Disclaimer: Wait for it - I'm gonna try my hand at poetry again!!!

I don't own Inuyasha

And I don't own a phone

I don't have any money

And so I have no......... what rhymes with phone?

(A/N: so now you understand why I don't write poetry - I suck at it! Anyway, thought up a new story and since I have a new keyboard I thought I might as well get to writing it before it burns a hole in my brain... well, anyway, this is kind of based on your average one of them's fatally ill, blah, blah, blah - but I'm not going to make it cheesy! I hate writing cheesy stuff! I'll add interesting stuff (or what I hope will be interesting) along in the plot. So it's kind of original... but also not kind of originally. Anyway, review and tell me what you think.)











28 Days

The Birds and the Bees

















Kagome sat on the porch and watched the madness unravel around her as she rubbed her hands together for warmth.

"Scuse' us love." A couple of removal men carrying her chest of drawers said from behind her and she hastily shuffled along the porch to make room for them, smiling politely as they went past. She rubbed her hands again and blew into them and tried to ignore how the frosty porch was making her behind nice and numb.

She was happy... but at the same time really, really sad.

She was moving out in a few hours. The truck had turned up early to hike all her furniture and gear off and transport it to her new apartment near her university. That's why she was sad... she was leaving home... she'd probably only ever come back at holidays for visits to see her family and pick up her presents. From now on she was basically classed as an adult. She'd go to university, get her degree and hopefully get some recommendations around the area she lived. Then she'd get a job... get a life... get a husband and raise a family. Then she'd move into a bigger house because a tiny flat was in no way going to support six kids. At least... she hoped she'd have a lot of kids.

She sighed again and smiled. She was happy for herself... but she felt like she was leaving a part of herself behind here. Like she was finally taking the big step out of childhood and into adulthood. A big step... and she'd be sleeping under a new roof tonight... without any of her family nearby.

There was a crash and she looked up to see that the removal men had slipped on some ice and the chest they were carrying had fallen to the ground. Her mother was happily telling them off for it while the rest of the removal men and neighbours carried on with packing stuff into the truck.

Those neighbours... they were a little hasty getting her stuff packed... anyone would thing they couldn't wait to get her out of the neighbourhood.

Kagome would lend a hand, but they all seemed to have their hands full and there wasn't much left for Kagome to help with. So she just sat back and absorbed it all.

"Do make yourself useful Kagome." Her mother smiled as she bustled past and back into the house.

Kagome took another look ahead and weighed up the chances of her carrying a chair down all those slippery ice covered steps and thought... nah.

She stood up anyway and looked around to see where Souta was. How come he wasn't helping either? Kagome went back into the house, intending to drag him away from the playstation for a few minutes so he could acknowledge the fact his big sister was leaving home. Though when she went into the living room she discovered he wasn't there. She tried his bedroom and a few other places but he didn't appear to be in the house.

Kagome wasn't the type to panic and have a heart attack over a missing brother, since she was sure he was just hanging around somewhere... probably hiding to get out of helping pack.





^_^





"Careful how you handle that!" Naraku snapped at the delivery service men that were having difficulty loading crates into the back of their truck. Normally they would have used a forklift but Naraku had stomped on that idea, saying that his cargo was too precious to be forked by lumbering machines. So they were stuck doing it by hand.

And the deliverymen weren't exactly keen on this arrangement since it meant getting particularly close to what they were supposed to lift. The strange crates kept emitting an incessant humming and buzzing sound that kept changing pitch every now and then.

But the deliverymen knew exactly what it was.

"Careful... careful." Naraku guided as the men started to lift a third crate into the truck. "Come on, I haven't got all week, you know. This stuff has to be at Tokyo central labs by this afternoon!"

The deliverymen just rolled their eyes and continued lifting at their own pace. Then suddenly one man's hand slipped across the rough wooden crate. He yelled out in pain and dropped his end of the crate onto his foot, making him yell out again. The lid of the crate jarred and popped open... and out of the crack several bees started to pour out.

"Close it! Close it!" Naraku yelled at once and the delivery man hammered down on the lid for all he was worth with his fists, despite the fact he was only weighing his foot down even more.

The lid snapped just again and the bees crawling or flying out were crushed with a yellow gooey mess. Every breathed a sigh of relief, but Naraku was slightly busy watching the thirty of so bees that had escaped whirl away into the distance.

"What'll happen to them?" one of the deliverymen asked.

"They'll die of hypothermia... hopefully..." Naraku sighed. It was incredibly cold and those bees were only made to survive in tropical climates. They wouldn't last more than a few minutes... and the chances of them coming into contact with a human were pretty low. Hopefully...





^_^





"Now listen Mikao..." Inuyasha sighed as he slowly crouched down to face the small boy. "You can't keep faking this illness just because you don't want to go to school."

The little boy scowled and folded his arms, mostly glad his mother had stepped out so she couldn't hear this. "So? All the other kids make fun of me-!"

"So? I'm not a psychiatrist. Don't come whining to me about your problems. You're wasting my time." Inuyasha said haughtily.

"You don't like kids do you?" Mikao stuck his bottom lip out.

"No... I absolutely adore them." Inuyasha faked a smile. "I just hate them when they fake big diseases so they won't get bullied. Be a man, face it!"

"I can keep on faking it if I want to!" the boy growled.

"Keep on faking and I'll tell mommy." Inuyasha growled back.

The boy paled. "I'll say you're lying... I'll keep faking... she'll think you're a bad doctor and get someone else."

"I'm shaking." Inuyasha rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm going to give you a little lesson in life, kid."

The boy rolled his eyes. Here came another teacher-like lecture that will tell him he'll get nowhere if he doesn't work his hardest.

"If you don't go to school then you won't get an education, if you don't get an education then you won't go to college. If you don't go to college you won't get a job, and if you don't get a job you won't get any money. And if you don't get any money then you can't buy any food. And if you can't buy any food then you'll starve and die."

Mikao stared at him in horror. "Oh...

Inuyasha had helpfully skipped the part about social benefits for the unemployed and how even if you didn't get a job you could still be a manager for MacDonalds or something. The kid didn't need to know that.

"So..." Inuyasha smiled again. "You wanna get better now?"

The boy nodded quickly.

"Good." Inuyasha stood up and went to open the door. "You can come back in now."

Mikao's mother came back in with a puzzled look on her face. "Is everything all right?"

"Yep, I talked to Mikao and he's agreed to stick to the diet I gave him." Inuyasha picked up his prescription pad and started looking around for a pen. "Where's that blasted pen...? I swear I had it a minute ago..."

"You can use mine." The mother quickly handed him one from her pocket.

Inuyasha took it and started writing instructions down on the pad. "I'm going to prescribe some calpol... that should clear up the chest infection."

"What about the fevers? And the bed-wetting? And the night terrors? And the fits?" Mikao's mother asked hurriedly.

"If he sticks to the diet he should be fine." Inuyasha sighed, hating the fact he was covering up for that squirt. "You can go back to seeing your regular GP now. I doubt he'll need to see me again."

"Thank you... doctor..." the mother smiled, a little unsure of calling him 'doctor' since he was still younger than she was.

She left the examination room and Inuyasha began hunting around for his lost pen. It was his favourite too... the black one with the red thing at the top. Undoubtedly Kikyo had decided to take it since she seemed to have a habit of taking things around the hospital without asking.

With a faint half-sigh, half-growl, he stomped out of the examination room and headed down the luxury-carpeted floor towards reception.

"Look if I had your stupid CD, you'd know about it, ok?" he heard Kikyo fending off another attacker. "What would I want with Tom Jones anyway?"

Miroku was leaning against the reception desk in his dark blue smocks that were the usual surgeon uniform. "I don't know, Kikyo, you always struck me as the type to throw your underwear at strangers."

Kikyo suddenly slammed her register shut and poked him in the chest. "Move it - you're not supposed to be up here anyway!"

"Just give me my CD back!" Miroku demanded.

"Why, so you can play it in your Mercedes to pull girls?"

"So you DO have it?!"

"No, I'm just commenting on the unlikely event that a girl would even get into the same car as you." Kikyo said simply, calmly opening her register. She looked up to see Inuyasha approaching and smiled. "Ah! Your next patient is-"

"Would it kill you to stop nicking the pens in my rooms?" Inuyasha said bluntly as he arrived.

Kikyo's expression turned upside down. "Oh for the love of... I didn't take your pen!"

"Then where is it?" he snapped.

She reached up to the side of his face and pulled out the pen that had been lodged behind his ear. She showed it to him with a 'hah!' kind of expression. He glared at it before snatching it. "Well, what did you put it there for?"

She just sighed and rolled her eyes. She then turned back to Miroku. "Beat it before I slap a restraining order on you."

"Like you're the first to threaten me with one of-"

"I'd really love to listen to you ladies bicker all day." Inuyasha interrupted. "But where's my next patient."

Kikyo shot Miroku one last glare before looking down into her registry book. "Guess who?"

"Who?"

"No, guess..."

Inuyasha sighed and looked thoughtful. "The Easter bunny..."

"No." she saw him try to sneak a peel at the waiting area. "you're not allowed to look!"

"Santa Clause?"

"Close." Kikyo pointed behind him and got back on with her work. Inuyasha looked around and spotted a familiar girl getting out of one of the cushy blue chairs.

"Not you again..." he groaned as Sango trotted up.

"I thought you'd be used to me by now." She smiled in reply. "You know you love me really."

"You know I do." Miroku leaned forward.

Sango leaned away and gave Inuyasha a pleading look. He rolled his eyes in response. "Come on." but before he went he made sure he grabbed a few of Kikyo's pens in case he ran out.

"Ok." Inuyasha announced as he burst through the door of the storage room. He held out his hand behind him to Sango without looking. "Form."

"Don't waste precious time on pleasantries do you?" Sango sighed as she handed him the form.

He glanced right down to the bottom. Two other signatures were there, and he had to add his own. Fortunately now he had several pens to do this task with. "How's the treatment going?" he asked as he quickly signed.

"Is that a pleasantry?"

"It's a question. Answer it."

"Ok... but... I can't really tell much difference since last week." She rubbed her hands together self-consciously. "I still can't grip things hard and they're always cold... are you even listening?"

"What?" Inuyasha looked up at her.

"I said there's no improvement!" she said loudly like she was talking to a deaf old person.

"I can hear you fine... I just wasn't listening." He began searching the shelves for her medication. "For god's sakes... will someone please tell Kikyo to stop filing things to her own alphabet?"

Sango waited patiently before he eventually came back with a white bottle. "You know the dosage, right?"

"One before every meal."

"And only for two meals a day." He nodded and took her hands. "Let's take a look."

Sango sighed patiently as he turned her hands over in his own and frowned at them. "Still cold?"

"As ever."

"Still can't grip?"

"Nothing..."

"Any other problems?" he asked, rubbing her left hand as if to get it warm.

Sango grinned at his action. "A little... after the surgery last month I can't really lift my arms above my shoulders."

"Why didn't you say that last week?" he frowned and dropped her hand, only to start on the second one.

"Because you all but shoved me out the door last week. You're too impatient for your own good." Sango rolled her eyes. "Personally I don't think the good doctor job was the right one for you."

"Unless you're a guidance counsellor, shut up."

"Actually-"

"Shut up anyway." Inuyasha placed his hand in hers. "Squeeze."

She did so... very weakly. He raised her arm a bit. "And again." It was even weaker. He lowered it so it was by her side, unfortunately he was slightly too tall to hold her hand down there so he had to get on one knee. "And again." She squeezed, stronger this time.

Just then Miroku appeared in the doorway. "Hey Inuyasha, have you seen my... what the hell is going on in here?"

Inuyasha took a moment to assess what it looked like before rolling his eyes. "Ew."

Sango shot him a look. "What do you mean 'ew'?"

"I mean, ew." Inuyasha slapped the bottle into her hands, watching her fumble around for a moment before managing to hold it steady. "Increase the dose to three times a day, ok? And if that doesn't work, you should consider getting a consultant meeting with Miroku to talk about another operation."

Sango and Miroku looked at one another, and one of them grinned.

Sango sighed. "Great..."

Inuyasha folded his arms. "Good, now get moving, I do have more patients than just you, ya know."

Sango trotted off happily while Miroku sighed and headed off the other way. "I'm never gonna hear Tom Jones again at this rate..."





^_^





Kagome went back outside and zipped her jacket back up tightly and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her firs bet was the well house, but the minute she poked her head in there she decided he wasn't going to be lurking in the dark no matter what the occasion was. That place gave him the creeps... and it wasn't like Kagome felt entirely comfortable around it either.

Next was the Goshinboku tree. She carefully stepped across the frozen tufts of grass that led up the tree and heard distinctive shuffling sounds from above her. He was in the branches.

"Hmm... I wonder where Souta could be..." she said looking around her without looking up. "I was so sure he'd be around here somewhere..."

There came more shuffling from above her.

"Well... if I can't find him he can't have that chocolate pudding mom just made." Kagome sighed dramatically and heard a snapping twig from above her. She grinned and looked up... but soon the smile slipped from her face. She was grinning rather stupidly at a squirrel. "Oh...

Souta tapped her elbow. "Talking to the animals again, Dr Dolittle?"

Kagome turned on him, feeling foolish. "Where've you been hiding?"

"No where... just been walking around." He stamped his feet to get the cold out of his boots.

"I'm leaving in a couple of hours, you know." Kagome reminded him.

Souta rolled his eyes. "Like I'd forget."

"So you... won't miss me at all?" Kagome raised an eyebrow.

"I guess..." Souta shrugged.

Something was definitely up with Souta. He wasn't often so gloomy, unless there was something on his mind, or troubling him at school. She crouched down beside him and wafted at the bee that had just crashed into her hair.

"Is something wrong, Souta?" she asked with concern.

"No..." he grumbled.

"Yes there is."

"No there isn't."

"We're not getting into a childish argument over this. I'm seventeen, I'm too old for this."

"You, you're as old as the hills... you're ancient..." Souta frowned.

"Hey, you've only got five more years to go before you're in the same situation." She reminded him, flicking again at the bee that kept buzzing around her head. Souta's chin dropped and she caught a hint at what might be bothering him. "Don't you want to go to university?"

"Well... yeah... but..."

"But what?"

"Aren't you scared?" he looked up suddenly. "You're gonna leave everyone you know behind and go live in a strange place around strange people you don't know. And you'll practically LIVE at university and do nothing but work and be bored... and how're you gonna make new friends so easily?"

He wasn't worried for her, he was worried for himself when his turn came. The best way to resolve this was by showing him she wasn't scared. "Souta... everyone there will be new, no one will know each other. Everyone will be nice to each other and help each other and the staff there will make you feel welcome... and it's not all work, ya know."

"Yeah, right."

"Yeah. Without parents or grandparents breathing down your neck you can stay up however late you want, eat whatever you want and go out to parties like, every Saturday. No one actually works at University." She grinned. "And besides, you still have five years, you won't be going for a while. You still should enjoy the time you have left as a kid, you shouldn't be worrying about stuff that far ahead."

"Who said I was worried?" Souta asked, eyeing the bee that refused to leave her alone.

"A little bird." She smiled and stood up, batting at the bee again. "That's weird... bees in winter."

"So you're not worried that you'll be all alone."

"I won't be for long." Kagome sighed. "I'll make new friends... get myself a boyfriend and probably marry him. Then we could open a Lawyer branch together and have little lawyer children and make love every night..."

"Way too much information, Kagome!" he said quickly.

"Just kidding." She poked him in the ribs. "Just want to see you squirm."

That bee was buzzing really close to her ear now and she frowned. Whipping around she clapped her hands together over it so she squished it between her palms. "About damn - AH!"

"What?!" Souta jumped back.

"Stupid thing stung me!" Kagome let the curled up dead insect fall to the frosty floor and held her palm up for inspection. "Ow... what a great way to start my adult life."

"I'd say." Souta took a peek. "Ew... it's yellow!"

"Wuss." Kagome clenched her fist to try and squeeze the pain out and smiled at her little brother. "You gonna help pack now?"

"Oh... do I have to?" Souta frowned.

"Well, if you can lift my bed... yes." Kagome started nudging him back in to direction of the Shrine. "You might as well be there with the send off committee..."

Kagome inhaled deeply and unzipped her jacket a bit, it was getting quite warm suddenly. The sun must have been coming out.

Kagome's mother was waiting for them when Kagome and Souta arrived. "There you two are - the truck's been sent off and so everything should be unpacked in your flat by the time you get there, Kagome."

"Great." Kagome tugged at her turtle neck jumper and blew out a furl of steam. "Is it me or is it warm out here?"

"Getting a hot flush? Probably all this excitement." Her mother smiled. "I'll just go check you've packed everything."

Kagome was about to follow her when her head began to swim slightly. She stopped when she reached the porch and had to lean against one of the wooden posts holding it up. "Whoa..."

"What's the matter?" Souta asked quickly.

"I don't know..." Kagome closed her eyes briefly to stop the ground spinning, but when she opened her eyes again black dots were dancing in front of her eyes and her body suddenly felt very weak. Something was wrong with her. "Souta... get... get mom... get..."

The black consumed her vision and she slumped to the ground as her legs failed and bile rose in her throat.

"Kagome!" Souta lurched towards her.

That was the last thing she heard.











(A/N: that's a long first chapter... anyway, next one should be up soon. Watch this space!)