InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Future Beginnings ❯ Ch 14: The Way Home ( Chapter 14 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Ch 14: The Way Home

 

The ride home was interesting. Peter's father had let him take the SUV back and Inuyasha insisted on sitting up front next to Peter so that he could see how Peter was making the car go.

 

That gave Noriko a chance to talk with Kagome. She had noticed something strange about Inuyasha, stranger than even his long white hair and amber eyes. Right before he had covered his head with his t-shirt she could have sworn she saw animal ears on the top of his head. Ok, so he had been playing with the dogs. Could her mind have super-imposed their ears on Inuyasha? But then why would he have put the shirt over his head? It could have been a piece of a Halloween costume that Peter's sister had left lying around, but somehow she didn't think so. Until last night, Inuyasha had never even heard of Halloween. Her mind wouldn't stop spinning. But what else could it be?

 

She started thinking of all the other odd things about Inuyasha—his long fingernails, his agility and the way he had jumped to the top of that rock, his tendency to appear and disappear suddenly when no one was looking. It was too much. “Kagome?” she whispered, not wanting Inuyasha to overhear her.

 

“What is it?” Kagome had been dreading this moment ever since the disaster with the ears. She wasn't sure how she would manage damage control on this one.

 

“Can I ask you a question—“ Noriko lowered her voice even more. “—about Inuyasha?”

 

In the front seat, Inuyasha's ears came to attention underneath his cap, although he continued watching Peter and the road ahead. He knew what was coming.

 

“Is he—does he--?” Noriko couldn't make herself say it. Instead, she reached out to pull Inuyasha's hat off, thinking that it would be easier than saying the words out loud. Before her hand touched the cap, however, Inuyasha grasped her wrist and stopped her.

 

He turned to face her and said, “I'll do it.” Then he took off the cap and shook his head, twitching the now very visible ears. “That feels better.”

 

Kagome sank back in her seat.

 

“So I did see them,” whispered Noriko. “What are you?”

 

Peter tried to glance over to see what was happening, so Inuyasha obliged him by turning back to face him. Peter's eyes widened, but he couldn't get much more than a glimpse at a time as he had to keep glancing back at the road. “Ok, so what's going on here? Are those—are you pulling a joke on us, Inuyasha? Where'd you get the ears?”

 

“Oh, they're real,” confirmed Kagome, resigned to what had finally happened.

 

“Watch the road,” said Inuyasha at the same time.

 

“Is there some place we can pull over and talk?” asked Kagome.

 

Peter knew that there was a state park up the road so he headed over there. They pulled into the park and drove past a picnic pavilion into a secondary parking area by a large pond. This late in the season the place was deserted. They got out and sat down at a picnic table at the edge of the wooded area.

 

“So now you know,” said Kagome.

 

“Know what? What's going on? Why does Inuyasha have dog ears on top of his head?” Peter looked at Inuyasha who was sitting next to Kagome on the bench. “Are you some kind of elf or something?”

 

Inuyasha didn't know what an elf was, so he didn't think he was one. It was time for the truth. “I'm youkai,” he said.

 

“Hanyou,” Kagome automatically corrected.

 

Noriko paled and she slid a little bit closer to Peter on the other side of the picnic table.

 

“What's a youkai?” Peter asked.

 

“A demon,” answered Noriko in a whisper. “Not human.” She wouldn't look up at Inuyasha as she spoke. He could feel the waves of fear coming off her. So could Kagome.

 

“Noriko, look at me. Listen to me,” she said. “Inuyasha is the same person right now as he was five minutes ago. Why are you scared just because you now know what he is? Besides, he's hanyou so he is part human.” Kagome spoke in Japanese, hoping to calm Noriko's fears but also hoping to defuse Inuyasha's rapidly increasing annoyance. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him turn sideways on the bench and fold his arms as he muttered “keh” under his breath. She patted his arm reassuringly and continued speaking to Noriko. “Anyway, I thought you were interested in Japanese folklore.”

 

“Yes, but I didn't really believe any of it was true!”

 

Inuyasha keh'd again.

 

Peter was still waiting for an answer. “Come on, what's a youkai?” he asked again.

 

“Hanyou,” Kagome corrected again.

 

“Keh. Noriko was right, I'm not completely human,” Inuyasha said. He spoke a mixture of English and Japanese, leaving Kagome to translate as Noriko was still shaken by the recent revelation.

 

“I could tell that much from the ears,” Peter agreed. Unlike Noriko, who had grown up on stories of evil youkai, Peter seemed to accept Inuyasha's alienness easily. “I still don't know what a youkai is.”

 

“Well, you were partly right before. Inuyasha is a kind of forest spirit, I guess. Youkai are part of nature, spirit creatures, and some can be monsters—“ Kagome looked at Noriko as she said it, “—but not all of them. Inuyasha's not a monster.”

 

Inuyasha demanded to know what she had said and predictably he disagreed with her. “You make it too simple.” He looked at Noriko. “Most youkai are monsters. As Kagome keeps telling you, I'm hanyou. So maybe I'm not a monster. You tell me.”

 

Peter had missed much of the by-play as it was in Japanese. “Cool!” he said. “So what can you do?”

 

“Do?”

 

“Yeah, you know—like since you're not human, well, not completely, can you do stuff that humans can't do, like disappear or shoot out death rays or something?”

 

After Kagome, smiling, translated, Inuyasha barked out a short laugh. “Something,” he said.

 

“If you're not a monster,” Noriko said suddenly in Japanese, “why do you have claws?”

 

In response Inuyasha put one hand up on the table so Peter could see it clearly too. Slowly he curled his fingers and dragged them across the picnic table, leaving deep gouges in the wood. He kept his eyes on Noriko's face the whole time and felt some satisfaction when he saw her gulp. “Claws don't make me a monster,” he said. He grinned, exposing his fangs. “Neither do these. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.” He stared at Noriko in challenge.

 

Kagome had never been more proud of him. She grabbed the hand that had clawed the table and brought it to her lips for a quick kiss, then she turned and kissed Inuyasha full on the mouth so that both Peter and Noriko would see that she, for one, did not think him a monster.

 

Noriko blushed.

 

“Come on.” Inuyasha stood up and gestured to Peter to follow him. “See what I can do.” He strode off into the trees with Peter right behind him. Soon there were bangs and crashes and cries of “Cool!” from off in the distance.

 

Kagome took this time to come around and sit with Noriko. She put her arm around the other girl. “Are you all right?”

Noriko took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now that Inuyasha had left the immediate vicinity she was able to relax a bit. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to panic like that, but it's all too much. To find out that Inuyasha is youkai—“

 

“Hanyou.”

 

“—hanyou, then to find out youkai are real… it was a shock.”

 

“I understand that, but can you at least try to accept Inuyasha for what he is? He's all alone here except for me, and it was his decision to reveal himself to you so he must trust you. You should be flattered. He ususally doesn't let people get too close.”

 

“Oh, I like Inuyasha as a person,” Noriko was quick to explain. “It's going to take me a while to get used to him as a yo—hanyou.”

 

Kagome laughed. “Well, then, the hard part is over! Most people have trouble liking Inuyasha as a person! He does take some getting used to!”

 

The two girls giggled together until the boys returned. Peter had a look of awe on his face but Inuyasha looked cautious until Kagome nodded her head slightly. He marched right up to Noriko and asked her, “You ok now?”

 

Noriko nodded and smiled a little. “I'm ok. Iuyasha—I'm sorry.”

 

“Forget it.”

 

They talked for a little while longer. Kagome filled them in on some of Inuyasha's background, but not all of it. She didn't want to confuse them by telling them Inuyasha was really from 500 years in the past.

 

“So you really are a miko then,” commented Noriko, which prompted a whole new discussion on what a miko was—and wasn't—and why Kagome was different—for Peter's sake.

 

“And so neither one of you can tell anyone else about Inuyasha,” said Kagome as they prepared to leave. “Most people wouldn't understand and the ones who did would be really dangerous.”

 

Inuyasha keh'd.

 

When they got to the car, Inuyasha asked Peter if he could try driving.

 

“Sure. Just to the end of the park road, though.” Peter showed Inuyasha how to operate the gas and brake pedals and how to put the car in gear. “Gently, gently! Loosen up your grip on the steering wheel before you break it in half!”

 

Surprisingly, Inuyasha did very well for his first time behind the wheel. Kagome could only imagine what this would lead to. Thankfully he wouldn't be able to get his driver's license without any ID. “Just don't let him drive on the street,” she told Peter.

 

The ride back to school was fairly quiet. Even Peter had run out of things to say. They dropped Noriko off at her dorm first.

 

Inuyasha asked her about his English lesson. “You're not still scared of me, are you? Are you still coming over tomorrow to teach me English?”

 

Noriko hesitated. She'd forgotten all about that. She hoped she would be able to be alone in a room with Inuyasha without freaking out. She owed it to him to be frank, though. He had been nothing but honest with her today. “You do scare me a little,” she admitted. “But I'll get over it. See you tomorrow, Inuyasha!” Waving good-bye, she ran inside the building.

 

“She thinks I'm scary,” Inuyasha muttered. “She should see Sesshomaru.”

 

“Sesshomaru! Of course!” Kagome sat up straight in excitement. “Inuyasha, if Sesshomaru has lived since the Sengoku Jidai then he must know all about the modern world! He would probably know a way to get you back to Japan!”

 

“No! First, we don't know if Sesshomaru is still alive—“

 

“But you said before he could be!”

 

“He could be, but we don't know for sure if he is. And second, even if he was, how would we find him?”

 

“Just leave that to me,” answered Kagome. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

 

“And third,” he continued stubbornly, although at this point Kagome wasn't listening, “I don't need his help!”

 

“Guys,” Peter interrupted as he pulled into the top parking lot of Kagome's complex, “I'm going to have to start taking Japanese lessons if you keep this up.”

 

“Sorry,” Kagome said with a soft giggle. “Thank you so much, Peter, for the weekend and especially for being such a good friend to Inuyasha and me.”

 

Peter came around and gave them both their bags. “Yeah, yeah, now you speak English,” he joked. “I had a good time too. Inuyasha, next time I come over you promise you'll show me Tess…Tess…”

 

“Tetsusaiga?” asked Kagome.

 

“That's it. He showed me some awesome moves with those claws of his and said he has even better moves with Tetsusaiga. Can't wait to see that, my hanyou friend. Later.”

 

 

It felt good to be home, even if home for the moment was just Kagome's dorm. It felt good to be out of modern clothes too, thought Inuyasha as he lay sprawled across Kagome's bed in his traditional red outfit. Kagome busied herself putting away the things from their trip.

 

“What was that all about when you kissed my hand at the park?”

 

Kagome stopped what she was doing and sat down next to him on the bed. She picked up both his hands and kissed them, then kissed each claw individually. “These hands, which can cut through trees, are the hands that hold me and love me.” She leaned over and kissed his mouth. “These fangs are as sharp as your temper yet as gentle as your heart. I wanted them to see what I see.”

 

“Keh,” replied Inuyasha, but he reached for her and drew her down to him for another kiss.

 

Later, as he lay drowsing on the bed, he heard the keys of Kagome's laptop clicking furiously. She must be doing more homework, Inuyasha thought. Much later, he heard the door open and close and then heard the unmistakable beeps of the telephone being dialed.

 

“Mama?” he heard her say. “I need you to do me a favor….”