InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Hanyou Wars ❯ Revelations ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: I only own Takara, but maybe he can introduce me to the others….

4. Revelations  

The pair returned to the family’s shrine with heart full of hope, minds full of determination, and an appointment to return to the clinic in a week for the next round of treatments. While Kagome had accepted the hormone injection that would stimulate the production of extra eggs with good grace, her hanyou mate had found the administration of the new drug designed to increase his sperm count both painful and degrading. Since the drug functioned best when introduced into a large muscle, there was only one logical place to give the injection.

He stalked along the street next to his mate, pausing occasionally to rub at his violated backside. “How long are we going to have to do this?” he snarled.

She shrugged, more than a little surprised that he had accepted the requirements of the treatment as easily as he had. “I don’t know. Sometimes it works on the first try, but a lot of people have to keep trying for years before they get a viable embryo. If there are a lot of successes, the extras can be frozen and implanted at a later time.”

Although he was by no means as stupid as he allowed most people to think, he was clearly out of his depth with the complicated technology of modern fertility research. “Frozen pups?”

She laughed at what she could only imagine were the images going through his mind. “Something like that. If we can have several frozen, we can use them to have the pups whenever we’re ready for them.”

The woman watched silently as the pair approached the steps in front of the shrine complex. More than a little pleased that the two seemed to have weathered their first joint visit to the fertility clinic, she looked fondly down at her son-in-law. Even now, after all this time, she was amazed that he was able to overlook what had to be at the least considerable discomfort to leave a world in which he was admired and respected to come to a place where he had to conceal his identity because most of the people living there didn’t even believe that creatures like him had ever existed outside of old stories.

And he did it all for the woman he loved.

She watched the pair climb the long flight of steps, trying to determine exactly what had happened at the clinic from their expressions. Although the hanyou’s expression was neutral, indicating to her that he was deep in thought, she was relieved to see her daughter’s soft smile. Apparently, they had received at least some encouraging news if not an actual solution to the problem of their inability to have a family.

By the time the two young lovers reached the top of the stairs she was in the kitchen preparing tea. As they entered the house she directed them to seats at the kitchen table. “So,” she said, pouring them each a cup of tea and setting out a large plate of cookies, “How did things go?”

Her daughter shook her head, still smiling. “Surprising,” she said, catching her mate’s eye and eliciting an answering smile from him. She explained that the doctor she had been seeing for weeks was actually a young hanyou girl she had known five centuries in the past. She paused, glancing at her mate. “She seems to think that we’re almost certain to be successful, although it will be a rough road, especially for Inuyasha.”

The older woman simply nodded, having read something about the things infertile couples sometimes had to do to conceive. “I think you’re right. It’ll be difficult, but if you two are determined to proceed, I don’t doubt for a second that you’ll be able to handle it.” She frowned thoughtfully. “This is going to make tracking down those slavers a lot harder--you’ll probably have to be making regular trips to the clinic for a while.”

The hanyou just shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about that. Our best lead to finding those bastards is the kid--the one Kagome found in the forest. He’s pretty beat up, and probably shouldn’t be traveling around for a while. Hell, it’ll probably be a while before he trusts any of us enough to agree to help. There’s no hurry--even if they manage to catch and sell off a few more hanyou kids before we find them, I’m sure I can talk them into telling me where they went. After that, we can just go and get them.” He smirked as he cracked his knuckles, and the older woman shivered at the thought of what would probably happen to anyone who tried to stop him.

“But what on earth will you do with them once you get them away from the slavers?”

Her daughter shook her head. “That’ll be up to them. It would be nice if at least a few of them would stay with us--it would be the easiest way for them to learn that being hanyou isn’t necessarily a bad thing--but we won’t try to hold them against their will. We would be just as bad as the savages who captured them in the first place.”

The woman nodded slowly, trying to figure out exactly how the cheerful little girl she had raised had turned out to be such a compassionate, insightful woman. With a glance at the silent silver-haired figure sitting at the table looking at the last cookie on the plate with something like avarice, she decided that she couldn’t honestly take all the credit--love, she always knew, can do a lot to bring out hidden talents and abilities. After all, who would ever have guessed that the rude, violent hanyou who had followed her daughter home after she had been missing for three days could have become the gentle, solicitous, and obviously loving mate who had made her so very happy?

“Well,” she said, gesturing at the shopping bags on the kitchen counter, “I picked up a variety of instant meals anyway--heavy on the ramen, of course,” she added, smiling at her son-in-law. “You’ll probably want to be getting back home soon anyway, so that you can check on your patient--if he’s anything like another hanyou I know, your friends are probably having a terrible time getting him to rest.”

After exchanging a guilty look because they had been so wrapped up in their own problems that they had forgotten about the trouble their houseguest might be causing in their own time, the pair headed for the door. Just before leaping into the well laden with their packages, Kagome turned to her mother. “Bye, Mama! We’ll see you next week--and maybe we’ll bring Takara with us!”

The elder of the Higurashi women shook her head slowly as she turned back to the house, thinking that “Takara” was a very odd name indeed for a child that was considered utterly worthless by the people around him.