InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Fruition ❯ Drowning ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Blinking in surprise as the rising sounds of very unhappy babies seemed to echo in Ben's living room, he stopped short to watch as Cain Zelig unfastened one of the baby carriers as quickly as he could before moving onto the other one to repeat the process.  He shot Ben an apologetic sort of glance as he carefully lifted one of the babies and reached down to scoop up the other.  "They've been crying pretty non-stop since . . . Well, since we left the hospital, actually," he said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the din.  "I'm surprised we weren't kicked off the plane . . ."

"I thought you were good with babies," Ben remarked, crossing his arms over his chest and slowly shaking his head.

Cain snorted.  "Pfft!  Normally, I am.  I'm pretty sure that these two just don't like me . . . I've changed them, fed them, you name it.  They're just unhappy; that's all."

Rolling his eyes, Ben let his arms drop as he strode forward.  "Hey," he said softly, holding his hands out to take one of the babies.  "It's all right . . . Cain's just an ass, right?  I'd cry, too, if I were you . . ."

Cain's eyebrows lifted as the baby in Ben's arms hiccupped and suddenly stopped screaming.  Ben chuckled softly and shifted the infant to free up his right arm.  "Here," he said, waving his hand toward the other unhappy infant.

Cain carefully handed over the other baby, who also stopped crying as she stared at Ben's face.

"Well, I'll be damned," Cain mused, breathing a sigh of relief.  "How did you do that?"

Sparing a momentary glance at Cain, Ben chuckled.  "Maybe they were simply scared . . ."

Heaving a weary sigh, Cain dropped into the nearest chair, rolling his head back from side to side as he closed his eyes for a minute.  "Any luck finding potential adopters?"

Carefully settling onto the sofa without bobbling the babies, Ben shook his head.  "No, not yet.  Most of the families only want one baby, and the one that said they’d consider it changed their minds when they heard the story."

Cain grunted.  "Ridiculous! They're babies, for God's sake!  They had nothing at all to do with it!"

Ben nodded as a smile broke over his features.  Gazing down at the two identical faces that stared back at him, he couldn't credit the strange sense of peace that settled on him with the warmth and familiarity that he hadn't really known in what felt like ages.  If he stopped and thought about it, he might be able to recall the time and place when he'd felt that way before, but for now, it was enough.  "They're . . . They're so small," Ben remarked, more to himself than to Cain.

Cain sighed.  "Their mother—Elizabeth—didn't want to leave the babies with Unker's relations," he stated quietly, his gaze clouding over as he turned his head to watch Ben holding the twins.  "She said that they were all pretty shady: petty crime, drugs, you name it.  She wanted them placed into a stable home away from all of that, and since she didn't have any family to speak of, she asked me to find a place for them."  Shaking his head in obvious irritation, he sighed.  "I don't want to split them up," he admitted.  "I don't know.  Maybe someone in Gin's family will take them, even if the twins have to go to Japan to do it."

"I already talked to Sesshoumaru," Ben murmured, careful not to raise his voice or startle the twins.  "He wasn't very optimistic."

"Yeah," Cain breathed, and he didn't look at all surprised.  "I promised Elizabeth, damn it.  I’m not giving up, of course, but . . ."

"I'm surprised she didn't hate you," Ben remarked, finally shifting his gaze to meet Cain's.  "I mean, all things considered . . ."

"I was, too," Cain admitted.  "She said she knew that it'd come to this.  She was more angry, more bitter, toward Unker than she was to me.  Said she knew damn well what was going to happen.”  Cain winced, as though whatever he was thinking about hurt him.  “Elizabeth said she got pregnant because she hoped that he’d . . . he’d make peace with it if he had something—someone—else to focus on, but . . . But he didn’t, and . . .” He sighed again, slowly shook his head.  “She said that Helena—"

"The daughter that you had to issue the hunt for?"

He nodded.  "Yeah.   She said that everyone knew that Helena had committed those murders.  She was high at the time, I guess.  But Unker never stopped saying that it wasn't her fault, that the drugs made her do it, and maybe they did.  It doesn't mean that she should have been pardoned for it."  Cain sat up straight then hunched over, elbows on knees as he rubbed his face with his hands.  "Forfeited his own life and that of his wife, all because he couldn't accept that his daughter did something wrong . . ."

"Don't take it with you, Zelig," Ben warned.  "He made his choice, and you had to follow through.  It's your job."

That earned him a quelling look.  "I know what my job is, Ben," he growled.  "Better than anyone else, I think."

"You do," Ben agreed.  "But you're a decent man, and that decent part of you tends to hold onto things for far, far too long."

Cain grimaced at the gentle reminder of the things he'd done wrong over the years.  He'd learned his lessons well enough when he'd almost lost Gin years ago—at least, he thought he had.

"Sometimes, I wonder why I'm still tai-youkai," Cain said.  "Bas is more than ready to handle it all.  He's stronger than me, and I know it, but then, I think . . ." Trailing off with a heavy sigh, he made a face.  "Then I think that stepping down would be the single, most selfish thing I could ever do to him.  If he had been tai youkai now . . ."

"Bas will be a fine tai-youkai, whenever he's ready to take over," Ben assured him.  "Yes, I'm sure that he'll be challenged.  You can't be the tai-youkai and please everyone all the time—you know that.  Bas knows it, too, and whether it's now or five hundred years from now, he'll still have to face it himself one day."

Cain sighed.  "I know."

Ben shook his head.  "You did what you had to do, Zelig.  There's really nothing else to say."

"Yeah, well, I still don't know what to do about them," he admitted, lifting a limp hand to flick it in the direction of Ben and the infants he held.  "If I take those pups home with me, Gin will get attached, which would be fine, but right now, I'm not so sure that it'd be a good or even a feasible idea, but there's really not a choice . . ."

Cain's cell phone rang, and he fished it out of the pocket of his more-rumpled-than-usual khaki slacks.  "Uh, it's Gin," he said.  "Do you mind, keeping an eye on them for a minute?"

"It's fine," Ben assured him, his smile returning as he watched one of the twins yawn wide.  Her eyelids started to droop as she drifted off to sleep.  The other twin was already dozing, and Ben shifted them slightly to cuddle them a little closer against his chest as Cain stood up and wandered toward the other side of the room to take the call.

'Cute, aren't they?'

Smile widening just a little as he breathed in that sweet baby-smell that they carried so effortlessly, he absently nodded.  Funny, it was.  He'd held babies before—he'd held each one of Zelig's children, after all.  Even so, there was something different about these babies, though . . .

'You know,' his youkai-voice said, 'what's going to happen if you can't find anyone willing to take them both?'

'Someone's going to want them . . . They just need to see a picture of them . . . How could they not?  Just look at them . . .'

'Okay, then suppose someone comes forward and wants to adopt them.  How will we know that they're going to be good parents?  I mean, there are people in the world who want babies, but wouldn't be decent parents, even if they do seem entirely capable to the naked eye.'

That was true enough, Ben supposed.  Even so, it wasn't like they'd ever just handed a child over to anyone without thoroughly investigating them to make sure that everything was exactly as it should be.  That really was all they could do.

'But is that enough?' his youkai persisted.  'Look at how tiny they are; how helpless they are . . . Ben . . .'

'I . . . I know . . .'

'Objectively speaking, they've already been dealt a shitty hand, if you think about it . . . Lost their parents, carted across the States . . . and no one wants them simply because they cannot separate the sins of the father from them.  Aren't we . . .?  I mean, isn't it our job, Ben?  Protect the innocent, and what in the world could be more innocent than these two cubs?'

Ben didn't really know.  He'd already thought the same things, ever since it had become obvious that placing the twins was not going to be as simple as he might have hoped.  Staring down at the sleeping babies in his arms, he frowned as he pondered the questions his youkai-voice had raised, even as the softest voice whispered the in recesses of his mind.  Too bad he couldn't quite make out the words.


Leaning back in the thickly cushioned office chair as he frowned at the computer screen, Cain let out a deep breath as he hit 'send' on the email he'd spent the last hour drafting and glanced over at Ben, who was feeding a bottle to one of the twins.  "Let's hope I get a positive answer from St. George," he muttered.

"You honestly think that he'd have an easier time finding someone to place them with than we have?  Are you planning on asking MacDonnough or Covington?"

Cain snorted, which answered Ben's question nicely enough.  Considering that he wasn't exactly on the best of terms with either of those particular tai-youkai, Ben ought to have known the answer to his question long before he'd ever gave voice to it.  Cain got along well enough with the South American tai-youkai, Eduardo St. George.  The same couldn't be said for Europe's Ian MacDonnough or Australia's Jude Covington.  MacDonnough was an ass and always had been, and Covington?  Well, it was safe to say that neither of them held much affection for the other, given the threats that Covington had made against Cain's son-in-law, Gavin . . .

"Maybe St. George will have more luck.  Anyway, it doesn't hurt to try," Cain replied in an almost sulky tone of voice.

"Maybe," he replied, though his tone held very little in the way of optimism.

Cain's frown darkened.  Gin had called awhile ago, simply to ask him if she should prepare a nursery for the twins since there really was nowhere else to take them.  Even so, the trepidation was riding high.  It wasn't that he didn't want to take the twins home with him, no, but he, better than anyone, knew Gin well enough to realize that she would get attached to them, and, while he couldn't say that was a bad thing, either, with their own twins due to be born in a few months, he was afraid that she'd end up spreading herself way too thin, too . . .

Which really wasn't here or there, as far as he was concerned, because if it came right down to it, Cain would consider keeping them.  Better than the alternative of watching them be split up—if they could even find willing families, that was.  Then again, knowing Gin's family as well as he did, Cain kind of thought that it might not come to that, after all.  Surely someone in the extended family would be willing to take them in, he had little doubt.  After all, Gin herself was a product of her environment, and as much as Cain might like to bluster and fuss about them collectively, he had to admit, at least to himself, that they really were a warm and accepting lot.  The woman he loved more than anything in the world . . . She was who she was because of the people who loved her from the start, long before Cain had ever crossed her path . . .

Ben shook his head as he set aside the bottle and carefully lifted the infant to his shoulder.  "You never said what their names are," he pointed out, effectively shattering Cain's pensive line of thought.

Cain blinked and stared at Ben for several seconds, as he tried to figure out just what Ben was talking about.

"The babies," Ben clarified.

"Oh.  Uh, they don't have names yet."

Barking out a terse laugh, Ben's eyebrows shot up in surprise.  "What do you mean, they don't have names yet?"

"I figured it was something that the parents would want to do, so it seemed a little ridiculous to just give them whatever names I could think up off the top of my head," he explained.

"They need names, Zelig," Ben stated.  "How did you even get them onto an airplane without them?"

"It was Sesshoumaru's plane," he muttered.

Ben shook his head and held up the infant to examine her face.  Blinking at him, she seemed content just to look at him, and Ben smiled.  "Emmeline," he stated flatly.  "She looks like an Emmeline."

"Emmeline?" Cain echoed in a rather incredulous tone.

Satisfied that the child now had a name, Ben brought her back against his shoulder as he glanced at Cain, only to do a double take at the raised-eyebrow-ed look he was getting.  "What?"

"That so . . . cute," Cain replied with a shake of his head.  "All right, we'll call her Emmeline for now.  What about her twin?"

After settling Emmeline in the empty carrier, Ben reached down and lifted the other baby, repeating the process of holding her up at eye-level to stare at her, too.  "She looks like a Nadia," he finally said without bothering to look at Cain again.

"Nadia . . . Also, err . . . precious," Cain replied with a shrug.

He didn't say anything as Ben dug another bottle out of the ridiculously pink diaper bag that Cain had gotten from the hospital, simply watching as the panther-youkai negotiated holding onto Nadia while he opened the sterile packed nipple and popped the sealed cap on the ready-to-drink formula.  It was rather impressive, Cain had to admit, at least to himself.  Ben managed to screw the nipple top onto the bottle with one hand—something that Cain was pretty sure he couldn't do.

Cradling the infant in one arm, he settled her against his chest to feed her.  Frowning thoughtfully as he watched the panther that he thought he knew well enough, Cain slowly shook his head.  He’d have to be blind to miss the absolute sense of peace that surrounded the old panther-youkai, and it was unsettling, albeit, in a good way.  'It's almost as if he . . .'

Cain cleared his throat.  "Uh, Ben . . ."

Ben didn't look up from his task as a little smile surfaced on his features.  Too busy, too preoccupied, watching the infant that he was feeding, wasn’t he?  "Hmm?"

Cain shrugged, deliberately assuming a nonchalant kind of air.  "Do you . . .?  Do you want to . . . keep them?  Until we find a family to place them with?"

His question got Ben's attention quickly enough.  A few emotions seemed to flicker to life on his face, one right after another, shifting too quickly for Cain to accurately discern them all.  "Oh, uh . . . I . . . I don't know anything about babies," he muttered, cheeks pinking just slightly as his gaze fell back to the infant snuggled against him.

'Ben?  Blushing?  Re-e-eally . . .' Cain schooled his features and tamped down the urge to tease the panther.  "You're doing all right now," he pointed out.  "There's not that much more to it, you know, other than changing diapers . . . I mean, other than that, you just . . . You just hold them and that kind of thing. The, uh . . . The fun stuff."

Cain wasn't sure just what Ben was thinking.  Staring down at the infant in his arms—the one he'd named Nadia—he seemed to be mulling things over, but as the seconds ticked away, Cain wasn't entirely sure what to make of it.  True enough, he'd never actually seen Ben act quite like this, but . . .

In fact, he was starting to think that Ben wasn't going to answer him at all.  As the silence stretched and grew, Cain's amusement faded as a small frown—a thoughtful expression—surfaced, instead.  There was a foreign sort of peace surrounding Ben, wasn't there?  It was one of those feelings that Cain hadn't really noticed before since the Ben he knew so well was entirely self-assured, entirely comfortable in his own skin.  To be honest, it wasn't the kind of sense that Cain ever realized wasn't there, but seeing him now, holding the infant . . .

It was an emotion that Cain himself knew well enough.  How often had he felt that same kind of contentment as he'd sat there, holding one of his children?  It reminded Cain of the same sort of emotion, the same sense that had occurred to him when he'd watch his granddaughter's mate, Kurt when he'd showed up in Maine with a tiny hanyou girl in tow—now Kurt and Sami's daughter, Tanny . . .

It was the kind of emotion that Cain had felt, too, all those years ago when he'd met the strange youkai woman in the forest outside of his house, when she'd held a tiny baby in her arms and asked him—implored him—to find a family for her own infant daughter, and that daughter had grown up in the shelter of the Zelig family, hadn't she?  Cain's sweet and beloved daughter, Jillian . . .

The thing was, he really couldn't force the issue, not at all.  It occurred to Cain that Ben might not even realize what he was doing, in the first place, and assuming the care of one child was hard enough.  Twins?  Cain grimaced inwardly.  Twins were a crazy amount of work for two people, but for one . . .?

“Well, it’s getting late, and it’s a good, eight-hour trip back to Bevelle, so I’d better get moving,” Cain said.

“Uh huh,” Ben replied, though it sounded rather automatic and not at all like he’d actually heard a thing that Cain had just said.  Too busy, staring down at the baby he was feeding, wasn’t he . . .?

Heaving a sigh, Cain stood up.  It was already nearly five in the evening, and he'd wanted to make it home tonight.  Rounding the desk, he moved to take the infant—Nadia—only to pull back when the baby erupted in a high-pitched screech about the second Cain touched her.  Ben shot him an entirely reproachful kind of look as he turned away just enough to keep Cain from being able to take her from him.  Cain rolled his eyes and stepped around to reach for her, only to have her wails intensify.  Only after he'd moved away with the baby did she calm down again.  Cain shook his head.

"Okay," Ben said, his voice soft in the relative silence.

Cain blinked and shook his head.  "Okay . . .?" he echoed, unsure exactly what Ben was talking about.

Clearing his throat, he shot Cain an almost bashful kind of grin—one that Cain had never seen before, not from this particular being, at least.  "I'll, uh . . . I'll keep them," he said. "I mean, it's pretty damn obvious that they don't like you, and . . . Well . . . I mean, I'll just keep them then, until we find them a permanent family . . ."