InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Overboard! ❯ Chapter 10

 

Disclaimer: Neither the characters from the storyline `Inuyasha' by Rumiko Takahashi, nor the plotline from the movie `Overboard' starring Goldie Hawn, are mine.

 

Author's Note: One reader pointed out that Sesshoumaru's attraction to `Kikyou' last chapter seemed too sudden. He walked upstairs and suddenly realized he was jealous of his little brother for not appreciating such a fabulous woman. Hopefully the last chapter undermines that abruptness - Sesshoumaru was lying to himself from the start.

 

Overboard (Inuyasha-style)

Chapter 10:

 

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. She looked up from their activity - coloring papers with crayons on the coffeetable - and then winked at Rin. Sesshoumaru had promised to come home early today. Perhaps this was him now. With Rin dogging her footsteps, she opened the front door.

 

But the woman beyond the threshold was not Sesshoumaru. Instead, there stood a lanky, pretty woman, with concerned, brown eyes and pursed lips. She was holding her handbag tightly, and her long straight hair fell neatly about her shoulders. For a moment, a spark of jealousy flashed through Kagome's mind, and she took one startled step backward into the living room, wondering why she would feel that way.

 

It was like looking into a mirror, only not quite. Panic rose within her, trying to choke off her air, and her heart raced, but still she could not imagine why she felt this way. Why, there was nothing frightening about this lady! Instinctively, she knew the woman was older than she, wiser too, and if anything they were friends.

 

Yes, friends. Even more than friends. This woman was afraid of spiders and good with children. When they were younger, both girls had run through a field of leaves, laughing, while her grandfather waved a rake in mock anger, shouting at them for ruining the piles. Souta had once admitted that Kikyou was pretty cool, but he had promised he liked his sister better. A little boy's laughter tinkled in her ears, as she tried to process all the information and imagery pouring before her eyes. Souta's sister…

 

She had a brother, a grandfather, a mother, an aunt and uncle, and a cousin. In high school, she had been sick often, but she never, ever had a bad back. Her first boyfriend Hojo had been sweet and caring, their physical relationship had been awkward and painful, and the affair had petered out after several months. Afterward, she had wondered if sex was awfully overrated in movies and books, but she knew better now because of Sesshoumaru.

 

Her husband, Sesshoumaru. He had the same last name as Inuyasha. They were brothers. She remembered this much. Once not long ago (although it felt like ages), she had wanted Inuyasha to like her. Handsome, casually confident, only occasionally brusque, he seemed like a perfect boyfriend when he was with her cousin. But the way she had felt about his brother was different, somehow.

 

Gods, what was happening? A moment ago, her past had been fuzzy and indistinct, but upon seeing this woman's face, suddenly everything had come clear. It wasn't as though she suddenly remembered that which she had forgotten; instead, it was as though her memories had always been there, and a veil had been lifted away, allowing the obscure to become visible again. Pieces of the puzzle slid into place, as she recalled who she was, where she came from, and how exactly she came to be stranded on that dock in Shanghai.

 

Still, there was one glaring omission in her mind.

 

Why? Why had this happened to her?

 

It made no sense. For the last three days, he had called her Kikyou. But the woman standing before her was Kikyou; she recognized her life-long companion on sight. All of this settled weightily on her mind, shutting off her thought processes, and she stared vacantly back at her cousin, wondering what to do next.

 

Her first thought was, I should call him at the office, he'll be glad to know that I have my memories back…

 

After a few seconds though, the beautiful, brown-eyed, utterly familiar stranger burst into tears on her doorstep. “Kagome!” sobbed the lady, overcome with relief. The emotional wear-and-tear of the last few days was finally catching up to her. “You're all right!”

 

“K-kikyou?” she murmured, lifting one hand to brush away her cousin's dark hair. Confused by this new development, Rin stood behind them in the doorway, watching, waiting.

 

“You remember? Do you remember me?” sniffled the other lady, blearily wiping her eyes and smiling gently. “I can't believe he… Are you all right? Nothing bad happened to you, right? Tell me everything!”

 

“I…” Kagome replied timidly. “I think I need to sit down.”

 

Taking Rin's hand by habit, she closed the front door and ushered the three of them into the living room, before she realized what she was doing. She was trying to comfort Rin, touching her hand to reassure the four-year old that everything was going to be all right. This was not her daughter. She had never even heard of this little girl before the beginning of the week.

 

Despite knowing the truth, she also recalled the happy days she had spent with Rin. The way she felt about the child was real, almost more so than the reality of her own name. Rin was such a sweet child; she wasn't difficult to love. Even meeting Rin as Kagome, she knew she would have felt the same way about the bright little girl. No, forgetting about her would be much more difficult than caring for her in the first place.

 

Now, she knew too much. She knew Rin liked stuffed dogs more than other animals, hated studying, and often missed her father when he went to work. She knew Rin's favorite food and the way her eyes twinkled when she was about to get into mischief.

 

Releasing Rin's hand as though it burned to touch the girl, Kagome stared at her one-time daughter in dismay. And being the intelligent girl she was, Rin immediately picked up on this not-so-subtle signal that something was wrong. “Mommy?” she inquired cautiously, awaiting a sensible explanation from the adults around her.

 

A speechless pause was soon broken by Kikyou's scandalized exclamation, “She's not your mother! Oh, I ought to kill that… Kagome, what did he tell you?”

 

It was all too much to handle. Coloring project forgotten on the coffeetable, Rin started to cry, and Kagome realized there was a time for truth and a time for lies. This was definitely the latter.

 

“Calm down, Kikyou,” she replied sternly, silently marveling at how much she had changed in the last few days. Before losing her memory, she would never have been able to stand up to her cousin like this. Going on a cruise to Shanghai was only the most recent example of falling prey to her cousin's well-meant machinations. “There's no need to yell at her.”

 

Gathering the four-year old to her side, she pet the girl's fluffy hair and reassured her that everything was going to be fine, interspersing her promises with an explanation Rin might be able to understand. “Your Father will be able to explain this much better than me,” she improvised, “But he knew how tired you were of your nanny, so he arranged for me to look after you for a few days. We had a lot of fun, didn't we?”

 

Rin nodded, peering up at her surrogate mother through long lashes. Kagome recalled the way the girl had cried for her not to leave, when her grandfather had visited earlier, and she based the rest of her answer around the suspicions this event raised. “Now, you know I'm not really your Mommy, don't you?” she asked gently.

 

Rin nodded again, clearing up this little bit of misinformation at long last. “When your Grandfather came to the house before, you worried I was going to leave. I promise I'm not going to do that. I might go away for a while, but if you don't mind, I would like to come back and visit you sometimes. Is that okay?”

 

Now that the situation was looking brighter from Rin's standpoint, the four-year old raised her head, noticeably calmer than she had been. Kikyou merely gaped at them, feeling out of her depth. It sounded like her cousin had just agreed to come back to this dreadful house in the future, all for the sake of a kid she did not know.

 

“Great!” Kagome finished enthusiastically. “Of course, we'll have to ask your Dad for permission too.”

 

With a satisfied nod, the issue was settled, and Kagome instructed Rin to play upstairs while she talked to her cousin.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

It took about thirty more minutes for Kikyou to relay everything she had heard in the boardroom and her experiences in Shanghai to Kagome. The blue-eyed shrine maiden accepted everything in stride, and she did not say much, even when Kikyou asked why she had left the group in the first place.

 

Sitting in the middle of Sesshoumaru's living room, sunlight streaming through the windows, it didn't seem the time or place to reveal her age-old crush on Inuyasha to her cousin. In fact, with the way she was feeling right now, it might never be the right time. What did it matter anyway, why she ran out on her friends in the middle of the night? That was then; this was now. She began to suspect she might be in shock, from recovering all her memories at once.

 

“I don't know,” she replied when Kikyou asked after her health for the third time. “My head feels all woozy. Swimmy.”

 

“I'm sorry, Kagome. This must be awful for you,” sympathized the brown-eyed Higurashi cousin. “I feel so guilty, I should have flown back to find you immediately. I'm so mad at Inuyasha right now.”

 

When yet another protracted silence met her in reply, Kikyou shifted uncomfortably. “I made an appointment with the doctor on the way over here,” she urged, “We should head over there as soon as possible, you might have a concussion, or…”

 

“It's fine,” Kagome shook her head. Then, she laughed weakly, trying to put a positive spin on the drama that was her life. “At least I'll have an interesting story to inspire me in my creative writing class.”

 

The truth was she wanted to leave. Running away sounded like a very appealing option at the moment. But she had to wait for Sesshoumaru, because if she didn't hear the words from him, then she might never understand what had happened. She should not even ask him why; he knew he owed her an explanation. If not, then he was far more of a callous asshole than she took him to be. When he returned to the house (his house, Kagome reminded herself firmly), she would simply wait for an answer.

 

The portrait Kikyou had painted was bleak. Sesshoumaru, power crazy and determined to show his brother who was best, abducted his brother's girlfriend under false pretenses and refused to let her return to her normal life. Still, Kagome felt sure there had to be something more to it.

 

If Sesshoumaru wanted to torture his brother, there were a hundred other ways to do so. At college, she constantly heard about this or that vexation Inuyasha had with his elder sibling. Why would Sesshoumaru take interest in Kikyou, in particular? There had to be a missing piece to the puzzle.

 

“Ne, Kikyou?” she murmured doubtfully. “You met him before, didn't you?”

 

The question startled her cousin out of her anxious, hand wringing state. “Sesshoumaru?” Kikyou clarified. “Yes, we saw each other at the office all the time. Are you remembering more now?”

 

“I told you already, I remembered when I saw a familiar face,” replied Kagome with mild exasperation. “Just like the psychologist said I would.”

 

The two of them had known each other. They had seen one another all the time, before the cruise. And when the opportunity arose to prank both his half-brother and Kikyou at the same time, Sesshoumaru had grabbed it.

 

Although this made the story black and white in her cousin's eyes, it confused the issue for Kagome. According to Kikyou, the aspiring businessman hated her boyfriend and desired to make his life miserable. Kagome had been an unfortunate side-show, a victim of his heartless insensitivity and selfishness. But there were always two sides to one coin. Or as another adage told, the distance between love and hate in a human heart was only as thick as rice paper.

 

Sesshoumaru didn't hate his father. She might not know him as well as she had thought, but she had seen him interact with Touga. In retrospect, using actual memories to color her perception, she suspected he had been desperate to garner his Father's approval at dinner that night. Not once had he lied to the man outright, although it would have made the situation easier. He worked insane hours, trying to win his Father's favor. He had saved all his Mother's clothing, when Touga had tried to trash the memories of his first marriage, the family to which Sesshoumaru had belonged.

 

And as for Inuyasha, Kagome suspected the animosity was overblown in that arena too. If memory served correctly, Sesshoumaru had assisted his half-brother out of a number of sordid situations in the past. Not precisely the actions of a despicable villain, since acquiring `blackmail' to hold over his half-brother's head also required actually using aforesaid information in a negative fashion, which he had never done.

 

“Ne, Kikyou?” Kagome began again. “Do you think Souta will do my chores for another week at the shrine? When I get home, I want to take long nap.”

 

“Of course!” Kikyou guaranteed. “We'll both help.” Sitting down next to Kagome on the couch, Kikyou reached out to hug her cousin, then refrained at the last minute. It seemed like Kagome was contemplating something very seriously, and she did not want to break her concentration. Mostly, she just wanted to leave this house and return to the shrine. Kagome would surely recover once surrounded by her friends and family.

 

Finally, a car parked in the driveway and both girls stood. Standing in front of her cousin protectively, Kikyou tried one last time to take control of the situation. “Are you sure you want to do this right now? You don't have to talk to him…”

 

But where the old Kagome might have been convinced, this one had to confront her problems, now or never. Like Sesshoumaru, she hadn't been entirely honest with her family member about last night's events. It was yet another reason why she did not want to accept Kikyou's harsh justification of the circumstances. Sesshoumaru was more than black and white. He didn't really seem to hate his Father or Inuyasha. And last night, he had not seemed to hate `Kikyou' either.

 

Facing the front door, Kagome felt her heart pounding in her chest, and she wondered which answer she was waiting for with such anticipation. Either way, she would surely be disappointed.

 

If Sesshoumaru admitted to being the bastard everyone thought he was, then he was simply a spiteful jerk, taking an unconscionable form of revenge on the half-brother he hated. And if he didn't hate Inuyasha, then this was all about Kikyou. He either hated her (see aforementioned unconscionable revenge) or he loved her, much like she had once desired the unobtainable Inuyasha.

 

Kagome was tired of everything in her life being about Kikyou.

 

Still, this predicament was partly her fault. He had told her the truth, and she had refused to listen. Assuming he was merely being stubborn, she had seduced him - another thing the old Kagome would not have been capable of doing. Thus, whatever his motivations, good or bad, she could not blame him fully for last night. Primarily, but not fully. Knowing the truth, he should never have followed through, but she had started it.

 

All of this left her no closer to understanding Sesshoumaru, although it did give insight into her own character. About to forgive someone who could do nothing except bring her pain, and already missing the daughter she had never had, Kagome decided that she was officially too soft-hearted. No matter what his answer, he was a villain or he was in love with someone else, and she was going to be unhappy.

 

He stepped through the door quietly, and she noticed he had no briefcase or tie. Slouching, he appeared tired, bone-weary. Platinum blond hair shaded his face, and obviously, he could tell they were standing in the living room, because he did his best to glue his gaze to the tiles in the hallway rather than meet her eyes.

 

But neither lady was about to end the awkward silence. Kikyou felt too angry with him and Kagome was determined to allow him to make excuses. Since he could not make amends, excuses were the least he could do.

 

“I'm sorry,” he began without preamble. Then, clearly realizing how inadequate that sounded, he quickly added, “For taking you from Shanghai, and telling everyone you were… you know…”

 

Trailing off, as his apology moved from insufficient to ridiculous, he took a deep breath and finally met her gaze. “I am a terrible person,” he tried again, rolling the words around on his tongue as though he was trying them on for size. “What do you want me to say?”

 

“Do you love her?” Kagome asked softly, accusingly. It was a woman's prerogative to ask unanswerable questions. She wondered which one of them she hurt more by asking, yet it had to be said.

 

Through the corner of her eye, she saw her cousin stirring restlessly. Confused by the conversation, Kikyou moved to intervene, but Kagome frowned and motioned for her to stay out of it. Kikyou would demand a defense, a reason, but she did not want pointless apologies, only an excuse. Please, let there be an excuse.

 

“Her?” Sesshoumaru repeated, flustered by this sudden turn. His eyes flickered toward Kikyou and then away, and he looked so hopeless that she knew she had her answer. If he cared so little, then he would act like it. This was not the indifferent, unfeeling half-brother that Inuyasha complained about so often. “No,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

 

“Then I hate you,” she snapped. And those words were not completely true either, but they also had to be said. It was the only correct response at this point. Maybe someday she could make it true. At the moment, she was probably too close to the situation. Once she readjusted to real life, her feelings would settle down and everything would be normal again. “Rin wants to visit me sometimes, so if that is okay with you, then you can get in touch with me later. I'm ready to go home now, Kikyou.”

 

Staying silent and still, Sesshoumaru watched as she walked through the door.