InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Inu Yasha Themes ❯ Unique ( Chapter 9 )

Unique

 

`Kagome, are you alright?'

Wondering what it would take to make him stop asking that question, Kagome smiled brightly. The kitsune didn't look convinced. `You look unhappy, Kagome.'

`So do you,' she glanced at his small hands, clenching her shoulder so tightly. `I'm sorry, Shippou-chan. Please don't worry.'

Shippou frowned. `Is it what I said, that Kikyou once asked Inuyasha to become human for her?'

Her eyes widened at the implications. Unsettled, she looked away. `No,' she hastily answered. `That's not it.'

It was a half-truth, but what truly bothered her was something much more fundamental. She glanced at Shippou. Perhaps a youkai could help with this dilemma - if only such heavy thoughts could be explained in a manner light enough for a child.

`It surprised me that Hiten and Manten were brothers,' she confessed.

`Eh?' Shippou looked speechless. She could see the boy's mind feverishly working to connect this question to Kikyou. She could see him fail.

`They looked like different kinds of youkai,' she clarified. `That's all.'

Shippou stared at her, but it took only a moment for understanding to dawn in his leaf-green eyes. `They were.'

`Eh?' Now it was her turn to be confused.

He leapt down from her shoulder and straightened to his full, tiny height. `Coming from your strange land, you probably don't know it,' he lectured. `A youkai can only have one nature. If its parents have different natures, it can't have half a nature - or two.'

Kagome frowned. `How can that be? Inuyasha is…'

Shippou folded his arms across his chest and looked away. `Humans can only be human and youkai can only be youkai. Hanyou are both - and so neither. That's why they're different.'

Her head spun sluggishly. To think she had been worried the child wouldn't understand…

`Kagome, you've seen his human heart, haven't you?' Shippou seemed to realise she was struggling.

`Well, yes…' she trailed off in sudden realisation. Youkai of different types couldn't produce hybrid offspring because it would split their souls to do so. The child had to inherit only one, or its own soul would be torn apart by a war within its own heart.

`Inuyasha's unique,' she whispered softly, and Shippou nodded, clearly pleased she understood.

She hadn't fully appreciated how lonely even the concept of being hanyou could be. How… homeless. She hadn't understood how this Shikon no Tama could make Inuyasha a full youkai, yet Kikyou had clearly thought it possible for him to become a full human. Now she understood that it had to be possible - she had seen Inuyasha's human heart for herself during the night of the new moon. Did that mean a hanyou wasn't so much a half-breed as a person with two hearts bound within one soul? Were those hearts at war?

Did that mean a hanyou who could manifest his human heart could also manifest his youkai heart?

Her eyes drifted towards the starless sky.

`Inuyasha…'

She couldn't help but wonder what his youkai heart was like.

 

 

FIN.