InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 4: Justification ❯ Confessions: Part I ( Chapter 42 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Gin rubbed her throbbing temple as Cain closed the front door behind him.  He'd done it quietly, but that didn't keep the sound of the lock clicking into place from making her wince and grit her teeth.  'I'm never touching liquor again,' she vowed.  'Never, ever, ever . . .'

It should have been enough that her head thumped to a rhythm that was captured in her head.  It should have been enough that her mouth tasted like something furry had camped out in there, leaving behind a fuzzy feeling that even vigorous brushing hadn't been able to rid her of.  It should have been enough that she couldn't remember much of anything from the night before—at least after she'd thrown up.  Nope, and to add to all that, Cain had been acting quiet and sort of distant all morning, and Gin couldn't figure out why.

He'd left to see if he could find her keys with the parting remark that she ought to see if Bellaniece had left anything behind that she could borrow since the exterminator should be coming by to check her apartment, and since she wouldn't want to greet the man in Cain's shirt, now would she?

Gin sighed and stumbled off toward Bellaniece's bedroom, groaning softly as the door squeaked when she pushed it open.  Glancing in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall beside the door, Gin made a face.  Dark circles under her lackluster eyes, hair ratty and tangled, skin sallow and dull . . . Yeah, she'd seen better days, hadn't she?  And just why was her nose all red?

Pushing open the heavy closet door, Gin scowled at the few dresses Bellaniece had left behind.  None of them looked like something she'd wear, and even then, they all seemed like they'd be a little too big.  Bellaniece was at least half a foot taller than her or better, and the girl in question didn't mind wearing low-cut dresses—the kind Gin wouldn't ever have the guts to wear at all . . .

The best she'd be able to do would be to wear one of Bellaniece's dresses backward so that certain parts of her were decently covered.  'That'd look . . . well . . . stupid,' she decided with a thorough sigh as her ears flattened against her head.

Grimacing as she slammed the closet closed, Gin rubbed her temple with one hand and jumped as something thudded on the floor inside.  'Don't let whatever it was be broken,' she thought as she carefully pulled the door open again.  'That'd be just my luck, now wouldn't it?'

She didn't see anything right away.  She was about to close the door again when she noticed the grayish cardboard on the floor.  Stooping down to pick it up, she turned it over in her hands, absently running her fingers over the tiny seashells and elbow macaroni that were carefully glued all around the edges.  She'd done something similar in primary school.  Bellaniece had obviously made this one.

It held a picture.

Gin held it up, frowning as she stared at the image of the smiling woman beside Cain.  Arms wrapped around one another while the woman's smile beamed back at her, they looked . . . happy . . . He was smiling, too, but he wasn't looking at the camera.  His eyes were fixed on the woman's face; his expression one that Gin had never seen on him before, and she winced.

He was staring at the woman with the same sort of expression she'd seen on her father's face whenever he gazed at Kagome; at those times when InuYasha thought no one else could see him . . .

'It's . . . her . . . isn't it?  Bellaniece's mother . . . Cain's wife . . . Isabelle . . .'

The proof was there in her hands, staring back at her with a secretive, almost mocking smile.  Gin slipped the picture out of the frame to read Cain's scrawl on the back.  'Belle, 6.28.2010.'

Gin stood up slowly, carefully pushing the photo back into the silly little frame that she didn't doubt Bellaniece had made for her mother's picture.  Her chest hurt, her eyes burned, and yet she sank down on the edge of Bellaniece's bed, unable to look away from the woman in the picture.

She really was beautiful—stunning, actually.  Tall enough that she reached Cain's chin in the flat shoes she wore and possessing the willowy build of a classical dancer, Isabelle's pose exuded a quiet grace, a certain sophistication that Gin would never ever really achieve.  Golden hair drawn back in a softly curling ponytail, her light blue eyes sparkled and shone in the bright daylight where she stood beside Cain on the sandy beach against a background of harsh rocks and rippling water.  The gauzy white dress seemed to cling to Isabelle's frame, hindered only by Cain's arms, wrapped loosely around her waist, resting on her left hip.  Her slender arms wrapped over his in what seemed to Gin to be a possessive gesture.  Why did it seem like her smile was growing wider as she stared out of the image back at Gin?

'How could he have not loved her?  I didn't even know her, and I can see it . . . Kami, she's . . . She's like a fairy princess, isn't she?  No wonder . . .'

And Cain . . .

Still rumpled, still wearing the low ponytail in his hair . . . But the shadows she knew that lingered in his gaze weren't there back then.  Running a delicate claw over the familiar lines of his face, Gin bit her lip, blinked back a tear, and she couldn't help feeling just a little foolish.  It had become too easy for her to forget that Cain had obligations that he held above anything else.  This woman had a hold that Gin didn't really understand, but Cain did, and Cain . . .

She really was stupid, wasn't she?  She was a stupid little girl who had conveniently forgotten that some promises were impossible to break; that some vows could not be undone.  Isabelle was his mate, and Gin . . . Gin had forgotten that, hadn't she?

Mates were forever, or so she'd been told.  Once a youkai or hanyou took a mate then nothing mattered: time, space; centuries or continents . . . and separation from one's mate normally always ended in the death of the one left behind.  Sure there were a few notable exceptions.  Her grandfather had been one.  Still remembering how close Toga had come to dying because he'd been separated from Sierra . . . Was Cain like her grandfather?  Strong enough to overcome the will to give up after losing his mate . . . Or was he like Toga, and was obligation alone forcing him to survive, and if that were the case, just where did that leave her?

"Gin's nothing to me—nothing."

It was true; absolutely true.  Maybe he hadn't meant for her to hear him say it, but that didn't remove the sting of his words, and it didn't make them any less truthful.  Despite the things that he never told her, the things that she didn't know, she did know one thing: Cain never lied to her, and that meant that what he'd said to Pierre . . . He really had meant it.

A vague image of the night before flashed through her mind, and Gin winced.

"It's because of Isabelle, right?   Because I'm not her?"

Cain's anger—the pain in his eyes . . . Of course he didn't think she was like Isabelle.  Forcing herself to stare at the picture, Gin shook her head and sighed.  'I'm not like her.  I'll never be like her.  He knows that, too, doesn't he?  I'll never be graceful or elegant; poised or beautiful . . . nothing Isabelle was.  I'm just Gin . . . stupid little Gin, but I thought—hoped . . .'

"You're in luck, Gin.  Look what I . . . found . . ." Cain strode into the room with her shoe in one hand and her key-ring spinning around the index finger of his other hand.  He stopped abruptly, his smile fading as he caught sight of Gin's obvious upset.  "Hey . . . What's wrong, baby girl?"

"Wha . . .?  Oh, nothing," Gin said, making herself smile but wincing when he scowled.  "It's nothing . . . I . . . I knocked this off Bellaniece's shelf . . . I wasn't being nosy, I promise . . . I wasn't trying to be, anyway.  I'm sorry . . ."

He stared at her for another long moment before he let his gaze shift to the picture frame she held out.  A fleeting glimpse of pain shot through his features before he dropped the shoe on the floor and rubbed his hand over his face as though he were really exhausted.  "Oh . . . Gin—"

Gin barked out a terse laugh; dry and devoid of humor as she shook her head and cut him off.  "She was something, wasn't she?  I mean, I know everyone said she was beautiful, but . . . She could have been a model or something."

He sighed.  "She could have, I guess.  Listen—"

"She looked like a dancer.  Bellaniece looks just like her, except she's got your coloring . . . Isabelle was kind of like a fairy princess.  That's what she reminded me of: a fairy princess . . ."

He reached out to pull her close as he sank down on the bed beside her.  Gin shot to her feet.  "Gin . . ."

"This shouldn't be in the closet.  She was Bellaniece's mama, right?  She shouldn't . . ." Eyes darting around almost wildly, she glanced at the empty nightstand and nodded.  "There's a good place for it," she decided, stepping over and propping the picture up against the lamp.  "I'm going to go.  I need to change, and the exterminator will be here soon, right?"  She pulled the keys out of his hand and held them up.  "I'll see you later."

"Gin, wait," he said, standing up and reaching out to catch her hand.

She forced another smile, a terse laugh.  "Gotta go, Zelig-sensei.  Time's a-wastin'."

He sighed.  "All right . . . You'll come back in a little bit?"

"Uh . . . Yeah . . . S-Sure."

He let go of her hand and sat back down on the edge of the bed.  Gin hurried out of the room before he could try to stop her again.

She just had to get out of there.  The idea of sitting there, of hearing him tell her how cute he thought she was and knowing that in his heart she'd never, ever compare to Isabelle . . . She couldn't do it; at least not now.

With a low groan, Gin stopped.  She'd forgotten her shoes.  The one was still by the door, but the other one . . .

Gin sighed and turned around to get her other shoe.  She stopped in the shadows of the hallway, a thousand painful stabs erupting in her chest as she watched in silence.  Cain still sat on his daughter's bed with the picture in his hands and a sad little scowl on his face.  He was staring at the old photograph as though he'd never seen it before.  Gin closed her eyes, leaned against the doorframe, unable to look away as he slowly ran his claw along the smooth surface.

She forced herself to move then.  Stumbling back down the hallway and through the living room, heading for the front door—for the sanctity of her apartment before she did something she'd regret, like cry.

'It's one thing,' she figured, 'to know that Isabelle was probably drop-dead gorgeous.  It was another thing, entirely, to find out it really was true.'


Bellaniece bit her lip as she slipped the mini-CD into the stereo and turned the volume down low.  Kichiro was lying down, not that she blamed him. She had worried that he would end up being sick again, but he hadn't been.  She waited for the music to start and frowned.  She'd heard the song before, earlier at Funtown when Kichiro had made her sit down and left to go do . . . whatever it was he went to do . . .

'He . . . He recorded that . . .?  For me?'

Bellaniece hurriedly wiped away the tear that had slipped down her cheek as she listened to the song.  'She's Got a Way,' by Billy Joel.  Old song, sure, but the words . . . She shook her head.  'Is that . . . Is that how he feels?'

He could sing.  She remembered sitting on the bench near the cheesy little recording studio off the plaza at the park, hearing this person singing this song . . . Sure they said that they didn't play the songs out loud, but Bellaniece had been to the park too often to not know that they lied every time.  She'd thought at the time that whoever was singing really was good.  It was him?

"It's your gift, such as it is.  Consolation prize.  Sorry I couldn't win you anything."

Bellaniece uttered a soft, "Oh . . ." and slowly shook her head.  Surely he didn't think . . .?  Why would he ever think that this—what he'd done—was somehow inadequate?

She turned around and ran toward the stairs.  Peeking into his room, she frowned at the sleeping hanyou and wondered how irritated he'd be if she woke him up.  That would be selfish, wouldn't it?  She'd known he had a terrible time at the amusement park.  She wished he would have said something sooner.  She didn't really understand why he hadn't told her.  He certainly didn't make any bones about telling her when anything else bothered him, did he?

The steady rise and fall of his chest made Bellaniece smile as she crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe.  The dim light from the hallway filtered into the room.  He'd taken off his shirt and left the button of his trousers unfastened.  Stretched out on his back with his right arm bent over his head, his left arm was tossed casually over his stomach, pinning down the thick braid of his hair, he looked completely relaxed, and Bellaniece bit her lip as she sighed.  He really was remarkable . . .

As much as she wanted to ask him why he thought that the song he'd recorded for her wasn't that important, she didn't have the heart to wake him, either.

Bellaniece lingered another moment before slipping out of the quiet room and down the hall.

She wasn't sure why she headed straight for her closet.  Inspired by the strangely introspective mood left in the wake of Kichiro's song, she pulled the huge white leather-bound photo album off the top shelf and stared at the cover, tracing over the letters in gold gilt paint: 'Bellaniece Zelig'.  She smiled sadly.  She'd had the album ever since she could remember.  Cain had made it for her, and the first few pages were covered with newspaper clippings and old, faded photographs; images of the mother that Bellaniece didn't know.  Strange how Bellaniece looked so much like her; like Isabelle.  Stranger still to know that Isabelle still had a very real hold over Bellaniece's father—a hold stronger than bands of iron . . . a hold stronger than the love of a father for his daughter . . .

She shivered in the stillness of the lonely mansion, wondered fleetingly what her father was doing, half a world away.  Maybe he missed her . . . Was he thinking about her?  All Bellaniece's hopes were riding on the shoulders of a girl who was oblivious to the truth of the situation.  Remembering the way Cain had smiled at Gin; the gentle teasing that was so foreign to him . . . 'Come on, Gin . . . I'm counting on you . . . Make him want to live again.  Make him . . . make him want to stay . . .'

The wash of loneliness was a bitter thing.  Smacking into Bellaniece with a force that made her slump against the open closet door as she closed her eyes and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming, it took a minute for her to regain her composure.  She didn't want to be alone.  She'd never wanted to be alone . . .

Clutching the photo album to her chest, Bellaniece hurried out of her room and back down the hall.  Kichiro hadn't moved in her absence.  Careful not to make any noise, she tiptoed over to sit on the floor beside the bed in the rectangle of light that cascaded through the opened doorway.  The sound of his breathing filled her ears, chased away the sense of loneliness that she hated.  'How did he do that?' she wondered as she set the book aside and knelt beside the bed, hesitantly reaching out to touch his bangs, to trace the outline of his eyebrows in the darkness.  'How could he make me feel as though I'll never have to be alone again when he isn't doing a thing?  He's just sleeping . . .?'

"Lemme guess: you bumped your head on one of the rides, and you can't find your own room?"

Bellaniece gasped softly, jerking her hand away from him and sitting back on her heels as Kichiro rolled toward her and groggily opened his eyes.  "I . . . No, of course . . . not . . ."

He started to chuckle but was thwarted by a wide yawn.  "So you came in here willingly?  Didn't get enough of The Kich earlier?"

She felt her cheeks warm, but stubbornly shook her head.  "Don't be silly.  I was just checking on you; that's all."

"Tell that to the reporters, Belle-chan.  I know why you're really here."

He was teasing her.  She could sense the smile in his tone despite the blank expression on his face.  "And why would that be, Dr. Izayoi?"

"If you want to crawl into bed with me, you don't have to ask, princess.  My bed is your bed . . . Just don't think you'll be sleeping because you won't."

"Are you feeling any better?" she asked, ignoring his off-color commentary.

"A little," he told her.  "You could come here and check for yourself."

"Check what?"

He snorted.  "How I feel, wench.  Pay attention, will you?"

"I'm starting to not feel so bad about you throwing up," she grumbled.

"Oh, that . . . I didn't throw up," he assured her.  "I simply had to purge the toxic sugars out of my system."

Bellaniece rolled her eyes but smiled.  "If you're feeling better, are you hungry?  I could make food for you . . . a sandwich or something . . ."

His ears flattened as he shook his head to clear the sleepy fuzziness from his mind.  "Ugh, sandwich?  No thanks."

"You love my peanut butter sandwiches!" she informed him.  "You ate the whole plate of them, remember?"

He winced and sat up, reaching over to turn on the lamp before groaning and quickly shielding his eyes from the invasive artificial light.  "Yeah, that . . . I . . . don't really . . . like those . . . at all."

She shook her head as she scowled at the taupe linen bedspread.  "But you ate them all . . . Why would you do that if you didn't like them?"

He sighed.  "Belle . . . It's simple: you smiled at me, so I ate them, just like today.  You smiled at me, and I ate everything you shoved at me."

"So, you ate all that stuff because . . . you felt sorry for me?"

"No.  I don't feel sorry for you, princess.  I feel sorry for my stomach, but never for you."

"You should have told me," she grumbled.  "You should have said you didn't like it.  I wouldn't have been mad or anything . . ." She trailed off, eyes narrowing suspiciously.  Kichiro intercepted the look and sighed again.  "Does that mean you puked up all the sandwiches, too?"

He rolled his eyes.  "No . . . If you'd force-fed me more of the marshmallow ones though, I might have . . . That stuff is just nasty."  To emphasize his point, he affected a full-body shudder, complete with exaggerated grimace full of revulsion.

Bellaniece almost laughed.  "Do me a favor.  Tell me you don't like something next time, okay?"

Scooting down so he could stretch out again, Kichiro stuck his hands behind his neck and lifted his eyebrows.  "Yeah, yeah . . . It's fine, Belle.  I have to ask, though . . . You eat that crap all the time, right?  How the hell do you look like you do if you eat shit like that?"

"I'm hanyou, remember?"

He shrugged.  "Oh, right . . . the one hanyou on earth who can't fight . . ."

"Anyway, I mean it.  I'd rather that you tell me you don't like something than to see you make yourself sick."

"All right, I'm sorry," he gave in.  "I'll never do it again.  Please, please forgive me."

She made a face at his sarcastic remarks.  "I'll forgive you," she agreed, "on one condition."

"What's that?" he asked, grabbing a lock of her hair and weaving it around his fingers.

"Tell me why you thought that the song you recorded was a consolation prize?"

He let go of her hair and sighed.  "It just was," he growled.  "Forget it.  It was a dumb idea."

"No, it wasn't.  It was—"

"Yeah, I know.  It was pathetic, right?  Don't worry about it.  Just throw it away."

"I didn't say—"

"You didn't have to, princess.  My brain was affected by the food—mental food poisoning.  Happens all the time."

"Don't—"

"Can we talk about something else?  I'm still tired, anyway.  Chalk it up to stupidity, and leave it at that, will you?"

Bellaniece bit back the desire to growl at Kichiro and drew a deep breath instead.  "If you're finished putting words in my mouth, I'd like to say something without your help."

He refused to look at her, but didn't interrupt.  Satisfied that he wouldn't, Bellaniece let out her breath and shook her head.  "I loved it."  She could feel his gaze shift to her as she scowled at her hands folded in her lap.  "It was the nicest thing anyone's ever given me, you know?  Thank you."

"The nicest thing?  You've gotta be kidding.  It was idiotic.  It was nothing."

Bellaniece nodded slowly as she started to get up, needing to distance herself from him, from his caustic statements and harsh words.

"Where are you going?"

She stopped when he caught her wrist to keep her from running away.  "Sometimes," she told him, fighting to control the tremor in her voice, "you're such a jerk.  I thought maybe today . . . but you're still . . . Let go!"

"I'm a jerk?" Kichiro sputtered, tightening his grip on her wrist.  "What the hell am I supposed to do for you, Belle?  I've bent over backward for you; jumped through fucking hoops to make you happy, and you—"

"I didn't ask you to make yourself sick!"

"No, but you asked me to win you a prize on the midway, and damn it, I couldn't even do that!"

Bellaniece shook her head.  "I was joking!"

"I didn't know that!"

"You said I'm nothing!"

"What?"

She scowled at the floor, dashed her free hand across her misting eyes.  "You said that your present was nothing, right?  Well, you don't give 'nothing' to someone without thinking that someone is less than nothing, too, so yeah, I'll go toss your CD into the box of other stupid trinkets that guys have won for me that I keep in my closet because I just don't care about them."

"Belle, I didn't mean—"

"I don't care what you meant.  I thought maybe . . . but I was . . . I should have known."

He let go of her hand and sighed.  Bellaniece stumbled toward the door.

"I just . . . felt stupid," he grumbled in a tone that she figured he hadn't thought she'd hear.  She stopped and slowly turned around to face him.  Ears flattened as he scowled at the ceiling, he didn't seem to notice that she hadn't left him.

"Why?  I didn't think it was stupid at all.  I thought it was . . . incredible."

"I didn't win it.  I didn't earn it.  I didn't do a damn thing for it."

"All those prizes are nothing but a stupid way for boys to show off playing another man's rigged games so they can hand the trophy prize to the trophy girlfriend, and then she gets to ooh and ahh over how great he is when he's really nothing at all.  What you did for me . . . that was really something, and I'm sorry if you can't see it because . . . Well, I just loved it, so maybe I'm a little stupid, too."

He stared at her for long moments, gaze narrowing as though he were trying to read her mind.  He cleared his throat and shrugged, cheeks pinking as he looked toward the window.  "You know, Belle . . . I could eat a sandwich now."

Bellaniece shuffled her bare feet and shrugged, wishing he'd look at her again; wishing she could understand the demons that haunted him, too.  "Okay."

"Belle?" he called as she started away.  She stopped but didn't look back.  "I'm . . . I'm glad you had fun today.  I did, too."

She did glance at him for that statement, incredulity making her slowly shake her head.

"No, I did," he assured her.

"Thank you for taking me."

He finally smiled.  "Don't mention it, wench.  Now are you going to feed me or not?"

She giggled and wiggled her fingers before stepping into the hallway, heading for the stairs to find something to feed a picky hanyou like him.