A/N: Last chapter everyone. Thanks for reading (and reviewing) and have a GREAT Christmas. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, only my AWESOME Christmas gifts, muhahaha!

It was nearly half an hour of calling for a tow truck at six different repair shops before either Kagome or Inuyasha looked out the window. The ground, street, and Inuyasha's car were already covered in two inches of fresh powder.

"This might be a problem," Kagome commented to him. "I don't think a tow truck would come out this late...in that."

Inuyasha nodded grimly. "I think you're right."

"Guess you'll just have to stay here," she said casually, then padded off toward the kitchen section of her apartment. Speaking the answer to his unspoken question.

"You're a very strange girl," he commented, following her. It was the first time he had spoken of such thoughts openly to her. He wasn't much of a talker, and she always seemed to fill the void with idle chatter so as not to make him feel obligated.

Kagome only smiled over at him as she put her tea kettle on the stove. "I know," she replied. "It makes life more fun."

"Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. "My Dad raised me to be honest, instead I'm selectively blunt. I think it's a matter of having a certain level of shame. I don't have many social anxieties."

He leaned against her counter, trying to puzzle her out like she was a problem with a design he was working on. He had puzzled through many in his lifetime, she would be no different. Then, when he was done, his fascination would be over. He could move on and not look back.

Kagome went about her kitchen, pulling two mugs out of the wooden cabinets, then pulling out two packets of something from the cupboard next to it, emptying their contents into the cups. Then she dug two spoons out of a drawer, and grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge. Inuyasha watched her ministrations for a few minutes, but then his attentions wandered through the apartment.

It was a nice loft, huge and airy. Christmas garlands hung around all the windows and poles. Fake snow was sprayed across all the glass, adding an artistic look that he liked. There were a million decorations, small touches that gave the place which would ordinarily seem empty from lack of furniture a sense of self.

A Christmas tree was set up in the far corner of the room, strung up with blinking lights and shiny ornaments. It wasn't a huge tree, and it was kind of scrawny, but it seemed to suit Kagome's Charlie Brown-esque Christmas theme. Then again, he couldn't picture Kagome having any other kind of tree. She was, in a certain essence, just that way.

"I know my place isn't much," she commented, handing him a steaming cup of hot chocolate. "The price is low and I don't need a lot."

"It's perfect," Inuyasha assured her. "It screams you."

She laughed. "Of course it does, I live here."

There was a brief bout of silence until Inuyasha dared to ask a question, the first time he had ever attempted to make a conversation with her of his own accord. Kagome was appropriately shocked, of course.

"When did you move here?"

She had to pause and think. "About...four years ago, I think. Just after I started college. I was in the dorms first semester, but I hated it with such a passion that I had to find myself a place or face death. This place just fell in my lap, and after I moved in, I learned to love it." Kagome paused, sipped, then turned the question around. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"How long have you lived in your apartment?"

"About a year. I moved in after I got my promotion last November."

"Can you afford it now? I mean, since you don't have that job anymore."

He looked at her sharply. "How did you know I don't have another job?"

She shrugged. "Most people don't have other jobs while working crazy Christmas hours."

"Don't you?"

"No." Kagome walked across the room to sit on her windowsill, legs curled beneath her. "I had internships when I was in school, but I graduated in June. So far, I haven't had much luck finding work. I work at a music store, but it's not great money, and I quit so I could do the "elf" thing. It's just touch and go right now."

Inuyasha followed her, sitting casually with his back against the wall, legs stretched out, next to the window. The heated cup was cradled in his hands. "Why did you quit? Our job is only seasonal. What are you going to do for money now?"

"I'm an elf every year," she said with an air of mystery. "And I'll find something. I always do."

He wouldn't let it drop. "Why are you an elf every year?"

Kagome looked down at him. "Why do you care?"

"Call it professional curiosity," he responded, adopting her own mysterious tone.

Kagome shrugged. "I like to think of it as penance."

"For what?" Now his attention was caught.

"For being a horrible daughter," she responded, a hint of something like contempt in her voice. "We all have our reasons for doing what we do."

"What's yours?"

Kagome looked over at him skeptically. Did he really care? Probably not. He was just bored and stuck in her house, so she might as well tell him something about herself. Maybe then he'd lighten up a little. Maybe then he'd be as repulsed by her as her family was, so she'd stop thinking about him.

"My father was in the army," she began, sipping cocoa and sighing. "He'd be away for long periods of time, missing a lot of stuff, but then always come back for Christmas. It was the only holiday that we knew he'd be back for. I guess that's why I love Christmas so much, because of my Dad and how close we were."

"Were?" he prompted when she paused.

"He died when I was fifteen," she explained. "Everyone in my family just...fell apart. Grandpa became more subdued, and seemed to grow older. Mom, she tries to pretend that nothing's wrong, but I hear her crying at night. She's broken on the inside, never bringing herself to talk about Dad at all. Souta, my brother...he's the worst. He became so angry after Dad died, he just shuts himself off. I was the strong one, Daddy's little girl left to carry on for the family."

A fierce anger suddenly pumped through Kagome as she gripped her mug's handle, knuckles turning white. "I paid bills, I cooked and cleaned. I was the one who bought the birthday presents and got groceries and made sure we were still functioning. For two years I was the only one who did anything to keep us alive." She sighed again, running a hand through her hair. "During the day I was the perfect adult, but at night I was an idiot. I drank, I partied...I did a lot of stupid things I never should have done, and I loved every minute of it. I did it so that I could feel like a teenager, and forget how much I was hurting, and just stop feeling at all."

"What happened to make you stop?"

She shrugged. "College. I got into a good one, for my music. I made up my mind that I was going to go and get a degree, and stop being stupid. If I was going ot have a future, a different one than the rest of my family, I had to get sober and stop partying. That's why I left the dorms after the first semester, it was too much of a temptation.

"The elf-thing came later, when I was broke at Christmas and I wanted to get a present for my brother. I tried to steal it, but i got caught. The mall officials said they'd let me go if I worked off my debt. I guess they had the Christmas spirit or something. I've just been an elf here ever since."
"You loved it that much at once, huh?" Truth be told, he was entranced by her story, not knowing if he should believe it as truth or think of it only as a story.

"I hated it the first year," she said with a smile. "The kids were loud and the Santa kept hitting on me and I was scared. But the next year, I came back, and the kids weren't as loud and the Santa was different, and it got a little better. Last year, I met Sango and it was great. This year, I made Miroku come and I met you and everything was...perfect."

"Or it would have been, if there was a better Santa," Inuyasha commented, suddenly feeling guilty for his surly routine as the man in red.

Kagome smiled brightly, almost as bright as her tree winking in the corner. "I thought you were a good Santa, despite the attitude."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

He felt instantly better.

"Are you going to tell me about you now?" she asked, and his mood darkened again.

"What do you mean?"

"I told you my story," she commented. "Are you going to tell me about yours? Your old job...why you hate Christmas, that stuff."

"So this is a bargain of sharing?"

"More like...friendly knowledge," she encouraged. "I promise not to tell anyone."

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. He owed her that much, a little of his life's story. "I had this tradition when I was a kid," Inuyasha began, setting the stage. "I'd always be sick on Christmas. Every single year from the time I was one year old. The year I was eight was no different. On Christmas Eve that year, my parents left me at home for a few minutes while they ran across town to drop off some food at the food drive. They did stuff like that, you know? They were just good people. But the roads were icy, and it was Christmas Eve so people were drinking." He paused, swallowing a large draught from his cooling drink. "On the way home, their car was hit by a drunk driver. They were both killed."

Kagome made a small sound in the back of her throat, halfway between a whimper and a sob. He looked up, expecting to see pity in her eyes. Instead, he saw sorrow. Plain, undiluted sorrow. The kind that choked your heart.

"That's why I hate Christmas," he whispered, too struck by the way she looked at him.

She didn't apologize, or offer condolences. Such trivial things made matters worse than they had to be. Instead, she bowed her head in an offering of sad understanding. He felt the pain rise in him again, the loneliness of a little boy who barely got to know his parents before they were gone.

"Christmas," she said quietly, voice choked with anguish, "reminds me so much of my father, but I guess that's why I celebrate it so much. To remember him and relive those moments...and wish he'd walk through the door with a present in his arms, singing Jingle Bells off key." She gave a watery chuckle. "This season is as sad as it is happy."

"A lot of memories," he agreed.

"Good and bad," she added.

"Do you...remember when you said...that you did all those things when you were a teenager...because you wanted to stop feeling?" he asked haltingly.

"Yeah?" she prompted.

"That's the way I've always been. I do a lot of random, stupid things to help me forget that my life has been shit. It's what got me fired from my firm. I was an architect, and a good one too. But then I did the stupid thing of sleeping with my boss's wife, and he caught us and I was fired. That's why I'm a mall Santa."

Kagome didn't pass judgment or make a joke. Instead, she just lifted her mug and sighed, disenchanted. "To being stupid," she toasted.

"To being stupid," he echoed. They clinked their mugs, drank their fill, and passed the night in relative silence.

--------------------------------------------

"Do you get the feeling that Kagome likes Inuyasha?" Sango asked, shrugging on her coat.

"You know, I was thinking that myself," Miroku agreed as he held open the door for her. He had stopped by that evening to pick up Sango and Kohaku from their apartment to head to Kagome's for her party. "She seems smitten."

"I know she was bugging him because of the bet, but still..."

"What bet?"

"She never told you?"

"No. What bet?"

"We made a bet," Sango explained as they reached the car. Kohaku was in the backseat as the couple climbed in the front seats. "She lost, so her terms were that she had twelve days, until Christmas Eve, to give Inuyasha some spirit."

"Kagome lost a bet?"

"Yeah."

"But Kagome never loses a bet!"

"Well, there's a first time for everything," Sango said wryly.

"What was the bet on?" Miroku questioned, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Whether or not you'd hit on another mother before lunch," Sango smiled languidly. "Which you did, naturally."

Miroku stared at her, not starting the car. "Impossible," he finally said, shaking his head and turning the key.

"Why?"

"Kagome is my best friend," he reminded her. "She knows me better than I know myself, and that includes my tastes and habits. If she was wrong over whether or not I'd hit on a woman, she did it purposely."

"But why would she want to lose a bet?"

"I know," Kohaku piped up, smiling widely.

"Oh?" Sango asked, turning to look at him. "And why's that, my little genius?"

"It's obvious," he said with a grin. "You give her something time consuming, like chasing after that Inuyasha guy, which leaves perfect opportunity for you and Miroku to have "alone" time."

There was silence in the car.

"I'm going to kill her!" rang both Sango and Miroku as they pulled into a parking space in front of Kagome's apartment. But by the time they reached the door, and were ushered in by a happy Kagome, and noticed Inuyasha was there--egg-nog in hand--they were too stunned to do much of anything.

Kaede and Shippou came a few minutes later, and the group and ate laughed and watched A Christmas Story on the television for a while. It was a wonderful time to be had, really. Everyone was in high spirits. The egg-nog was plentiful. The company was never better.

Before it got to late, presents beneath the scraggly tree were distributed. Sango got a new zoom lens for her camera. Miroku got a new DVD burner for his computer. Shippou got DDR for playstation 2, the game he'd been begging for all year. Kohaku got a new pair of hockey skates. Kaede, a new cook book and baking tray. Then finally, Kagome handed Inuyasha a small box. Inside, nestled among the tissue paper, was a fuzzy Santa hat that looked like it had seen better days.

"Is this some kind of subtle joke?" he asked her with frosty sarcasm.

Kagome laughed. "It was my Dad's," she explained. "Just put it on."

He did, much to his own chagrin at having vowed never to wear one again.

After a little while more of joking and egg-nog, the hour grew late and the guests deemed it time to head home. Kagome hugged them, wished them well, and thanked them for the gifts they had left for her beneath her tree for tomorrow. Sango and Miroku left with Kohaku, soon followed by Kaede and Shippou. She held Inuyasha back.

"I have one more gift for you," she said, slightly blushing.

"Oh lord," he muttered, tugging on the brim of his hat. "I can only imagine what it is."

She punched him on the shoulder. "Relax, it's nothing bad, really. I'm just going to sing you a song." Inuyasha stared at her. She smiled back, forcing him to sit on her windowsill. "Prepare to be dazzled!" she announced, hitting a button on the radio in her kitchen. Catchy Christmas-themed music filled the air.

"Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree for me," Kagome sang, moving with the music. "I've been an awful good girl

Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight." Her voice was amazing, he couldn't deny.

He was in trouble.

"Santa baby, an out-of-space convertible too, light blue. I'll wait up for you dear, Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight. Think of all the fun I've missed. Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed. Next year I could be oh so good, if you'd check off my Christmas list."

She did a little dance around the kitchen, grabbing something off the counter, then made her way toward the window. He gulped, what else was there to do.

"Santa honey, I wanna yacht and really that's not a lot. I've been an angel all year, Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight. Santa cutie, there's one thing I really do need. The deed to a platinum mine, Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight. Santa baby, I'm filling my stocking with a duplex and checks. Sign your 'X' on the line, Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight.

"Come and trim my Christmas tree with some decorations bought at Tiffany's. I really do believe in you. Let's see if you believe in me. Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing. A ring. I don't mean a phone! Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight. Hurry down the chimney tonight."

When she finally reached him, it was the end of the song, and she relieved what she had been holding. A sprig of mistletoe. She smiled. He smiled back. "Hurry down the chimney tonight," she sang quietly, the song dying away. Then she kissed him.

Inuyasha believed in Santa Claus again after that day.

In fact, Christmas became his favorite holiday.

Kagome would always remember that those twelve days of Christmas were the best of her life.