InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Snow ( Chapter 39 )

~~Chapter 39~~

~Snow~

 

-=0=-

 

 

Kurt stomped his feet on the soggy red industrial mat just inside the service door as he brushed snow off his shoulders. Mass transit was in a tizzy, and the snow that just kept falling was thick and heavy.

 

“Wow, Doc! Did you walk from home?” the security guard asked as he leaned in the doorway of the monitoring room with a cup of coffee in his hand.

 

Kurt grunted a half civil, “Of course not,” and headed for the elevator.

 

He'd almost made it all the way downstairs and into the holding area when Harlan hailed him. Stifling the desire to lay the man flat on his ass, Kurt stood still and waited for the old bastard to catch up with him.

 

After having spent the last few hours watching surveillance footage before heading in for the day, he was growing increasingly irritated with the lot of them, enough so that all he really wanted to do was lock them all in cages and see how well they liked being treated worse than a dog. The tape he'd watched was from fairly early on, and while they hadn't done anything overly horrid to her, they had jeered and belittled her when she'd been forced to relieve herself on the table where they'd strapped her. She'd kept her face turned away, but he could sense her acute humiliation, and that was bad enough. That the bastards had called her names and then hosed her down with the power hose, though, taking extra care to `clean' her privates . . . Well, Kurt had to wonder just how bad four thousand five hundred pounds of pressure would hurt if he turned the damn thing on their bare-assed peckers . . .

 

“What do you want?” he demanded, unable to summon even a token measure of civility.

 

Harlan either didn't notice or figured he'd be better off to pretend otherwise. “I'm about to take off,” he explained quickly. “But you'd better keep a close eye on our girl, and call me if she doesn't seem right.”

 

“Why wouldn't she seem right?” Kurt made himself ask.

 

Harlan laughed. “Oh, nothing big. We injected a trace amount of the influenza virus into her, though. You know, to test out her immunities.”

 

“You injected something into her to make her sick,” Kurt reiterated just for clarity's sake.

 

Harlan smiled, as though the entire affair was of absolutely no significance. “Well, the labs showed that her blood is extremely resistant to infection, so we aren't really worried, but there's something to be said for trying out the hypothesis on a live specimen as opposed to the controlled environment of a Petri dish . . .”

 

“So you're starting small? Going to work yourself up to . . . what? Injecting mass-amounts of HIV virus into her? Implant a few cancer cells? You sick bastard.”

 

Kurt started forward only to stop when the little demon was escorted out of the testing room down the hall. She avoided looking at him as she passed, which was just as well, all things considered. Moving in closer as the guards put her in the cage, Kurt narrowed his gaze on the miscreant doctor and shoved him out into the hallway—and hopefully out of earshot of the little demon. “Are you really reckless enough to take that kind of chance that she won't get infected? Are you fucking stupid? Do you think that your investors would look kindly on your killing another one of the demons that they're paying for?”

 

Harlan stared at him for a long moment then suddenly chuckled almost nastily. “Careful, Doc . . . you almost sound like a jealous boyfriend.”

 

“I don't give a shit, what I sound like,” he growled back.

 

Harlan sized him up then slowly nodded. “Have a good night, Doc . . .”

 

Kurt frowned as Harlan walked away. Something about his demeanor bugged him more than usual, which was saying a lot, really. The guards shuffled past him, but Kurt didn't go inside until they'd gotten into the elevator.

 

Oddly enough, the little demon remained silent as he lowered the security walls that the guards had put up before their departure. “What? No hello or anything?”

 

She still didn't say anything.

 

He hurried over and set his bag down before striding over to hunker down by the cage. “You sick?” he asked, staring at her, trying to figure out if she were feeling ill from the injection.

 

She shook her head and stared at him for a long moment before purposefully lifting her gaze to stare at a fixed point over his shoulder.

 

He turned to look, too, and blinked. Affixed to the wall just over the monitoring station was a brand new camera. `Bastards . . .'

 

Standing up, he strode over to the control panel beside the door and activated the outer security walls around the little demon's cage for the sake of the camera before wandering over to inspect the device. It was trained on the cage so he was out of view. At least it was one of the 8000 series. Cheap idiots . . . they'd just made it a hell of a lot easier for him to mess with them.

 

It only took about ten minutes of computer hacking to set the camera up on auto-loop, which gave him a good fifteen minutes to fix the problem. Climbing up on the table, he made quick work of causing a `short' in the camera by pulling one of the wires loose. It'd short out by itself quickly enough, he figured. The red light that indicated that it was working flickered and went out as he dropped to the floor again.

 

“Are you going to get in trouble for doing that?” she asked quietly.

 

“Are you going to tell on me?” he countered as he headed over to drop the outer walls once more.

 

She actually had to think it over for a moment before she answered. “I suppose not,” she quipped.

 

He snorted and shook his head as he stomped over to the cage to let her out. “You had to think about it?”

 

“Not so much, no,” she replied.

 

He snorted again and waved a hand for indicate that she should follow him. “Come here,” he said as he sauntered over to the supply cabinet. “Let me check you over.”

 

She wrinkled her nose—he'd figured that she would, considering she didn't seem to like doing anything of the sort. He supposed he couldn't rightfully blame her for that, either, all things considered. After being poked and prodded all day, why would she want to go through it at night, too? “I'm not your science experiment, too,” she pointed out.

 

Rolling his eyes, he pinned her with a no-nonsense look as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn't say you were, so move it.”

 

“I don't want to, and anyway, I'm all right.”

 

“Just humor me.”

 

Her response to that was a marked flattening of her ears. “But—”

 

“Knock that off!” he grumbled, cutting her off. “Look, I'll tell you what. You let me give you a check-up, and I'll get you a chocolate bar. Fair?”

 

Her ears quirked upon mention of the unexpected treat, and she considered the offer slowly before she gave a terse nod. He nearly snorted again. Okay, so bribing her with candy was probably not the smartest of things to have done, but hell . . . Climbing up to sit atop the desk, she waited patiently while he listened to her heartbeat and then her lungs, though she did jerk back just a little since the stethoscope he found in the cabinet was probably a bit on the cold side. Still, she behaved quite nicely, and it only took a few minutes for him to check her over. “Good,” he mumbled, frowning since she really did appear to be just fine. “And you're feeling all right?”

 

She nodded, scrunching up her face as she tried to get the feel of the tongue depressor he'd used out of her mouth. “Fine,” she insisted. “They injected something bad into me, didn't they?”

 

He frowned, deliberately taking his time as he gathered the equipment together and put it away. “They injected a strain of the influenza virus into you, yes,” he admitted. “So you need to tell me if you start feeling even a little sick, okay?”

 

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes dark, mysterious, and suddenly, she smiled—an expression full of irony and very little actual humor. “I don't know whether that's incredibly appalling or the funniest thing that I've ever heard in a completely ironic sort of way . . .” she finally admitted.

 

“Ironic?”

 

She shrugged and pushed herself off of the desk. “We don't get sick,” she said. “Never.”

 

“Never's a long time. What about diseases?”

 

Shaking her head, she peered over her shoulder at him. “Huh-uh . . .”

 

Letting out a deep breath, he wasn't sure whether he should be impressed or completely horrified by that. “You demons . . .”

 

She suddenly shook herself, as though she'd been thinking about something that wasn't quite as pleasant then changed her mind about it. “Enough of that, taijya . . . where's my candy?”

 

Kurt blinked and shook his head. “You've got a one-track mind, you know . . .”

 

“You did promise,” she reminded him.

 

He supposed that was true enough, and judging from the look on her face, she wasn't going to leave him alone until he made good on it, too.

 

“All right,” he relented. “I'll go get it. No funny business; got it?”

 

She agreed easily enough, and he couldn't help the sigh that slipped from him as he headed out of the room. What was it about that little demon and chocolate, anyway . . .?

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Glowering at his cell phone, Kichiro considered heaving it off of the hotel roof for several minutes before he stuffed it back into his pocket.

 

Kami, he was sick of getting calls that sounded so promising, if only for a moment, only to end up being nothing at all, which were only made worse by the calls that actually sent people moving, flying here or there to check into them, and yet they always seemed to come up short.

 

It made no sense, damn it. Where the hell could she be?

 

Telling himself that he'd find her was just not working as well as it used to. He still believed it, at least most of the time, and he knew damn well that suffering doubts was also a normal thing, but that didn't help to make him feel any less horrible, did it? What kind of father really thought, even for a second . . .?

 

The trill of his cell phone interrupted his musings, and he couldn't stave back the loud growl that slipped from him. “Hello?” he answered, frowning at the number that he didn't recognize.

 

“Yeah, you're the dude with the missing kid?”

 

Frowning at the ease in the man's voice on the other end of the line, Kichiro braced himself. “Yes, my daughter,” he corrected.

 

“Yeah, yeah . . .”

 

Gritting his teeth at the boy's flip attitude, Kichiro reminded himself that it was all for Samantha. “Do you know something? Have you seen her?”

 

“Oh, sure! In fact, I fucked her last night!”

 

The kid hung up, his obnoxious laughter echoing in Kichiro's head long after he'd clicked off the phone. Tamping down the desire to hunt that kid down and beat some sense into him, he rubbed a hand over his face and let out a long breath. “Damn bastard . . .” he muttered.

 

“You want I should hunt `em down and put the fear of the hanyou into `em?” Ryomaru sneered as he strode over to Kichiro. He hadn't heard his twin step outside.

 

“Yeah,” Kichiro gnashed out.

 

“Don't let it get to you,” Ryomaru added despite the irritation that was entirely too evident in his voice.

 

“How am I supposed to do that?” Kichiro countered. “I just want to shut the damn thing off, but I . . .” Trailing off with a sigh, Kichiro scowled out over the city that he despised. “But if she tried to call, and I didn't answer . . .”

 

“So what are you gonna do?”

 

Letting out a deep breath, he shook his head. “I don't know.”

 

“Keh!” Ryomaru grunted, his gaze following Kichiro's out over the landscape. “If you don't know, then I don't know, either. Hell . . . I ain't the voice of reason . . . I just . . .” Heaving a sigh, he shook his head, looking more frustrated than Kichiro could credit. Pinning Kichiro with a darkened glower, looked like he was struggling to say something . . . “I'm . . . I'm worried about you, Kich,” he muttered.

 

All the anger that had roiled up inside him seemed to disburse with his brother's confession, leaving him feeling empty, lost. “Don't worry about me, Ryo. I'll be just fine.”

 

Ryomaru stared at him for a minute then nodded, though he didn't look like he believed him. Trying to smile, he clapped him on the shoulder. “Don't stay out here too long,” he warned as he turned to go. “It's getting colder, you know, and Mother . . . Well, you know how she is . . .”

 

Kichiro nodded and watched him go, heaving a sigh as he slowly turned around again to stare out over the city with eyes that didn't really see anything at all. Somewhere in the distance, a clock struck midnight. A sad little smile quirked on his lips. “Where are you dollbaby . . .? Daddy . . .” Trailing off as he held out a finger to catch a fat flake of snow, he watched as it melted: slowly around the edges, the water seeping into the center as the whiteness paled and thinned and then disappeared altogether. For some reason that he didn't dare consider, the snowflake reminded him of his daughter.

 

“Daddy loves you . . .”

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Samantha sat on the cot with her hands tucked under her thighs as she bounced the balls of her feet against the cold cement floor. She supposed she'd never actually been good at waiting, and this time was no better, was it? She was trying to be good, wasn't she?

 

`What kind of special surprise do you suppose he has for us?' she asked her youkai voice.

 

`Hmm, I don't know, but you know, those damned white-coats have told you that before, and look what their idea of `special' was . . .'

 

Samantha wrinkled her nose. `That's just not amusing in the least.'

 

`The truth rarely is.'

 

She sighed. That was true, she supposed. Still . . .

 

Oh, it had all begun innocently enough. He'd been eyeing her a little too closely all evening, and she knew—just knew—that he was waiting for her to get sick. When he'd broken down and asked her if she was sure that she felt all right for the eighth time, she'd lost her temper a little and told him that she wasn't going to talk to him if he wasn't going to listen since she'd already told him that she was `fine, just fine' at least eight times, too . . .

 

So after spending about two hours completely ignoring him, he'd suddenly announced that he had a `special surprise' for her, and after admonishing her to be good and that he'd be `right back', he'd strode out of the holding area and hadn't showed his face since.

 

A strange scraping sound interrupted her musings, and she sat up a little straighter in her effort to see exactly what he was bringing into the room.

 

She didn't have long to wait. Stepping inside with a large, utilitarian trashcan in tow, he didn't even glance at her as he pulled it into the center of the room and stopped.

 

Sniffing the air, she frowned since she really couldn't tell exactly what he had. He smelled like the wind and the snow, but she couldn't rightfully discern anything else.

 

He reached into the can and did—something. From her vantage point, she couldn't actually see what he was doing, but she gasped when he whipped around and chucked a softball-sized white mass at her. She squealed when it hit her, breaking apart in globs. “Snow!” she shrieked then ducked when another snowball flew at her.

 

The coldness was beautiful, and it smelled so fresh and clean, and just for a moment, she felt as though she were outside once more, able to breathe in the crispness, to revel in the welcome sensation of the season . . . Scooping together all the snow that she could, she packed it and whizzed it back at him. He blocked it easily and, while he didn't smile, his violet eyes were shining in a completely pleased sort of way.

 

Giggling happily, she dashed over and stared at the piles of white inside the trashcan. He'd filled it almost completely to the top. “I'm going to make a snowman,” she announced as though it were of the utmost importance.

 

“I don't think there's enough in there to make a snowman,” he countered mildly.

 

“So it'll be a little snowman,” she retorted then laughed. “Did you make snowmen when you were little?”

 

He didn't answer right away, and she was too preoccupied as she scooped up snow and started to pack it that she didn't notice his reluctance.

 

“I . . . don't remember,” he said quietly. “I suppose I must've . . .”

 

She didn't look up as she formed a basketball-sized lump for the base of the small snowman. “I used to like to make snow angels, too—that's what Mama called them, anyway. I'd make them all over the yard, then I'd go inside, and she'd laugh because I brought tons of snow in with me . . .”

 

Setting the snow on the floor, she hurried back for more. “Sometimes I talked Papa into making them with me. I think he felt bad because there wasn't really anyone else my age around.”

 

Heaving a bittersweet little sigh, she worked in silence for awhile. “It never seemed like the snow lasted long . . . It normally melted within hours, and it always made me sad . . . Actually, we didn't get snow very often, so I really liked going to my grandfather's house for Christmas because there's always so much snow in Maine . . .”

 

“Your grandfather lives in Maine . . .”

 

“Mhmm . . . right on the ocean . . . It's gorgeous there—so different from where I grew up . . . There! Now all he needs is a head . . .”

 

The taijya uttered a little sigh. Samantha finally looked up at him. Something about that sound had been so melancholy, and she blinked at the faraway expression in his eyes. “My . . . sister . . . She loved to make those, too,” he said quietly.

 

She almost smiled, but something in his tone stopped her. “You . . . you have a sister?”

 

He shook his head slowly, his gaze dropping to his knees. Sitting with his back against the cage, it struck her once more that he really was just as trapped as she was . . . and maybe his invisible prison was worse than hers ever could be . . . “No,” he replied, his voice thick, ragged. “Not anymore.”

 

“Did she look like you?” Samantha asked hesitantly, unsure if her question would set him off. Why did she have the feeling that it'd been a long, long time since he'd talked about his sister . . . or any of his family, for that matter?

 

He sighed and shook his head again, his jaw taking on a firmer set, and for a moment, she almost apologized for asking so personal a question. “She had . . . golden hair . . . like my mom. I, uh . . . I guess I looked like my dad.”

 

`How old were you when they died?' she wanted to ask. She didn't, though, not because she was afraid that he would be angry, but because she knew that it would cause him more pain, and that . . . that was something she simply couldn't do.

 

He sat still for another minute then suddenly shook himself like he was just waking up from a dream and got to his feet. “It was a long time ago,” he said, as though that was answer enough.

 

She stared at him then slowly smiled. “Don't suppose you'd help me put a face on him, would you?” she ventured.

 

He blinked and glanced at the snow man. “He doesn't have a head,” he pointed out as he opened one of the desk drawers and started rummaging around.

 

She mashed together more snow into a somewhat lopsided head then carefully arranged it on the snowman's body that was already starting to melt, much to her chagrin. “So what do you think?” she asked proudly, stepping back to examine her handiwork.

 

“Not bad,” he allowed slowly. “Not good, but not bad, either . . .”

 

“I think he looks fantastic,” she retorted.

 

“Here,” he said, handing her two pill bottle lids and a fat black marker. She took them and placed the eyes and marker-nose. The taijya narrowed his gaze, tilting his head to the side as he crossed his arms over his chest, regarding the snowman with a critical eye. “He looks a little . . . creepy,” he decided at length.

 

Samantha rolled her eyes and leaned way over to dig the last bit of snow out of the trashcan, packing it idly as she wrinkled her nose at the disparaging man. He hunkered down to straighten out the poor, lopsided snowman, and before she could consider the ramifications, she tucked the misshapen lump of snow down the back of his tee-shirt.

 

“Ahhh!” he hollered, shooting to his feet as Samantha smashed the snow between the shirt and his skin. He did a half-scoot dance step, contorting his body as he tried to shake the cold stuff out. Samantha covered her mouth with her hands and giggled. “Oh, now, see? You are a damn demon!” he grouched, which only served to make her laugh harder.

 

Her laughter died away, however, when he suddenly yanked the now-wet shirt over his head as he headed for the desk. “O-o-oh . . .” she breathed quietly, her eyes widening as she stared at him. He didn't seem to notice as he grabbed his knapsack and dug around inside it.

 

His chest wasn't nearly as broad as many of the men in her family, and he wasn't as well-defined as they were, either, which wasn't to say that he was out of shape. Quite the contrary, actually . . . She could see his muscles under his skin, but he wasn't completely chiseled . . . and those love handles . . . barely there, to be sure, but enough to enthrall her, just the same.

 

But the thing that caught her attention and held it was the sparse hair that was sprinkled over his chest—just a little bit of fine black hair that spread over his chest, only to taper down to a thin line that disappeared from her view before it actually ended . . . She could feel the breath catch in her throat as she lifted a hand to flutter over her lips.

 

He didn't seem to notice her rapt attention, though, which was probably good, all things considered. She seemed to have forgotten every last bit of manners that her mother had so painstakingly instilled in her from the time that she was a child . . .

 

`I . . . wo-o-o-ow,' she breathed.

 

`Ni-i-i-ice,' her youkai agreed. `You don't suppose he'll leave his shirt o—Oh, damn!'

 

She couldn't have said that better, herself, and she sighed inwardly as he fished another tee-shirt out of the knapsack and tugged it over his head, muttering under his breath about the evils of demons and that he ought to have known.

 

Luckily, though, her equilibrium was slowly returning to normal by the time he finally looked up at her. “You think you're just funny, don't you?” he demanded though his tone lacked any real irritation.

 

She forced a smile then laughed a little weakly. “Who? Me?”

 

He rolled his eyes and rubbed the side of his head, the black locks so stark against the skin of his hand. “Yeah, don't try to convince me that you're innocent. I know damn well you're not. Anyway, you'd better play with your snow before it all melts.”

 

The poor snowman was ready to lose his head since he was now leaning way over. She let out an exaggerated sigh, though the giggle that slipped from her gave her away. “Thank you,” she said as she knelt down to try to repair the snowman, to no avail.

 

“What for?” he asked.

 

She shrugged and peeked over her shoulder. When she met his gaze, she winked at him. “For this . . . for bringing me snow.”

 

He didn't answer her, and she turned back to scoop together the rapidly deteriorating pile of snow.

 

“You're a nice man,” she said quietly, almost more to herself than to him.

 

She heard the creak of the desk chair as he sat down and shook out the newspaper. “I'm not nice,” he muttered, “and that . . . that was just . . . snow.”

 

“But you didn't have to,” she countered in a distracted sort of way. “I'm glad that you did, though.”

 

He sighed and rattled the paper once more. “Don't thank me,” he told her. “It wasn't a big deal.”

 

She smiled to herself. He might not think that it was a big deal, but to her, it was. It was a huge deal . . . and she adored him for it, too.

 

 

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

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Final Thought from Kurt:

She's evil …

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Vendetta): 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~