InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 7: Avouchment ❯ The Second Trial ( Chapter 65 )

~~Chapter 65~~

~The Second Trial~

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“He's not going to throw up on anything, is he?” Griffin asked baldly without looking up from the newspaper.

 

“Keh,” Gunnar snorted though the sound was missing much of the hanyou's customary arrogance.

 

“No, but if he did, I suppose that'd give me a good reason to talk you into buying a new sofa,” Isabelle remarked with a wan smile.

 

Griffin grunted something entirely unintelligible, and she rolled her eyes. There really wasn't anything wrong with the sofa, after all. She was just picking on Griffin, and he knew it.

 

Gunnar moaned softly, knocking Isabelle's hand along with the washcloth that she'd been using to dab his fevered forehead away.

 

The dosage was still too high.

 

At least his fever wasn't nearly as bad as it had been following the first test. It was bad enough, though, in her estimation, and the end result was the same as it had been the first time around: Gunnar had been purified.

 

She intercepted the completely disgruntled look on Griffin's face as he cautiously peered around the corner of his paper. He was staring at Gunnar with a thoroughly perplexed sort of visage, as though he were struggling to reconcile the visage of the hanyou he'd come to know with the human lying on the sofa. She laughed softly, unable to help herself. The expression on Griffin's face was just too amusing to ignore.

 

“That's just . . . scary,” he muttered with a shake of his head.

 

“What? That he looks so different now?” Isabelle couldn't resist asking.

 

Griffin snorted. “That he looks like a woman.”

 

“I can hear you, you damned old bastard,” Gunnar grumbled without opening his eyes.

 

Griffin snorted again, though whether it was because of what Gunnar had said or because he was still awake, Isabelle didn't know. “Will you help me? I need to get him into the guest room.”

 

He didn't look like he wanted to do any such thing. Making a show of rolling his eyes, Griffin hefted himself out of his chair and stomped forward, apparently willing to help even if he wasn't pleased with the idea of it. If it were any consolation, Gunnar didn't look very happy about the arrangement, either, cracking his eyes open wide enough to glower at the bear-youkai. Griffin ignored the expression and helped Isabelle pull Gunnar to his feet, and, each one catching Gunnar's arms around their necks, they helped him out of the living room and down the hallway.

 

“I could have carried him,” Griffin couldn't help saying, stating it just loud enough that he was sure that the hanyou-turned-human didn't miss it.

 

Gunnar snorted indelicately and muttered something under his breath.

 

Isabelle rolled her eyes as Griffin kicked the guest room door open and helped Gunnar into the room. “He doesn't weigh much more than a woman,” he went on, drawing a certain level of somewhat perverse pleasure out of goading the incapacitated hanyou.

 

“He does, too,” Isabelle replied with a shake of her head. “You shouldn't kick him while he's down, anyway.”

 

“Go to hell, will you?” Gunnar slurred. “Just . . . right to hell . . .”

 

“You're kind of becoming a permanent fixture around here, so I'd say it's close enough,” Griffin retorted.

 

“Enough, you two,” Isabelle interrupted as they helped Gunnar over to the bed. “You need to rest, Mamoruzen. I'll be in later to check up on you.”

 

Groaning as he dragged the blankets up under his chin, Gunnar mumbled something that sounded like, “All right,” but she couldn't be certain.

 

Making quick work of drawing the curtains, she followed Griffin out of the room and sighed. “I thought I had it calculated right this time,” she complained in a petulant little voice.

 

“Oh, I doubt it'll hurt him,” Griffin replied as he headed back toward the living room again. “Do him some good to be knocked on his ass every now and then.”

 

She shook her head but fell in step behind him, rubbing her forearms since the evening was a little cooler than normal. She hadn't thought to close the windows earlier. The late September weather was sometimes a bit unpredictable . . . “You're not being very nice, you know,” she pointed out mildly.

 

Griffin shrugged. “That's because he's a pain. He'll always be a pain, too, I imagine.”

 

Smiling despite herself, Isabelle rubbed her forehead and laughed. “You're terrible, Griffin Marin,” she chided, her words undermined by the humor in her tone. Her laughter died, however, when she noticed the way he was rather gingerly rotating his shoulder. “Let me see,” she said softly, touching his shoulder gently.

 

He jerked away, startled, and glanced back at her. “It's fine,” he muttered, his cheeks reddening slightly.

 

“Humor me?” she pressed with a little smile to reassure him.

 

Heaving a long-suffering sigh designed to let her know that he thought she was worrying over nothing, he grudgingly unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off, letting the garment dangle from his forearms as he waited for her to get it over with. “I'm telling you, it's fine.”

 

“Mmm,” she intoned, rubbing the area with the tips of her fingers. He sucked in a sharp breath but didn't try to stop her. “Why don't you take off your t-shirt so I can rub some ointment into your shoulder?” she suggested.

 

“Don't need it,” he replied, shrugging the shirt back into place.

 

“Let me take care of you for a change,” she prodded.

 

He shot her a quick glance as he buttoned the shirt again, his brows drawn together as though he were trying to figure out something, but his cheeks reddened just a little more, and he shook his head adamantly as he stalked over to his desk and sank into the chair. “It's fine,” he stated once more. “Don't worry about it.”

 

She wrinkled her nose, ready to argue with him if she had to, but had to let it go for the moment when the telephone rang. Sparing a moment to pin him with a long look, she turned abruptly and grabbed the handset. “Hello?”

 

“Good evening, Isabelle, isn't it?”

 

She blinked since she didn't recognize the woman's slightly lyrical voice. “Hello . . .? Do I . . . know you?”

 

The woman laughed. “I'm sorry . . . I suppose we've never properly been introduced. I'm Maria Masta, Attean's wife.”

 

“Oh? It's nice to hear from you! I suppose you've called to talk to Griffin?”

 

At the mention of his name, the bear-youkai's head snapped up just before he narrowed his gaze and pushed himself to his feet.

 

“Well, not exactly,” Maria allowed with a chuckle. “He is being good to you, yes?”

 

“Yes,” she assured him as Griffin stepped forward and held out his hand for the receiver.

 

“Excellent.”

 

She laughed and winked at Griffin, backing up a step to keep him at bay. “I guess he wants to talk to you,” she said as Griffin made a grab for the phone. “It was nice talking to you.”

 

“The pleasure was mine,” Maria remarked.

 

Rolling his eyes and snorting loudly, Griffin snatched the phone and turned his back on Isabelle. “Hello?”

 

“Ah, Osezno . . . How are you?”

 

“Not so bad,” he replied, acutely aware of Isabelle's avid interest. Holding his hand up to keep her at bay, he hurried toward the basement door since he was relatively certain that she wouldn't follow him down there. “Did you need something?”

 

Maria laughed. “Do I have to have a reason to call you, hmm?”

 

Grimacing since he really hadn't meant to sound so abrupt, Griffin grunted as he reached for the doorknob. “Uh, no, but . . .”

 

“Good!” she interrupted. “So how are things with you?”

 

“They're, um, fine,” he muttered, sparing a moment to pin Isabelle with a look before he closed the door and lumbered down the steps.

 

“Fine, is it? You don't sound like everything's fine.”

 

Letting out a deep breath, Griffin plopped onto the sofa and winced when his shoulder protested the movement. “No, it is. It's . . . everything's . . . good.”

 

“Well, to be honest, I called to talk to your little Isabelle,” Maria admitted at length.

 

Griffin snorted automatically. “She's not m—there isn't a damn thing `little' about her.”

 

Maria laughed. “Are you trying to tell me that your Isabelle is a . . . generously proportioned woman?”

 

Rolling his eyes at Maria's delicate way of stating things, Griffin rubbed a hand over his face and uttered a terse grunt. “She's not allowed to talk on the telephone,” he muttered.

 

“Oh? Why is that?”

 

“She's a menace,” he explained.

 

Clucking her tongue, Maria half-laughed, half-sighed. “Does she know that you have such a high opinion of her?”

 

“`Course she does.”

 

“Well, Attean and I have been discussing the idea of taking a vacation.”

 

Narrowing his eyes, Griffin leaned forward to grab the elk he'd been working on for the last few days. He had a feeling that he'd rather not hear more about this proposed vacation . . . “A vacation, huh?”

 

“Yes . . . it's been a while since we've been to see you, has it not?”

 

It was on the tip of Griffin's tongue to remind her that they'd never actually come down to see him, but he thought better of it, wondering vaguely if he couldn't talk Attean out of it before it became a reality. “Don't you have too many obligations to get away for a vacation?”

 

She laughed. “Everyone needs one every now and then,” she pointed out. “Besides, you haven't seen fit to come up this way in much too long, so someone has to make the effort, don't you think?”

 

“I don't know if that's a good idea,” he remarked, thinking about the hanyou that he just couldn't quite seem to be rid of. He wasn't entirely sure how long the testing was going to take, but if Gunnar ended up purified and sick after every dosage, it was safe to assume that it may well take quite a while. Making a face at that thought, Griffin stifled the urge to sigh. True, Gunnar hadn't been overly hostile during his forced stays, but Griffin was pretty positive that the surly cub simply hadn't felt up to it.

 

“You want to have alone time with your Isabelle,” she surmised.

 

“W-n-no!” he blurted hotly, wincing as the delicate leg of the wooden elk snapping as his grip tightened.

 

The infernal woman laughed again. “I see, I see,” she went on as though she hadn't heard his outburst. “Understandable, that is . . .”

 

“That's not—”

 

“Oh, Attean's home. I must go, but tell your Isabelle that I cannot wait to meet her. Be good, Osezno.”

 

“She's not `my'—” Cutting himself off with a harsh growl, Griffin lowered the receiver and glowered at it as the empty dial tone issued from it. Attean and Maria coming for a visit? The sigh that he'd been trying to hold in came out as he stood up to discard the ruined figurine in the bin beside the fireplace.

 

`That'll be bad, won't it?' his youkai remarked in a foreboding tone of voice.

 

`Probably.'

 

`Maybe you should call and talk to Attean . . .'

 

Rubbing a hand over his face in a weary sort of way, Griffin slowly shook his head. `If I did that, they'd be even more convinced to come,' he thought with a cynical snort, wondering not for the first time, exactly why he'd ever stayed around the couple as long as he had. Besides, it had been a long time since he'd seen them—longer than he cared to think about, and as much as he hated to admit it, the Mastas were as close to family as Griffin had.

 

`Don't worry about it, Griffin. You can't change their minds if they want to come down, so worry about the things you can control instead.'

 

Heaving a sigh, Griffin shook his head. That was the problem, wasn't it? There wasn't much he did have control over; not really. He supposed that it was normal, come to think of it. He'd yet to meet a man who really did have a good handle on anything once they succumbed to the pretty flutter of eyelashes. It just figured, didn't it? He was never, ever going to be in control of anything in his life again, was he?

 

`Damned if you do, and damned if you don't,' he thought acerbically, reaching into the shallow box he kept beneath the coffee table with odd blocks of wood. `Might as well brace myself for the lace curtains . . . it's only a matter of time . . .'

 

 

A small smile broke over his features, though, as another thought occurred to him, and swallowing hard to choke down the suspect thickness that made his eyes sting, he cleared his throat. He supposed that he simply hadn't taken the time to consider the ramifications of the truth that he'd only recently come to acknowledge. If Isabelle really was his mate, then that meant she knew it too—not surprising since she loved to say it over and over again to him—but the deeper truth to it. To spend the rest of his life with a creature like her—someone who wore her beauty so loosely; completely unaffected by the way the world outside perceived her? Someone who was utterly free with her laughter and her affection and who didn't mind that Griffin never could be quite the same way . . .? But that was all right, wasn't it, because Isabelle didn't care as long as . . . as long as he allowed her to be near him.

 

It was enough to scare the hell out of him, and yet . . .

 

And yet it was enough to thrill him, too . . .

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“I hate you.”

 

Sebastian Zelig leaned back and laughed, the chair he was occupying giving a low groan under the man's healthy weight that went hand in hand with his hulking stature. “Of course you do, but you know, I have to admit, Marin had a damn good point. You're scary as hell when you're human . . . and you do rather look like a woman . . .”

 

“He's completely . . . obnoxious . . .” Gunnar muttered as Isabelle checked his pulse, “almost as obnoxious as you, Bas-tard.”

 

Rolling her eyes, she refrained from comment until she'd finished her task. “Is he?” she replied, not bothering to ask about whom Gunnar was speaking.

 

Gunnar grunted, shifting onto his side and burying his face in the down of the pillow.

 

“Well, then, I'd think that the two of you would get along great since you have a habit of being pretty obnoxious, yourself,” Isabelle went on smoothly.

 

He muttered something that Isabelle was probably better off not hearing before adding, “He thinks this entire thing is hilarious.”

 

“We-e-ell . . .” Bas drawled with a lopsided grin on his face.

 

“Shuddup,” Gunnar retorted.

 

“Of course he doesn't,” Isabelle assured him, frowning at the thermometer readout before chucking the ear cover into the trash can. “He simply thinks that you're pretty, that's all, which you are. Even Mama said so.”

 

“Keh!” he snorted, cheeks reddening slightly. “Thanks a lot, Izzy.”

 

She laughed quietly and handed him a glass of water. “Drink,” she commanded with the authority of a dictator.

 

He sighed and pushed himself up—a sure sign that, even though he wasn't feeling well he was feeling, at least marginally better than he had after the first injection. “If I drink this, will you leave me alone for a while?” he grouched.

 

She nodded. “Yes.”

 

Rolling her eyes again when he hurriedly gulped down the liquid and shoved the glass at her, Isabelle slowly shook her head. “Your vitals are better this time,” she allowed slowly. “I really thought I'd adjusted the dosage enough. I'm sorry.”

 

Waving off her apology with a grunt as he flopped back down and drew the blankets up under his chin, Gunnar closed his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he intoned groggily.

 

“Oh, don't be sorry, Bitty,” Bas said thoughtfully. “It does the moron some good to be knocked down a peg or two . . .”

 

“Go to hell, Bas . . . straight to hell,” Gunnar muttered.

 

Bas laughed. “Don't worry about him. I'll keep an eye on him.”

 

Isabelle narrowed her eyes on her cousin-slash-uncle and slowly shook her head. “Why do I get the feeling that you two are going to start fighting the second I walk out of this room?”

 

“Would I do that?” Bas asked mildly.

 

“Oh, I know you would . . . or don't you remember the time that you and Mamoruzen got into a fist fight on his human night when you were, what? Thirteen?”

 

Bas didn't even flinch. Nope, he grinned. “That's because he was asking for it.”

 

Isabelle couldn't help but smile though she did shake her head to let him know what she thought of that. “Grandpa was furious with the both of you.”

 

Bas chuckled. “Got the lecture about fighting with humans,” he remembered. Gunnar snorted again since he had been the human that Cain was lecturing about.

 

“Don't make me call Grandpa,” she warned, pinning them both with stern looks before she finally slipped out of the room.

 

“You ever tell her what I said that pissed you off?” Gunnar asked at length after the door closed behind their cousin.

 

Bas snorted. “Not a chance in hell,” he remarked since Gunnar had been picking on Bas—or at least on parts of Bas'—anatomy at the time, and that had always been a bit of a sore spot with him, anyway.

 

“You know, Bas, there's a good chance you'll kill some poor girl with that thing,” Gunnar had said at last—the final straw that had snapped Bas' temper at the time.

 

Remembering those particular words, though, made him smile. “Sydnie doesn't complain about it,” he muttered, his cheeks pinking despite his resolve not to blush.

 

Gunnar groaned and pulled the pillow around his head. “Spare me the details, Bas,” he grouched. “You find out anything?”

 

Bas shook his head since he understood Gunnar's abrupt change in topics. Since he'd just gotten back from his mission of trying to figure out what was happening with the sporadic youkai disappearances, he figured that was what Gunnar was asking. “Nope . . . Couldn't find a thing, and either no one knows anything or they're not willing to talk.”

 

“Mm,” Gunnar intoned, letting go of the pillow and pushing himself up into a sitting position though he did rest heavily against the headboard. “Nothing.”

 

Bas rubbed his forehead and nodded slowly. “Not a damn thing.”

 

Gunnar frowned. Eyes red-rimmed and skin a sickly yellowish shade, he looked like he was exhausted, but Bas knew well enough that Gunnar would be furious if he didn't tell him everything he'd learned before he left. “Maybe it's coincidence,” Gunnar said at length though he didn't look like he really believed any such thing, and neither did Bas. Call it a gut instinct, but something about the situation just didn't feel . . . right.

 

“Yeah,” he agreed in a doubtful tone. “Maybe . . .”

 

 

~xXxXxXxXxXx~

 

 

“I don't remember telling you that you could come down here,” Griffin pointed out with a raised eyebrow as Isabelle stepped off the bottom stair and held out a steaming mug of fragrant herbal tea.

 

She smiled at him and shuffled over to the sofa. “But I brought you tea,” she pointed out in an entirely reasonable tone of voice.

 

“I'm perfectly capable of making my own,” he remarked but took the mug and stared at it for a moment before lifting it to his lips.

 

Isabelle laughed and sank down beside him. “I won't stay long if you don't want me to,” she offered. “I just . . . I just wanted to be near you for a while.”

 

Choking on the sip he'd just taken, Griffin scowled at her as he wiped his chin with the back of his hand and set the mug aside.

 

“Was it too strong?” she asked, frowning at the mug.

 

Griffin coughed, wondering what the odds were that she wouldn't look at him until his cheeks had cooled down. “It's fine,” he muttered. “Don't you have to check on that obnoxious cousin of yours?”

 

She giggled. “Funny you should use that word,” she mused.

 

He blinked and shook his head since he wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about. “What? Obnoxious?”

 

She nodded and leaned up to kiss his cheek, which brought on a whole new round of `red-bear'. “He said the same thing about you a while ago.”

 

Griffin snorted and grabbed the mug of tea to hide behind. “Don't . . . do that,” he grumbled.

 

She laughed louder. “Why not?”

 

“I . . . don't want your . . . germs.”

 

“My germs?” she echoed, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs.

 

“Yes, your germs.”

 

Her laughter wound down though she looked entirely too amused for Griffin's comfort. “So what did Maria want?” she asked conversationally.

 

Griffin took his time drinking his tea before he answered. “Nothing,” he lied.

 

“Oh? She sounds friendly.”

 

“She's not,” Griffin assured her quickly. “Attean keeps her in a cage.”

 

Isabelle's lips twitched. “. . . Really.”

 

He nodded. “The world's safer that way.”

 

“. . . Are you going to put me in a cage?”

 

“Thinking about it.”

 

Her nostrils quivered. “Will you come by to visit me?”

 

“Why would I do that?”

 

“Oh, I don't know . . . conjugal visits?”

 

Narrowing his gaze as she dissolved in a fit of laughter once more, Griffin shook his head and decided that that was definitely not deserving of an answer.

 

“So how long have you known them?” she asked, wiping her eyes with a crooked finger as her laughter finally wound down again.

 

Pondering whether or not she could possibly turn his answer against him, he shrugged. “A while,” he replied vaguely.

 

“Did you live with them?”

 

Carefully dragging the tip of his claw along the block of wood, he shrugged again. “For a time.”

 

“How'd you meet them?”

 

Heaving a sigh, he shot her a look designed to let her know that he really didn't want to talk about Attean and Maria, but he stopped. Staring at him with such a mellow look in her eyes, she seemed genuinely curious. “I, uh . . . I was looking for a . . . a good place to . . . die.”

 

He could feel her youki draw in around her at his admission. “You wanted to . . . die?” she asked softly.

 

“Well, uh . . . not so much wanted to, but . . . I was . . . I thought I was . . .”

 

He could sense her unvoiced questions and sighed again, giving up on the pretense of carving the block of wood as he tossed it carelessly onto the coffee table and leaned back. “Your great-grandfather . . . he cut me down after, uh . . . after what happened to your great—After what happened to his wife. I was dying. I knew it. I just . . . I didn't want to . . . I mean, there was so much . . . death . . . there . . . I didn't want to . . .”

 

“You didn't want to die there,” she concluded softly.

 

He nodded. “I just figured . . . I wanted to find someplace peaceful . . . someplace . . . quiet . . .” Shaking his head, he tapped his fingertips together between his splayed knees and let out a deep breath. “Someplace . . . where I didn't hear screaming . . . when I closed my eyes . . .”

 

“Griffin,” she breathed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could sense her pain—pain she felt because he felt it, too.

 

Shaking himself suddenly, he blinked away the residual memories and grunted softly. “Anyway, Maria found me, and she and Attean . . . they took me in.”

 

“How long did you live with them?”

 

That question gave him pause, mostly because he wasn't quite sure how long he had stayed with them—at least, near them. “I don't know,” he began slowly, a thoughtful look surfacing on his features. “Fifty? Sixty years? Maybe more . . . I didn't stay with them the whole time . . . I lived near them, though.”

 

“So they're kind of like your family,” she concluded with a little smile.

 

He grimaced. “N-not really.”

 

“It's okay to have family, Griffin—even family that you don't choose.”

 

He rolled his eyes and shook his head quickly. “No, it's not that,” he blurted, unsure why he was trying so hard to make her understand. “It's just . . .”

 

“Just what?” she prompted when he trailed off.

 

Drawing a deep breath, he leaned forward, scowling at the floor as though his answers were woven into the worn old rug. “Maria . . . she . . . she taught me things.”

 

“Oh? Like what?”

 

He scratched his temple and licked his lips, struggling to find a way to put into words what he was trying to say. “Well, I guess she didn't teach me so much as she . . . reminded me.”

 

Leaning forward, she placed a gentle hand rest on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze to reassure him, he supposed. Slowly, timidly, he reached up, covering her fingers with his. “What did she remind you?”

 

Griffin swallowed hard, blinking as a strange wash of moisture threatened his vision as he tried to stare into the flames on the hearth before him. “She, uh . . . she reminded me . . . that not all humans were . . . bad . . .”

 

For a moment, he thought that the tears that he smelled were his own, but Isabelle sniffled quietly, and he was shocked to see two fat tears slip down her cheeks as she smiled sweetly at him. “She sounds like a remarkable woman,” Isabelle said quietly.

 

Griffin cleared his throat and opened his mouth to refute that in his customary fashion then suddenly shook his head. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice barely above a whisper. “Y-yeah . . .”

 

 

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

A/N:

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Final Thought from Bas:

Well, he does kind of look like a woman …

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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~