Fictionalisation by naqaashi
Fictionalisation
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, or anything from Lladro (though I hope to, someday), or Enid Blyton's quote from Inthe Fifth at Malory Towers. I do own a copy of that book, but no copyright to the words within.
A/N: This fic is an entry for Tangerine Dream's Annual Fanfiction Tournament. Please vote for me if you feel my fic is good enough to win the final round! Madison is my partner for this round, so please read her story also, and then decide whom you will vote for!
Our prompt for this round was Fact or Fiction.
Here are the contest rules -
http://www.dokuga.com/forum/29-challenges/64798-second-annual-fanfiction-tournament
Many, many thanks to zandrellia, for acting as emergency beta and plunnie-tamer!
I would also like to thank everyone who read my stories and voted for me, getting me to this point. It's been a wild, inspirational ride, and thi story is dedicated to all of you readers - not just those who voted for me, but everyone who's enjoyed the Tournament!
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Higurashi Kagome was fairly used to receiving the odd hate-mail among the usual bundle of fan letters, but an outright death threat was a novelty indeed.
And to receive such a coherent, even elegantly phrased – if sparse – declaration of her impending doom – why, the young authoress mused in rather deviant glee over her editor’s panicked mutterings, this was a rare treat indeed!
“Kagome, I simply can’t understand how you can remain so calm! Some lunatic out there is planning to slaughter you!”
Kagome, on the other hand, was less preoccupied with her fate, concentrating instead on twisting the letter this way and that, holding it up to the light, and generally making quite a thorough Holmesian examination of it. “...what pretty writing...,” she murmured, a faint hint of jealousy threading her voice. Her own, she whined internally, looked like cat scratches.
Her editor stared at her, confounded, for exactly one hundred and six seconds. Then he sprung to action. In the blink of an eye, the offending note was snatched out of her fingers and slammed in front of her with the declaration that she was going to call the police and report it. Pronto.
Kagome beamed affectionately at the furious and worried man before her, but decided against telling him, once again, that she had once upon a time been the receiver of so many death threats that she hadn’t quite known which would be acted on first. And she had outlived them all. The knowledge might just kill the poor fellow, and she was rather fond of him, after all.
But he was just...so...tiresome! A walking and talking and fretting example of the case that surviving into your twenties did not cure you of all your high-school mawkishness. Really, what right did he have to curb her enjoyment of this letter, she griped, even if it notified her of her own demise? It was easily the best-written hate-mail she had ever received! And the quality of the paper was to die for. Clearly, she had come some way ahead from the frantic flames of the usual hater! It was a cause for celebration, couldn’t he see?
And then she shut her internal bitch up with the sudden realisation that no, he probably couldn’t see, being the rather ordinary soul he was. Consequently, she mustered a comforting smile and patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Quit worrying, Hojo. Either it’s a prank, or else it’s...”
When she didn’t continue, he prodded, “Or else it’s what?”
She shrugged.
“Kagome!” Her old schoolmate-turned-editor pursed his lips in a familiar gesture of disapproval and reached for the telephone. “I’m calling the cops. We don’t know what this wacko wants, so let’s get you some protection, at least.”
Now that wouldn’t do at all, the writer decided. Was a former warrior priestess and guardian of a jewel-of-mass-destruction to be babysat by modern policemen?
Nope, no way.
Rising from her seat, she took the phone from him and placed the receiver firmly in the cradle. “I am not going to have a bunch of poky policemen hanging about me round the clock.”
“Then what, you’re just going to let this slide?” he snapped.
She considered the situation carefully, before deciding on suitable course of action. “No, I’m going to find out why this person wants me to stop writing.”
Hojo gaped at her in disbelief.
“Oh, c’mon! ‘Cease publishing your worthless scribbles immediately if you do not wish to enter an early grave, woman’ is not precisely indicative of anything beyond a thorough dislike of my books, Hojo!”
“And a thorough desire to kill you if you don’t stop publishing them, too!” he retorted.
“Exactly!” she said, the light of victory in her eyes. “So I’m going to find out why!”
The browbeaten editor sighed, knowing the he was unlikely to win the argument now. “Right. And how are you going to do this? We don’t even have a name for this person.”
The young woman grinned. “I’m going to write back, of course.”
“Kagome...I just said that we don’t even-”
But that unholy grin on her face only grew wider.
And so it was that the very next month, Hgurashi Kagome launched a new book – a saga of love and loss and melo and drama with the following dedication-cum-preface: “Dear Mr. Anonymous Coward who likes to threaten innocent writers with death, why don’t you like my stories?”
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Within a week of publication, Kagome had received a reply. As before, it was written beautifully on handmade paper in curt, dismissive language.
“For the crime of calling this one a coward, you have been sentenced to a swift execution. For the crime of publishing another bit of rubbish you enjoy calling a book, you have been sentenced to a painful execution. You have one week to settle your affairs,” she read aloud with an incredulous smile on her lips. Ooh, someone feels burned! She decided against sharing the missive with Hojo – the poor man was sure to flip and lock her in a high-security vault. Besides, she had a letter to write...
Ripping a sheet from an old notebook, she nibbled the tip of her pen for a few minutes, composing her answer. “Within her novel In the Fifth at Malory Towers, Enid Blyton said that anonymous letters can be the work of a coward – and only a coward. You still haven’t answered my real question.” Quickly, she penned and posted it, since her would-be-murder had seen fit to include a return address, a post office box, on the envelope this time.
Then she settled in to wait.
One week to the day, Kagome awoke at 3:26 a.m. to find a tall young man with bright silver hair and vivid golden eyes looming over her bed with a copy of Enid Blyton’s In the Fifth at Maory Towers in his hand that was being reduced, slowly, to bubbling green goo.
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Kagome was flabbergasted to see Sesshoumaru in her bedroom.
In stark contrast, Sesshoumaru was not at all flabbergasted to see Kagome in her bedroom.
Indeed, when had the youkai ever looked anything, actually? Except perhaps vaguely homicidal?
It registered on Kagome’s brain that he looked like it now. The realisation was followed rapidly by another dawning idea – she now knew why he wanted to kill her.
Before she could get further than that and remember to feel afraid, a faint breeze rustled the muslin curtains at her window. He was gone. She blinked, then supposed he had made himself perfectly clear – if she didn’t quit using him as a model for her hero in the sappy, soppy, teen-addicty romantic fantasy saga she was penning, she’d meet the same fate as poor Ms. Blyton had.
She sighed. Why isn’t he dead and gone, like the rest of them? It would have made things so much easier...but now she would have to end her series on a premature note, because naturally, unlike normal people, Sesshoumaru didn’t sue for defamation – he simply annihilated the defamer.
Not that she was defaming him in the least! In fact, he was popular enough to rival Edward-what’s-his-face with the teenage population! And she was giving him more action in the sack than he had ever gotten in real life, she bet!
Why, she fumed, the blasted youkai should thank her. Every girl on the planet thought he was the nicest, dreamiest, yummiest, sweetest hero EVER!
She stopped short. Rethought that one. Ahmmm....
Very well, she could see why Sesshoumaru, being Sesshoumaru, was furious.
Yet, the flutter in her belly refused to lie still, and her brain was buzzing on belated adrenalin. Sesshoumaru is alive! Well, he wants to melt me into a puddle of green acid, but he’s alive! She would have felt almost unreasonably happy about it, if he hadn’t just rushed away without a single civil word to her.
Five hundred years after her adventures in Feudal Japan, the guy she had crushed on had finally come to see her – and in so doing had inadvertently revealed that he’d known she was alive and well all along. And still, he hadn’t come to see her until she had let her crush play out via a fictional saga of her adventures and almost destroy his mythological reputation in the entire literate world. Even after that, he hadn’t bothered to say a single syllable in greeting. Well now, Kagome wasn’t having any of that!
She dragged herself out of bed and marched resolutely to her writing desk.
Three months later, her new book – which nearly broke all boundaries of niceness and fairness on part of the hero and included some particularly flowery speeches in a romantic hot-spring setting – was released to the adoring public. And, she hoped, one utterly enraged taiyoukai.
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Kagome didn’t know what she was expecting; mayhaps a dramatic situation in which Sesshoumaru zipped into her home once again, caught her at her most vulnerable, raised his claws for a slow beheading, and thus provoked her own powers to rise and slam him against the wall while she lounged about in, say, her sleepwear (one of her cuter sets) or wet skin and a skimpy towel.
It would be such a cool sight, her imagination asserted.
Therefore, when he finally – finally – showed up after three weeks of watching and waiting in the aforementioned states of clothing, he chose to do so when she was swathed in her baggiest overalls and then had the audacity to not even try guillotining her!
She chucked her favourite Lladro vase at his head.
He caught it with consummate ease, examining it briefly before he returned to its niche in the wall. “That’s an expensive trinket, woman,” he reprimanded, eyebrow raised in disapproval (or mockery at her improbably terrible aim. He’d been within a dozen feet of her and she still managed to throw it three feet wide.) But then, she thought irritably, she wasn’t an expert on his face.
Even more irritably, she complained aloud, “You look almost normal.”
He did. The Rapunzel hair was cropped to a smooth shag that framed his face to devastating effect. The markings were non-existent, as were the fangs and claws. His inherent beauty still glittered, but its present etherealness could not match his former exotic appeal.
He took it mildly. “You say that as though it were a cardinal sin.”
She scowled. How could she explain that it was? That he had no business waltzing in and destroying her fantasy and her copyright over her characters and her ghastly drip of a hero who resembled him in merely name and face because he’d never given her more? She settled for addressing a safer grievance instead. “You were supposed to off me, or didja forget?”
“Not that senile yet.”
She flung her coffeepot at him. The pot missed. The coffee within, not so much.
As a result, she was forced to put on her hostess garb and scrub his hair for him while he commandeered the services of her bathtub and, to his delight, collection of Bodyshop skin-hair-face-care products.
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Somewhere in the middle of massaging conditioner into the short silver strands, she started crying. Her guest widened his eyes as much as he was able – which wasn’t much – and asked her what business she had mourning his hair when even he didn’t think it was worth howling over.
The theatricality of her creative soul snatched the spotlight before any other emotion could get there. “B-b-b-buuut...it was sooo pretttttt-waaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” She even managed to squeeze out a few appropriately theatrical sniffles.
The taiyoukai took it as a cue to throw her out of her own bathroom.
“Fine!” she pouted, when minutes later, he emerged in a fluffy purple bathrobe. “But you have no sense of drama at all. None! Zero. Zippy-doo-dah!”
He appeared to not be in the least desirous of obtaining a sense of theatricality as he gave her a once-over. Whatever he saw must have dissatisfied him, because the next thing he did was to grab her chin gently, the way lovers did right before a kiss in every single Mills&Boon you cared to lay your hands on, robbing her of speech and breath and tears in that simple move.
“Why. Were. You. Crying.”
Except for the lethal tone of voice.
Her shoulders sagged. Glaring daggers at his clavicle while resisting the urge to lean in and nuzzle it wasn’t easy, but she managed. It was preferable to meeting his eyes. He gave her chin a warning jerk.
“You’re going to steal everything from me. You said you’d kill me if I wrote any more of those books, and they’re all I have left.” It was an inadequate explanation, but she refused to admit that it was really him she would lose.
Or her fantasy relationship with him, played out in her writing.
“This one means so much to you.” It was a statement and a question all rolled in one Sesshoumaru-esque remark, but the depth of his perception almost made her faint.
Ohgodgodgodgodgodgod. The Lord of the Western Lands (Did he still own them, a distant corner of her wondered. He must be filthy, stinking rich if he did...) knew she had a crush on him. Notgoodnotgoodveryveryveryveryverybad. Bad. Bad bad.
She needed a hole to crawl into. Do I have mice? Do they have homes here? Would they let me camp on their cheese for a few days if I promise to not get a cat?
“Arf.”
She was removed from her mental search for new accommodation with a start of hysteria. “Did you just bark at me?!”
“I am a dog.”
“That barks?”
“I am a dog.”
She gave up. She needed medicine. Or booze.
He, however, was not on the same page, because he refused to give up. “I mean that much to you?”
Heaven help her now, she was going to start weeping for real!
“Woman.”
Well, at least he wasn’t barking anymore.
Sesshoumaru growled.
Kagome lost it, and her pride too. “YES!”
There seemed nothing more to say. His grip loosened and fell, and silence settled around them, thick with tension. Yet, for some reason, he looked pleased. Or something like it, because she couldn’t really tell, not being an expert on his face just yet.
“What?” she enquired, a trifle waspishly.
He tilted his head to assess her. “In three decades, you will turn into a decrepit shrew.”
She stiffened with outrage, but he was having none of it. The faintest glimmerings of open humour were in his eyes now, sparking something warm within her. “It is a good thing that this one has arrived in time to prevent it.”
Her bad mood refused to be charmed away as easily as that – and by a man who was historically noted for not possessing even a whit of charm, at that. “Old age or shrewishness?”
“Both.” A pleased thrum underlay his words.
“I beg your mighty, poisony pardon?”
He raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her display of wit. “If that is the best you can manage, I wonder how you manage to sell as many copies of that trash as you do. But,” and the light of holy revelation seemed to be dawning on his face, “this one shall take it as final proof the utter inferiority of the human intellect.”
“...are you inviting me to throw my socks at you?” For the overflowing laundry hamper was just within reach, and the topmost item was a highly smelly pair of unwashed socks.
His nose took a whiff and wrinkled in horror. “No, you daft female, this one is implying that he has been lonely as well.”
Kagome’s jaw almost dislocated in its attempt to reach the floor.
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Of course, Sesshoumaru eventually did inform her that five hundred years of living through various mortal vagaries had the tendency to put even an immortal, inhuman being “in touch with his feelings.”
She still took a week or two to recover from it.
And then he informed her that they could embark on a journey of mutual gratification and knowledge and possibly something...many things more. But first she had to stop. Those. Damned. Books.
Or else he would sue her for everything she had.
It almost did end in a courtroom battle, and almost sent Hojo to the Intensive Care Unit for life, but finally, they both relented. Sesshoumaru allowed her to finish her series – on condition that she rewrite the whole thing and publish them as serious historical fantasy.
Starring him as hero.
“And where am I going to get so many details? I was around in Feudal Japan, but I wasn’t everywhere, dolt.”
Seshoumaru simply slanted a sly, provocative look at her, effectively reducing her to happy, female jitters.
“This one shall...help...of course.”
And he leaned in to tell her more.
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