In His Arms

All previous disclaimers apply.

Consciousness was slow in coming to Kagome. She came up from the darkness that had consumed her for an indeterminate amount of time only to hover in a state of fog. Her mind was caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness with no way for her to fall back into the former or rouse herself into the latter. She knew this feeling only too well, it had happened to her often enough to leave a lasting impression upon her. She was being kept purposefully in a state of haze, a state of helplessness. Someone had drugged her. Only, this seemed slightly different from other times she had been drugged. There was an aura of pain waiting just above the fog. Pain she was feeling as if she wasn’t truly feeling it at all. As if it were someone else’s pain. So, she had been drugged for her own good. To keep her out of the pain that her body was experiencing. Only one person would be so kind to her. Kaede.

With the thought of Kaede, her mind became more aware and with the awareness, memories flooded back to her in a wave. Waking in the middle of the night. All alone. No one was there. The lack of Shippou’s warmth in her arms was what had woken her. She was next to the fire as she had been, but Inuyasha, Miroku, Shippou, Sango, and Kirara, they were all gone. A closer inspection of the camp had made her see that it was as if they had never been there at all. The only equipment was her own. The only footprints were her own. She had returned to Kaede’s village with utmost haste, asking if they had come through. No one in the village had seen them, but all remembered perfectly well who they were, saving Kagome from complete madness. Kaede had insisted that Kagome not go out on her own for a search, but Kagome had not listened.

For one month she had been searching for them, all of her friends. Outside of Kaede’s village, however, no one seemed to have ever heard of any of them. Even villages Kagome was sure they’d passed through, even stirred up trouble in, seemed to have no memory of the hanyou, the kitsune, the demon slayer, or the monk. Slowly she had stopped looking in villages. She had ventured further and further into unmarked territories, littered with danger. She questioned the wild peoples she met, she questioned the friendlier demons. She questioned the unfriendly demons. Every time something tried to do her any bit of harm, she lost consciousness, only to wake a time later alone again. She was being driven to the edge of her sanity. She began talking to the air as she prepared food for herself. More than once she found she had prepared a meal for all of them before she remembered she was alone.

The nights were her only freedom from the madness that had begun to haunt her. The nights had always been a surprisingly welcomed time of escape. Now, they were all that kept her sane. The simple predictability of them. She dreamt, as always, of Sesshomaru. She had never told Inuyasha, but she had dreamt of his brother from the day she had first laid eyes on him. He was fascinating, so beautiful and so alien to her. His aloof attitude and simple arrogance interested her. He was just so . . . royal. Though, in her dreams he was anything but aloof. In her dreams, he ran his hands over all of her body, every inch covered by his hands, his lips, his tongue. In her dreams, they joined desperately, or quietly, romantically, or like animals. All she knew was that in her dreams he brought her pleasure beyond her wildest reckoning and she, in turn, gave the same to him. More than once, even as he tried to kill her, she had seen the naked lust in his eyes when he watched. She assumed it was what fueled the dreams and had not been concerned with them.

Then, he had found her. Waking in his arms had been the final shock to her system. Knowing he had brought her true pleasure in the night had been more than she could take. Kagome knew she hadn’t truly lost her mind at that point, but it had been something close to it. She had suddenly felt like a simpleton, willing to do anything and everything he told her and enjoy it. At the time he had woken and questioned her she gladly would have killed herself if he had asked it. The pain he had put her through had only solidified that fact in her mind. At that moment she had been exactly what she had told him she was. His slave. Part of her mind told her it was the shock of dealing with the civilized after so long dealing with uncivilized. But, then again, how civilized could Sesshomaru be when he thought nothing of ramming his claws though her shoulder? There was really only one explanation. Really, many small reasons that accumulated to form the explanation. She had been exhausted beyond her breaking point, he had been the first to question her before attacking in a very long time, and subconsciously she had always wanted Inuyasha’s older brother to do exactly what he’d done to her that night. She had always wanted him to dominate her the way Inuyasha had too much pride to do. The combination of the three, and her disappointment in not yet finding any trace of her friends, had made her his slave. For a short time.

Now though, when she felt at least partially rested, she realized what she had done. And what he had done to her. The pain was caused by him. The humiliation and shame that coursed though her like a sick, hot wave was caused by her actions and her actions alone. In her drug-induced haze she wished once again that she could die. She had given her pledge to Sesshomaru to be his slave, a pledge he would not let her break easily, if ever. She was confident that he would never again touch her in any sexual manner. After all, he hated humans almost as much as he hated his hanyou brother. Why then, had he touched her in such a way, even once? Just the remembrance of his fingers deep within her made her mind light in a twisted pleasure. She had more control over her body than she thought through the haze and was startled when she realized the shamed moan she had been expressing in her head had also come from her mouth.

Whomever was watching her seemed to take the moan, not as a symbol of shame, but as a symbol of pain. She had no choice, given her state, when a hand lifted her head and tilted it back. She could not fight as a strong liquid was poured down her throat. She could not even resist swallowing when another hand stroked her throat, forcing the liquid down. She knew what it was the moment it was down. Slowly, she began drifting lower into the fog. Farther from the pain, down, down, into the comforting arms of the black reaching for her. She went willingly into those arms, where she didn’t even have to think anymore.