InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bottled Genius ❯ A Ghost of the Past ( Chapter 7 )

AN: Finally, I think I have a plot coming in this chapter. And from here on out, I think the romance becomes more prominent ^_^ However, I would really like to see romance in the actual series ie. Kissies between our favourite pairing (which means I'll be fighting tooth and nail to get a copy of the second movie when it comes out - and fast forward straight to that scene!).

And about the writer's block, it shouldn't last too long I hope. I do know exactly how all the stories will play out and how they will end… it's just that I've lost the enthusiasm (I'm depressed, so sue me). But I reckon after a good shopping spree in town tomorrow, I'll be good to go again ^_^

Bottled Genius

Chapter 7

A Ghost of the Past

"Dad…?"

Souta and Grandpa looked up as Mrs Higurashi came into the kitchen with a slightly bewildered look on her face. "Yes?" Grandpa asked.

"You know when you said Kagome was entertaining boys in her room?" Said girl's mother tottered over to sit down in a chair between the guys.

"Yes…" he answered slowly.

"Well…" Mrs Higurashi blinked slightly. "With twister I think you'll find."

"Oh." Grandpa and Souta gave each other an odd look. Obviously the woman was in a state of shock or something similar.

^_^

'She saw your ears!' Kagome told Inuyasha in full fledge panic. Her hands were shaking so much she was stumbling over her words.

"So?" He replied with a short shrug. "They're sticking out of my head, I can't help it."

Kagome had obviously been getting better at the lip-reading thing. 'How do I explain?!'

"Just tell her the truth!" Inuyasha shot back.

'I can't!' she hesitated a moment, forgetting her anxious pacing as she turned to him and chewed her lip. 'It'll upset them - it'll upset Grandpa! They won't believe me and I don't want them mixed up in all this curse business!'

Inuyasha's brow lowered a fraction. "It's not like I'd set out to kill them…" he grumbled, though his lips barely moved so she didn't catch what he'd said.

'I'll think of something.' She told him and pointed to his bottle. 'Just stay hidden for a while. Ok?'

He gave her a sharp sign with his hands to show he understood, even as his gaze was averted and a deep scowl furrowed his brow. Kagome was taken aback slightly by his sudden mood and would have asked about it, had he not dissipated from the room.

She sighed in his absence and turned to leave and go face the music.

^_^

"Who was he?"

"Where does he come from?"

"How did you meet him if you're stuck in your room all the time?"

"Is he cool?"

"What was his name?"

Kagome held up her hands to stop the flood of questions. They were all talking at the same time and she couldn't understand a word. 'One at a time!' she told her mother with a roll of her eyes.

"What did she say?" Souta demanded.

"She told you to be quiet a moment." His mother told him as she leaned forward against the table, eyes intently on Kagome's. "So what was his name?"

Kagome told her.

"What did she say?" Souta repeated, looking rapidly between Kagome and his mother.

"Inuyasha… his name is Inuyasha?" Mrs Higurashi smiled slightly. "That's an unusual name."

"Where's he from?" Grandpa asked quickly.

Mrs Higurashi translated for Souta's benefit. "She says he's from the next town over. He goes to the comprehensive school. That's how she met him. I didn't know you'd made a firm friend already, Kagome?"

Kagome's head ducked slightly and they could have sworn they saw a slight pink brush across her cheekbones… but it was gone in a moment. Mrs Higurashi wondered exactly how much of a 'friend' he was.

"He'd have to have the patience of Buddha to put up with Kagome like this." Souta pointed out, earning him a kick under the table from god only knew who.

"Where is he now?" Mrs Higurashi asked Kagome.

'He's…' Kagome paused a moment, trying to think of something. 'Gone home.'

"Ah…" Mrs Higurashi nodded before cocking her head. "I couldn't help noticing… the… uh… the ear thing… and… the hair thing…"

Souta glanced at his mother. "Does he have an earring and a mohican then?"

"Extraordinary…" Grandpa breathed.

"No!" Mrs Higurashi shook her head quickly at them. "He had… well… you'd have to see for yourself, but it was very strange." She looked back at Kagome. 'What was wrong with his ears?' she asked.

Kagome smiled sheepishly and shook her head with a shrug. Pity she hadn't thought up a convincing story for that.

"Well… any friend of Kagome's is a friend of ours." Mrs Higurashi sat back with a smile. "You can invite him to dinner some time if you like."

Kagome nodded slightly, wondering if that was such a good idea…

"For now tell us more about him!" her mother's smile turned into a beam.

^_^

Kagome tapped her pen to an irregular rhythm against her text book. Perhaps she'd be able to keep the beat better if she could hear it. Looking behind her, almost to check if Inuyasha was still there, a sudden thought occurred to her.

Maybe now was the time to follow up on that punishment thing…

She tossed her eraser at him, hitting him on the nose. His eyes snapped up and he sat up from her bed. "What?" he griped, rubbing his offended nose.

'What did you mean before,' she asked him with an inquisitive look. 'When you said you were still enduring punishment for something else?'

Inuyasha stared at her a moment before scowling and bringing his hands up to talk back. 'Mind your own business, bitch.'

Kagome's eyes narrowed. 'You threw me a bone Inuyasha, I can't help but wonder what you meant now. So answer me.'

'It doesn't concern you'. He folded his arms. "So forget it."

Kagome's fingers clenched into fists for a moment before she tried again. 'It concerns me! Why won't you tell me?'

"You wouldn't understand." He sighed impatiently, turning his back on her in favour of resting his arms on the windowsill beside her bed and looking out.

Kagome had run out of safe things to throw to get his attention back. For a moment she toyed with the idea of marching up to him to pursue the matter… but that probably wouldn't get them anywhere… unless she intended to make them both mad at each other again. She picked up her pen and turned in her chair to get back to her studies.

She'd just ask again later until he cracked and told her.

^_^

"If you tell anyone I'm playing this game with you, I'll bite you." Inuyasha told Kagome evenly one afternoon.

Kagome grinned and passed the cats cradle back to him. He'd made the same threat with the game of twister. That didn't mean he enjoyed himself any less. He had to pause and look up at her as he took it, just to make sure he was getting it right. She nodded and the threads slipped from her fingers onto his.

With her hands now free, Kagome popped the question. 'Come to dinner tonight?'

She took the cat's cradle back so he could answer.

'No.' was his answer.

She passed the cradle back to him hurriedly, he fumbled for a moment as she retorted angrily. 'Why not?!'

"Why should I?" He scowled, struggling to keep a grip on the threads. "It sounds like you're inviting a lover home to meet the parents. I ain't doing that."

'They won't stop asking me about my little friend,' Kagome told him with a frown. 'Please spare me any more torture and just let them see you.'

'So they can ridicule me?' he asked when the cradle was back in her hands.

Kagome shook her head quickly, shaking off the cradle to talk. 'They're not like that. They just want to know you.'

"You ruined it now…" He sighed, looking down at the tangled mess of string on the bed. "I was just getting the hang of it too…"

Kagome hooked a finger under his chin to get him to look up at her. He jerked away from the contact… it was almost a flinch. "What?!" he snapped irritably.

'Come. Please.' She gave him the most earnest and vulnerable look she could manage.

He watched her for a moment before shrugging. "Whatever."

Whatever. It was always 'whatever'. Never a 'sure' or an 'ok' or even a 'yes'. It made it sound like he didn't care… like he didn't have a choice. She didn't want him to think of it like that…

^_^

"So did you grow up here?" Mrs Higurashi asked pleasantly at the dinner table that evening.

"No." Inuyasha answered, aware that Kagome was watching him like a hawk. "I don't usually stay in one place for very long."

"How long have you been in Izu?" Kagome's mother asked as she passed the tomatoes to Souta.

"About fifty… uh…" he trailed off as he saw Kagome making throat slashing motions beside her mother. "Fifty weeks… roughly a year I guess…"

"I see." Mrs Higurashi was genuinely interested. "Where were you born then?"

"In a castle in Kai." Inuyasha happily accepted the tomatoes that had been passed from Souta. "This food's great!"

"You were… born in a castle?" The family looked perplexed.

Kagome interrupted the moment. 'His mother went into labour on the museum tour.' She explained hurriedly.

"Ah…" Mrs Higurashi nodded. "Do your parents live around here then? Maybe we'll hear of them."

"Nope. Both dead." Inuyasha shovelled down the noodles.

"How… terrible… I'm sorry I brought it up." Mrs Higurashi held a hand to her mouth in surprise.

"I think I just found a new favourite food." Inuyasha chortled on obliviously.

"I don't think it's anything recent, Mom." Souta pointed out, noticing Inuyasha's attitude.

"I suppose you live in foster homes, that's why you move around a lot?" Mrs Higurashi asked.

Inuyasha gulped down the last of his food to free up his mouth. "Nah… No one would take me in. My mother died when I was about… uh… seven I think. I got kicked out the town and out of court and then I just stayed wherever the hell I liked."

"Oh." Mrs Higurashi paused in surprise. "Didn't the authorities take you in?"

Inuyasha smirked. "They tried. Always too slow."

Kagome was unusually quiet… even for a mute person.

"So you were like a street kid?" Souta asked, obviously having idolised Inuyasha within the first three minutes. "Did you go around stealing stuff to get by and shine shoes of the gentry for a living. Like 'Shine ya boots guvna'?'"

"Something like that…" Inuyasha shrugged.

"That sounds like a rough way to grow up…" Mrs Higurashi said with a touch of sympathy. "It must have been hard."

"Don't sweat it." Inuyasha shrugged again, suddenly a little offset by the sympathetic eyes watching him.

"So you met Kagome in school?" Grandpa finally spoke up. Everyone glanced at him… "What? It's about time I got a word in."

"She never talks about you." Mrs Higurashi said, making sure Kagome's head was down eating her dinner so the girl wouldn't see what she said. "I'm surprised she still knows people from that school. She got expelled after two days."

"What can I say? She can't shake me off." Inuyasha shrugged with a sly smile.

"It's good for Kagome to have friends at a time like this. She must get very lonely. She needs company." Mrs Higurashi smiled at him. "She's lucky to have someone like you."

"Yeah…" the smile kinda slipped off his face with that. "I wouldn't say she's all that lucky to have me."

There was a chuckle from the older pair of Higurashi's. "Don't be so modest." Mrs Higurashi told him lightly. "Any friend to stick with her through all this trouble with Kagome being mute… you must be very loyal."

Kagome looked up in time to see him answer the question.

"Loyalty is my middle name."

^_^

"They were nicer than I thought they'd be." Inuyasha told Kagome that night. Kagome nodded with a happy smile. "They didn't say anything about my ears though…"

'I told them it was a birth defect.' Kagome winced slightly. 'Sorry'

"That's not completely wrong." He shrugged and sat down at the end of her bed whilst Kagome wiggled to get comfortable where she against the pillow in her pyjamas with the blankets drawn over her legs.

'I didn't know…' Kagome started uncertainly.

'Didn't know what?' he asked.

'That you grew up like a mortal.' She frowned in thought. 'I thought you'd always been a Wishbringer. I didn't know you had parents.'

"What, you think I just started existing five hundred years ago, out of thin air as I am today?" he scoffed and looked away. "All Wishbringers were mortal at one point, Kagome."

Did he just use her name? No… she must have mistaken him… but that wasn't important right then. 'What changed?'

"What?" he glanced back at her.

'If you were mortal like me then why did you become a Wishbringer?' she asked.

His gaze slid from her face to the blankets between them, his eyes tracing the patterns on the duvet. "I was never like you…"

Kagome cocked her head, silently waiting and urging him to continue. Eventually she was rewarded for her patience when he looked away again, out the darkened window, but he spoke again. "I was… am… a Hanyou. You know what that is, right?"

Kagome shook her head slightly.

"It means I'm half a Youkai. Half a monster. Half a human though… and riddled with all the weaknesses that come with being human." He smiled slightly, but it meant nothing. An empty smile. "I didn't lie when I said I was born in a castle. My mother was the daughter of a warlord… a princess in her own respect. She died of an illness when I was little, and without her influence in the castle, I was cast out."

Kagome watched him intently. She'd never even thought about him having a life beyond granting wishes… this was a whole new side.

"So." He started off loudly, looking back at her with a shrug of the shoulders, as if to cast off dark memories or thought. "In a world where you're rejected by humans, but too weak and human to be accepted by Youkai, what's a Hanyou to do? I wanted to get even with the Youkai… I was strong… though only because my father was strong and I wasn't even a quarter as strong as he was. And I wanted to be stronger. I wanted to prove that I could be a son to a real taiyoukai… as it was… I was just a bastard little Hanyou. I wanted to be legitimate I guess… so I went through all sorts to get the power I wanted."

Kagome noticed his gaze had slid back to the floor… it wasn't as if he was talking to her anymore.

"I was greedy… selfish and stupid… I found a ninth generation Wishbringer in a vase I smashed. My first wish was to have ultimate power… power that was above and beyond any mortal's or Youkai's. I wanted to be stronger than my father… stronger than my brother… and I got what I wanted." He sighed and closed his eyes. "That's my punishment. My curse. I destroyed myself with my very first wish, and ever since I've had to watch master after master destroy himself or herself the very same way I did. Either through death or some unpleasant sentence… It's my punishment to watch them destroy themselves, but know that I'm the cause. It's a reminder of my greed…"

A feather light touch against his arm caused him to snap his head around to look at Kagome. She'd shifted closer whilst he'd been lost in his thoughts. Too close.

His heart gave an unfamiliar lurch in his chest as he tried to slide backwards off the bed, but found his way blocked by the bed post. He'd seen that look before. She was sorry for him… she pitied him. There was something else there too, but he decided to focus instantly on the anger she inflicted with her pity. He didn't want that from her.

"Don't look at me like that!" he hissed. "If you think I'm unhappy - I'm not! I like being this way!" he forced a laugh. "I have ultimate power, power that could make Sesshomaru weep and my father proud! I have no need for pity! I've managed to kill thousands of people in an eye blink - something they could never do!" Oh dear… his breathing was becoming a little choppy and unsteady… he needed to stop thinking about their lives… or else he'd…

His masking smile and laugh faded from his lips as Kagome suddenly reached out and wrapped her arms around his torso from his side. One arm hooked around his back, the other around his chest, trapping his arm to him.

It was a strange sensation… not the hug, he'd been hugged before. That was nothing new. But it was as if something inside him was leaning toward her… leaning into the embrace like this was what it wanted. Compassion… understanding.

No. He didn't need it.

His breathing was becoming even more unsteady and his heart was beating slightly faster than normal. He looked down at the dark head resting against his right shoulder.

He shouldn't have told her.

With a sudden movement he broke roughly out of her arms and stood up, trying to get his breathing under control and stop the slightly dizzy feeling he felt from rattling up the inner self that had been leaning into Kagome. He rolled his shoulders and looked back at her to find her watching him cautiously. "Listen. Ten weeks will be up when dawn breaks tomorrow. You'll have your hearing back and your voice too."

It didn't seem to make her look any more joyful. She still looked at him like she was sorry…

"Stop it…" he growled. "I don't need this…" he turned and dissipated… relocating himself elsewhere. He couldn't stand being in that room anymore, the silence had been too tense for even him.

He found himself standing on top of the oil tank in the middle of the dark. Above him Kagome's room still cast an orange square of light on the ground before him. But after a few minutes it disappeared… Kagome had gone to bed.

"It doesn't matter." He said aloud to the quiet night. Only the crickets chirped back. "They're dead… even I can't bring them back to life."

He stepped off the tank to land on the ground six feet below… gracefully and without a hitch… or that had been the plan. But his sleeve got caught on the flower trellis around the tank and he heard a loud ripping sound.

"Clumsy bastard…" he jerked his haori off and examined the sleeve. It may have been as relatively strong as poor quality armour, but it was aged and worn out… the nicks and tears were beginning to show. "I'm too old…" he told the night before snorting. "I wish…"

For a moment he paused, the coat dropped in his hand to his side as he leaned back thoughtfully against the oil tank and the trellis. If he could go back in time and make a different wish… what would he wish for if not for ultimate power?

He smirked to himself. He'd wish for a barrel of sake that never ran dry. A plate of food that refilled itself whenever it was empty. That's what he should have asked for…

And that brat, Kagome, had had to remind him all over again. He scowled suddenly and pulled the dark haori over his hair the way little girls put pillow cases over their heads and pretended to be a bride. He pretended to be Kagome. "Oh you poor thing, being made immortal! Given powers that would gods jealous! Being able to outlive your pathetic brother and laugh at his grave! How awful it must be for you!" A perfect imitation of her voice.

He threw the haori on the ground angrily and kicked the trellis, making it quiver violently. "Stupid wench… always looking at the glass half empty!"

He was anything but unhappy. Yep. He was perfectly happy. He knew that in a month or so, when Kagome made her last wish he'd go back into storage and the next time he opened his eyes, years would have flickered by for him. What strange new things would he see in the next future? He'd be able to look back at Kagome and see a wrinkly old woman and be grateful that he never aged the way she would. He was lucky… yeah…

Yeah right.

If he was so happy and guilt free… then why had he wanted to stay and accept her embrace?

Something tickled at the edges of his senses and he looked up and around him uncertainly. He couldn't recognise it… but it felt familiar. But just as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

Probably just a bat and its sonar…

He ambled off to find something else to do, seeing as everyone had gone to bed now. He went and threw sticks in the river, but he couldn't see very well through the dark so he quickly lost interest.

It wasn't long before he found himself sitting on the wall beside the driveway gates of the old house. He leaned against the heavy set post beside him and gazed at the ground four or five feet below him.

Then it was back, the tickling sixth sense that flitted around the back of his awareness. He scowled a moment, trying to understand and locate it, before the presence made itself known to his fifth sense. His hearing.

He looked up the road, frowning heavily as he heard the footsteps approaching. They were irregular and clumsy. He knew that gait.

His frown lifted off his face and stopped leaning on the gate in favour of resting his elbows on his knees, a slow smirk playing on his lips. It was a few minutes before the new arrival stepped into his line of sight.

Nothing was said for quite a while.

"So you're still alive." Inuyasha lifted his chin slightly.

"A stupid observation."

Inuyasha shrugged lightly. "It's what you wanted. Immortal life. You have it."

"You tricked me."

"Mm…" Inuyasha smirk widened. "Perhaps."

"I only used six of my wishes. I'm entitled to my last four."

"I don't disagree." Inuyasha cocked his head to the side. "I'd use them on yourself if I were you, you're a mess."

"Thank the lord you're not me. Now come. We have business."

"I have business here." Inuyasha interrupted.

"You're priority is to your last master. Now come with me or I'll make you regret it."

The smile slipped off Inuyasha's face and he let himself slip to the ground. "As you wish."

AN: And great, thanks to Saro mentioning the Princess Bride, I keep having flashbacks myself ^_^ But I assure you Inuyasha is not saying 'I love you' when he says "As you wish".