InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ He Touched Me ❯ Recovery ( Chapter 2 )

He Touched Me

By: TuxedoUranus89

Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha. The goddess Rumiko Takahashi does and we're just allowed to play with the characters. =3

Author's Notes: Whew, first chapter's over, so the huge Darky Doomy Darkness part is over, and now there's only Traumatizing Doomy parts left. =D I'll try my best to be all emotional and heart-wrenching here, and forgive some partially OOC-ness, but hey, the girl just went through some traumatizing shit, expect her, and him, to act a little differently. (oh, and I must say, four reviews in one hour on a new fic?? Gee, if I'd've known that higher ratings = more reviews, I'd've done this ages ago! XD Thank you everyone!!) Enjoy!

 

Kneeling carefully, InuYasha gently set Kagome down. He slit through the ropes and eased her arms around to the front of her body, watching her face twitch unconsciously as he moved her left arm. He frowned, and gently lay her down. Carefully taking her left arm up, he rolled the sleeve back. A low rumble vibrated through his chest, and his eyes flashed, seeing the swelling and purpling signs of a broken forearm. Her leg was looking the same. He carefully put her arm back down, and started to get up, but then he noticed the blood on his hands. Looking back down, InuYasha's eyes flashed again as he noted all the blood around her wrists. Dammit…

Carefully, InuYasha slid his hands under Kagome's body, and picked her up. The movement woke her. She gasped, and then screamed. “DON'T! GET OFF OF ME, STOP IT!!! INUYASHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

His heart hurt. It hurt more than his ears did. He hated hearing her in pain like this. Kneeling quickly, he tried to cover her mouth gently, speaking softly and quickly into her ear. “Kagome! Kagome, it's me, stop it! I'm here, you're ok, it's ok, Kagome!”

She struggled for a moment longer, and then stilled, tears falling down her muddy face. InuYasha removed his hand from her mouth. “I'm sorry.” He said softly, hating himself for touching her more than she wanted to be.

“InuYasha…” Kagome sobbed, burying her face into his haori.

He held her close, trying not to jostle any of her breaks and bruises, stroking her hair soothingly, whispering nonsense words into her ear, letting her cry her hurt out. “I'm sorry, Kagome… I'm so sorry I wasn't there sooner…”

She sniffed, and looked up at him through her one good eye. “You came though.” Her voice was a croak from all the abuse. “You came, just in time… wasn't it?”

He thought about it. He scented her for a minute, and nodded. “I still wish I could have been there sooner… I could have saved you all this…” He looked over her battered body. Blushing, he looked back at her face. “We need to get you into the water though, you need cleaned up…” And as much as she's still intact, I need to get those fuckers' scents off of her… I can't stand her smelling like them anymore…

Kagome nodded, wincing as she did so. “Ok.” She sniffed again, and raised her good arm to wipe away her tears, wincing when she touched her bruised eye. InuYasha nuzzled her briefly. “You'll have a nice sunrise tomorrow.” He said softly.

She looked at him quizzically. He shook his head. “It's a bad joke, never mind.” Kagome made a noise that meant she wanted him to explain, or else she'd be upset. He sighed. “You'll sit me.” She frowned, and gave him a `tell me, or I will' look. Lowering his ears in defeat, he told her, “By morning it will probably look like the sun came up in your eye, different colors of bruising.”

Kagome leaned her head against him. “That's a horrible joke…”

“I know, I'm sorry…” InuYasha lay her down and took off his haori and undershirt. Kagome shrank back. “W-What're you doing?”

“You're going to wear that when we're done. Your clothes aren't fit to wear in public anymore.” InuYasha grunted, lifting her up gently. Kagome squeaked. “But I'm dressed!! I can't get into the water like this!!”

“Stupid.” He chided gently, nuzzling her hair again. “You'd sit me until I drowned if I took you in naked, and you're in no condition to be in there by yourself.” He was up to his waist in water, and sat down. “Plus, the strips we cut from your clothes will make better bandages if they're wet.”

Kagome made a noise when she was up to her neck in warm water. She cringed and hid her face in the crook of InuYasha's neck. “It burns…” InuYasha rubbed her back soothingly. “I know, I know…” He murmured to her. “Just wait.”

She nodded, and his heart broke. She was cracked inside, they'd broken her; he knew it, and it was killing him. “Here, we need to clean you up, you're caked in mud and blood…” He murmured. Kagome sniffed again and gave a short laugh despite herself. “Come on, can't you be gallant for once and say I've never looked better?”

You're always beautiful… “If I said that, you wouldn't believe me. Or you'd wonder what was wrong with me. Now, lean back, I've got you.” InuYasha instructed, holding her gently by her upper back as she floated on her back in the water. He kept his eyes firmly on her head, knowing full well what her shirt was doing to her chest at the moment.

Kagome glanced up at him, and noticed the determined look on his face as he delicately combed the muck from her hair with his claws. What wasn't purpling on her face slowly turned red as she realized why. Tears leaked out of her eyes, and she choked back another sob. InuYasha, of course, took it the wrong way. “Am I hurting you? Dammit, Kagome, don't cry, I can't stand it when you fucking cry!” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and Kagome immediately stopped, or tried to. His ears lowered, and he pulled her closer to him. Her hair was mostly clean, and he knew she would want to try and fix it herself with her own bathing things. He pulled her up and held her close against his chest, nuzzling her wet hair and whining gently to let her know he was sorry. I just keep putting my fucking foot into it… “I'm trying… not to be so… I know you're hurting…” InuYasha cracked a knuckle in frustration for not coming up with the right words. “I'm working on it, and you know how… my mouth doesn't exactly… I can't… uh…” At this point he was grinding a rock into gravel, unable to come up with what he wanted to say that wouldn't upset her. “You know how I am.” He lamely finished.

Kagome leaned against him, trembling slightly from the heat and their closeness. “I know…” She whispered. “I just… I'm scared, can you blame me for it? I know it's you, but I… I can feel…” She broke into sobs again, and InuYasha panicked again. “I c-c-can feel… their s-s-s-slimy hands-s-s a-a-all over… He t-t-touched m-me, th-they all t-touched me!!” She sobbed. His ears were back again, and he tried to soothe her. “Shhh, it's ok, they can't get you now, it's ok…” Kagome sobbed harder. “H-How can y-y-you be sure?! They might, might come again, t-t-to do me in w-worse—”

InuYasha silenced her when he turned her to look at him, silenced her with the cold, calculated look in his eyes. “They're dead.” He told her quietly. “I killed every last one of them for taking you from me. For doing what they did, and trying to…” The words stuck in his throat. He couldn't say it, say the words they both knew came next; it made him angry all over again, thinking them, seeing the pained, frightened, defeated look on Kagome's face when he shattered the wall… Kagome looked at him for a moment longer now, and then rested her head against his chest. She was silent for a moment. “Good.” She remarked quietly.

He stared down at her. She wasn't quite the innocent girl she had been just yesterday at this time. She was different inside, he knew; he'd seen the same haunted look in her eyes in many eyes of women who had received worse than she, and nothing sealed the fact more than she showed no remorse for what he had done. It could be worse… He supposed, bringing a handful of water up to her face and gently washing the tear-streaked dirt off of one cheek. She could be doing that captive-sympathy thing… Then again, I'm not sure they would have let her live long enough for her to grow sympathetic or attached… or if she would let herself live that long. It hurt him to think that, but he knew it was true. He also knew that if he had been unable to save her, he would have preferred her to, instead of living a hellish nightmare for a life.

With gentle hands, he did his best to get as much of the dirt and dried blood from her face as possible, wincing when she did if he brushed a bruise too hard. Kagome wiped water from her eyes when he finished, gasping as she touched the blackened eye. “How bad is it?” She asked, pointing to her face to show what she meant. InuYasha frowned. “You're asking me that? Why?” She frowned in reply. He sighed, wondering why she was doing this to herself. “You're eye's gonna be a mess for a few weeks, your cheekbones look like you've got ash all over them, and you've got a cut or two on your forehead, and one in your eyebrow above the black eye.” Kagome looked down, and tried to see for herself in the water, but the sun's angle made it difficult to discern much. “Oh…”

Lifting her into the air gently, InuYasha stood, and walked back to shore. He sat her down against a tree, and threw his shirts at her. “Take your wet things off and put those on.” He told her, turning his back for her sake. Kagome coughed, and his ears flicked back to her. She sighed. “InuYasha, I… My arm, I can't…” The hanyou turned, a blush staining his cheeks. “What do you want me to do about it?” Again, the words were out of his mouth before he could stop to think.

Her good eye narrowed. “Look, I don't want you to either, but seeing as how you're the only one here who can do anything to help, I'm asking you. If not I guess I'll just sit here and catch my death from infected wounds and bones that can't heal properly, and sitting around in springtime in wet, shredded clothing!” She snapped, seconds away from sitting him into next week.

InuYasha snorted, still having the good graces to blush, and knelt beside her. “I'm already feeling guilty enough, you don't have to give me a pretty speech to pour salt into my wounds…” He muttered, slicing through the back of her shirt easily. He purposely missed the back of her bra, leaving her with a small bit of decency, and pulled the rest of the ruined shirt off, being careful with her injured arm. Kagome cried out anyway, and InuYasha knew he had to get it splinted soon; she wasn't going to like that anymore than him just touching it. The garment gone, InuYasha steeled his nerves, and slit through her skirt, no more than tatters around her waist. He wondered for a minute why he was worried about removing it completely when it barely had covered anything to begin with, never mind in its current state, and pulled it free. Feeling sure that every visible inch of his skin, and even his ears, were bright red, InuYasha pointedly looked at the ground near her feet, and threw the haori over her as soon as his fingers found the fabric.

Oddly enough, it wasn't as uncomfortable as she had feared it would be. Sure, she had a feeling of dread, but this was InuYasha. The man could barely string two words together without putting his foot in his mouth, let alone try and seduce a woman, and he was nothing like Miroku. He wasn't like the bandits, eager to get a glimpse of skin before beating her into submission and forcing themselves on her. He was trying to take care of her, and was being a good sport about doing something that obviously put him way out of his comfort zone. She suppressed a smile as his face got redder and redder, and noted with faint amusement that his ears were turning pink. Kagome knew exactly why, and he probably did too: her panties were long gone, lost somewhere during the night. Squeaking in protest as the haori covered her from her head to her knees, she pulled it down and looked at him. His eyes were still trained on her feet, but he had turned away from her slightly; his jaw was set, and… was he sweating? It wasn't even that warm out.

InuYasha gritted his teeth, and attempted to calm down. FUCK. I can't let her get to me like this… Not now, not when she's like this. Fucking bastard, I'm not worse than them, getting excited by the thought of a naked woman… Kagome made an inquisitive noise. One of his ears flicked back in her direction. “I can… I can try to get it on… I just need you to… to tie it, ok?” She stammered. He let out a strained sigh, and moved to kneel behind her, thankful that he'd gotten his arousal under some form of control. “Here, let me…” His voice drifted off as he got a good look at her back.

Her shoulders were one large bruise. Purpling handprints adorned her sides, and from what he could see, continued across her bottom. Kagome started a little when she heard InuYasha growl. “What's wrong?” She asked. She felt his hair drift back and forth across her back as he leaned forward to take his haori. “More bruising… I can't do anything about these, they'll just have to heal in their own time. You won't want to lay down for a while.” He draped the fire-rat cloth over her shoulders to hide the offending marks, fighting back the impulse to destroy the corpses he left behind. Kagome slipped her good arm through the slits in the haori's sleeves, and he helped her with the other arm. Helping her stand on her good leg, InuYasha reached around her and folded the openings closed, tying the shut with the sleeves. On her, it was almost a dress, and certainly covered more than her usual outfit did.

Sitting her back down, InuYasha put on his white undershirt again. Kagome watched as he bound up into a nearby tree, and began hacking off limbs. She briefly wondered what he was doing until her stomach growled. She was surprised she was actually hungry after what had happened. Life goes on, I suppose… She thought, and leaned back, mindful of her bruised back, watching her hanyou go to work on the wood. InuYasha was carefully cutting two of the branches into slats. The others he cut into what looked like firewood, and set them up under a makeshift spit. One final block he cut a deep pit into, and fashioned a springy twig on it like the handle of a bucket. All of this Kagome watched in fascination. He's so good with his hands, so… crafty. InuYasha filled the makeshift bucket with water and set it up on the spit. Finally, he turned and looked at her. “I have to set your bones.”

Kagome looked at him warily. “How?” He held up the slats he'd just cut in one hand, and her torn shirt in the other, with a determined look on his face. Kagome gulped audibly, and started to shake. “It's going to hurt, don't do it please!” She whimpered, trying to scoot away and wincing when she jostled her arm. InuYasha's eyes softened, and he sat down next to her. “Look, we've gotta do it. I promise I can make something that will make you stop hurting, but only after we get this done.” Kagome whimpered again, sliding further away; she lost her balance and threw out an arm to catch herself. Unfortunately, it was the wrong arm. InuYasha dropped everything to mash his ears against his head as Kagome let out an ear-piercing scream, and abruptly stopped. Cautiously, he opened one eye. Apparently she had passed out from the pain. Feeling bad, but better about the whole thing, InuYasha lay her out flat, and got to work.

Leaning close to her swollen arm, InuYasha focused his hearing on the grating bones as he made to realign them. He pushed two of the boards together, one below and one on top of her arm, and bound them together tightly with strips he'd cut from her shirt. He then repeated the process with her leg, glancing frequently up at her still face to make sure she was still awake. The whole process took no longer than half an hour, and he was mildly grateful that Kagome had been passed out for the whole thing: it would have made things a lot harder, and a lot more painful for the both of them had she been awake.

Kagome stirred some time later, and scrunched up her nose at some foreign smell. She vaguely remembered to stay off of her broken arm, and slowly propped herself up on her good one. “InuYasha?” She mumbled sleepily. “What… happened? What's that smell…?” The silver-haired hanyou was at her side in a flash, holding the makeshift bucket in one of his hands as he steadied her with the other. Kagome grimaced: the awful smell was coming from the container. “Here, you need to drink this.” InuYasha insisted, holding it closer to her lips. The smell was making her stomach roll, she couldn't understand why he, with a much more sensitive nose than hers, hadn't blacked out yet. “What is it?” She asked, still groggy.

“It's a mix of herbs. Kaede-babaa taught me it. It'll make you stop hurting, and it'll make you stop wanting to throw up everywhere.” InuYasha sniffed and noted her current state of nausea. “Come on, the faster you drink it, the faster you'll stop feeling like shit.” He insisted. In the end, the need to make him stop talking at her when she wasn't coherent made her drink it. She gagged as the vile liquid slid down her throat, and almost spat it back in his face once or twice, but he wouldn't let her rest until she'd drank the whole lot down. Kagome rested her head against his arm when she was done, still feeling green around the gills, but less so than she had before.

InuYasha slid behind her, letting her rest her upper body against his torso. Still blinking stupidly and sleepily in the early afternoon light, Kagome mumbled, “What happened?” He fought the urge to chuckle, and instead coughed. “You, ah, passed out. You moved away from me when I tried to splint your arm, and fell on the bad one. I'm guessing the pain knocked you out. Just as well for me, you weren't ruining my hearing when I set your injuries.” For the first time, Kagome glanced down. Her arm was splinted, and her wrists were bandaged, and her broken leg was set in a splint as well. Smiling slightly, she leaned her head back against his chest. “Thank you.” She said quietly. “Those will hold until we can get back to my time…”

He blinked in confusion. “Keh, wench, those should hold the whole time you need to heal. I listened, they're where they're supposed to be.” He scoffed, slightly offended at her dismissal of his ability to take care of her. She sighed. “InuYasha… In my time we can take pictures of the inside of your body, and see the bones. I need to get those pictures taken, and make extra sure the bones are going to heal the right way. I trust you, but I want to make sure.” InuYasha was now curious. “Pictures… from inside of you? And I thought your time couldn't get any weirder… How do they take these pictures?” Kagome rolled her eyes, and winced as her black eye protested. Naturally, her curious puppy would want an explanation of something as complicated as an X-ray when she'd been awake less than fifteen minutes, and the feudal painkillers had yet to kick in as promised.

“Well, it's hard to explain. There's this special kind of light that gets shot down through a camera lens. It moves fast enough to move through your skin without you even noticing, but it gets slowed down by your bones, which are much more solid. The picture that comes back from the light shows the spots where the light slowed down, which is your bones.” Kagome explained. InuYasha nodded, understanding on his face, though she couldn't see it. “So, kind of like a shadow? Your body blocks the light and the shape of it appears?” She laughed. “Actually, yes, I hadn't thought of it like that.”

Sighing with content that she'd warded off most of his questions, she unconsciously snuggled into his protecting embrace. “So what do they do after that?” Her eyes opened again. Drat. Foiled again. Feeling that he was more neko-hanyou, for his curiosity, she replied, “Well, the doctors look at the pictures, and can tell what's wrong, and then they fix it by doing what you did. Only the splints we use are more like wearing a rock on your arm for a few weeks, not like these. Sometimes if the picture shows a bad enough break, they'll have to do surgery to fix it…” She was getting tired again, but the word `surgery' stuck out in her mind, and apparently it did in his mind too. “Sur-jury?” He could tell she was getting tired, but he worried about how much she was sleeping with a head injury. He did pay attention when she lectured him about his reckless caring about his own health. “The doctors cut you open and fix the problem by hand, instead of letting you heal by yourself.” She explained, a little too patiently.

Panicked, InuYasha's grip tightened. “They're not cutting you open!” He declared fiercely. Kagome couldn't help herself, and started to laugh. “InuYasha, it's not like they won't fix that too. They'd sew me back up, like when I had to sew that big cut on Sango's arm.” Relaxing his grip slightly, he just shook his head. “You people are weird…” She giggled again; her pain was going away, and she was feeling better than she had for ages. “Says the one who has adorable puppy ears on his head.”

He cocked an eyebrow down at her. “Adorable puppy ears?” She nodded happily. “Keh… I think the herbs I gave you might have been a little strong…”

They sat in silence, watching the small fire dance, the sounds of the wood popping and sizzling filling the air. He heard her stomach growl after a while, and left her dozing against a tree to catch lunch. He knew he should feel relieved that she was acting happier than what he'd expected, but he felt it was only the effect of the brew he'd given her. It was supposed to alleviate pain and nausea, but there was such a thing as too much of a good thing. Apparently it was numbing the pain he'd seen earlier, the internal pain. He prayed as he caught a rabbit, (he checked if it was male: mating season was recently done with, and he didn't want to kill any kits), hoping that her modern doctors could help her with that pain if he couldn't.

She smiled giddily at him when he returned with only the meat, the scraps left as an offering to the forest god, and most likely to be eaten by the nearest scavenger, and speared them on the spit to cook. “I missed you…” She told him in a sleepy voice. InuYasha fought the urge to laugh and shake his head: she sounded like she'd been at a bottle of sake. “No need to, wench, I just got your dinner.” The promise of food left her smiling happily. He wasn't sure whether he should be amused or disturbed at her reaction. Usually he was the one salivating over his food, especially anything that she had made with the exception of the curse that was curry, not the other way around. Usually she would make some comment about the `poor fluffy little bunny' he had just ruthlessly slaughtered just to keep their stomachs full. Deciding to leave it be, he tended to the meat, and helped her eat when it was ready, making sure the container had water from the spring to drink from.

“InuYasha.” Kagome called his attention to her. He looked at her. “You'll make a good dad someday.” She remarked with a smile, and took a bite. Cheeks red, telling himself that it was the herbs talking, he muttered, “Why say something stupid like that?” Swallowing, she replied, “Because it's true. You took care of me all day, and put up with me when I was screaming and fussing, and made food for me, and gave me a bath… Just like a good daddy would.”

Muttering something about needing more water, he left her at the base of the tree and filled the bucket again. Of course, she has to hit those spots when she doesn't have any fucking idea what she's saying… He wanted pups, yes, someday when he wasn't trying to put together the world's most damning and dangerous puzzle, and attempting to slaughter what was quite possibly the most infuriating and destructive villain ever set foot on the earth. And he wasn't quite sure he was going to live to see the day after all that was complete. It was a sore spot with him, a tantalizing prospect of happiness that was dangling just out of reach. It was worse coming from her, the woman he wanted to see it all through with. She was still eating when he came back, oblivious to everything but what was right under her nose, and he had to smile briefly at her. Medicine or not, I'm just glad she's happy right now…

 

((So, Kagome's current look is based off of this picture: http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/userpics/22510/Ka gome%20and%20Inuyasha.jpg which I'm going to guess is a dojinshi cover? I thought it happened in the anime as well, but I haven't found a picture aside from this, so… stolen and I'm sorry!!! T_T Also, many apologies if the explanation of how an X-ray works is incorrect. I know the basic idea, but it's very early in the morning, so I, like Kagome, cannot think about something so complicated when I'm tired. I also think this chapter ended off on a more happier note than the last one, but we're not finished here yet. Expect another dash of angst next time!! Please remember to leave a review!! =) ))