InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Fool's Redemption ❯ Bad Blood ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6 - Bad Blood

He wanted to break something, almost as badly as he wanted to know just what the hell was going on. He stormed down the dark hallway toward the office at the end, resisting the urge to punch a wall or two along the way. He could tell the door was open before he got there, from the dim lamplight spilling out into the hallway. That didn't stop him from slamming it open just a little more as he entered.

“Why is she here?” he barked without announcing himself.

The older man sitting behind his desk didn't even look up from the paper he was reading. “Good evening to you too, Inuyasha,” he said calmly.

“Tell me!” Inuyasha demanded, his voice rising. “What is she doing here? You know who she is, don't you?”

Still not looking up, Kagome's uncle replied evenly, “It has nothing to do with you. She's my niece.”

Inuyasha blinked, suddenly caught off guard. “Your niece?”

“Yes. My brother was her father.”

“Why the hell didn't you tell me that woman was your niece?”

“You told me you didn't want to know anything about the person responsible for freeing you.”

Inuyasha paused, considering this. The old man was right about that. “Why is she here?” he asked again, calmer this time.

“She's seeking refuge.”

“For what?” he asked, frowning.

“You should ask her that yourself.”

The old man's nonchalant attitude was pissing him off. Ignoring the suggestion, he raised his voice again. “I don't want her here!” he snapped, slamming his hands down on the desk to emphasize his point.

Kagome's uncle didn't even flinch. “That's not your decision to make, Inuyasha,” he said in the same calm voice.

“So I get no say in this?”

“That's correct.”

“That's bullshit,” Inuyasha corrected sarcastically.

The older man sighed, and finally set down the paper he had been reading. “Why are you carrying on like this? Does having her here bother you that much?”

“So what if it does?”

The two men stared at each other in frustrated silence for a moment.

“I'm sorry. This is partly my fault…” the older man sighed finally.

“For what? Letting her in here? Hell yeah it—”

“Not in that way, Inuyasha,” he said, looking up at the younger man. “Just listen to me. When you first came here you were a mess. You were terrified of everything, suspicious of everyone, barely knew how to act like a human, and you had no idea how to take care of yourself. You needed time to settle in and start learning how to live a normal life.

“I wanted to make things as easy as possible for you, so I never asked you to talk about your past. I thought you would deal with it when you were ready. But you didn't. You got to a point that was comfortable and stopped wanting to move forward. I noticed and kept meaning to bring it up with you, but always ended up putting it off. Now I guess I've run out of time, and it's obvious by your reaction to her being here how big of a mistake that was on my part.”

Inuyasha's own similar thoughts from a few nights prior rose uneasily in his mind, but he pushed them back angrily. “What do you know about what I'm thinking?” he shot back lamely.

“I can see it. You're bored and you're unhappy. And it's because you won't deal with your past. You can't keep ignoring it, Inuyasha. Sooner or later you're going to have to come to terms with what happened to you. And since Kagome is also part of that past, you're going to have to settle things with her before you can let it go and move on. Get out of this rut. Just because it's comfortable doesn't mean it's good for you.”

Inuyasha turned his eyes away and said nothing, staring blankly across the room with a surly expression.

“Did you ever wonder what happened after you left that lab? About the aftermath of your escape?” the older man asked quietly.

Shut up, Inuyasha thought.

“About who had to deal with the deaths of those scientists?”

Shut up!

“It was her.”

“Don't lecture me, old man!” he snapped suddenly, feeling the blood lift to his face. He had wondered. But the reality in the older man's words wasn't something he wanted to think about. It doesn't concern me. It was the same thing he had told himself every time those same thoughts had crossed his own mind.

As if sensing the futility in their conversation, the older man sighed once again. “Inuyasha, look,” he said, sounding very tired. “I'm not going to fight with you about this. You're like a son to me. I consider you to be just as much a part of my own family as she is. But I refuse to choose between the two of you. Just like you, she's free to stay here for as long as she wants. If you can't at least be civil with her then just ignore her.” He picked up the paper on his desk and went back to reading once again.

Inuyasha stood there, glaring down at him for a minute, knowing the conversation was over. This was the first time they had ever had anything even close to an argument. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't come here, he thought angrily, clenching his fists. Without another word, he turned and left the office, storming back down the darkened hallway and out into the domed foyer, again resisting the urge to damage things as he passed.

He paused at the entrance to the atrium. He couldn't go back downstairs. He didn't want to risk the possibly of running into her again. And he didn't want to go home yet either. His assistant would probably come there looking for him before long. That only left one place. He headed out across the floor of the atrium, toward the one place he knew he could be alone, at least for a little while.

*****

Sango had witnessed everything from the side of the dance floor. She had come running up to Kagome as the younger girl stood searching the crowd with desperate eyes. When she had reached out to take her arm, Kagome had jumped at her friend's touch, staring up at the older girl with a hopeless expression.

“I think it's time you told me what's going on,” Sango had said gently, and Kagome nodded her agreement.

They now sat in the lounge area under the king's terrace, at a small table overlooking the dance floor. Kagome had told Sango everything—about the organization she had worked for, about the lab and meeting Inuyasha, helping him escape, and the consequences of her actions.

“And so, here I am,” Kagome finished with a sad little sigh.

“You've had a hard couple of years, haven't you?” Sango said sympathetically. “I understand now, why you've acted so strangely when talking about him. But you must've known he would react like this if he saw you again. That's why you've been putting off going to him this whole time. And you probably would've been just as safe in any other city. So why come here if you knew it would end up like this?”

Kagome hesitated, and then replied, “I wanted to see him again, to ask his forgiveness. For what I helped do to him. I know I should have just sucked it up and gone to him, but I was scared of what his reaction would be.”

“But you helped him! Shouldn't he be grateful to you? And if he isn't, why should you care?”

The younger girl didn't answer, and turned her gaze out over the crowd.

As if the thought had suddenly occurred to her, Sango asked quietly, “Are you in love with him?”

Kagome flinched inwardly. She'd wondered that herself, many times, but had never come up with an honest answer. Instead, she had always told herself that it didn't matter whether she loved him or not. If she did, it was a hopeless, one-sided love anyways, so she would always push the question away without answering it. And if she had fallen in love with him, she certainly hadn't meant to. When she first met him in the lab, he had been a violent, wild terror of a man to deal with. Most of the time he was kept naked and drugged, strapped down to his bed, locked up alone in his small, windowless room, a camera high in one corner keeping constant watch over him.

She could still remember the first time they had seen each other face-to-face. It was on a day her colleagues had been running some extremely painful tests on his legs to observe muscle reaction, and as she was led down the hall toward his room, she could hear his deafening screams piercing the silence of the otherwise quiet building. As she entered the room, she had found him writhing on the examination table, fighting uselessly against his restrains, as her colleagues in their sterile white coats bent over him, recording the results of their cruelty. The pain must have ceased for a moment, because his shrieks had suddenly lowered to ragged gasping, and she stood watching him from the door as his chest heaved, his lungs trying to regain the breath that his screams had forced from them. His eyes rolled about, staring deliriously at the ceiling above. She had noticed that, despite the pain he was in, he didn't use his regained breath to beg for them to stop.

His head fell to the side, his gaze dull and unseeing. She wondered if he had lost consciousness, until his eyes had suddenly focused directly on her. With his strange, bright golden eyes, the young man stared at her, and she had found his gaze so intense that she wasn't able to bring herself to look away.

Someone near the examination table had called to her then, snapping her to attention. It was the man who had led her to the room, and she suddenly remembered that this was the first day they were allowing her to help with testing on the `special subjects'. “Come on over,” he had said. “Don't worry, he won't bite. Well, he will, but just don't get too close to his head and you'll be fine.”

The others had laughed, but she felt the taste of bile rise in her mouth. As she'd walked over to join them, she glanced down at the young man, who was still staring warily at her.

She had found herself suddenly terrified. She didn't want to help them. She didn't want to hear his screams again, didn't want to cause him pain. As she took up her position next to the bed, she had fought to keep her expression neutral. She'd worked so hard to earn these people's trust—any hesitation now might ruin everything.

She steeled herself and looked down at the young man with an uninterested glare, but just before they began the experiment once again, she softened her eyes slightly, and almost imperceptibly lifted her chin at him. Be strong, she had tried to tell him with her eyes. His gaze, still locked on her, was unsure for a moment, then as the test began again, his face twisted back into a look of pure hatred and pain as his body shook in a violent spasm. He managed to hold back his screams for only a few seconds, but after that, he had been unable to stop them.

That first experience had left her shaken but determined that, no matter what, she would find some way to shut down the laboratory. Afraid that someone might have noticed her unease when seeing Inuyasha for the first time, she was very careful from that point on to stay as reserved and calm as possible when around her colleagues, acting just as indifferent to the pain they inflicted as they did. She had refused to let herself get attached to any of the lab's test subjects. While she felt sorry for most of them, she doubted any of them would survive long enough to ever see freedom. With everything they were being put through, they were constantly being pushed to the point of death. Becoming attached only to watch them waste away and die would have been just too much for her to bear.

The months had passed, and as she expected, one by one they succumbed to the ravages of the constant experiments. But with Inuyasha, things seemed to take the opposite direction. When she first began working with him he had been so thin that his shoulders and hipbones had protruded grossly. He refused to eat, so feeding was forced by shoving a tube down his throat. His eyes were always dull, even after the drugs had worn off, and he seemed violently terrified of everything. But as the months wore on, he had begun eating on his own, and as a result, gained a healthy amount of weight. His gaze became sharp and observant, and even though he was still unpredictable, he was only aggressive when threatened with another painful experiment. Once in awhile, he would meet her quick glances of encouragement with a steady, perceptive look of his own.

She eventually realized that he had understood the words she could only give him with her eyes, and that he had decided to fight for his life. He seemed determined to survive. Encouraged by this, she had worked tirelessly to gain enough trust with the lab's staff to be allowed to work with him almost exclusively. Despite her best efforts to keep herself from getting attached, once she had seen the changes in him, she knew she was growing to care for him more than she should have. She had only remained distant because she had thought he would end up dead like the others. But now things had changed, now he had a chance, and she became more determined than ever to put a stop to the abuse. He had become her motivation, and was the first thought in her mind every morning when she woke, and the last thought every night before she fell asleep. All she had wanted was to put an end to his suffering and to see him living free.

And now, she had accomplished that. She had gotten what she wanted, and had never allowed herself to desire anymore of him than that. So what was she doing here now? Was forgiveness really the main thing that had motivated her to come here?

No. But, I couldn't ever hope for anything more, so…

Looking back on it honestly now, she realized that the real reason she was in this place wasn't because she couldn't live without his forgiveness, or had nowhere else to go, and it wasn't because her uncle ran the city, or that this was where she felt the safest, or any of the other countless excuses she had told herself. It was because this was where he was. This was where he lived and worked and slept, and even though he wasn't aware of her presence, she was able to be near him, knowing that he was always somewhere close by.

I just want to be near him. That's enough for me, she thought with a sudden feeling of finality. A relieved sigh escaped her, as if her mind was glad to finally be released from the constant gridlock that came from thinking about her feelings toward Inuyasha.

Sango evidentially took her drawn-out silence for a positive response to her question, and the older girl ran a hand through her hair. “I see. One-sided love. I guess with your situation there wouldn't be any easy way to approach him anyways, much less tell him how you feel. It must be hard.”

Kagome lifted her chin and looked back at her friend with a hopeful expression. “It is, but it's alright. I'll find some way to make things right.”

Sango smiled at her. “I hope so. I'm glad you finally told me. I could tell that something had been bothering you this whole time. I know how you feel.” The older girl's eyes drifted away to the other side of the enormous hall, up to the three terraces hanging high above the crowds, and settled on the one in the middle.

That's the black prince's terrace, Kagome remembered, following her friend's gaze.

“Loving someone you can't have, it's painful, ” Sango said quietly, as if her mind was suddenly someplace far away. She began absently twisting a ring on her middle finger, something that Kagome had come to recognize as one of the girl's nervous habits. She only seemed to do it when she was deep in thought or something was bothering her.

“Hey,” Kagome said, suddenly wanting to lighten the mood. She reached across the table to take Sango's other hand. “You know, if you need to, you can talk to me, okay?”

Sango blinked, as if startled by the kind gesture, then grinned. “Thank you. I—” But something behind Kagome seemed to catch her attention suddenly, and the warmth faded from her face, replaced instantly by a guarded smile.

“Good evening, Chief of Security,” came the low, smooth voice of a man.

Turning to the source of the voice as he moved to the side of their table, Kagome found herself looking up at a strikingly handsome man with long, shining black hair that fell in waves down to his waist. He smiled down at the two of them, and Kagome noticed his eyes were a deep shade of red. His eyes have been altered, she thought. Changing the color of one's irises was possible through a simple medical procedure, and as a result, the city was full of people with unnatural eye colors.

Trailing just behind the handsome man were two others—one huge and dark with sculpted muscles bulging out from beneath his tight shirt, the other smaller and pale, his dark hair hanging loosely around his face to just above his shoulders. Neither one paid the two women any notice.

“Good evening, Naraku,” Sango said pleasantly, but Kagome felt that her friend's smile and welcoming tone were being forced. “What are you doing down here?”

“Well, I was upstairs at Inuyasha's birthday party, but it seems he's suddenly disappeared, so I decided to wander around for a while,” Naraku replied easily. Looking down at Kagome, he offered a charming smile. “I don't believe I've met your friend,” he directed at Sango.

Kagome noticed that her friend was worrying her ring much more vigorously now.

“Won't you introduce me?” he asked.

Sango hesitated for just a moment, then gestured between the two of them. “Kagome, this is Naraku.” She paused and then added, “The Black Prince.”

*****

Should have brought a coat, Inuyasha thought ruefully.

He sat lounging in the branches of an enormous tree that grew along the edge of a high cliff overlooking the southwestern side of the dome. It was an ancient looking thing, growing out of and over the edge of the cliff, suspended securely by the firm grip its massive twisting roots held on the rock face. He sighed as the chill of the night air sank into his skin. Even though the dome's atmosphere was controlled, the environmental barrier was so thin that the cold night air outside always ended up seeping inside to drop the temperature during the night.

He was grateful that no one had tried to stop him on his way out of the atrium. He was certainly in no mood to talk to anyone right now. But out here among the treetops, he didn't have to worry about being bothered. His assistant was the only other person who knew of this hiding spot, and he certainly wasn't going to tell anyone. Growing in the precarious position that it did, the tree would have been almost impossible for anyone who didn't have his dexterity to climb, at least not without putting in a great deal of effort, and the thick foliage provided enough cover that he didn't worry about someone spotting him from the cliff edge below.

“Of all the women on the dance floor tonight, the one that caught my eye just had to be her,” he complained, folding his arms crossly as he leaned back against the trunk.

He'd been speaking with someone at the edge of his terrace when he had noticed her on the dance floor below. He'd always had an eye for the ones with dark hair, and her lightsome movements had instantly captivated him. Without waiting to get a good look at her face, he had excused himself from his conversation and rushed down to the dance floor. There he'd found her dancing by herself, her back turned to him as she moved with the music. He hadn't waited for her to turn toward him before approaching.

“Idiot,” he scolded himself. “If I'd just waited a second…” He sighed. “What am I gonna do? Now I'll have to worry about running into her all the time.”

He leaned his head back, looking up through the leaves to the cover of stars above. What a shitty birthday, he thought, clenching and unclenching his hands as he remembered touching her. He closed his eyes.

Does having her here bother you that much? The older man's question repeated itself in his head.

“Why shouldn't it, after what she did to me?” he answered aloud. “How could I ever forget…” he trailed off as a sudden memory rose to the surface. It was of her face, and that subtle look of determination she had given him from time to time. How could I forget…

He had been surprised at his reaction to seeing her the first time. He had been embarrassed by his nudity, and by his pathetic screams, which he'd been horribly unsuccessful at biting back once the experiment resumed. And there was that odd little nod she'd given him just before they had turned the pins in his legs back on. It had made his heart race, and he didn't understand why. He had hated her for it.

At first, she seemed just like the rest of them. She helped them with their unspeakable experiments, wearing that dull, indifferent stare when he screamed out his pain, and her tone was cold and uncaring. Ever since he had left the nursery at age six, his life had been valued as nothing more than a fascinating scientific experiment. The people in the white coats never looked on him with anything other than greed and cruelty, their eyes uncaring and hard. His tormented screams were something that they controlled and ignored as they pushed his body to well beyond its limits.

Truth be told, he had already given up by the time she walked through that door. The only kindness he had ever known was during his short time in the nursery, and he had no hope of ever returning to that quiet kind of life. But when he caught that little nod as she stood over his bed on that first day, he felt as if there was something she was trying to tell him, something that she wasn't able to simply come out and say. So he watched her, confused by her actions but curious at the same time.

No matter how much she tried to act like the rest of his tormentors, he could tell she was different from them. She never looked at him with the eyes of a scientist, as if he were some fascinating new specimen that could be dissected and toyed with. She would carry a stiff expression when she was in the presence of the other technicians, but when she was alone with him, or there was no one looking, she would give him that purposeful glance, a look full of determination, with eyes that told him to be strong.

Hang in there, she had seemed to say, and so he did.

He hadn't known what she was trying to do, but he knew there was something she was trying to hide from the people she worked with. So he had waited, and hoped that the resolve in her eyes held some chance of salvation for him. There were small things she did, he suspected to make up for some of the pain she caused him, like persuading the staff to provide him with extra blankets, with the reasoning that if they wanted the best performance out of his body, they shouldn't do their experiments on cold muscles. To his amazement they had agreed, and even turned the temperature in his frigid room up by a few degrees. His food tray always seemed to have more on it when she was in charge of serving him.

But those were all small comforts compared to her most important accomplishment. Gradually, as she was placed in charge of him more and more, she began to complain to her coworkers about his screaming, saying that she got headaches easily and that she couldn't take his screams all the time. This had angered him tremendously at first. It wasn't as if he could help it. But he realized her purpose one day when she finally threw up her hands and stormed out of the room, covering her ears, returning a few minutes later with a small vial of liquid in her hands.

“We're using this today,” she had said, filling a syringe with the liquid.

“Do you have permission?” the assisting technician asked in a worried tone.

“Do you want to listen to his screams all day? Because I don't,” Kagome had shot back. She could be amazingly intimidating when she was mad. “We don't need any reaction observations from him today. We already know it probably hurts like hell.”

The technician had backed down immediately, and Inuyasha watched as Kagome injected the needle into several spots along his left arm, which had been covered with probes that were jammed deep into his skin. Almost immediately the pain had subsided, and when she flashed him a quick glance, he understood. The whole thing had been an act so that she had an excuse to use whatever it was that she had put into his arm. From that day on, she started having a lot of headaches, and no one ever argued with her when she decided to use the numbing agents.

Then finally, the day came when she had quietly entered his room early one morning and, without a word, slipped something into his left ear and injected something into his arm. Almost instantly, the urge to sleep had washed over him. He tried to ask her what she was doing, but the drug worked too quickly and his eyelids were too heavy. The last thing he had remembered was feeling the pressure of the restrains around his wrists ease slightly, and then his senses slipped into darkness. Her voice had woken him some time later, sounding small but clear in his ear…

A sudden noise from below the tree pulled Inuyasha from his thoughts.

“Inuyasha?” he heard a familiar voice call up to him.

He sighed. He had been found. But he couldn't be mad at the kid. It was part of the young man's job to look after him. “What?” Inuyasha snapped, looking down and spotting his assistant's blond hair through the branches.

“Everyone's wondering where you ran off to. Are you coming back?”

“No.”

“But it's your birthday.”

“Whatever. Tell them I'm sick, or tired, or something.”

“Ok,” the young man said, sounding disappointed. “I'll see you at home, then.” And with that he wandered away, leaving Inuyasha alone once again.

Allowing his mind to drift back to his memories, Inuyasha realized with a start just how sentimental he had suddenly become. His eyes hardened as he felt his anger returning. Yes, she had shown him some kindness. But despite that, he had just been used as a means to an end, the pathetic poster boy for her and her comrade's crusade to save poor unfortunate victims like himself. They got to play the heroes, and he was left a fugitive. While they had taken their time getting him out of there, he had been suffering. He still had nightmares about it almost every night. Even the stabbing pain would return in his dreams sometimes, causing him to wake screaming in his bed.

No, he told himself. She still helped them torture me. She still caused me all that pain. I won't forgive her for that.

A small part of him told him he was being unreasonable, but he didn't care. He wasn't ready to let go of his anger, and if blaming her for everything was the only way he could justify it, then so be it. “Besides,” he reasoned. “She must feel guilty about what she did. It was all over her face when she looked at me. If she still feels bad about it, then I have every right to hold it against her.” Satisfied with that conclusion, he smirked and sat up. Swinging his legs out and hoping lithely from branch to lower branch, he made his way down the tree quickly.

As his feet landed on the massive knot of roots at the bottom of the tree, the king's words sounded in his mind once again. If you can't at least be civil with her then just ignore her.

“I'll ignore her, alright,” he growled. “I'll avoid her like the damn plague.”

*****

So this is the black prince, Kagome thought, staring up at the strikingly handsome, black haired man, feeling a blush rise slightly in her cheeks.

Naraku gave her a charming smile. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Kagome. I don't think I've seen you around before.”

“I'm kind of new,” she replied modestly.

“That would explain it. Well then, let's all have a drink, to celebrate your arrival,” he suggested cordially.

Kagome opened her mouth to accept his offer but was cut off as Sango grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. “Actually, we were just about to leave for the night. It's been a long evening, and we're both pretty tired,” the older girl said, offering an apologetic smile.

“Oh?” Naraku asked, feigning a pout. Then he shrugged and looked at Kagome. “Another time then?” he said in his smooth tone. It sounded more like a promise than an invitation.

Before Kagome could reply, Sango had already dragged her away and was making straight for the elevators. She seemed to be walking as fast as she could without actually breaking into a jog.

“Hey!” Kagome said to her, suddenly worried by her friend's abrupt behavior. “What's wrong?”

Sango finally came to a halt at the foot of the elevators, and as she pressed the return button, her shoulders dropped slightly, as if defeated. “Nothing,” she answered. “It's just… he likes to talk a lot, and I didn't feel like getting pulled into a long conversation with him tonight.” But the older girl wouldn't look at her as they stood there waiting, and Kagome suspected her friend wasn't being entirely honest with her. When the elevator finally came, they entered silently. The doors slid closed behind them, and as the elevator started its ascent, Sango turned and stared out through the glass and iron. After a moment, she spoke softly.

“Kagome, I think you should tell him how you feel.”

Kagome stared at her, caught off guard by the sudden suggestion.

“You're so close now, you should at least try. If he won't listen, make him. There's… nothing worse than having to secretly love someone from a distance.”

Sango turned to her with sad eyes, and Kagome knew that her friend was speaking to her with the sorrow of her own experience.

As the elevator was swallowed back up into the dimly lit shaft, Kagome watched the softly glowing blue-green lichen slide past. She didn't really understand her friend's sudden motivation for telling her to confront Inuyasha, nor why the visit with the black prince had seemed to unnerve her so much. But she knew Sango was right. One way or the other, she would find some way to make things right with Inuyasha. She had come too far to give up now.

Continued in Chapter 7 - The Trouble With Forgiveness

A/N: So, I was a bit worried when I posted the first four chapters all at one time and didn't get a single review. I thought that I might have to pull yet another story from MM.net for lack of interest, but the awesome reviews I received for chapter five completely eased my mind! A TON of thanks to you three for your encouraging comments!

Funny thing. I spent so much time absorbed in all that atmospheric writing that getting back into dialogue proved to be a challenge. This whole chapter seemed to come in fits and starts. And because of that dialogue, it ended up being a bit longer than the other chapters, so to those of you who like quick reads, I apologize. Seems no matter how hard I try, I just can't half-ass anything that's creative. Cuz trust me, I tried to cut this chapter down a bit, but it didn't work : /

And I know you guys wanna see them meet! Not like hit-and-run meet either, but actual interaction and conversation. You'll get plenty of that starting with the next chapter, I swear! There will also be a bit of naughtiness!

As for whether or not Miroku is here (cuz I know this is buggin people ;D), I'm afraid the only thing I'll say about who's here and who's not is, again, even if there are others here, they may or may not be immediately recognizable. I gotta keep some secrets! Cuz secrets keep people coming back to read ;P. The only one who I will say with absolute certainty is NOT here is Kikyo. No need for that whole mess. And probably not Shippou either. I'm not entirely sure I could (or would want to, for that matter) fit a child into this story : /