Assassination

A/N: I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack!
Good thing? Bad thing? You decide.
Anyways, new chapter up. And, as I said before, both Inuyasha and Kagome need time before they can jump each other.
Anyways, onto the story!!!


Disclaimer: Why do you insist on putting me through this?
No, for the last freaking time, I do not own Inuyasha.
Satisfied???????????????


CHAPTER 6 : Cleaning Day

Inuyasha Kingreaves sat in the middle of his pristine room, staring at the piles of miscellaneous items circled around him.
It was about a week after his family and friends had ganged up on him, using threats, pleas and tears to get him to promise not to try to commit suicide again.
He was no longer suicidal, although the thought occasionally flitted through his mind. He was desperately tempted to accept the thought and just die, but his promise to Kikyo’s crying little sister always had him standing strong.
It didn’t mean he had to be nice about it.
He had spent the last seven days in a towering snit. He bossed around the servants, sniped at his friends, and picked fight after fight with Sesshomaru.
The servants took his abuse kindly, as they had all known him for their entire lives and correctly viewed his bossiness as his way of dealing with his loss.
His friends, though accommodating, were showing signs of wear, especially Sango, whose eyes had flashed murderously when Inuyasha told her to jump in a lake after she’d brought him a snack the night before.
Sesshomaru, however, took no crap from him whatsoever. Everytime Inuyasha incited a fight; Sesshomaru gleefully took the opportunity to wipe the floor with him, sometimes even having to carry him back to his room after he beat him unconscious.
Inuyasha was eternally grateful for small favours.
But today, he had barricaded himself in his room, latching the double lock he had insisted on when his father had replaced the doors Kagome had blasted into smithereens to save him.
He had run through his room like a whirlwind, gathering all Kikyo-related items to throw away.
He might regret it someday, but the dresses in the closet and the shoes lying on the floor gave him a cruel hope that Kikyo would walk through the doors and reclaim all of the things she had left behind, himself included.
He couldn’t live with the physical reminders. The ones hounding his mind day and night were enough to drive him insane.
So he sat, all the items that even remotely reminded him of Kikyo piled in front of him.
Her dresses and other clothes lay in one, her shoes in another. All her books he stacked behind him. Her jewelry box, along with her perfumes and cosmetics, he dumped into a huge cardboard box. He had decided to give them to Kaede, if she wanted them. If not, he would sell them, destroy them, reset them, anything but keep them.
All of Kikyo’s gifts, such as the lamp, some books, even a wrought-iron pair of bookends, he heaped into a smaller box. He was unable to throw away gifts, so he would banish them to the attic and probably never open them again.
He looked down at all the items, dry-eyed. He had cried enough. He never cried while awake, but every morning, he woke up to a wet pillow.
He also woke every morning clutching to the sheet to his right, where Kikyo always slept.
He glanced at her towels, her soaps, her beauty products that had always lined up on the marble sink like soldiers ready to battle any little imperfection.
All the pictures of her that had littered the room, of her smiling, sulking, laughing, pouting seductively, grinning, goofing off, angry, sad, joyful were packed neatly away into a box next to the gift box.
He had stood in front of the fireplace, the photographs grasped in his hands, and he seriously considered tossing the entire lot into the flames.
He had even thrown in one, his least favourite one, of her with her previous boyfriend with whom she had stayed friends, and watched as the thin paper curled around the edges, a tiny red circle appearing in the centre of her forehead.
He had watched, aghast, as the circle had expanded rapidly, consuming her laughing face until all that was left of her was ashes.
He had put the remaining pictures gently into a box and sealed the tops with tape.
All her knickknacks, her flower vase, little gadgets that she was fond of, and her personal journals went into another box.
He could not part with her favorite things, even when their presence poisoned him.
He picked up her most recent journal, a cheerful, bright thing in bright red.
He flipped through it, skipping over her fashion notes and business arrangements until he reached the last page she had written in.

“Diary,

Oh, today is possibly the happiest day of my life. Even better than the Versace contract! Even better than the Prada one! The best day of my life is definitely today.
Why, you ask? Well, if you were patient, I’d tell you.
Oh, to hell with it.
Inuyasha asked me to marry him!
I’m getting married!
And to the kindest, most thoughtful man in the world!
Isn’t it wonderful?
At first, when we originally started dating, I thought it would be an issue, him being a hanyou.
But it isn’t. I swear it. He’s the best being in the world, and he loves me!!!
Today is the beginning of a lifetime of best days ever.
And when we’re old together, and dying, I’ll go knowing then, as I know now, that I am loved. And will be missed.
I hope that I die before him, so I’ll never have to live without him.
How does the poem go?
“If I live a hundred years, I hope you live one hundred and one, so I’ll never have to know a day without you.”
It’s so selfish, but I don’t want to live without him.
And now I won’t have to."

Inuyasha closed the book, head thrown back in agony.
Kikyo had gotten her wish.
She would never know a day without him.
And him?
All he had now were empty days, and sorrowful nights.

***************************

Sesshomaru stood shirtless in front of a full-length mirror, examining the blood trickling from his split lip.
The nasty little bastard had come courtesy of Inuyasha and their most recent brawl.
He knew that he really shouldn’t be fighting with his brother, that he should be there emotionally for him, and if his father- or worse, Kagome- found out that he regularly and cheerfully pounded the hell out of Inuyasha on an almost-daily basis, he would die a slow and painful death.
At the moment, he didn’t particularly care. It was only during their physical confrontations that Inuyasha showed glimpses of his old, obnoxious self, especially when he started trash-talking, as he had yesterday, calling Sesshomaru a useless old fart.
After Sesshomaru had finished making Inuyasha swallow his words, he had laughed, remembering the competitive gleam in his brother’s eyes.
Psychology and tender, loving care were not Sesshomaru’s fortes. He would leave that to Kagome.
What he was there for was to keep his idiot brother busy so no more suicide thoughts entered his unoccupied head.
And, busted lip notwithstanding, he was doing a damned fine job of it.

***********************

Kagome sat in the middle of her room, eyes taking in all her things.
Her bed was a nice, normal double bed, stuffed with a million pillows that Kikyo insisted was fashionable.
She remembered telling her, mock-scowling, that she would prefer sleeping on her bed than spending the night taking off all the unnecessary pillows.
To which Kikyo had laughed and told her that sleep was no longer the point of beds.
Kagome shook her head now, as she had then, at that ridiculous statement.
Her walk-in closet, filled with designer clothes, shoes and purses, stood open, accusing her.
She had already taken down all her moveable mirrors and stuck them in the attic. She couldn’t and wouldn’t ask her brother and son to move every mirror in the house, so she would just have to turn her head every time she passed them.
It had been about a week since she returned to the Kingreaves mansion. She had slipped out of the emergency, save-Inuyasha-from-himself meeting after Kaede had made him promise not to kill himself.
She had not called any Kingreaves, Rin included, neither had she tried to contact Sango or Miroku.
Her son and brother practically lived at the mansion, though, so if anything important happened, she would know about it, especially as the two boys reveled in giving blow-by-blow accounts of the daily battles between Inuyasha and Sesshomaru, sometimes even going as far as to demonstrate some of the more spectacular moves for her.
Usually, she would have marched in and beat Sesshomaru upside the head with his sword, but not only did she understand why he fought Inuyasha, but she no longer belonged anywhere near any of the inuyoukai.
She knew just how painful it was for Inuyasha to even look at her, so she stayed well away.
She also stayed away from Kaede, who had flinched when Kagome had approached her to say goodbye.
She instead had just turned around wordlessly and slipped out of the mansion in the dead of night, telling absolutely no one.
Every day, Souta and Shippo told her that Sango, Miroku and Rin asked daily for her.
Kagome smiled at that sadly.
They wanted her there, but the people whose opinions, whose wishes had to come first right now, that is, Inuyasha and Kaede, were always silent.
She knew Kaede didn’t want her there.
She doubted Inuyasha even realized that she wasn’t there.
She couldn’t go back.
Not now.
And maybe, she thought, being truthful with herself in the safety of her mind, she would never go back.

******************

Inutaisho studied his face in his bathroom mirror, noting his familiar features that no longer seemed to belong to him.
His long hair was tied up, leaving an unobscured view of his face. Still, even without the mist that usually coated the mirror following his always-hot showers, he couldn’t seem to recognize himself.
He could admit to himself, even without any supernatural prompting from all the spirits surrounding him, that he was lost.
He could not grasp a hold of reality, an occurrence that happened only twice before.
Both times coincided with the deaths of his sons’ mothers.
He slid along now, as he did then, trying his best to be there for his family, even when it was his family itself that had him in such a state of disarray.
His baby boy, his little demon, had tried to take his own life, and he had been powerless to stop it. His child was in pain. A soul-wrenching, gut-twisting ache that Inutaisho knew all too well.
And what could Inutaisho do?
Stare at himself in the mirror and remember memories he wished he could desperately cast into oblivion.

*********************

The slight, shadowy figure crouched atop the roof of the Kingreaves mansion, eyes trained on the twinkling stars above. After the requisite reconnaissance work, the assassin liked to relax. It just happened to be on the house of her next target.
She had heard everything said in the mansion for the past week, including the Kingreaves’ attempt to keep Inuyasha Kingreaves from taking his own life.
She wished that they hadn’t.
It would make her life infinitely simpler.
She knew from beforehand that the motley crew that comprised the Kingreaves and their friends would be hard to infiltrate; even harder to assassinate one of their key members.
Now, it would be next to impossible to murder a hanyou determined to live, a miko with healing powers watching over him, and two overly protective inuyoukai with godlike powers.
Sadly, she was better than the best assassin.
Inuyasha Kingreaves had no chance.
Even in the highly unlikely event that she somehow failed, the person who had hired her to kill Kikyo Innesly and her fiancé was a ruthless, heartless bastard of the highest order who would just keep sending assassins until Inuyasha Kingreaves was finally dead.
She was doing Inuyasha a favour, really. He would only have to face one assassin, not the parade her current employer would indubitably send after her.
He was a lucky bastard he’d only have to face down one of death’s faces.
Unfortunately for her, death’s face was always hers.


A/N: So? *dance dance more macarena* What do you think? Thoughts, thoughts, anyone got thoughts?
And yep, the assassin, who I have yet to name, will also be an important part of the story.

Next Chapter: The First Foray Into The World