Nothing at all by moonflames

Chapter One

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are not my own, a humble nod of recognition goes to Rumiko Takahashi for her wonderfully exploitable characters.

Dedication: Ms. Selah, for the hours of pure enjoyment I get from everything you write. The least I can do is say thank you by way of this humble offering.

Now please allow me to spin my little tale

Her eyes briefly scanned her makeshift camp and caught the sight of the rising sun. Absently she moved Shippo to the side of the sleeping bag and stood up only to be caught in the golden glare of a different dawn, the golden depths of Inuyasha's eyes. Empty, lifeless, pleading, searching. "Inuyasha" she said in the barest of whispers. His little doggy ears twitched at the sound of her voice. He came down from the tree in a soft thump to the ground and disappeared through the trees. Kagome looked at the rapidly fading red and silver blur and decided, as was always her penchant, to race after him with no second thoughts. With his sensitive hearing she knew he caught the sound of her bare feet crunching the leaves beneath her. He stopped in a clearing in the woods, hanging his head and scanning the foliage with his eyes. "Kagome," his voice sounded gravelly and ill used, "go away".

"Inuyasha, just talk to me please" she approached him quietly and not without some trepidation. "Please Inuyasha, we are friends aren't we?"

She smiled up at him with her trademark tremulous smile. "Kagome," he groaned in that special way of his. "I..." and then he looked square into her eyes and touched his lips to hers in a desperate kiss. The only thing Kagome could think of was the kiss she had shared with him, when she was trying to bring him back from his demon side. A kiss she had given to him, fraught with desperation and longing. He was kissing her with just the same emotion and just the same passion. Only this time his desperation and longing were reserved for someone else. Kikyo. But Kikyo, both the priestess of fifty years ago and her reanimated clay and bone body were gone. Dead and gone. Gently Kagome disengaged herself from Inuyasha's lips and arms. She stepped back and slowly forced his gaze to her eyes. She sighed to herself, a long deep world-weary sigh.

Kagome always wanted to be special. She wanted to be one of a kind. Funny how life is sometimes, one of a kind she scoffed to herself. Fate is a cruel mistress.

Again she was merely another victim of one of life's ironies. She dreamed of being one of a kind, and now that she was, she would give, just a little piece of her soul, to not be so rare. To not have to look upon yellow eyes whose brightness and purity once rivaled any sun. Now the sun had set in those eyes and those eyes searched hers looking for a glimpse of the women now gone. Searching her soul for the piece of it that had been a part of the one so dearly loved. But it was not her, she was not the cherished one, she would never truly compare.

And if she was honest with herself and maybe she could be from time to time, she never really wanted to compare. She wanted to be more. It was always more. More beautiful, more special, more powerful, more pure...more wanted...more loved. And now, it just did not seem to be so important. Because she wanted to shout and rail at him and say, "It's just me, only me, Kagome! Kikyo doesn't live here anymore and honestly she never really did". She was more than just a body that housed an old soul, she was what she chose wasn't she? Then why did she feel that she was just another spinning top that the fates played with? No, she was not a top she was a marble that was shot and edged the other marbles out of the way and let the other marbles move.

She looked into Inuyasha's empty dawn eyes and felt such sorrow. Not for what was lost, the 'could-have-beens' would have killed a lesser girl but not her. She selfishly, and wasn't she allowed a bit of selfishness anyway, she felt sorry for herself. For a myriad of reasons: for not ever really loving him as she thought, for not loving him as she could.

She wondered, How do you love someone with your whole soul, when the person you love is wishing that your soul was the one he used to love. Even with Kikyo gone she could not stand in as her replacement. Maybe once, yeah, once she could but now? No, she closed her eyes, and looked away from Inuyasha's heartbreak, and from her own inabilities. As single tear streamed down her face, and this one lone tear seemed to be everything. The tear rode it's silent path down her check and took with it her once shining innocence, her naiveté, her want to be everything to this sad hanyou gazing so hopelessly upon her. She felt so sorry that she could not rise up and sacrifice herself and mold herself to be everything her prior incarnation was. She did not want to be more than Kikyo anymore, and maybe just maybe wanting to be more wasn't enough. She could be more, more Kagome; for really she could be no one else than herself. No matter what soul was foisted upon her body.

"Inuyasha", she whispered brushing a feather soft hand against his check, " I wish I could heal this the way I can any wound on your body. But I can't. I can't be her, I won't be, not for you, not for anyone. I love you. You must know that. But in my way, with my heart." She paused for a moment, and the reality of her words suddenly sank in. That's right, she thought, my heart is all mine. Sure the soul could have been recycled and reused, but the heart, THAT is only mine to use, to forgive, to love, to suffer. No one can take that, no one can be that.

And with that thought she gave him a tremulous smile, "Inuyasha, I cannot be who you want, but I can be me, Kagome, your friend, always. The one whose heart may not beat for you, but it does bleed for you" She carefully wrapped her thin arms around his torso and hugged him with all her might; she wanted him to feel the depths of her loyalty, feel that he was not alone. Never alone, no matter what he may think. Maybe imprint this moment, this feeling on his wounded soul and perhaps be a balm to all the fractures in his heart. "I will always be by your side Inuyasha. Always." With movements like syrup from a bottle, she dropped her arms and moved away. Inuyasha looked at her with just the barest of light in his eyes, a light that was not there moments ago, muttered "feh" and took to the tree tops leaving her and his pain behind. " Feh! Feh!!! What the hell does that mean anyway?" she screamed at the departing back of the half demon. She stamped her foot and started to chuckle, "Trust Inuyasha to be nothing but predictable" she muttered.

Looking at her surroundings she decided to make haste back to her little camp before some demons decided to come along and dine at the All you can Eat Miko Buffet. Lost in her meandering thoughts Kagome failed to notice the tall, cool, white slab of marble she walked into. Unfortunately this piece of marble did not take the form of Michelangelo's David, but rather of a striking deadly Inu demon Sesshoumaru. Quickly she moved back and stared. Mouth agape and eyes wide.

"Are you going to kill me? " she could barely choke out the words. 'Ugh,' she made a mental note to herself...don't ask questions you really really don't want the answer to. Maybe if I said it was a rhetorical question? she thought. Oh brother, do demons even know the meaning of rhetorical? Does this particular demon even know anything other than how to kill, when to kill, and how to keep myself looking perfectly groomed while killing? She pondered this for a fraction of a second, and concluded that it was doubtful, he is the killing perfection after all....Gazing up at the murderous demon in front of her she thought to herself, Well at least he is nice eye candy to look at before I die.....ok, hold on girl, you are about two seconds away from being a short memory, can you think of anything more insightful and deep than eye candy, and nicely maintained claws. Looking upon the lovely demon in front of her, she decided, 'Nope. This is a good thought to go out with...my two seconds of inane humor and no angst ridden soul swapping thoughts....Wait! Two seconds??' This is when she realized he had yet to do any bodily harm to her, in fact looking upon those strangely lit amber eyes, he had yet to even blink.

And the look he gave was not nearly so romantic as to be called intense, passionate, mysterious...no that look was, well, it was the look she imagined a boy gave an insect right before he started to pull out it's wings..... Ok, she thought inanely, just breathe deeply and be very grateful you don't have wings.

"Ummm" she stammered, "Sesshoumaru...."

Sesshoumaru looked at the girl gaping at him with fearfully clouded dark blue eyes. He had just caught a whiff of his dirty half-breed sibling and wanted to discern the whereabouts of Naraku, when he collided with the pathetic human in his path. . Not one to be easily surprised, he berated himself for his carelessness causing a near collision with the human. Kagome, he recalled, was this particular humans name. This Sesshoumaru was not a stupid demon and the incessant screaming of this girl's name from his brother was not hard to notice. In fact, he scoffed to himself, with the two of them bellowing each other's name all the time, he wondered if both of them were hard of hearing. Maybe, he thought, with a flicker of malicious amusement, Inuyasha was just too addlebrained and needed to reminded of his own name all the time lest he forget.

"Are you going to kill me?" came the nearly breathless whisper interrupting his silent musings.

The demon looked down at the girl through narrowed eyes. And wondered why she was not dead yet. If not by his hand then by some lesser demon she decided to entertain with her annoying bravado. As he stared at her he questioned, for the first time, what it was about this one human that made her different. Black hair, dark blue eyes, indecently short kimono, sun kissed skin and he took a breath, a clean scent with just the barest of traces of hanyou. She was loud, annoying, certainly lacking in the intelligence department if one could judge someone by the company of the ignorant half demon she associated with. And of course Sesshoumaru was the one to judge. She was nothing. Nothing extraordinary, nothing special. Not anything of worth that would seem to make her small group of misfits cling to her with a never-ending loyalty. Nothing that would cause him not to simply lash out with his claws and eliminate one more useless human.

He looked harder, a demon used to understanding the subtle nuances of the whites, blacks and ambiguous shades of gray of life. A demon accustomed to discerning all of life mysteries with the ease born of intelligence and long life. A demon that stood perplexed by the enigma before him to whom he had paid the barest of attention.

He recalled his first meeting with her in at the grave of his father. She stood there trembling with fear, pulling out his father's sword, brandishing it about and threatening him, of all demons, with it. All the while he could hear her knobby knees shaking together in fear, and her breath coming in fast heavy pants. The little puppy that she was, nipping at the heels of the bigger, greater and more powerful dog. She was inconsequential then, just an annoying gnat that needed to be swatted away from the ripe fruit that he craved. The sword. The infernal sword. He inwardly sighed.

Over time he saw how valiantly those around her protected her, he saw through his superior eyes, how often she stood in the face of evil and rage and still fought fiercely to protect those she dubbed hers. No, he thought again, she did not strive to protect what was hers, she protected all around her. Demon, human....hanyou. Those she felt needed her purity to protect them from the world around them. He recalled, in another quick flash of memory, her body draped across his worthless half brother. Her eyes beseeching him to spare Inuyasha's life. It was her eyes he remembered, not a word that spilled from her mouth. But those eyes, haunted and desperate...to what? he wondered. To protect. Just that. Maybe that is what his father meant on that last day. "Who do you protect" he had asked. This Sesshoumaru's answer was, "I have no one to protect". But this slip of a girl, this puny insignificant human, her answer Sesshoumaru knew in the depths of his demon soul. She would have said, "The world". And this human, unlike his brother, possessed no special strength, she had no powerful curse like the monk, or skills like the slayer. Just that hum of power beneath her skin. That humming of pure power that came from where he knew not. But she did not know how to harness it, how to use it. Without that knowledge, her power meant nothing. So why, being the weakest of her group, did she have the willingness and the desire to protect anyone and anything.

Human, that is all she was. Not worthy of the precious moments he spent pondering her existence. But to kill her? No, not now, not today. Not until he mulled over these odd thoughts of her. Pulled them out and put into his hand to be examined from every possible angle. Maybe once he understood her ridiculous need to protect, then he could kill her. Or maybe, if no answer came, he could just tear her skin off a layer at a time to see where her power came from, to see what she possessed inside to make her strive to protect. Tear her apart slowly, then maybe he could understand the kaleidoscope of grays and whites that made up who she was. "Ummm," she stammered "Sesshoumaru" This time he was pulled into action by her words. He gave her once last glance looking her up and down, and confirmed his earlier musings, no, nothing remarkable he thought. Nothing at all. And he walked silently past her in a whisper of silk.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed my brief foray into the writing world. I now return you to your regularly scheduled day :)