InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Once Upon a Time ❯ On the Road Again... ( Chapter 19 )

Disclaimer: Inu & Co. aren’t mine, but I won’t give up hope….

19. On the Road Again….  

It was a late start in the morning, as Kaede, accompanied by her two young assistants, insisted on a thorough examination of Kagome’s injured leg before they would permit the girl to travel. Once she was pronounced fit enough to travel in the wagon, there was a lot of rearranging and repacking necessary. Even though they had used a fair portion of their supplies, the food they had brought had been augmented by the diligent hunting of the inuhanyou. Still, they had to make room for two people to travel in the back of the wagon--when the two young mikos-in-training had traveled that way, there had been fewer supplies. Although Kagome was the only one who required special transportation, the old woman thought it wise to provide her with a companion in the event that some unforeseen problem should develop during the journey.

Although there was no lack of volunteers for this particular task, the first shift fell to Shippou. The little kitsune was a bit concerned about his ability to remain discreet: even though he had seen the entire conversation between Kagome and Inuyasha the previous night, he understood that the two hadn’t noticed that they were being closely watched and would probably take exception to that fact, no matter how well-meaning the observation had been.

Still, they had plenty to talk about: Shippou had left the scene of the fighting early on in the battle, and had not seen how the fight had been resolved. Although he had heard most of the details from the others, all of them had been sent away for their own protection before the hanyou had ever transformed. He shook his head. “I know what happened, but what was it like?”

The girl shook her head. “It was kind of scary--not so much because he transformed, but because he knew what it would mean and took steps to protect me in case he couldn’t stop himself after he destroyed Naraku. The worst part was at the end, when he didn’t even recognize me. I had no choice: the only way I could reverse his transformation was with the Tetsusaiga, but he was so far gone that all he saw was a weapon, so he attacked. I never intended to hurt him, and I certainly didn’t want to kill him. I can’t tell you how glad I was that Sesshoumaru was there.” Though she would have preferred not to remember the entire incident, she found that it was less painful if she spoke of it to others. She lowered her eyes. “I mean, he saved us all, and then I--”

Miroku had been walking alongside the wagon. “Self-pity doesn’t look good on you, Kagome-sama. You aren’t Kikyou, no matter what people might think. You would never choose to die together--you would instead move heaven and earth to live together.”

Seeing that she was giving his remarks a good bit of consideration, he dropped back until he was following the wagon at a discreet distance. Sango looked at him. “I think they’ll be all right. I was worried for a while that neither of them would ever make a move, but it looks like they’ve finally gotten beyond that.”

The monk nodded slowly: this was really too good an opportunity to pass up. “Sango-chan, I need to talk to you about something.” At her curious expression, he continued, “You know that there’s something that I’ve never asked you--I think it’s time to ask that question now.”

She lowered her eyes, blushing furiously. It had long irritated her that the young monk asked every woman he encountered--all the way down to those who were barely more than girls--to give him a child. Even more disturbing was the fact that he had never made that particular request of her. She sometimes wondered if Myouga had been right when he had looked at her hand and essentially told her that she possessed absolutely no sex appeal. “It’s not necessary,” she whispered.

“Actually,” he said, “It is. Naraku is destroyed, and our fighting is over. We all have decisions to make, and I wanted to talk to you about that. Have you decided what you’ll do next? I know that you always talked about going back to your home and returning to you village’s work. I really don’t think you should do that.”

She looked up in surprise--this wasn’t at all the conversation she had expected. “Why not?”

He thought about it for a few seconds. “I think you should start up your people’s business again, but I don’t think it should be back in that isolated village you came from. If anything were to go wrong, you wouldn’t have anything to protect you except Kirara and Kohaku.”

“Exactly what did you have in mind?” She was growing increasingly curious--this was not exactly what she had come to expect from him.

“There’s an entire community of people who know and love you right where we’re going. Why couldn’t you and Kohaku set up shop there?” He watched her consider the question, wondering exactly how she would interpret his concern. Even though he had a well-earned reputation as a sort of ladies’ man, much of the flattery and come-ons were done in the spirit of harmless fun: he was not very skilled at being serious with women. “Sango?”

She looked up suddenly. “Why dies it matter? I suppose that we could set up pretty much anywhere, although it would take a bit of work to bring the forge and workshop out of the old village. I just don’t see why you’re suddenly so concerned about where we work.”

He shook his head--this wasn’t going nearly as smoothly as he had hoped. “It’s not a sudden concern.” He sighed, then continued, “I see that I have to speak more clearly. I want you to stay in the village with the rest of us. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I think that we--”

He never got to finish, as she threw her arms around his neck with a strength he had long suspected but never before experienced. When she finally released him, he rubbed at the side of his head where he’d been hit with the corner of her Hiraikotsu. “So,” he said, “What do you think?”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Am I interpreting this right? Is this the conversation I think it is?”

He nodded slowly. “I don’t know why you seem so surprised. I’ve always cared for you--now that we have the chance to create something like a normal life, I want you to be a part of it.” He raised his right hand, examining the palm he had not seen in years. “Now that I have a reasonable chance of surviving more than another few moths, I find that I can start thinking about a future.”

“Baka! As if I ever cared that you might not live as long as some others. Even a few weeks of a life together would be better than a whole lifetime alone.”

Miroku suddenly saw her in an entirely different way. She had always seemed rather distant and sad, but he had learned that this was a reaction to the loss of her family and her entire way of life. Now that her village had been avenged and her brother restored to her, he was seeing the real Sango for the first time, and he liked what he saw very much indeed. She made him feel younger than he had felt in a very long time.

Shippou had grown tired of traveling in the wagon and had been replaced by the hanyou. In spite of the things he had said the previous day, Kagome wasn’t entirely certain of how to talk to him--when someone who is normally not very demonstrative suddenly starts talking about things as personal as love, it gets a little unsettling. Still, as she watched him perched on the side of the wagon, she realized that he hadn’t changed at all--he had only finally said the things that had been in him all along. Still, it was probably best to start with a fairly neutral subject. “How long do you think it will take us to get back to the village?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure--four or five days, maybe, depending on how long we travel every day. I know we’re going to be making a slight detour--Kaede told me that we’ll be stopping at Jinenji’s on the way home.”

She looked up in surprise. As near as she could remember, she had never heard him refer to the village that stood where Tokyo would one day be as his home. “You really do think of it that way, don’t you? After all this time, the village has become home to you.”

He looked at her for a few seconds, then shrugged. There was no point in trying to keep up the pretense any longer--she could see through it easily anyway. “Not exactly. It’s an important place for me: it’s where I finally learned to trust people again. But, home? Not really. For me, home is wherever you are. You still think of where your family lives as your home, even though you don’t spend very much time there any more.” He looked at her closely, trying to figure out what she was getting at. “You still seem pretty eager to get back there.”

“Of course I am. I have so much to tell them all! Mama won’t have any problem with it: I think she and Souta love you almost as--” She broke off in mid-sentence, not at all sure he wanted to hear that. “It’s just that I worry about it causing trouble for her--she’ll have to explain to the school and all my old friends why I’ve disappeared. One of Jiichan’s exotic illnesses won’t do this time--it would be too easy to check.”

It seemed to him that his level of understanding was growing--he comprehended instantly what she had refrained from saying. Reaching out with the claws that had destroyed their enemy only a few days ago, he lifted her chin so that he could look directly into her eyes. “You don’t need to worry about your mother--she’s stronger than almost anybody I’ve ever known. She’ll do what needs to be done and get on with life. She is,” he said, “Very much like her daughter.”

At that moment, the wagon hit a rut in the road. Losing his balance, the hanyou fell into the back of the wagon. He sat up, rubbing at his head, and she laughed: it was just such a comical picture. He glared at her and snarled, “Really funny, Kagome.”

Suddenly, the tension evaporated. With the deadly serious mood lifted, she flung her arms around his neck. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that--you were sounding so serious all of a sudden it was a little scary.”

Inuyasha sat in the back of the wagon, an arm around the girl, trying to figure out exactly what the hell had just happened.

The old woman driving the wagon nodded in satisfaction, watching the road carefully to ensure a smooth ride.