InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Hidden Past, Hidden Self ❯ A New Time, a New Life ( Chapter 2 )

I do not own any of the InuYasha characters mentioned in this fanfic. Only the story line and main character(s) are off limits.

 

Okay, I totally rewrote the last chapter. As it turns out, this one is no exception either. The spelling mistakes were numerous, and the grammar atrocious. Plus half of the stuff didn't make sense. So, here's a new, edited version of chapter 2.

 

Chapter 2: A New World, a New Life

 

Kane floated around in dreams and memories. Her parents' worried faces shrouded her vision along with her friends laughing ones. She tried reaching out to them, but her hand went right through them. Finally, she saw her boyfriend Kaske, and tried to run up to him and kiss him. Instead, she ran through him and plunged into the darkness.

 

She woke with a start, sitting straight up from her floor mat. It had all been a dream. She hadn't met some crazy, dog-eared freak and an equally ludicrous girl in a Shinto shrine. It had all been a…

 

Wait, floor mat? Since when did she sleep on a floor mat? That, and since when did she find herself in a wooden hut with a fire pit in the middle of the floor?! She pushed the thin coverlet off of her body and stood up to look around. There was no glass on the window, the only window in the room, and there was a flap over the only door in the one-room house. Outside, the wind blew a gentle breeze through the branches of nearby trees and birds sang to the sun as it shone bright in the blue sky. A horse whinnied from a short distance and there was a gentle bustle outside. Taking a glance out the lone window, Kane saw that all of the houses were like the one she was in! Wooden and little! She backed away from the window and sat again on the mat.

 

`How'd I get here? What the hell is going on?!' She asked herself. Sighing, she lay back down on the mat and decided to sleep again. Maybe doing that would bring her back home. But to her dismay, she only opened her eyes and found herself in the same place as when she'd closed them. She sat up again, knowing for sure that she was in deeper than she thought. She never should've agreed to meet Kagome at the shrine.

 

An old woman entered the hut and found the girl sitting there with her head buried in her knees, shaking as she sobbed silently. Kane looked up before she said anything, somehow sensing her before she'd been informed of her arrival. The woman was wearing the traditional hakama and kimono a priestess or healer wore and her long gray hair was tied back neatly in a ponytail. Her face was worn, wrinkles marring her strong face. Kane guessed she was around sixty years of age.

 

“Well, child; have ye finally woken?” She said, her voice sounding as old as she looked. “Ye slept fitfully most of the night.”

 

“Who…who are you?” Kane asked, comforted somewhat by the old woman's presence. “And where am I? Is that weird dog-man somewhere around here?”

 

“Do ye mean InuYasha?” She bent to start the fire in the little pit.

 

“I think that's what he called himself.” Kane scratched her head when something moved in her hair. What she found made her jump and yelp in surprise. “Th-there's something furry in my hair! And it moved!” She tried to remove it, but found that it hurt her skull to pull on it. “Ahh! It's attached to my head!”

 

“Calm down, child!” The old woman reassured her, getting the struggling girl to remove her hands from her head. “Did ye not know of your ears?”

 

Kane blinked. “What about them?” She moved her hands to touch the place where her ears were…and all she found was skin, no ear. At first she started to panic, but then she wondered how she could still hear. Her hand traveled up to the top of her head and felt the fuzzy things again; she found out that she had two fuzzy dog ears adorning her head. “I…I'm a freak…” She started to feel hot tears gather behind her eyes. “Why did this have to happen to me?” She brought her hands back down and studied them. Her fingernails were now long, pointed claws. She got up, running for the bucket of water that she'd seen earlier to see her reflection. What she saw looking back at her startled her. Her silver tresses were pitch black with little triangle dog ears poking out from her scalp. And her eyes were what scared her the most; they were golden, just like that dog-man's. She fell back from her reflection.

 

“Child, what is the matter?” The old woman approached her, but she backed away from her too.

 

“Get away from me! What did you do to my eyes, my hair, my nails, and especially my ears?!”

 

Kane felt the presence of another person with a strong aura entering the hut and immediately turned to see who it was. She saw the man from last night; the man the old woman had called InuYasha. “Leave Kaeda out of this, Kane. She's not the one that changed you to what you are now.”

 

Her rage boiled in her blood. “You bastard, how dare you change my appearance and then bring me to some weird place like this?!” She jumped up and prepared to use her new claws on his face. “It's your fault that I look like a freak now!”

 

She landed on the floor as he leapt away from her. Her punch landed on the innocent wall and her hand when right through it. But she was too angry to care or wonder about her new strengths; she jumped up again and pounced over where he was standing. This time he caught her wrists in his hands, holding her against him as she glared into his golden orbs. He fought to get her down on the ground, slowly pushing her onto her back. Once they were on the floor, he yelled out, “Kaeda, give me the necklace!”

 

She hobbled over to where the two siblings tussled and took out a rosary of purple beads with white fangs, a lot like the one on InuYasha's neck. Kaeda lowered it over Kane's head, chanting a special incantation to activate the spell on the beads. They glowed around the girl's neck and she stopped straining against the man to look down at it in question. “What the hell is this?” She pulled on it, but it wouldn't budge from her neck; in fact, it wouldn't allow her to take it up over her head.

 

She sat up as InuYasha finally released her. Then he said in a very quiet voice, “Stay…”

 

She didn't even have time to contemplate what was going on; one minute she was looking at the necklace, the next it was glowing and pulling her into the ground to eat dirt. And it hurt too. She was stunned at first, and then she was angry. “You mangy mutt! What did you do to this god-damned thing?!” She leapt back up to give him one of the hardest kicks she could muster, but he only smirked and said the magic word.

 

“Stay…” Kane went down, mid-leap, and smashed right into the floor boards. This time, it hurt a lot more. That and she couldn't move.

 

InuYasha sighed and sat down next to his half-sister. “Well, have you finally learned your lesson?” He waited for an answer, but all he heard was gentle sobs coming from her body. He looked over at her and saw that her shoulders were heaving as she cried into the floor, and the smell of salty tears hit his nose. “Come on now, it couldn't have hurt that bad; I get it ten times worse when Kagome tells me to sit.”

 

Kane stopped crying just long enough to hear the word `sit' spoken from his lips. She smirked. `If he can say mine and it pulls me down, maybe saying his will make him go down like I did.' She sat up, face tear-streaked, and acted like she was still upset. “Oh, you're such a cruel person! You just sit there and…” She couldn't even finish the sentence he went down so fast. She looked down at him and felt triumphant for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

 

He jumped up as soon as the spell wore off and started cursing loudly at the old woman. “What the hell just happened?! That damn word is only supposed to work when Kagome says it, not her! Damn this stupid necklace, it betrayed me!!” He looked over at Kane's smug face and said with a snort, “So, you must feel pretty good about that now, huh?”

 

She turned her face away from him. “I'm not talking to you, you dog-faced idiot!”

 

Growling, he stood and got right in her face. “You're a hanyou too, so I wouldn't go around making smart…”

 

“Shut up! I'm not a hanyou! I am a normal girl, a regular high school student in the tenth grade with normal friends and a normal life!” She screamed in his face. “I am nothing like you and I will never be like you!” Kane got up and ran out the door at a speed she didn't realize she could run.

 

“Aw shit.” InuYasha said sourly as he watched her run. “I suppose I should go get her?”

 

“There are many dangers out there that she does not know exist. It is best that ye get her back here before something terrible becomes of her.” Kaeda shook her head. “And give her time to adjust InuYasha; she is not used to such circumstances.”

 

“You don't have to tell me that, old hag.” He said before going out of the hut and into the village to look for his sister.

 

***

 

It was dark before Kane finally stopped running blindly through the woods. Panting, she rested beneath a tree and wiped her brow of sweat. She looked behind her to see if anyone had followed and found that she was utterly alone…and lost.

 

Her heart started to pound in her chest as the realization dawned on her. She was lost, in a different time and a new place with nobody she could trust and nobody she could run to for help. She was helpless in this new era she'd been cast into. For what felt like the millionth time, she sat on the ground and cried.

 

`Mother, Father…I miss you…I want to see you again.' She thought miserably. `Kaji, Hitomi…Kaske…' The thought of her boyfriend made her cry even harder. She had loved him so much and they were just beginning to go steady. `Oh Kami, bring me back…get me out of this living hell!'

 

There was a noise to her left that made her stop her sobbing. She also noticed that the normal night creatures' noises had stopped at about the same time the sound had interrupted her crying. Fear clutched her heart with an icy hand and she stood, getting ready for a battle that she knew she couldn't win. She didn't know how to fight, especially now that she didn't know what she was dealing with.

 

She held her breath and waited for the next disturbance, but she didn't hear anything more. Relaxing, she continued to take in her surroundings. `Where am I?' She wondered, touching the bark of the tree behind her. `And how did I get to this other time?'

 

Then a louder noise interrupted her thoughts again and sprang at her from her left. A giant tiger demon snarled at her after she'd barely managed to dodge the initial killing blow, and felt her heart race faster than it ever had before. `Run you idiot; get away from the danger!' She told herself to run, but her feet were frozen. As the tiger advanced, she fell back into the soft dirt of the forest floor.

 

Its breath smelled of fresh blood and old carnage. It mingled together to created a nauseating smell that made Kane want to gag. Her stomach rolled and her head began to swim as the tiger licked its teeth. It almost seemed to smile when it looked at her bare neck and started to bite down on the tender flesh.

 

“Hey cat-breath, get your filthy paws off of my sister!” InuYasha's voice called out just as he unsheathed his sword, the Tetsusaiga. Before the cat could even reconsider his decision on who to eat for dinner, Tetsusaiga brought it to a swift end with one swing. It was cut in half and disintegrated almost instantly. Kane looked up at the man as he sheathed his sword and ran over to her side. “Hey, are you okay?” He knelt to her level and reached out to touch her cheek, but she flinched away from his touch.

 

“Am…Am I okay? No, I'm not okay! I'm terrified, and I want to go home! But no matter what I do or say to you, I'm still here!” She put her face in her hands and began her crying all over again. It wasn't just the fact that she was away from home in a place that she'd never adjust to, but it was the fear that was eating at her heart. The terror of almost being cat chow was something that wasn't on her menu of learning to survive; in fact, being here wasn't her idea of a walk in the park. “You have no idea what it feels like to be alone! You took me from my family and friends, and if that wasn't enough, you took me from my own time to some feudal era place in the past!” She lunged into his lap and he collapsed back as she hugged his waist with a fierce grip that started to crush his lower ribcage. “Please, take me home! I'm not what you think I am; I'm a normal human being!”

 

“Kane-Sakura, please…just listen to yourself.” InuYasha felt a shaky hand go out to her head and stroke her hair. “I…I'm sorry I brought you here, but…” What excuse did he have? He'd taken her out of a world that she'd known and thrown her into a new one that was dangerous and unfamiliar. What if it had been him that had been brought somewhere new? What if he had to live in the future for the rest of his life instead of the place he knew? He felt suddenly guilty for everything he'd done. What right did he have to bring her back here just so he could have a family relation near him that he could talk to? What did it matter if he didn't have a connection with is father besides the sword at his hip?

 

`But it does matter.' A voice said in his head. `Whether this girl likes it or not, you're her half-brother and it's your father's wish to take care of her in his stead. And the only way to do that is to keep her near, in the Sengoku Jidai.' InuYasha looked down at her, feeling inspired. `Show her that she's not alone.'

 

Her sobbing had calmed down to hiccups now and when InuYasha spoke, he said his words carefully. “Kane, there's something I'd like to show you.” He picked her up and carried her on his back to an old spot he knew only too well: The Goshinboku.

 

She looked up at the tree with wonder. “It…it's huge.” She breathed.

 

InuYasha nodded and set her on the ground beside the giant roots. “This is the Goshinboku, an ancient tree that has lived for generations in this very spot. Back in the time you once lived in, this tree was still alive and thriving.”

 

Another tear made its way down Kane's face as she thought of the future. “InuYasha, I…”

 

“I'm not done yet.” He said gently. “This tree to most means life; to others it means eternity. But to me, fifty years back, it meant loneliness and death.” Eyes sad, he leapt up onto the roots and landed beside a bare spot in the bark. “Someone I thought I could trust pinned me to this very spot on this tree, sealing me to it for half a century. When I was released three years ago, I was alone. Everyone I knew was gone; my father, the older villagers, even the one I thought I could trust, Kikyo. She had died the same day I'd been sealed to this tree.”

 

Guilt made its way through Kane's body as she looked at her half-brother. “So what happened?”

 

He shrugged. “I was gruff and rude, sometimes overbearing. And don't think I haven't changed; I'm not the same person I was three years ago. Kagome has changed all that and I'm not alone anymore. I…” He stopped before saying something he'd later regret. “And my other friends, Shippo, Sango, and Miroku; they all helped me become the person I am today.”

 

Turning to look at her again, he smiled slightly as he said, “Please try to understand that my father loved you and your mother a lot and when he lost you he was devastated. His final wish was that I find you and take good care of you in his place. He trusted that I'd follow out with his wish and find you no matter what. If there had been an alternative to bringing you here, I would have done it; but there was no other way.”

 

Kane suddenly felt that she understood his intentions. In the shimmering moonlight, she saw her brother with a new perspective; he really did look content and like he was happy being who he was. He was a hanyou and he wasn't ashamed of it. In fact, she thought he was proud of it. So, why shouldn't she be proud of her new self? Thinking back, she remembered how she'd punched a hole in the wall of Kaeda's hut, ran with energy for a good portion of the day, and she was fast. She'd struggled against her brother when he'd held he down and had almost succeeded at flipping him off of her had she not had her hands pinned. She smiled slightly and stood. “I understand now. What I used to be, the girl who went to high school and sang in the choir, that was the old me. I thought that coming here was the worst because I felt so alone. But…now everything's different. You were alone too, and I know that if I stay here, I'll eventually find out who I really am.” More tears reached her eyes and she choked on them as she said the last sentence. “InuYasha, I'm home.”

 

He smiled slightly himself and jumped down to meet her. He opened his arms and welcomed her. “Come here, I think you need this more than anything else.” She lunged into his arms and cried. He wrapped his arms around her tightly and embraced her as she let her warm tears hit his haori.

 

When she felt she could no longer cry, she looked up at him and said, “So, what's on the agenda for the rest of my life?”

 

He laughed a little. “I can't plan the rest of your life, but I can plan tomorrow at least. We're starting your training.”

 

“My training?”

 

“Yep.” He let go of her completely and started to walk away. “We start early in the morning, so you should get some sleep.”

 

She rolled her eyes, already regretting asking about her `agenda'. “What if I told you I'm not a morning person?”

 

“Then I'd only tell you that you're about to become one.”

 

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