InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 7: Avouchment ❯ Caving In ( Chapter 15 )

~~Chapter 15~~

~Caving In~

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

Isabelle scraped the plate off into the dog's dish and spared a moment to rub Froofie's knobby head before heaving a sigh as she stood up and turned toward the sink once more. She'd eaten way too much—a definite disadvantage of the holidays and one that she never could quite resist. Though the turkey—her first attempt, ever—was a little dry, it wasn't horrible, and Griffin had actually seemed to enjoy the dinner despite his assertions to the contrary.

 

During the morning as she was readying the turkey and re-reading instructions, she'd felt a few pangs of regret for having blown her family off. Still the idea of spending the day with Griffin was nicer than she could credit, and in the end, she hadn't regretted her decision to stay with him. Even then, she had to be at the hospital at midnight for her shift, and she'd always hated the idea of eating then running, which was what she'd have had to do if she'd gone to the family gathering in Bevelle. At least this way she could spend the afternoon drowsing on the sofa, and that idea was becoming more and more appealing as the minutes ticked away.

 

Griffin shuffled into the kitchen with the half-empty bowl of chestnut dressing and the remnants of a pecan pie. The way he kept looking at the pie, she had to wonder if he weren't irritated that he couldn't eat more of it. Still, she restrained the urge to smile as she washed the dishes and set them in the sink of steaming rinse water. He stomped out of the kitchen again, and Isabelle shook her head. She'd told him that he didn't have to help, but he'd just grunted and started to clear the table.

 

When he lumbered back into the room, she couldn't help but laugh when he taped a note on the top of the plastic he'd used to cover the pie: `GRIFFIN', it said in very large, bold lettering. “So I can't have any of that?” she asked, batting her eyes as she peered over her shoulder at him.

 

“Stay out of my pie,” he grumbled as he stowed the rest of it in the refrigerator.

 

She laughed and blew a handful of bubbles at him in retaliation.

 

“Keep your bubbles to yourself, Jezebel,” he muttered, turning on his heel and stalking out of the kitchen once more.

 

He'd mentioned something about working on the translation of the actual research, but it seemed to be giving him a little more trouble than the journal had, probably because he was dealing with more technical jargon that probably didn't translate very well. Still he seemed to be doing much better than she'd thought he would—so well, in fact, that he was already a good twenty-five or thirty pages into the notes.

 

In fact, he'd been working on the translations when she'd shuffled out of her bedroom at four in the morning to put the turkey into the oven. He'd peered at her over the thick rim of his glasses with a strange sort of expression just before he asked her if she was lost. His curiosity had gotten the better of him, though, and he'd poked his head into the kitchen while she was trying to cram as much stuffing into the ass end of the turkey as she could.

 

She'd had every intention of going back to bed. In the end, though, she'd sat down on the sofa to read over some of Griffin's translation notes, and it struck her that he really was tired—almost as tired as she was—and yet he refused to go to bed, himself.

 

So she'd stayed up with him, unsure why she felt compelled to do so when he so obviously didn't care whether or not she did. She had a feeling that it wasn't that he wouldn't go to bed, but more than he couldn't. The hints had been there all along, hadn't they? How often had she seen him grimace as he stood up and walked stiffly across the floor—pacing back and forth as he gritted his teeth but didn't say a word? She'd spotted him coming back from his walks in the woods, leaning heavily on the smooth wood cane that she'd seen propped in the umbrella stand beside the back door, his face a little pale and drawn . . .

 

It had struck her, too, that she'd never, ever seen Griffin with anything other than a long sleeved shirt, even at the end of the summer, and she realized with a wince that if he had scars that deep on his hands and on his face, there was a good chance that he had them on the rest of his body, as well. `But . . . how could he have gotten them . . .?'

 

With a sigh, Isabelle let the water out of the sinks and wiped the counter with a damp sponge. All she wanted to do was help him, but Griffin just wasn't the kind to accept that help, let alone acknowledge that there might be a problem, to start with. Not for the first time, she wished that there was a way for her to find out some of those things about him. She knew well enough that he was much too stubborn to let go of any of his secrets, and she doubted that there was another soul who could help her shed light on the situation.

 

Her grandmother had told her stories before; stories of the miko named Kikyou who had been her grandfather's first love. She'd died in what she'd thought was an act of the lowest sort of treachery when Naraku had disguised himself as InuYasha and had cut her down on the very morning that they were to meet so that InuYasha could use the Shikon no Tama to become full human in order to be with Kikyou. The anger and the guilt that InuYasha had carried around for so very long after he'd been revived from Goshinboku had nearly been his undoing. Was Griffin carrying around a weight like that? Somehow, Isabelle knew that whatever it was weighing on his heart, he certainly wasn't going to give it up without a fight.

 

Then, too, was Grandpa Cain, who had blamed himself for his first wife's death. She'd died giving birth to Isabelle's mother, and Cain had lived for years with the unstated desire to die for his perceived sins. He'd told her once that all it had taken was the love of a very good woman—the woman who Isabelle called `grandma' now. She'd made him understand that no one had ever blamed him other than himself. Gin had made Cain realize that he couldn't change the past by hurting the one person who had relied on him for years: Isabelle's mother, Bellaniece.

 

To her knowledge, though, Griffin didn't have any family; hadn't ever had any real family, and he certainly hadn't had a mate because even though Cain had lived through losing his first wife, he had also admitted, albeit sadly, that Isabelle Kroft Zelig never had been the recognized mate of his youkai blood. He'd lost his parents early on, and he'd never been one to talk about that. In that sense, Cain was a lot like Griffin, she supposed. Both preferred to leave the past lie instead of stirring it up with a sharpened stick.

 

But the mystery of Griffin wasn't nearly as daunting to her as she supposed that it should have been. Even if he could be stubborn, she could, too, and she'd already set her mind to helping him, regardless of whether or not he wanted it. He'd thank her for it one day. She was positive he would.

 

The fleeting memory of being held in his arms, of staring into his face and seeing the raw emotion that he tried so hard to hide from her . . . That was enough to bolster her resolve. He knew as well as she did that they really were meant to be together. `All he has to do is admit it to himself,' she thought as a small smile turned up the corners of her lips. `If he can do that, I'll do the rest . . .'

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

The chair slid back with a jarring scrape as Griffin pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. He'd sat at the desk far longer than he should have, unsure why he felt the strange sense of urgency whenever he looked at or thought about the research.

 

Maybe it was the unsettling sense of his impending doom that had set in shortly after the incident the other night. Maybe it was the foreign undercurrent that had been thick in the atmosphere whenever Isabelle was in the same room as he was. He couldn't help but think that he was living on borrowed time, one way or the other, and that was likely the reason that he felt such a need to hurry.

 

In any case it was late. The clock had struck two long ago. Even as he thought about that, the clock chimed the hour, and he rubbed his neck, letting his head fall back as he closed his eyes and sighed. He was bone-weary, and yet he was loath to lie down, too. Even if he managed to fall asleep, he couldn't help the nagging worry that the nightmares would come again. They were just too much, weren't they? The dreams . . . the smoke . . . the blood . . .

 

The house felt so empty. He'd noticed that happening more frequently whenever Isabelle went to work. As though she were the singular bright spot in his existence, he couldn't help the nagging suspicion that he was growing just a little too dependent on her presence.

 

The trill of the telephone cut through the brooding silence that had fallen over the house, and he jumped. He'd almost forgotten what the sound was, and it took him a moment to place it. Scowl darkening as he strode over to grab it, the first thought that crossed his mind was that Isabelle was in trouble. Why he thought it, he wasn't certain. He simply wasn't used to receiving phone calls, especially ones in the middle of the night. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good, he reasoned, and the only thing that could possibly be important enough to disturb someone at this hour was something bad; he just knew it. By the time he managed to push the `talk' button, his hands were shaking so badly that he nearly dropped the receiver. “Isabelle?” he blurted.

 

“Isabelle? No . . . Sorry for calling so late,” Attean Masta's voice came over the line. “Didn't figure you'd be sleeping, though. You have a moment or you are expecting a call from this . . . Isabelle?”

 

Tamping down the late irritation that flared in him, Griffin heaved a sigh, rubbing his face with his still trembling fingers. “Attean . . . wh—Never mind that. Why are you making phone calls in the middle of the night?”

 

“Did you find out anything else about Eaton Fellows?” Attean asked without preamble, ignoring Griffin's blustering with a question of his own.

 

Griffin rubbed his temple. “Just what I told you,” he mumbled. “Did you?”

 

Attean sighed. “Not so much, no,” he allowed. “I'm starting to think that it was just an alias he used at the time.”

 

“I don't know,” Griffin asserted. “The way they talked about him made him sound concrete enough.”

 

“I see . . . Tell me, why is this man so important to you?”

 

“He just is.”

 

“Yes, you said he posed a potential threat to someone close to you?”

 

“I didn't,” Griffin scoffed, cheeks pinking at the implication of Attean's words.

 

“Close enough,” Attean said. “It would help if I had an idea of what sort of threat he posed, wouldn't you say?”

 

Griffin sighed and shook his head, unsure whether he really ought to be talking to Attean about any of this, in the first place, but seeing no other options. “There's reason to believe that he had something to do with a murder—maybe two of them—around that time . . . twenty-five years ago, give or take. Two medical researchers: one that I'm positive Fellowes killed; the other just seems to have vanished shortly afterward.”

 

“Sounds intriguing.”

 

“Not so much.”

 

Attean chuckled. “Some things never change, do they?”

 

“Maybe not.”

 

He could hear the creak of an office chair and figured that Attean was sitting back, crossing his ankles on the top of the desk. It was a pose that Griffin had seen often enough over the years . . . “Kennedy Carradine and his brother, Carl.”

 

“Medical researchers, you say.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Zelig did nothing in this case?”

 

Griffin grunted, shuffling toward the kitchen to forage for a snack. “No, but I don't think he knew about it, in the first place.”

 

“Hmm . . . That gives me a little bit more to go on, though I have to say, you certainly know how to pick your favors, don't you?”

 

“Yeah, sure . . .”

 

“Can I ask you? Who is it you're trying to protect, Griffin?”

 

Attean's question caught Griffin off-guard. He wasn't sure why it was so. After all, it was the logical thing to ask, and yet he couldn't help the gut-wrenching feeling that he'd be giving away far too much of himself to answer, even if Attean had never judged him. “It's not like that,” he mumbled as he opened a cupboard and glowered at the ceramic Winnie the Pooh honey pot that Isabelle had bought a few days ago. The image of her smiling face flashed through his mind, and Griffin blinked quickly to dispel the image.

 

“It is this `Isabelle', isn't it?”

 

Sometimes Griffin really had to wonder if Attean weren't part bloodhound. He was too damn good at putting two and two together—something that made him a fine private investigator . . . something that had always irritated the hell out of Griffin . . . “It's not what you think,” he muttered defensively. “I'm just translating the research; that's all.”

 

“The research?” Attean echoed. “What research?”

 

Griffin grimaced, raking his hand through his hair as he berated himself for the thoughtless slip. “Nothing. Nothing important. Just something that I'm helping with.”

 

“And this Isabelle . . . she asked you to translate something . . . this research . . .?”

 

“Not important,” Griffin maintained. “I just need to know anything you can find out about Eaton Fellowes, all right?”

 

“Of course,” Attean allowed though he sounded like he was still thinking about Griffin's slip. “I'll see what else I can come up with.”

 

Griffin grunted in acknowledgement and clicked off the telephone.

 

It wasn't the first time that Attean had figured things out on his own; things that Griffin wanted to keep to himself. He'd done it before, a long time ago, and while Griffin had never actually confirmed Attean's suspicions, he really didn't have to.

 

But Attean Masta only knew part of the story. There really wasn't a single soul who knew all of it; just Griffin, and that's how it should be. What could anyone say after all? Either they would condemn him on the spot or they would try to understand, and in Griffin's estimation, that possibility was infinitely worse. He'd given up trying to make excuses long ago because they were simply that: excuses, and it didn't matter how many of those he made, there really was no way he could ever ask for forgiveness for the things he had done.

 

Gazing out the window over the sink at the vast blackness of the night outside, Griffin sighed. In the distance, he could hear the plaintive moan of a ship's foghorn as a thin beacon of light split the dark in a cadence. The beam seemed like a ray of hope, as corny as the idea sounded in his own head. Still that's what it was, wasn't it? A light to guide the weary to rest . . .

 

His expression darkened as his thoughts shifted to Attean's phone call. While he'd been irritated enough at the time, he had to wonder just how much Attean had discerned that he would wait until such a late hour to get a hold of him. It was quite possible that he'd realized that Griffin might not be free to talk at other times. Then again, Attean wasn't exactly known for keeping normal hours, either, so he could have just called on a whim since he'd known that Griffin rarely slept, and never for very long stretches of time.

 

But if Attean wasn't able to trace Eaton Fellowes, Griffin wasn't sure that anyone could. Attean had an innate ability to ferret out information that others might overlook or just plain ignore, and he'd made solid connections over the years—connections that had come in handy time and again. After all, it was Attean's connections that made it possible for Griffin to have the life that he lived now. In the age where artificial intelligence was far too easy to come by, in a world where the powers-that-be recognized you only by the number on your social security card, it was a daunting task to bury a past best left forgotten. As one woman had so blithely put it when Griffin was looking into registering for college years ago, “If you don't have a social security number, you just plain don't exist!” She'd been joking, of course, and yet there was a very real truth behind her words.

 

That was all water under the bridge, so far as Griffin was concerned. The point was that Attean was damn near a genius when it came to things of the subversive nature, and if the genius couldn't find the mouse in the maze, then who else could?

 

`Relax, Griffin . . . you've said it yourself. Attean is the best. He won't let you down. He never has before—at least the few times you've humbled yourself to ask for his help, that is.'

 

The words seemed reassuring enough. Still the feeling that he was doing little more than playing a dangerous game of hide and seek bothered him so much more than he ever wanted to let on. Call it intuition or just plain distrust, but for reasons that he didn't quite grasp, he felt like there was something or someone lurking out there just beyond the range of the shadows; an unseen force that had yet to reveal any of the cards in his hand . . .

 

His expression hardened as he continued to stare out the window; eyes glowing with a steely resolve as he clenched his hands into tight fists. If the ultimate target was the research, then Isabelle would be little more than an obstacle to take out of play, and Griffin . . . well, he'd be damned before he'd allow anyone to hurt her. He'd known it for a long time, but it was clearer to him now than it ever had been before. He was expendable, wasn't he? Isabelle . . .

 

She was not.

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“No.”

 

Isabelle rolled her eyes and tugged Griffin's hand closer as she worked the cream into his scars despite his efforts to pull away. “Oh, come on, Dr. G! When's the last time you got out of the house?”

 

Peering over at her, a foreboding darkness writ in his eyes, he slowly shook his head. “I get out of the house all the time, fat ass. The answer is `no'. Get used to it.”

 

Clucking her tongue, she shook her head and finally let go of his hand. “I'll buy you a bag of honey roasted pecans?” she offered.

 

“You'd do that anyway,” he asserted, scowl deepening into what might have been meant as a menacing expression. Too bad Isabelle knew that the man was all bluster . . .

 

“Oh, come on! If you make me go alone, you'll be sorry.”

 

His snort was loud and decisive. “As if I'm not sorry on a regular basis.”

 

Isabelle tried another tactic since the current one was obviously not working. “All right, fine. You'll just have to live with the decorations I pick out then, won't you?”

 

Leveling a menacing look at her that she summarily ignored, Griffin shook his head and sighed. “I've told you, haven't I? I don't decorate for Christmas. Ever.”

 

“Yeah, well, I do, and since you decided that I'm going to live here for the duration, then you're going to this year, like it or not.”

 

“It's my house,” he pointed out, quirking an eyebrow as he pinned her with a rather bored stare.

 

“I know . . .”

 

He frowned at the fleeting glimpse of deep thought that flitted over Isabelle's features. “What?” he asked slowly, grudgingly.

 

“You teach a Sunday school, right?”

 

He snorted. Isabelle normally slept in on rare Sunday when she wasn't working, so she'd never actually seen the children he taught but she knew that he did. He'd said as much a few weeks ago when she'd held up a little pink mitten with a quizzical glance at the big guy.

 

“So?”

 

“So? Don't your children ask why you never have a Christmas tree?”

 

He snorted again, opting to ignore the question as he reached for the research notes only to be thwarted when Isabelle planted her hand dead center on the binder.

 

“Christmas is for children, isn't it?” she went on, taken by this new inspiration. “Since you spend so much time with children and even invite them into your home, you should have a Christmas tree, don't you think? Come on, Griffin . . . if you really love the children . . .”

 

He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest as he shot her an `end-of-subject' glower. “There is no way on earth that you're ever going to convince me to willingly go into a department store on the day after Thanksgiving,” he reiterated. “That would just be stupid.”

 

“Oh, it'll be fun!” she assured him, waving her hand in a complete dismissal of Griffin's assertions.

 

“You seriously need to re-evaluate your idea of `fun',” he grumbled.

 

She wrinkled her nose, telegraphing him her most winning of smiles. “We can make an afternoon of it: shopping . . . finding the perfect tree . . . decorating it tonight after you've built a roaring fire . . .”

 

He actually looked like he might be considering it. Well, that was probably pushing it. At least he didn't look like he was going to snap her head off . . .

 

“Hear me out, okay?” she rushed on when he started to shake his head. “We can buy more `natural-looking' decorations, if you want, and I found a new recipe for molasses-pecan cookies that I'd be willing to test out . . . we can make cocoa and decorate the tree . . . of course, you'd have to put the angel on top since you're so much taller than me, and face it: I just might bust another chair if you put up a fuss over that . . .”

 

“I know what you're trying to do,” he grumbled, narrowing his eyes on her, “and it's not working.”

 

“. . . Not at all?”

 

“No.”

 

She heaved a sigh and clasped her hands together, twirling around in a circle before turning an imploring gaze on him. “Please, Griffin? Please?”

 

He blinked and snorted as she batted her eyelashes at him. “Will it shut you up?” he finally demanded, rolling his eyes heavenward as though she were sorely trying what was left of his patience.

 

She nodded, lips drawing back as the flash of her smile rewarded him.

 

He narrowed his eyes. “Somehow I highly doubt that.”

 

“Don't be such a pooh!” she insisted then giggled as Griffin's face reddened. “A pooh . . . did you get it?”

 

He rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, I got it,” he growled, irritated that he simply couldn't keep the redness out of his features. “Really not funny . . .”

 

“First we'll need to stop by the store and buy lights and ornaments . . .” she mused, turning her back on him as she started ticking off her list on her fingers. “Lots of lights and lots of ornaments . . . How many do you suppose we'll need for outside?”

 

“None,” Griffin grumbled, shaking his head in complete disgust.

 

“Now, now, there has to be lights outside . . . and maybe one of those perfectly awful inflatable Santas . . . tacky, of course, but the children love them . . .”

 

“No tacky Santa,” he stated.

 

She led the way into the foyer, leaning on the stand near the door as she slipped on her shoes. “And . . . Oh! Those plastic candy canes that light up! Those are really bad, too—almost as bad as the Santa, but I don't know . . . I rather like them for some reason . . .”

 

“Because you're mental, and no, no plastic anything in my yard.”

 

“How much do you think it'd cost to get one of those PA systems? Then we could play Christmas carols for the whole neighborhood.”

 

He paused with his arm stuck halfway into the sleeve of his oversized coat. “And have them over here beating on my door because they want to kill me . . . absolutely not.”

 

“Do you think an illuminated nativity would be too much?”

 

Griffin snorted. “Yes.”

 

“Yeah, you're right . . . what about those sleighs with the reindeer that you put on the roof?”

 

“I am not getting on the roof for a stupid sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

 

She pulled her hood up and stopped to smile at him. “You know the song?” she teased. “Will you sing it to me?”

 

“Just get moving before I change my mind,” he grumped, skin pinking up yet again in light of her incessant chatter.

 

Isabelle's laughter echoed in the house long after he'd pulled the door closed behind them.

 

 

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A/N:

Gotta tell ya … when you're stuffing the bird at four in the morning while everyone else is sleeping, you're absolutely thinking in terms of the bird's ass end …

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Final Thought fromIsabelle:

I love Christmas!

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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 InuYashaor 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~