/Kagome Views: 2401 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha, nor make money from this story.

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: I don�t own them, although I wish I did.

2. Manifestations

The scarlet-clad figure paced back and forth in front of the decrepit old well, growing more and more agitated with each passing second. He wasn�t stupid, regardless of what he encouraged most people to think--he realized that his violent reaction to Kagome�s decision to go back to her own world for a couple of days was way out of line. Knowing that, however, did nothing to ease the misery triggered by her absence.
He had always hated it when she went home. Somehow, nothing seemed worth the effort when she was gone: the sun wasn�t as bright, the air wasn�t as sweet, and food--even ramen!--was bland and tasteless. This time, though, something was different. He moved restlessly, trying to find the position that would place the least strain on his aching joints. His whole body felt strange, almost as though his lean muscles were somehow realigning themselves along his bones. His normally reliable senses seemed to be becoming erratic, changing from almost impossibly acute to almost humanly weak at irregular intervals.
Was it possible that he could actually be sick? Of course, youkai weren�t prone to diseases in the human sense of the word, but he himself had been sick a few times as a pup. To this day he remembered the medicine his mother had prepared for him, the way her touch had soothed his troubled sleep.
Dropping to his knees, he clutched at the side of the well, mouth open in a silent scream at the searing pain in his hands and feet. The spasm only lasted a few seconds, but it had been intense enough to leave him sweating and shivering on the ground. Pulling himself upright, he stared in confusion at the thicker, longer claws that dug carelessly into the wood of the structure.
Something, he decided, was very wrong here. Staggering to his feet, he leaned against the well briefly before allowing gravity to pull him into the future world on the other side.

*

Even though it was her very favorite restaurant, the woman couldn�t concentrate on her meal. Oblivious to the odd looks she was getting from her family, she massaged her hands, not at all sure what had suddenly caused her fingers to cramp up. With a wry thought, she realized that it certainly couldn�t have been due to overworking her hands with schoolwork.
*Where the hell--?*
Looking around suddenly, she realized that she had been the only one to hear the faint, distressed voice. Getting to her aching feet awkwardly, she shook her head. �I�m sorry, everybody, but I have to leave. I don�t�feel well.� As her mother moved to rise as well, she motioned for her to stay in place. �Don�t bother, Mama--stay and finish dinner. I�m just going to walk home. I�ll be fine: it�s only a few blocks.�

*

From his location at the bottom of the well, he could smell that nobody was anywhere on the shrine grounds. Wondering briefly where the woman who might be able to ease the pain he felt might be, he leaped out of the well, dashed out of the well house and across the grounds, leaping to the tree outside her bedroom window.
Reaching for the window that was his usual access to the interior of the building, he was suddenly grateful that she had left it unlocked: after the scene at their parting, he had worried that she might wish to deny him entry into her home. Sliding the window open, he stepped into the room, her scent reaching out from all around him, sweet and spicy, soothing the jangled nerves brought on by the sudden unexplained changes in his mind and body.
Standing in the middle of the room, he turned slowly in place, savoring the fragrance that could calm him like nothing else in either world. Following his nose to the place where the concentration of the scent was the greatest, he found himself curled up in the middle of her bed. Inhaling deeply, his eyes closed as the fatigue and stress of the past days finally caught up with him.

*

Though she had started out for the shrine at a normal walk, a sudden feeling of something terribly wrong overcame Kagome as she proceeded. The closer she got to her home, the stronger that feeling became, and the faster she moved.
When she reached the grounds of her family�s shrine she raced up the long flight of steps leading from the street below. Pausing briefly in the middle of the open courtyard that made up the bulk of the property, she simply waited. Whatever was going on, it wasn�t any of the usual sort of problems she had become so adept at dealing with over the past few years: she could feel no hint of fragments of the Shikon no Tama, there was no presence of youkai, and she couldn�t even feel the fiercely protective aura of the beautiful hanyou who had looked after her for the past four years.
Senses alert, she walked around the outside of the house once before going inside. Good. There was no sign of a break in. She moved methodically through the house, checking out each room thoroughly before moving on to the next. Still nothing.
Climbing the stairs silently, she continued her search for whatever might be causing the distress she�d felt.
�What happened?� The question slipped from her lips before she even realized that she had spoken. All things considered, it was a reasonable question. She stared in pure disbelief at the figure moving restlessly on her bed. Of course, she had seen this young man a few dozen times over the past years, and his pure masculine beauty never failed to surprise her.
Reaching out, she touched his shoulder lightly, causing him to leap to his feet, instantly awake. �What happened?� she repeated.
He simply stared at her blankly until she reached out to him, lifting a few strands of his silky black hair for him to examine. Dark eyes flew open in surprise as he carefully examined his hands, shocked at the sudden absence of the claws that had kept him alive for more than two centuries. �Something�s wrong,� he whispered.
A quick glance at the calendar resting on her desk confirmed her suspicions. Not only was it still daylight, but the new moon, the one night of the month when he lost all of his youkai strength and became human, was not for another nine days.
She sat on the edge of the bed, patting the soft surface next to her. �Come here,� she said. �Tell me everything. Between us we can figure this out.� As he sat next to her, she continued, �First of all, why are you here?�
He blushed furiously, staring at the floor between his feet. �You shouldn�t be away from me. You�ll be in danger when you go back.�
That made absolutely no sense to her. �What are you talking about?�
He had really hoped to avoid this conversation--forever, if possible--but he�d long known that it would eventually become an issue. �When you�re away from me for more than a day or so your mark starts to fade.�
Now it was her turn to blush. �What mark?�
He looked up suddenly. �It�s not what you think! It�s a scent mark that�s left on your skin by simply being near me. Every time you touch me, or I carry you, or you wear my haori, or even when you give me a cup of ramen, it�s renewed. It tells youkai that you�re under my protection. It won�t do much to protect you from something like Naraku, but it warns off the small fry.�
�Oh! I thought--�
�No,� he said quietly, �I would never do anything like that without your consent.�
Her tone softened immediately. �Is this why you hate it so much when I come home?�
It had always been easier for him to speak his thoughts when in his human form. �Partly,� he admitted. �Then there�s the fact that everything just stinks when you�re not there.� He shrugged. �I don�t know how else to explain it.�
She nodded slowly: she had been experiencing a similar phenomenon herself for more than three years. �I still don�t understand about why you�re human right now--has anything unusual happened since I left?�
He frowned, thinking about the strange things he had experienced just before falling through the well. �Yeah. I�ve been feeling really strange for a few days now--almost like my joints and muscles are changing a little bit. There are times when I can almost feel them moving under my skin. Before I came here today, my claws suddenly got a lot longer and thicker--I could probably have cut through steel with those.�
She shook her head. This didn�t make any sense at all. �Then you came here, and this happened?�
The sound of the downstairs door opening and closing ended any further discussion. She pushed him back down to the bed, pulling a thin but extremely warm quilt up over him. �Stay here for now, and try to get a little rest. If there is something wrong, being rested will make it easier to get over it. I have to talk to Mama--I ran out on them in the restaurant, and I don�t want them to be worried.
He nodded slowly, the soothing fragrance in the room--noticeable despite the handicap of a human body--already making his eyelids start to droop shut.

*

Kagome was even more worried when she returned to her room a short time later. Neither her mother nor her grandfather had been able to offer any suggestions that could help explain the hanyou�s sudden physical or personality changes. Pushing open the door, she squealed in surprise as the figure that had been crouched in the middle of the room leaped at her, claws extended.
He had changed yet again. His normal claws, fangs, and mass of silver-white hair had returned, and then some. Once he recognized her he stopped moving, standing still, his breathing labored with a kind of strain she could only guess at. Looking at his closely, she realized that he looked subtly different from his normal state: his claws and fangs were more prominent than usual, his wild snowy mane seemed somehow even longer and thicker than before, his lean frame somehow even longer and leaner, as though his muscular development had not yet caught up with a growth spurt, and he had developed markings on his face indicating that his youkai side was in control.
As she got over the sudden shock she realized that he was also different from the times when he had lost control of himself and released his youkai side. Perhaps most important of all, he had obviously recognized her: the only thing that had ever truly frightened her about his transformations to the youkai state had been the fact that he tended to lose all sense of himself when they happened--he didn�t recognize his friends and was as likely to destroy them as any other obstacle in his path. Stepping closer, she realized that his markings were also different than on those other occasions. Instead of the jagged purple slashes that he usually bore beneath each eye, he now possessed a single smooth, well-defined stripe following each cheekbone from the middle of the cheek to where human ears would have been had they existed. He also possessed a faint red marking of a crescent moon in the center of his forehead. Unlike that of his youkai half-brother, though, this marking was reversed, the open ends of the crescent pointing toward his right.
It was his eyes, though, that convinced her to approach. Instead of the scarlet eyes of his out-of-control youkai state, they had remained the same warm amber she had always loved.
*What the hell are you looking at?*
Without thinking about it, she answered out loud. �Come and see for yourself,� she said, dragging him over to the vanity mirror so that he could see the sudden alterations for himself. As he stared, speechless, at the figure in the mirror she realized that she had answered a question that he had never asked--she had been looking at him closely, trying to determine what had happened, and was absolutely certain that he had never spoken.
Noticing that he seemed on the verge of shock, she pulled him into a loose embrace, gently stroking the mass of hair that hung down his back--it was thicker than before, she realized --in an attempt to calm him slightly. Scratching lightly at the base of his sensitive ears, she was rewarded by a rough rumbling sound from deep in his chest.
*We have to go back�.*
Looking up sharply, he smirked, the expression looking a little odd on his subtly different youkai features. His voice, however, was nearly the same as always--slightly deeper, perhaps. �I thought it was important that you stayed here for two days.� The slightly husky tone sent shivers running up and down her spine as his arms closed lightly around her.
�What are you talking about?� She was clearly puzzled--she hadn�t said anything about going back earlier than she had planned.
He frowned thoughtfully. �You just said that we had to go back. After the fight you started when I tried to talk you out of staying here the extra day, I actually thought you might stay even longer.�
�I never said anything of the kind. I was just thinking that we might be able to find some kind of answers there--either from Kaede-baachan or Myouga-jiichan.� She stopped suddenly, looking up at him in horror. �Oh, gods,� she whispered, �You could hear what I was thinking!� She reddened briefly as she considered the nature of some of her thoughts regarding the hanyou: if he should ever find out about them she�d never be able to look him in the eyes again!
�We do have to go back,� she said, suddenly realizing that the voice she had been hearing now and then had actually been his thoughts reaching out to her. �Nothing like this has ever happened in this world--I don�t think that youkai even exist here any more. If we�re going to find an answer for you, it will have to be there.� She reluctantly released him--standing there wrapped in his arms had felt so good--and reached for the bag she had left lying on the floor. �I have to go downstairs and pick up some supplies. We can go right after that.�
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The More Things Change