InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 7: Avouchment ❯ Memory ( Chapter 3 )

~Chapter 3~

~~Memory~~

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“You're late,” Jordan Winters mumbled in Isabelle's ear as the two resident doctors reached for the same clipboard. “Guess I'll let you take this one.”

 

Rolling her eyes at the cheeky smile he shot her, Isabelle lifted the board and glanced over the preliminary information. “Five minutes,” she countered absently. “Not that late.”

 

“Late enough, Dr. Izayoi.”

 

“Stomach pains?” she said, shifting her quizzical gaze to meet his.

 

“Yeah . . . old man Hiller again. Probably gas.”

 

“Be nice,” she chided.

 

“I am being nice,” Jordan argued, falling into step beside her as she headed down the hallway toward the cubicle where Mr. Hiller was waiting. “Anyway, I had a dream last night, and you were in it.”

 

“Was I?”

 

“Yes. Care to hear exactly what we were doing?”

 

Casting him a chagrined look, she shook her head moments before she broke into a smile. “I don't think I would,” she replied easily.

 

Heaving a sigh, he shook his head and made an exaggerated face. “One of these days, Isabelle, you're going to admit that you want me.”

 

She laughed despite herself. “Will I?”

 

“Yes,” he maintained stubbornly. “You will.”

 

“Now, Jordan . . .”

 

He grimaced. “Don't tell me you're still stuck on that Marin guy,” he complained.

 

“Dr. Marin,” Isabelle corrected, “and I wouldn't call it `stuck' . . . That implies a certain level of hopelessness.”

 

“But why waste your time on that grouchy old bastard when you could be with a sexy young bastard, instead?” Jordan quipped.

 

“Oh, I don't know . . . I've always thought Griffin was pretty damn sexy . . .”

 

Jordan shook his head slowly. “It's the scars, isn't it? You love the mysterious type.”

 

Isabelle just smiled. “Maybe . . . too bad you're as easy to read as a picture book.”

 

Jordan grimaced, clutching melodramatically at his chest. “Cold words, Isabelle. Just cold . . .”

 

Isabelle moaned and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow as the cold, wet nose nudged her cheek. Whining softly, Froofie tried again, licking Isabelle's face since the playful nudging didn't gain her attention. “Okay, okay,” she muttered, rolling over and sitting up, sighing heavily when she realized that she'd ended up sleeping on the sofa—again. “You want to go outside, Froofie?” she asked, grabbing the dog's head and rubbing it back and forth as she leaned in to kiss his forehead.

 

The huge brown dog whined, his tail thumping against the coffee table so hard that made the empty glass on the table slide precariously.

 

Sparing a moment to stretch, Isabelle stumbled to her feet and shuffled toward the back door, stepping on the long ends of the lounge pants she's put on after her shower. Crossing her arms and leaning in the doorway as she watched the huge dog gallop around the yard, Isabelle yawned then made a face. It had rained in the night, which meant that Froofie was going to be a mess when he came back inside since he never failed to run through Isabelle's small flower garden on the edge of the patio despite her scolding him a thousand times for the transgression.

 

She'd wanted to head straight over to Griffin's house after she'd gotten off work, but it had been nearly four a.m., and she'd had to remind herself that he was probably sleeping. With any luck, he'd gotten some of the documents translated, and she was dying to see what all it said . . .

 

Still she supposed that she ought to try to get a little more sleep before she headed over there. She didn't have to go in to the hospital until midnight tonight. Making a face as she ducked back inside to grab a towel for Froofie's paws. She wasn't sure why she'd decided to take the emergency room physician job at Bangor Memorial Hospital, and it seemed to her that whoever did the scheduling had it in for her since she tended to end up with the graveyard shift way too often, in her opinion.

 

The dog ran up onto the patio, whining softly as Isabelle hunkered down to wipe the animal's paws, and he followed her back inside to sit patiently beside his huge bowls for his breakfast and a cold drink of water.

 

Isabelle hit the `retrieve messages' button on the answering machine as she passed the telephone on the way to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water.

 

“Hi, baby,” her mother's voice greeted, the smile that she normally had on her face coming through in her voice. “I just thought I'd call and see how you're doing. You don't call as often as you should, you know . . .”

 

Snapping the seal around the cap of the bottle, Isabelle chucked the bit of plastic toward the recycling bin and knelt to dump the contents of the bottle into Froofie's dish. She'd have to call her parents back later. It was true enough. She'd been so preoccupied with the research that she hadn't called them since she'd seen them at Jillian's wedding, and she'd missed the times when either her father or her mother called.

 

Stifling another yawn with the back of her hand, Isabelle dropped the empty water bottle into the recycling bin and shuffled out of the kitchen. If she were smart, she'd start looking for a staff position at one of the local clinics. At least then she'd have normal working hours . . . `Oh well . . . at least I'm hanyou,' she mused on her way through her home. Working such unrelentingly long hours had to be much, much worse on her human contemporaries . . .

 

She meant to grab a change of clothes to wear after she took a quick shower, but the sight of her bed was just a little too inviting, and she crawled under the soft tan coverlet, savoring the coolness of the cotton sheets against her naked arms, her bare feet.

 

`Just a short nap,' she told herself as she buried her face in her pillow.

 

She was asleep within moments.

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

Griffin closed the door behind the last of his Sunday morning visitors and let his breath out in a long gust. He'd almost forgotten about the children's weekly visit since he'd been up all night working on the translation of what appeared to be a journal. After his walk, he'd meant to lie down awhile, but that wasn't meant to be. Against his better judgment, he'd paused beside his desk, which had led to sitting back down; jotting translation notes in the margin areas of the papers, mulling the possibilities over in his mind until he locked onto the one that made the most sense. A couple of languages that were slurred together appeared to be two different dialects of Abenaki, and while the languages were basically the same, there were a few differences—enough to completely change the meaning of any given sentence, and while he could get most of the translation correct based on context, there were a few places where that wasn't really an option.

 

It was the challenge, wasn't it? That was the real reason he had accepted the task. It certainly had nothing at all to do with the woman, did it? What did he care if she'd looked entirely vulnerable—a completely unsettling expression on the woman-child he'd come to know when she was a student at the University of Maine. The light of panic that had illuminated her bright golden eyes had nothing to do with it, nor did the sense of resignation when he'd told her that there wasn't anyone else who could help her. No, it was the challenge, right? It'd been a little too long since he'd felt that surge of adrenaline . . .

 

`Sure, it is, Griffin.'

 

Deliberately ignoring the voice of his youkai blood, Griffin lumbered off toward the kitchen to fix a cup of raspberry and mint tea. His hand shook as he pulled the mud-brown earthenware mug from the cupboard. It'd been shaking since the night before. His joints were stiff, and he set the cup aside, lifting his hand and flexing his fingers with a wry grimace. The built-up scar tissue on his right hand made writing difficult, and he'd done so much of it the night before that it was only natural that he was suffering the effects brought on by the overexertion.

 

He carefully measured out two scoops of the dried tea mix, dumping them directly into the mug before pouring boiling water on top of the grounds. The chirping birds drew his attention, and he paused for a moment to glance out the window over the sink, his eyes clouded as he scowled into the brightness of the midday sky.

 

Adding a slow trickle of honey to the concoction in the mug, Griffin stirred the tea absently. As much as he wanted to go back to the translation, he knew better. His eyes still ached from staring at the printed out copy of the notes for hours on end. Better to take a break before he ended up with a migraine headache brought on by eye strain.

 

Pulling the spoon from the hot liquid and slowly running the edge of the utensil against the rim of the mug, Griffin took a moment to rinse it before carefully laying it on the saucer he used as a spoon rest beside the sink. Then he squeezed his eyes closed for a long moment, sighing softly as he considered and discarded the idea of taking some aspirin to ease the throbbing ache in his temples.

 

Grasping the mug's thick handle, he headed for the doorway that led to the basement.

 

`You know, this place looks more like a bear's den than the living room does,' his youkai commented.

 

Griffin grunted, balancing the tea as he slowly descended the cold stone steps. `That's not funny.'

 

`The truth rarely is.'

 

He grunted again, trying to ignore the observation. More of a cavern dug out of the earth than a real room of the house, the basement was lined with rough wood shelves against the far wall. Rough planking made up the floors, now faded gray with age, and when he'd first built the place, he'd only bothered to stack unfinished bricks up to line the walls. A long work table ran the length of the open stairway with a huge stone fireplace charred black with soot and ash where the plank floor was cut away revealing the hard packed earth underneath at the end. A threadbare, mud-brown sofa faced the hearth, and he set his mug on the stout end table, sparing a moment to turn on the lamp before slowly scanning the room for anything that might have been out of place. Nothing was. Nothing ever was. The shelves that held a menagerie of roughly carved wooden animals stood just as he left it; the pile of neatly stacked wood hadn't changed, either. The half-formed deer he'd worked on last was setting in the middle of the work bench, and he wandered over to retrieve the project before heading back toward the sofa once more.

 

There was something entirely soothing about carving the little statues. Over time he'd amassed quite a collection since he rarely gave them away. It wasn't that he was trying to hoard them; he just didn't really have anyone to give them to. He gave the children he taught one of them at Christmas time every year, but it hadn't made a real dent in the number of finished sculptures. They were all animals he'd seen through his lifetime, all of them in poses that he remembered. Occasionally, he carved intricate totem poles, and he'd made a lot of the furniture in the house, as well.

 

It kept him busy, and that was as good a reason as any to devote so much time to a hobby, in his opinion.

 

Besides, it also helped when he needed to clear his mind when he needed to gain a new perspective on something.

 

It gave him a fragile sense of peace, didn't it? It was something that was hard to come by for a man like him. After the darker days when he'd been so consumed by anger and hatred, he'd finally found a semblance of peace, and while he wasn't delusional enough to believe that the serenity that he'd managed to garner would last forever, he'd stopped looking over his shoulder every time he took a step forward, too. He loathed his very existence yet looked for the simple beauty in things, from the chattering squirrels early in the morning to the whisper of the wind rustling through the trees.

 

He owed a lot to them—everything he was, in fact. As close to family as he would ever have, they'd taught him so very much in the time long past. In the annals of his mind, he could still hear her laughter; he could still see the solemn light in his eyes. They had saved him physically, emotionally . . . they'd taught him that not everything was as he'd wanted to believe.

 

Wrapping his hand around the lump of wood, he carefully shaved away at it, taking special care not to cut too deeply around the deer's delicate legs.

 

It was cold when they'd found him. He wasn't sure how much time had passed. He could only recall the unsettling feeling of his cold-numbed body, could only recall disjointed days of wandering, of making his feet move him forward as pain wracked every part of him. He was dying, he supposed. The knowledge didn't hurt as much as it should have. Traveling through the terrain, searching for a good place to end his journey, he thought he had found it. Next to a small lake, he'd collapsed on his back, staring at the dried leaves carried on the bitter wind; at the vast sky above him that was mercifully free of billowing smoke. `It's a good place to die,' he thought. He might have even smiled as his weary eyes drifted closed. `Only hell awaits the damned . . .'

 

He hadn't thought he'd wake up again, so it was rather shocking when he did, eyes flashing open when the warmth of a dry hand touched his face, and he remembered wanting to stop them as they fashioned a stretcher out of tree branches lashed together by her unraveled scarf. He didn't want them to take him in. He'd wanted to die; that had been his wish, and though he'd tried to tell them, they hadn't understood, or maybe they'd thought that he was simply delusional. They'd saved him, and he . . .

 

He would never forget.

 

Attean Masta and his common-law wife, Maria . . .

 

She was a gentle soul—a human who had come to the New World with her parents as emigrants from Spain. At first, Griffin had believed that she, like Attean, was Indian. It wasn't until later that Griffin was told the story of how Attean—a deer-hanyou—had been shunned by his tribe, the proud Koasek—for taking a white woman as his mate after he'd struggled for years to gain acceptance because of his own mixed heritage. Though he was still considered a member of their society, he lived a distance away from the main concentration. He said it was safer that way, especially for Maria.

 

The first morning he'd opened his eyes to see the sun filtering through the cracks in the window shutters; it had taken him awhile to figure out where he was. He could discern the crackle of a healthy fire burning on the hearth, and he grimaced as he turned his head, absently taking in the humble but neat furnishings in the small dwelling.

 

She knelt by the fire carefully stirring something in a big black spider oven, holding back the edge of her shawl in one thin hand. Soft black hair shone in the warm light, and she was humming a low song under her breath as she worked. The smell of the cooking food made his stomach lurch unpleasantly. Under ordinary circumstances, he supposed he might have thought it smelled quite good, but the deep, angry gashes that traversed his body hurt too badly to even consider eating anything.

 

`H . . . human . . .' he thought dizzily, squeezing his eyes closed as he gathered the last of his strength before he tried to sit up. Body still wracked by agonizing pain, he gritted his teeth and shoved the coarse blankets aside.

 

Hearing Griffin moving around, Maria glanced over her shoulder only to drop the wooden paddle-like spoon she'd been using to stir the simmering stew as she stood up and hurried across the rough plank floor. She said something—her voice soft, gentle, despite the obvious censure in her tone—pushing him back with a firm but compassionate hand. He didn't understand the language she spoke, and it must have shown in his expression because she shook her head and smiled apologetically. “Hurt, yes?” she said, the use of minimal wording telling him plainly that English wasn't her native tongue. She had a thick accent—he'd later come to understand that it was Spanish—but her dark eyes were bright and friendly despite Griffin's obvious reluctance to let her touch him. “I clean . . .” She paused, as though she had to think about the word she wanted to use. “Injuries.”

 

He tried to push her hands away. “Leave me alone,” he rumbled, his throat dry, rasping. “I don't need your help.”

 

The woman sighed softly, carefully pulling the dressing covering his stomach away. Griffin couldn't stifle the groan that slipped from him when the material pulled on his rent flesh. The wounds had been seeping, bordering on infection, he supposed. She'd put some sort of plant paste on them to draw out the impurities, and as much as he wished it were otherwise, he could feel his body finally starting to heal.

 

“I said no,” Griffin growled, pushing her away with a sweep of his arm. Maria fell off the stool, landing on the floor with a heavy thump.

 

“So you really do want to die.”

 

He didn't turn at the sound of the intruder—Attean. He hadn't heard or even sensed the hanyou's intrusion. His senses were just too dull, he supposed.

 

Maria took her mate's hand, slowly getting to her feet. She murmured something to Attean before wrapping another shawl over her shoulders and grabbing the pail beside the door. Griffin heard the door close behind her, accompanied by the frigid blast of wind that punctuated her departure. Attean waited until she was gone before approaching the bed. Seeing Griffin struggling to sit up, he helped him only to stick a tin cup of water into Griffin's shaking hands. “I don't need your help,” Griffin muttered, anger simmering just below the surface; irritation at his inability to be afforded the basest of comforts, such as choosing his time and place to die.

 

“I thought as much when I saw you. As serious as your injuries are, they are not life-threatening for our kind.”

 

“I am not your kind,” Griffin lashed out before he could stop himself. “I am youkai—youkai. You're nothing but a hanyou—a half-breed.”

 

“I am hanyou,” he agreed, his solemn façade devoid of anger or hatred at the ruthlessness of Griffin's words. “So you despise humans,” he concluded with a sage nod.

 

“You've got it backwards,” Griffin allowed. “Humans despise me.”

 

The soft trickle of water sounded in Griffin's ears as Attean wrung out a cloth in a basin beside the bed. “A couple of youkai were here,” he said at length, carefully avoiding Griffin's direct gaze as he gently wiped the salve from Griffin's stomach. “Said they were looking for a bear-youkai.”

 

Griffin grunted, keeping his vision steadily trained on the ceiling. “Should have let them take me.”

 

“So they were looking for you?”

 

He grunted again.

 

“The infection was bad,” Attean went on neutrally as he reached over to retrieve an earthenware bowl from the rickety table beside the bed, sparing a moment to stir the contents—more of the salve, Griffin supposed. “You frightened my wife when she found you beside the lake. She thought you were dead . . .”

 

“I wanted to be dead,” Griffin admitted, scowling at the words that had slipped from him before he could stop them. Seconds later, the scowl shifted into a wince as the wound that split his left eyelid protested.

 

“If that's the case, you need to heal first. There's no honor in dying this way.”

 

“I abandoned what was left of my honor long ago,” Griffin said, unsure why he was telling this man—this hanyou—anything at all.

 

Attean's hand paused as he smoothed the greenish-brown paste onto Griffin's wounds. “Then you would shame your family.”

 

“I don't have any family,” he growled, unable to hide the bitter wash of emotion that seethed inside him at the blatant reminder.

 

Attean nodded slowly, setting the bowl aside and reaching for a clean cloth to cover Griffin's stomach and absorb the foul discharge released by the purging salve. “Then you must survive, yes? If you are the last of your clan, then it falls upon your shoulders to live on—to live for those who couldn't.”

 

The sculpture he'd been working on slipped out of Griffin's clumsy fingers, and he winced as the memory faded away. In those days, he'd been so ready to die. After everything he'd seen and done . . . He'd thought it was too much, that his hands were too dirty to contemplate a future, but as he'd grudgingly come to know Attean and Maria, as he'd slowly come to understand the understated gentleness that punctuated everything they did, he'd started to realize the truth in Attean's words: “Then you must survive, yes? If you are the last of your clan, then it falls upon your shoulders to live on—to live for those who couldn't.”

 

And there was a second reason; one he'd devoted his life to in the time since. He needed to make amends in his own way . . . to assuage the guilt he lived with every day the only way he knew how, and even if the blood on his hands never truly washed clean, it was no more than a being like him deserved.

 

`How long, Griffin?'

 

Slumping forward, resting his elbow on his knee, he let his forehead fall into his hand as he closed his eyes and sighed. `As long as it takes . . . as long as I live.'

 

`As long as you live . . .'

 

`. . . Yes.'

 

In his mind, he could hear the ghosts: the happy ring of a little girl's laughter . . . and the wrenching screams of one little boy.

 

 

~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~ =~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~

A/N:

 

Attean: Abenaki form of theFrenchname Etienne, meaning `crown'.

Koasek Tribe: one of the Abenaki Indian Tribes of New England, most notably, in the upper region of the Connecticut River area.

 

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Final Thought fromGriffin:

What a pain in the ass …

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Avouchment): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~