#rushed bc i gotta get to the mt where there is 0% internet access like now

[thehattertheory]

untitled s/k

I accidently reblogged a prompt list to the wrong blog and @cakeit0n requested 63. I forgot to forget. Given Cake has brought back the DDN/GMDDN and is an awesome human in general, I’m stoked to oblige.

I’m not sure how well this works for the prompt, my brain just sort of blurted it out.

Rating: G

Tags : Modern Era, CanonDiv, Kagome never goes back to the past, youkai politics in the modern era, romance, inu yasha has zero patience for these two idiots, drabble? nah my hand slipped, unbetaed, kind of rushed but im going out of town with no internet so now or never

When he met her again, she was covered in blood, working with a petite youkai to try and keep a wounded creature from pulling the fang in it’s thigh free. That the fang was easily the width of his wrist and buried in the thigh of a dragon meant little. He’d come to investigate the disturbance itself.

Finding her in the thick of it seemed fitting, twenty first century be damned.

When she looked up at him there was the briefest flicker of recognition before her features settled into determined lines. “Either you can go and get that sword of yours or you can help me make sure he doesn’t get that far.”

With only one real way to help, he clipped the dragon’s head, stunning it senseless. “How did this happen?”

“He’s not up to answering questions right now, we need to get him stabilized and moved,” She muttered, wrapping bandages around the fang to keep it from moving, a series of curses escaping as she finished the job. “Sesshoumaru, can you pick him up, we just need to get him into the truck.”

“Miko,” The petite youkai hissed, staring at him, then swinging her gaze back to the woman.

“He’s fine,” The miko dismissed. “We need to get this one out of sight, asap. Sesshoumaru?”

“You would have done this without me,” He reminded her, amused by her lack of decorum.

“But having a man around helps,” She shrugged. “Unless you want the news to get him on camera.”

With little option, he slung the youkai over his shoulder and followed her to the van parked in the next alley, dropping the stunned creature into the back with a modicum of grace and watching as the petite youkai got in the back, the door being slammed shut in his face.

“Don’t mind Souten. She’s paranoid of the elders.”

Him. She was paranoid about him. “Is she a criminal?”

“We both work a clinic.”

A clinic, not The Clinic, the same one they’d been searching for as the conflict between the youkai factions had begun escalating. He knew better than to think they weren’t the same thing.

“You’re being forthcoming.”

“You won’t turn me in,” She shrugged.

“Presumptuous.”

“Then got on with it or let me get him somewhere safe.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I don’t care.”

He frowned. The crux of it. “You’ll take me there.”

“No.”

“Miko-”

“You can’t go back, Sesshoumaru. You called me by my name,” She reminded him with a pinched frown.

“Five hundred years is enough time for the formalities to reassert themselves.”

She had the gall to roll her eyes at him. “I’m not leading you there. We just moved again.”  Just as abruptly, something shifted, she looked back up at him, her exhaustion peeking through the mask she’d been wearing. “Please, just- Just this time. Let us go. Forget you saw us.”

Exhaustion, frustration, even a little fear. But resilience too, the girl he’d known a scattered blueprint for the woman standing in front of him. “I owe you no favors,” He said slowly, seeing her go rigid, steeling herself. “But I owe a debt to the girl that saved my ward, a very long time ago.”

Her shoulders sagged, naked gratitude replacing the fear.

“Thank you,” She breathed, her only acknowledgment before slipping into the van and starting it.

Despite himself, despite the laws he’d helped compose, that he’d sworn to uphold without exception- He watched her go, and did not follow.

########################

Tensions continued to rise, tempers and minor conflicts sparking among youkai in the city, even spreading outside of Tokyo, spreading them all thin. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first war that chanced being caught on cellphones and city CCTV, the entire world wired to take notice of them.

He didn’t seek out the clinic itself, but he did search for Kagome. It should have been simple to find a miko, especially one with blue eyes, one that healed anyone, regardless of species. What should have been simple had turned to an exercise in futility, the last tangible rumor of her from a residency that she’d completed, not a whiff of magic about her.

Then nothing but fragments of whispers.

So it was surprising to be called to a hearing, only to find himself face to face with her.

“And who is this?” He asked, biting back surprise.

“It turns out the miko Sango has been the one giving haven to the wounded, instead of bringing them to our attention.”

Sango. He remembered that name, remembered the huntress and her younger brother. Memories tied up in Rin’s life, and her death. “Sango, is it? Do you understand why you’re here?”

Fierce, rebellious blue eyes rose to meet his gaze without flinching. “I’m helping them. Most of them don’t have any choice. Their leaders are forcing them to fight-”

“They all have a choice,” Another of the Elders interrupted, as if bored with the proceedings.

“If someone disobeys their clan head they’re cast out. Are you you going to take care of them?” She countered, fury spilling over, voice echoing through the room. “Tell me, who’s going to help them if they’re hit by a car and can’t explain walking away? Or what about the ones that require weekly seals for their unstable blood? Will you see to it they can survive the modern era?”

“Passionate, coming from a miko,” One of his peers sneered.

“If you want to end my interference, do your jobs and end the conflict between the clans.”

It was the nail in the coffin. He could see the decision writ clear across their faces.

“Perhaps it is time she go to one of the holding areas, so we may discuss this matter,” He suggested.

“Bind her, force the truth out of her, clear out the clinics,” One of the others said with ease, as if he wasn’t suggesting the most horrific punishment they’d inflicted on their worst criminals.

“I think it is a matter that should be discussed,” He repeated. “Take her to the eighteenth floor.”

The two youkai that had been hanging back nodded their assent. Kagome didn’t allow them to touch her, following peacefully between them.

“We need access to the youkai she’s protecting,” One of the Elders muttered. “It’s the only way to find the instigators.”

She wouldn’t give up the youkai or her clinic, not that he was going to inform the others of any such thing. The agreement rose around him, where it fell apart was the how of it. Every elder had their own opinion of how to proceed. None of them agreed, and none of them was willing to cede.

They adjourned, nothing solved.

###############################

“Sango?” He asked, walking into the holding area. Little more than a small bedroom with a toilet and sink in it. One of only a small handful, all of them spelled to hold even the most dangerous of youkai and miko.

“I didn’t want them finding my family.”

“You’ve been doing this longer than the current conflict.”

“There’s always been a need for a clinic,” She shrugged, watching him warily. Whatever ease she’d had in his presence before was gone.

“You sacrificed yourself so your patient could escape,” He accused. “You would not be here otherwise.”

She remained silent.

“Foolish.”

“You would have done the same, once.”

“You speak as if I’ve changed so much.”

“Haven’t you?”

“You haven’t given me much chance to prove otherwise.”

A flicker of shame. “I’m sorry. It’s-” She stopped, shook her head. “It’s hard to know who to trust now.”

“I don’t need your patients,” He finally admitted. “Only the clans they belong to.” She opened her mouth in protest and he raised a hand to silence her. “We have no solid proof, not yet. We need something. Names of clans, at least. We only have suspicions, for now. We have to have more than that to do our jobs,” He reminded her. “Even we have due process.”

Her mouth twisted in distaste. “You want me to spy.”

“More or less.”

“And my freedom hinges on betraying trust?”

“No. I’m going to see you escape here regardless,” He said, unable to stop the smirk tugging at his own lips. Utterly dumbfounded. It was nice to see her that way, when she’d been so in control before. “The spells and seals have been nullified. You can walk out.”

“What about you?”

He was older, stronger, and more wily than most of them. “They’ll never know I was here.”

She got to her feet, walking past him slowly. “I won’t betray my patients,” She challenged, already opening the door.

“I understand.”

She slipped out. He had no doubt she wound find her way out of the building. The engineered chaos on the twenty third floor, a loosed youkai with both a temper and a penchant for fire had the guards undivided attentions.

###############################

Hands inspected his chest, poking gently at the area that throbbed with pain. He hissed, the pain radiating out, then disappearing completely. “This isn’t how I expected you to gather information,” A quiet voice murmured. “If I’d known you would go to these extremes, I would have just asked someone to come forward.”

A dark room greeted him, Kagome hovering over him, examining him in an impersonal way.

“You wouldn’t have anyway.”

“I did,” She corrected, continuing her ministrations. “Why did Mouti attack you?”

“How did you know it was Mouti?” He grumbled.

“Pheasant’s eye roots works a lot like morphine for youkai,” She huffed, giving him a slight smile. “You may have let a few things slip.”

“I hope nothing embarrassing,” He groaned, pushing himself up.

“Only how much you admire my blue eyes,” She teased.

“They are lovely, but I doubt they were the first thing on my mind.”

“Which brings up back to Mouti.”

“It is my concern,” he dismissed. As ever, she ignored the implicit command.

“It might be mine.”

“Oh, do tell?”

“I purified him,” She declared quietly, pulling her gloves off and snapping them into the trashcan by the bed. “I felt Bakusaiga. I haven’t felt it in years, like lightening. I couldn’t, it wouldn’t let me ignore it. And then I found you both, and somehow he’d wounded you-” She shook her head, looking down at her hands. “I haven’t killed a youkai since I got back.”

It struck him then, that she was a doctor, and no matter what she’d done as a youth, a doctor’s first priority was to heal. Not to kill. She was carrying that weight for him, because of him.

“Mouti is an architect of the current conflict,” He finally admitted. “You killed the man that has kept your clinic so busy.”

It didn’t help.

“I don’t believe he’s the only one. Nor that the clans will stop, even if we were to put an end to the scheming. They’ve been given too many ideas, now they believe it’s possible to take over.”

Kagome dropped onto the bed, clearly exhausted. “I thought that might be it.”

“Kagome-”

“I’ll get names of clan heads for you,” She whispered, eyes clenched shut. “Just end this, Sesshoumaru. We don’t have the means to make this work for much longer.”

The clinic, with it’s myriad needs, to say nothing of the frequent moves. “Let me help.”

“You can’t endanger your place on the council right now-”

“Let me worry about my place on the council. I’ve held it for longer than you’ve been alive,” He reminded her dryly, earning a startled, broken laugh. A hand clapped over her mouth and bright, tear filled eyes lit on him. He could see the shock, the mortification and amusement in them, and offered a dry smile of his own in return. “I sound like your grandfather.”

“You do sound like my grandfather,” She huffed, hand dropping to her lap. It was a sad thing, her laugh, a puff of air and little more.

“Do you see them?”

“Not since this started escalating. I don’t want to chance it.”

He paused, because some things needed saying. “Inu Yasha-”

“He found me, when I was still in medical school. I know.”

Older than them both, aged and with children. Older, maybe even wiser than them both.

“Don’t tell him about this. You know how he is.”

It was genuinely amusing she thought his brother hadn’t been keeping tabs on her since she’d been born. The utter lack of information on her had probably been his brother’s doing to begin with. “You have my word I won’t bring him into this.”

“Thank you,” She breathed.

###############################

The child stared at him with eyes too bright, too vivid to be human. Even contacts couldn’t accomplish the array of colors that whorled as she stared up at him.

“Can I help you?”

“This is from the bird woman,” The hanyou announced, handing over an envelope.

He accepted it, and the child bolted. He attempted to follow, stunned to see- Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. As if the child had never existed.

Bird woman. Shaking his head, he opened the envelope, stunned to see two names written in a feminine hand, with a single line beneath it.

I don’t want to see you in my clinic again.

Shaking his head, he looked over the two names again, then promptly destroyed the letter.

###############################

The strange hanyou came to his apartment five more times, each time with a message from the Bird Woman. Every message with at least one name, sometimes more. Names of clan heads and nothing more. No more personal messages, nothing to hint at who had written them, or what the names meant. But they were all her handwriting, a tidy feminine script that he recognized immediately as hers.

And just as immediately, he destroyed them all, quietly repeating the names, forming plans of how to expose and judge them.

###############################

There were two cities, in Tokyo. The city humanity walked, with it’s myriad bright lights and bustling corridors, full of a thousand dreams and nightmares, pulling people into the consumerists cycle of styles and creations, art and politics.

The Tokyo behind it, below it, was one that had been cultivated centuries before, thriving. Until now. Now it’s tensions were breaking, leaking into the humans Tokyo, threatening to spill into the sunlight. Threatening to expose all of them.

It was the exact reason his brother had shown up. Not that it was helping his temper as he scoured maps, looking again and again for some sort of reason.

“There have been bodies showing up,” Inu Yasha observed.

“I know.”

“She wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I know,” He ground out. The child with the messages had stopped coming as well.

“Have you found the clinic?”

He’d had no need to find it, had known where it was the moment she’d moved, kept tabs on it because it meant keeping tabs on her. “She hasn’t been there. Shippou and Souten haven’t seen her.”

“Why would they take her? She’d get a hearing, at least,” Inu Yasha muttered.

Something suspiciously akin to guilt needled at him. “She did. I got her out.”

“She’d still have a formal arrest, you’d know-”

“She’s been feeding me names of clans, so I can try and figure out who all is involved.”

“You let her- Sesshoumaru, what the hell were you thinking?” His brother snarled. “She’s a doctor-”

“I know,” He snapped, unable to contain his frustration. “I know she’s a doctor and it goes against her ethics. I know!”

His brother stopped, pale gaze widening. “Holy- You care about her.”

“What are you on about?” He snapped.

“You wouldn’t do this for any spy. You care about her.”

“Stop projecting your moronic fantasies onto me, Inu Yasha.”

“Don’t lie to me. Just- Tell me the truth,” Inu Yasha demanded, voice quieter than it had ever been. “I just want to know the truth.”

“It’s my fault,” He admitted. He’d asked for the information, he’d used it. It had only been a matter of time before someone had been able to connect all the dots. He should have been more careful, and because he hadn’t, she’d been taken.

A hand rested on his shoulder, squeezing once. “We’ll get her back.”

###############################

Finding her was more simple than anticipated, knowing her energy, knowing her. It had only taken scouring the city, district by district. It was easier on foot, easier and faster for them than it would have been for humans.

Finding her was also stunning, the derelict building lacking any real protections.

“You will not have my bride!” The spirit shrieked at them, it’s shrill voice piercing, making his ears ache as it rang through him.

Bride.

Kagome sat at the table, dull blue eyes focused on nothing. She was still wearing jogging pants and a shirt with a bright pink stain on it, as if she’d been taken while out on a morning run. Taken and drugged to be the thing’s bride.

Tenseiga was quick. Quicker than the spirit deserved.

###############################

“As bad as the past,” Inu Yasha huffed, shaking his head. “Fucking figures it was someone trying to marry her.”

He glared at his half-brother.

“You should ask her about it sometime.”

“Why are you still here?”

Inu Yasha’s expression grew smug, a sly smile stretching his features. “I want to see what you do when she wakes up,” He gloated.

“Ensure she arrives home safely.”

“You moron,” Inu Yasha groaned. “You’re both in the middle of a war. She almost had something completely unrelated kill her. Are you really going to sit on your thumbs?”

“I truly abhor this conversation.”

“She’s worth it, you know,” Inu Yasha said, abruptly changing tactics, growing serious. “She really is.”

“Just because you loved her doesn’t mean everyone will.”

“But you do, don’t you?” His half brother challenged.

It was irrelevant. She didn’t want him at her clinics, in her life. She’d made it clear.

###############################

He was there when she began stirring, bruised, blue eyes squinting open first, then slowly widening, a groan escaping. There was nothing particularly beautiful or delicate about it, as if she was being dragged back to consciousness completely against her will. Leaning back in his chair, he watched her shift, blink resentfully at the window, then look over at him.

“I’m not married, am I?”

“No.”

“Good,” She breathed, closing her eyes again and snuggling down into his pillows. “Thanks.”

“The girl calls you the bird woman.”

A light smile, the shadows of resentment vanishing. “I helped Suki last year, another miko had tried to bind her youkai blood completely. She’s been my eyes since then. I don’t know why she calls me that. She just always has.” Her eyes opened, and she looked far ore at home in his bed than he really knew what to do with.

“Inu Yasha is here,” He advised, unsure of what else to say as she stared up at him, waiting for something. Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been that, her expression falling. “He saw the signs, and came of his own accord.”

“Oh.”

“He’s been worried about you.”

He watched her push herself up, left her alone in his room, in his bed. Inu Yasha was glaring at him, pointing at the door even as he exited. He ignored it, going back to the kitchen. An exasperated sigh erupted behind him, the hanyou disappearing into his room. He heard the joy in her voice, how it changed when his brother appeared.

Unashamed, he listened in.

“He’s an idiot, forgive him.”

“It doesn’t matter-”

“It’s stupid. You’re both in love-”

“Inu Yasha, you need to stay out of it.”

“I’ve had to listen to you-”

“Yasha-” She hissed.

“And he’s been insane trying to find you and then pretending-”

“He can hear you,” Kagome muttered, voice pitching.

“Then let him hear it. That’s constipated jackass for I love you, I should know-”

His entire body burned, unsure of how to stop his brother’s meddling without doing something that would prove the bastard right. “I think you’ve upset her enough,” He ground out, humiliated by his brother’s display. The door to his room opened, Inu Yasha stomping back out, Kagome behind him.

“I should never have removed the subjugation beads,” She muttered.

“Get off your high horses already,” Inu Yasha huffed, rolling his eyes. “I’m going for some food. Have this solved by the time I get back.” Without further aplomb his brother left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

“I lied. He sounds like my grandfather,” Kagome muttered, cradling her face in her palms. “Another suitor.”

He felt mortified despite himself.

“Not you, not- That you are a suitor,” She amended quickly. “The spirit.”

“Inu Yasha mentioned it was something of a pattern.”

She rolled her eyes. “When I was fifteen. I was pretty sure I’d entered untouchable spinster territory.”

“Not at all,” He demurred. “You’re more than you’ve ever been.”

She flushed, pink burning up her neck and cheeks. “Thank you. You-” She paused. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.”

“I thought you made it clear.”

She frowned. “What?”

“You told me not to come back to the clinic.”

She was the one to close the space between them, her hands taking his, bringing them to her heart. He could feel it beneath his palms, thrumming in a steady, reassuring tattoo. “I didn’t want you to come back as my patient."

He felt foolish, having it spelled out for him.

As if she understood, she brought his hands up to her lips cautiously, as if unsure of her welcome. Slowly, she began kissing his fingertips, lips barely brushing over them in myriad kisses. Featherlight, as if she couldn’t stop exploring his hands, she kept kissing the callused flesh. The hands that had killed hundreds, thousands of youkai and humans, some dozen within the last week. Watching, stunned, he didn’t know what to do until she pressed a kiss to his palm, her breath shuddering out of her.

She meet his gaze evenly, vulnerability and resolve.