InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 7: Avouchment ❯ Tears in Heaven ( Chapter 22 )

~~Chapter 22~~

~Tears in Heaven~

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

`Something's bothering her. Don't make it worse, Griffin . . .'

 

He grunted at the quiet words of admonition from his youkai voice as he glanced back at the clock and shifted in the chair to wait. `Yeah, well, if she thinks that she's going to get away with her thoughtlessness—of her blatant disregard for the promise that she made—then she's sadly mistaken.'

 

`All I'm saying is that she was really upset, in case you didn't notice . . . do you really think that making her feel worse is a good idea?'

 

`When you make a promise, you abide by the consequences,' he argued. `No one twisted her arm. The least she can do is apologize for being completely thoughtless—again.'

 

His youkai sighed, figuring that there really was no reasoning with him. After spending nearly four hours in a classroom on the campus of the University of Maine giving a lecture in one class and then a test on ancient Aztec writing in another, he was pretty much at the end of his patience, and he knew—just knew—that had Isabelle not come home when she had, he probably would have called his classes off for the day. As it was, he figured that he should have done that, anyway. Good thing that the class didn't meet again for another week since he was still grading the first one of them and had been trying to do so for nearly two hours while waiting for Isabelle to walk through the door again.

 

She was a hypocrite, wasn't she, constantly telling him that he needed to get things off his chest when she was no better about doing the same thing . . .?

 

Griffin snorted, drawing Charlie's attention as the animal lifted his chin off his paws and stared rather sadly at him. “And don't you dare take her side,” he admonished, narrowing his eyes on the dog.

 

Charlie wagged his tail and uttered a soft little whine before dropping his nose between his paws and heaving a sigh as his eyes drifted closed again.

 

“You, either,” he grumbled as the kitten rubbed against his ankle. The rotten little beast broke into a loud, if not rusty sounding, purr.

 

He sensed Isabelle's youki the moment she opened the door, his scowl darkening at the forlorn sense that greeted him. It was entirely different from the aura she normally surrounded herself with, and for reasons he didn't want to think about, the sadness bothered him.

 

But he waited until she stepped into the living room, a thin little half-smile twitching on her lips—a wooden sort of expression that didn't even come close to lighting her eyes, and it struck him again that when Isabelle smiled—truly smiled—her entire being smiled, too. If she really thought she was fooling anyone, she was sadly mistaken . . .

 

Her smile faltered when she met Griffin's gaze, and she shuffled her feet almost nervously, as her eyes skittered away, as she stared at her hands clasped in front of her like a little girl who had ripped her Easter dress . . . “I'm . . . I'm sorry about this morning—and last night,” she whispered in a voice so soft that he had to strain to hear it. “I should have called . . . but I . . .” Trailing off, she shook her head and swallowed hard. “I'm sorry . . .”

 

The meekness of her apology only served to further Griffin's rising irritation. “Where the hell were you?” he growled, crossing his arms over his chest and leveling a no-nonsense glower on her.

 

“There was an emergency,” she whispered. “I'm sorry, but I—Excuse me.”

 

She barely got that out before she dashed out of the living room. Griffin blinked, his anger not even close to being satiated, when she quietly closed her bedroom door. He wanted to make her understand, didn't he? Needed to make sure that she knew exactly how worried he'd been when she didn't come home, when she didn't have the decency to call . . .

 

Dropping into the chair once more, Griffin heaved a sigh and shook his head. `Irrational woman,' he thought as he snatched up the red ink pen he'd been using to grade the tests. `Doesn't have a whit of sense to her and doesn't ever think about anyone else . . .'

 

Which wasn't true at all, and he knew it. Too bad his mood was too black to listen to reason at the moment . . . `The next time she does anything even remotely close to this, I swear to God I'll—'

 

`Griffin?' his youkai blood interrupted.

 

`—turn her over my knee or—'

 

`Griffin . . .'

 

`—beat some sense into her . . . That's the trouble with women like her. She's never—'

 

`Griffin!'

 

`—been taught that there are consequences, so she just doesn't think, and then—'

 

`Hey, Griffin!'

 

Sitting up straight, Griffin shook his head, his tirade cut short. `What?'

 

His youkai heaved a longsuffering sigh. `Grumble about that later, will you? Right now you've got bigger fish to fry.'

 

`What are you babbling about?' he demanded, dangerously close to losing his patience with his youkai, too.

 

`Can't you tell?'

 

`Tell what?'

 

`Pay attention, you moron . . . I think . . . I think she's . . . crying . . .'

 

That stopped him short, and he blinked in surprise, dropping the pen and leaning back in the chair as his head swiveled around to stare at the empty hallway. Narrowing his gaze, he cocked his head to the side and listened. There wasn't a sound other than the soft ticking of the clock on the mantle. `Don't be ridiculous! Isabelle doesn't . . .' he began only to trail off when the muffled scent of something salty tingled in his nostrils. The smell reminded him of the warm summer breeze blowing off the ocean, but they were too far inland for that to be the case, and even if it were possible, it was winter, which meant . . .

 

`They're tears, Griffin; tears . . . and it's been awhile since you've smelled anything like that . . . but she's hurting, and she's sad, and maybe . . .'

 

Rising slowly to his feet, Griffin didn't think as he headed down the hallway. Drawn nearer, nearer, he didn't question the unnamed emotion that gave rise to the surge of panic that swept through him. He wanted to make her stop, didn't he? But every time he reached for the door handle, he hesitated. If he wasn't certain that she was crying before, he was now. Her sadness contained an abrasive quality, chafing his youki; chafing his soul . . .

 

Standing outside her door for what seemed like forever but was likely only minutes, Griffin winced and turned away, grinding his teeth together as he forced his feet to move, to carry him away from Isabelle . . .

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

Kichiro didn't glance up from the pile of papers littering his desk as Ryomaru strode into the room, bringing with him the tingle of cold air with the underlying stale smell of the crowded city. Wrinkling his nose as a whiff of formaldehyde infiltrated his senses, Kichiro rubbed his nose then adjusted his glasses before dropping the police report onto the nondescript pile and turning his attention to his twin.

 

“Don't take this the wrong way, Ryo, but you fucking stink,” Kichiro remarked rather mildly.

 

Ryomaru snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Wouldn't know why . . . just spent the last three hours at the morgue,” he shot back. “If you think I stink, you shoulda sat in there with old man Ain't-Got-A-Sense-Of-Humor . . .”

 

“Ah, Kenichi-san was working, I take it.”

 

Ryomaru nodded. “Yep . . .”

 

“The morgue, you say?” Kichiro mused, sitting back and scowling at his brother.

 

“Yeah, the morgue,” Ryomaru reiterated, digging the missing notebook out of his leather jacket and tossing it onto the desk. “Had to play nice to get that, too . . . hard-ass bastard . . .” He made a face and wiped his hands on his jeans before pinning Kichiro with a fulminating glower. “You know where they fucking stick that preservative shit?” he demanded.

 

Since Kichiro had spent time paying attention in medical school, he did know, but in an effort to appease his sibling, he just shrugged. “Did that bother you?”

 

“Keh!” Ryomaru snorted indelicately. “Not exactly. Then again, I reckon there are some things in this world I'm better off not knowing.”

 

Kichiro chuckled. “Just make sure you die an honorable death, and you won't have to worry about having formaldehyde injected into your post-mortem body.”

 

Ryomaru grinned, perching himself on the far corner of Kichiro's desk. “Now, see? That's what I'm talking about! Don't leave nothin' for the scavengers; that's what I say.”

 

“You're entirely screwed in the head,” Kichiro remarked but grinned. “How'd you get this? Wasn't it confiscated for evidence?”

 

“What evidence?” Ryomaru scoffed. “The pup's dead—and he was just a pup. So doped up on meth-meth-method—” he said, snapping his fingers as he struggled to find the word he wanted.

 

“Methadone?” Kichiro supplied with a quirked eyebrow.

 

“Yeah, that . . . stole it from your stash, probably—Oi, why the fuck do you have something like that in your medicine cabinet, anyway?”

 

Rolling his eyes, Kichiro pushed away from the desk and stuffed his hands into his pockets, pacing the length of his study. “It wasn't in my medicine cabinet, you baka,” he grumbled, pausing by the windows that looked out over the back yard where Belle and Samantha, their youngest daughter, were busy building a snowman in the six inches of accumulation they'd gotten overnight—snow that was already melting and would likely be gone by nightfall. “I just kept some on hand in the lab, was all. You never know when you'll need something, and that was the most secure location—or so I thought.” Heaving a sigh, he shook his head but didn't look back at his brother. “Dead, huh?”

 

“Yep, dead. Fell off the overpass in front of a delivery truck. If the fall didn't kill him . . .”

 

Kichiro winced.

 

“Anyway,” Ryomaru went on, ignoring the obvious disdain in Kichiro's braced stance, “he had everything there with him in this cheap black canvas bag. Took a bit of convincing, but Dull-As-Dishwater-sensei finally decided that the other shit in the bag was enough evidence that the lack of the notebook wouldn't be remarkable—I assume you didn't bother reporting that as stolen?”

 

“No, I didn't,” Kichiro admitted. “Thanks.”

 

“Not a problem,” Ryomaru said moments before a wide yawn precluded speech.

 

Kichiro rolled his eyes but finally grinned. “Get out of here, will you? You're stinking up my house.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ryomaru said, pushing himself to his feet and ambling toward the door. “If you don't like it, then feel free to call someone else next time your panties are all bunched up.”

 

Kichiro laughed and nodded, waving over his shoulder as he reached for the handle of the glass doors. Belle spotted him as he stepped outside, her smile bright and instantaneous, and she leaned in to whisper something to Sami before the two of them dashed over to his side . . .

 

`Funny,' he thought as he wrapped his arms around his two girls and let them both kiss his cheeks. `Things always look so much different in the bright light of day . . .'

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“But you're her doctor, and you told her that everything was fine . . . I don't understand . . . How could this have happened?”

 

Biting her lip as she slowly nodded, unable to do much more as the shock of the news wore off, Isabelle couldn't do more than remain quiet and try to answer Kevin McKinley stared at her, his gaze full of questions, of confusion. She had brought him in here just after he'd arrived. Though she didn't delude herself into trying to believe that he would take the news well, she owed it to his wife to try to make him understand before he went in to see her. “I'm so sorry, Mr. McKinley . . . when she came in, everything did look fine . . .”

 

Standing up so quickly that the chair he'd almost collapsed into skidded across the floor only to smash into the white cabinets lining the wall of the small examination room, he shot her a murderous glower, raking his hands through his light brown hair as he paced across the floor and back again. “She believed you! You told her . . . you said she was okay! You said—”

 

“She seemed okay,” Isabelle said quietly, stinging from the anger that was fast replacing the shock even as she reminded herself that the man had every right to be upset. “Everything seemed routine, and the urinalysis was fine.”

 

“Fine, my ass!” he bellowed, eyes flashing, the tendons in his throat standing out. “You should have done more tests, damn it! You should have figured it out! You . . . you . . . damn you! You call yourself a doctor? Because of your carelessness, you . . . you killed my daughter! You're a murderer! A murderer! I'll have your license, you bitch! See if I don't!”

 

Wincing at the hostility in his tone, at the cold vindictiveness in his words, Isabelle blinked hard to keep from tearing up. The things he was saying were the same things she'd been telling herself over and over since early this morning when Kristen McKinley had walked into the office; since the moment when she'd realized that something was desperately wrong. The once active baby had stopped moving a couple days before, Kristen had said, and she'd been suffering some pains—just twinges, she'd maintained, and a trace amount of bleeding. She hadn't wanted to seem like a mother hen, she'd said. She didn't want to run to the doctor constantly only to be told that everything was okay . . . but the real signal that there was a problem came when Isabelle hadn't been able to find the baby's heartbeat. She hadn't wanted to be one of those mothers that called or came in for every tiny thing, Kristen had maintained, and because of that . . .

 

An emergency ultrasound along with some accompanying blood-work had confirmed Isabelle's worst fear: the placenta had torn—small enough that it hadn't been remarkable during Kristen's last visit after her fall. Somehow the rupture had grown larger, causing massive bleeding in the uterus and basically poisoning the infant in-utero, and because of the lack of treatment . . .

 

And she'd tried to find a way to forestall the delivery—to at least put it off until Kristen's husband got back from his business trip. She couldn't do it, though. Kristen's coloring was paler than normal, and her heartbeat was fast and labored. If they waited too long, the toxins could seep into Kristen's tissues, putting her life in danger, as well. To exacerbate it all was the placement of the infant. She'd already descended low enough that a cesarean delivery wasn't possible without causing more harm to the infant's body—something that Isabelle simply could not consider; not after everything else . . . It was the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, explaining the situation to the mother-to-be. Kristen had looked completely bewildered, as though she couldn't quite grasp the meaning behind it all. She didn't even cry when Isabelle had told her that it was too late to save the baby . . .

 

In fact, Kristen's sobs hadn't come until she was holding the unmoving infant, and then they'd come with a vengeance. They still echoed in Isabelle's ears as she made her way to the waiting room where the receptionist had asked Kevin McKinley to wait. She'd left the woman holding the cold body of her infant daughter when the nurse had whispered in her ear that the father had arrived . . .

 

And it was hard to try to explain a thing when she already blamed herself. If she'd just ordered more tests run . . . if she'd made Kristen come in sooner or even had her check into the hospital for observation . . . if only . . . and maybe they'd be at home with their newborn instead of sitting in a desolately clean room as far away from the hospital's maternity ward as they could be . . . It was the only thing Isabelle could do for them in the end, to have Kristen put in a room where the cries of other people's infants could be heard; where infants in portable bassinettes were wheeled to their mothers' rooms . . . Isabelle couldn't ask Kristen to endure that . . .

 

“You killed my daughter! You killed my daughter! Murderer! Murderer . . .”

 

Slapping her hands over her ears, Isabelle squeezed her eyes closed despite the tears that streamed down her cheeks unchecked, wishing that the sound—the hateful sound—of Kevin McKinley's voice would fade away yet unwilling to let it go. She'd failed him, failed Kristen, but worst of all, she'd failed Baby Girl McKinley, the infant who never got a chance to open her eyes . . .

 

She didn't hear the soft tap on the door or the whispering click as the knob turned. She didn't sense Griffin's youki as he slipped into the room. So lost in her own misery and hellish contemplation, she didn't realize that he was there standing beside her bed until he cleared his throat.

 

Hiccupping as she struggled to stop crying, she swatted the tears off her cheeks and shook her head, fighting for a semblance of control over her emotions that she simply didn't have.

 

“Wh-why are you leaking?” Griffin grumbled though not unkindly.

 

She sniffled miserably, burying her face in the cradle of her raised knees, embarrassed that she couldn't seem to staunch the flow of tears and mortified that Griffin knew it. “I-I'm okay,” she lied, her voice shaky, muffled by her legs.

 

He grunted in response. “You'll go to hell for lying,” he remarked, gingerly sitting on the side of the bed. “I, uh, brought you some tea . . .”

 

She couldn't even summon the will to answer. His presence, the unvoiced concern in his youki, only served to make her feel that much worse when she knew deep down that she didn't deserve to accept the comfort that he offered her. The McKinleys wouldn't be able to find such a thing, would they, and she . . . she couldn't accept such a thing, either.

 

He shoved the tea into her hands with a decisive grunt. “Drink that before you get all dehydrated,” he grumbled.

 

It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she just didn't feel up to trying to argue with Griffin, either. Choking down a few sips of tea, she noted in her distraction that he'd even added honey to the brew—something he'd never let her have before. “Thank you,” she murmured half-heartedly, and to her absolute horror, her vision clouded with tears once more.

 

“You do that all day while you were working?” Griffin mumbled, shifting uncomfortably as he waved a hand at the spectacle she was making.

 

Isabelle choked back another round of tears, forcing herself to down the rest of the tea though she just couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye as he reached out and gently took the empty mug from her, setting it aside on the nightstand. “No,” she whispered, drawing a ragged breath as she swatted at her damp cheeks. “No, I . . . well, I drove there . . . but I . . . I didn't go in . . . I couldn't, and . . . and . . .”

 

“So what did you do then?” he asked, his voice a little gruffer than normal, or maybe it was just her imagination. She finally dared a glance at him. He was scowling down at his hands though she had a vague idea that the scowl, itself, wasn't exactly directed at her . . .

 

Heaving a sigh, Isabelle grimaced, her eyes still burning with the effort to stave back her tears. “I just . . . drove,” she said quietly, clearing her throat and shaking her head. “I drove down to the coast . . .”

 

“A little cold to go wading, wasn't it?” he intoned. It seemed to her that he was being more careful than usual in choosing his words. The thoughtful gesture brought more tears to her eyes, but she stubbornly blinked those away, too.

 

“I didn't go wading,” she said. “I didn't really know what I was doing . . . I just . . . ended up there, I guess . . .”

 

He digested that in silence as she sniffled and tried not to hear Kevin McKinley's words echoing through her head: You killed my daughter! You killed my daughter . . .” Smashing her fist against her lips, it was all she could do to stop herself from screaming . . .

 

“You going to tell me why you wanted to run away?”

 

His question startled her, and she recoiled as though he had physically struck her. “I-I wasn't running away,” she protested weakly.

 

“What else would you call it?” he countered.

 

It occurred to her that he wasn't actually being unkind. His words were abrupt, but his demeanor and his tone were not. “Maybe I was,” she admitted softly. “I just couldn't . . .”

 

“So you just . . . drove?”

 

She nodded rather vaguely, dragging in a ragged breath that she immediately released in a heartfelt sigh: a weary sound—a broken sound. “It seemed . . . wrong . . . The world keeps going without any sort of acknowledgement . . . It was so surreal. I couldn't do it . . . I don't have the right . . .”

 

Griffin grunted, obviously confused by her clumsy way of trying to explain as he fumbled in the breast pocket of his gray and black flannel shirt. “Why don't you start at the beginning before you flood me out of house and home?”

 

“At the beginning . . .?” she repeated, rubbing her temple and taking the handkerchief he rather abruptly shoved under her nose. Dabbing her eyes, she frowned at the bit of crisp white linen. “I . . . I'm not sure where that is . . .”

 

“Then what's the gist of it?” he asked instead.

 

She winced. “I . . . I killed . . . their baby . . .” she whispered.

 

Griffin's back stiffened at that revelation, but he didn't turn to look at her. Another wave of guilt nearly overwhelmed her, and she squeezed her eyes closed, clutching her stomach and pitching forward against her raised knees. “Somehow I doubt that,” he muttered, shaking his head and heaving a sigh as a hint of something foreign crept into his tone—something warm and all the more poignant, hidden behind the rumble of his voice. “Just give me the facts, girly.”

 

“I did,” she muttered, her voice rasping, harsh, almost screechy as she fought to control her emotions. The truth hurt, and while she might be able to make excuses, they wouldn't do a damn thing but assuage her conscience in the end . . .

 

“So you think you killed someone's baby,” he reiterated in a matter-of-fact rumble that made Isabelle grimace as a soft little whine that was wrenched from her. “Did you mean to?”

 

“Of course not!” she snapped, righteous indignation flaring at what she considered a ridiculous question.

 

Griffin nodded, turning his head just enough to peer over his shoulder at her. “Then you didn't kill anyone.”

 

She sat up, letting her head fall back as a few errant tears squeezed through the seam of her closed eyelids, sliding down her temples into her hair. “I'm a doctor,” she retorted, the angry tone of her voice breaking, giving way to a high pitched screech that rang in her ears. “I should have known, and—”

 

“And you're still not making any sense,” he cut in quietly. “Why is it your fault?”

 

“Because I'm a doctor!” Isabelle growled, unable to control her rising irritation that Griffin kept asking her what should have been obvious.

 

“So you've said,” he growled back, “and yes, you're a doctor, but you're sure as hell not God.”

 

“Isn't that what a doctor is supposed to be?” she challenged, her eyes flashing open as she finally met his gaze. He didn't blink, and he didn't look away, and somehow it only served to inflame her anger a little more. “A doctor saves people! That's what I should have done, and I . . . I couldn't; it was too late, and . . . and . . .”

 

“You're wrong, you know. Doctors aren't gods, and just because you couldn't save one baby doesn't make you a devil, either.”

 

“Doesn't it?” she challenged, her tone belligerent; her eyes almost wild.

 

He shook his head and narrowed his eyes on her as though he were trying to read her mind. “Your father's a doctor, isn't he?”

 

“Yes, but—” she began, unsure where he was going with his question.

 

“And you're going to tell me that he never lost a patient?”

 

“Of course not!” she scoffed, her temper rising by degrees.

 

“Are you sure about that?” he challenged.

 

She opened her mouth to retort but snapped it closed, cheeks pinking as she remembered a little too late that her father had worked in an emergency room, himself, and he'd told her more than once that sometimes there were those that couldn't be saved.

 

Griffin interpreted her expression well enough, and he sighed, shaking his head slowly. “You're not meant to be perfect,” he pointed out.

 

His words, softly spoken despite the disdain she heard underlying them, were enough to siphon away her anger, leaving her feeling lost and empty once more, trapped in the confines of recrimination so biting that she felt as though she was going to scream, and yet . . . and yet his presence alone was soothing to her tattered emotions, and even if he didn't know the effect he had on her, she couldn't help but crave the solace that he unwittingly offered. Letting out a stunted breath, Isabelle shook her head, dragging a hand through her tangled hair, lips quivering precariously as she sought to find a way to explain how she felt. “She came in last week after falling on the ice,” she finally said, her voice dropping to a husky whisper as she smashed the handkerchief in her fist so tightly that her knuckles leeched white. “I checked her over . . . ordered a urinalysis . . . but everything looked fine . . . just fine . . .”

 

“You mean the test came back normal?” he questioned.

 

She nodded, her eyes glossing over as she stared at the worn but beautiful quilt that covered her bed. “Yes . . . no trace of blood . . . no sign of infection . . . nothing . . .”

 

Griffin grunted.

 

“But it wasn't fine,” she admitted, “and when she came in yesterday for her checkup . . . Her placenta must've torn just a little in the fall—not enough to show up in the urinalysis right away since it had just happened the night before, but enough to . . .” She swallowed hard and had to draw a few deep breaths to keep from breaking down completely. “When she came in, she said the baby . . . hadn't really moved . . . a couple days . . . and I . . . but then . . . I—” Cutting herself off, she smothered a soft sob with the back of her hand, unable to control herself for a few minutes as the raw memories cascaded down around her once more. The sickened feeling Isabelle had gotten in the pit of her stomach as she'd desperately tried to locate the baby's heartbeat . . . the anxiety that Kristen McKinley had fought to hide as she lay on the table, her belly exposed while Isabelle administered an emergency ultrasound . . . the shock on Kristen's face when Isabelle had explained to her in hushed tones that her baby . . . the desperation as she forced herself not to break down in front of her patient . . . and the cruel words of Kevin McKinley—words and condemnations that Isabelle had wholly deserved . . . “So I had to induce labor because . . . because it was too late, and . . .”

 

“It would have been dangerous to the mother,” he supplied when Isabelle's voice faltered.

 

She nodded, sniffling miserably. “She asked if I could wait a few days. Her husband was away on a business trip, but I couldn't, and . . . And she was alone, and I couldn't do a damn thing for her . . .”

 

The bed shifted, and Isabelle wiped her eyes with the handkerchief again—they'd started to tear up once more. Griffin had turned to face her, and for a moment, she wondered if he was going to reach out to her, but he didn't. “It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong,” he mumbled, scowling at the quilt as he smoothed it absently.

 

“I did; I did . . . I should've run more tests in the beginning . . . A non-stress test or ordered an ultrasound or—”

 

“Is that common practice? You said, yourself, that everything seemed fine,” he said a little too reasonably.

 

Isabelle sighed. “It doesn't matter! I should have known! If I had ordered more tests . . .”

 

Griffin cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest as he sat back and lifted his gaze to her once more. “Even if you had ordered more tests, do you really think that you'd have figured it out? You said, yourself, that the urinalysis didn't show anything wrong.”

 

“That doesn't really make me feel any better,” she whispered. “She was perfect, you know? Her color was a little off but not bad . . . ten fingers . . . ten toes . . .” Isabelle choked on a sob as the entirely too-real image of the stillborn baby with the downy corn-silk hair haunted her. Perfect, perfect, and yet she never opened her eyes, never drew that very first breath . . . “Kristen kept . . . begging me . . . begging me to save her daughter, and I . . . Over and over and over . . .” she whispered, unsure if she were speaking aloud or if it were just the same things she had been rehashing time and again in the confines of her mind. “Just kept pleading with me to save her . . . `She's . . . she's sleeping, right? Just sleeping . . .' but she wasn't, and I couldn't . . .”

 

“Don't do this to yourself,” Griffin rasped out, his voice oddly roughened, as though he was suffering as much as Isabelle was.

 

“Do you know what that's like?” she demanded in a broken hiss, turning her tear-stained face toward him, her eyes pleading, wondering if there really was any way he could ever understand. “Do you have any idea how it felt when I held that baby in my arms? I would have done anything—anything—to give her back to her mother, and . . . and I . . .”

 

Griffin closed his eyes, gritted his teeth together so hard that his jaw ticked while Isabelle tried to keep from breaking down in sobs. The room was silent other than her stunted breathing, and she could hear her pulse drumming relentlessly in her ears, loud enough to drive her mad as the sound of a mother's racking wails rose like the winter wind's bitterest gale.

 

“I've tried to reason it in my head,” she confessed as a few more tears slipped down her cheeks. “She never even got a chance to . . . to live . . . It doesn't make sense—none of it makes a damn bit of sense, and it's my fault . . .”

 

“No,” Griffin cut in sharply, eyes flashing open, a fierceness in the depths of his gaze that startled Isabelle. She started to shake her head, but he was faster; reaching out, grasping her arm, shaking her almost roughly, and yet there was a certain desperation that she didn't quite understand. “Don't you do it; do you hear me? Don't you blame yourself. It wasn't your fault, and . . .” Trailing off, he drew a deep breath, his grip loosening though he didn't let go. “It's never going to make sense. Sometimes . . . sometimes . . . something like that will never make sense, no matter how many years you live.”

 

She stared at him for several long seconds. The misery in his expression; the raw emotion in his eyes . . . He did understand, didn't he? He understood . . .

 

And maybe it was that simple realization that he knew—that he understood the feeling that she was completely worthless; that no matter what she knew in her logical mind, her heart just could not comprehend it all . . . With a harsh cry, she felt the last strands of her control give way as the torrent of sobs that she'd been keeping in check finally broke free. Smashing her hands over her face, she couldn't stop the ragged wails that escaped her. It felt as though her heart was breaking, as though everything inside her ached so desperately that she just couldn't contain it any longer.

 

The heaviness that encircled her was slow, halting, almost jerky, and she didn't really understand anything other than the basic instinct, the need to draw close to someone—anyone—in her desperation. So lost in the tide of emotion, it didn't really register in her mind . . .

 

It was too much for Griffin. Watching as her heart broke was killing him. Something about her reached out to him—the need to fix it for her a palpable thing, and even though he knew that there wasn't a thing he could do to alleviate the pain she felt, he couldn't just let it go, either.

 

Closing his eyes tight, he clumsily pulled Isabelle close, tucked her head under his chin as he patted her back, pitifully trying to comfort her and feeling like a complete failure as her body shook, every muscle straining with the force of her sobs as she clung to him; as he felt himself dying a little inside with every tear she shed . . .

 

 

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A/N:

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Final Thought fromGriffin:

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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~