InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Fruition ❯ Upheaval ( Chapter 13 )

Ben gazed out of the French doors, staring thoughtfully at the hanyou woman, sitting in the shade of a wide, tan umbrella she'd set up in the back yard of his Maine estate with the babies beside her, protected from the harsh, late afternoon sun.  The twins were sleeping, completely oblivious to everything around them while Charity worked on her project and checked her email.

The soft tick of the clock was the only sound to be heard in the companionable silence of the house, and he smiled to himself.  What was it about simply watching Charity and the girls that filled him with such an astounding and almost humbling sense of well-being, an inner calm that rivaled or maybe even surpassed any other sense of peace he'd ever known before?

He wasn't entirely sure what to think of the situation nor how he was supposed to feel about any of it.  Numb, he guessed.  Maybe it was simply the sense that everything was moving so much faster than Ben was usually comfortable with.  He supposed that it was just in his nature to be more methodic, more likely to stop, to think, to consider the options, sometimes ad nauseam.  By the time he usually made some sort of decision, he'd already mapped out about a million possible outcomes, a thousand contingencies.  No, he just wasn't used to doing anything off the cuff, so to speak, which had been odd enough when he'd volunteered to keep the twins, to start with, and pretty much everything since then had felt quite foreign to him, too.

'Never would have thought that Zelig would insist that Charity and you adopt the twins together.'

His smile faltered slightly but didn't completely disappear.  On one hand, it was the most amazing of situations, given how much Ben liked having Charity around.  On the other hand, however, he wasn't entirely sure how it was supposed to work, and more, he had no idea what was really going through her mind about it all, either.

'Come, now, Ben.  Humans do things like this all the time, right?  Maybe it's not the perfect situation, but the bottom line is that the end result will be worth it, right?'

Rolling his eyes at his youkai-voice's commentary, Ben raised an arm, bent at the elbow, to lean on the door frame.  'We're not human, and that is exactly why this situation has never arisen before, I'd wager.'

'So, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?  And there's Charity, too . . . That woman . . .'

Letting out a deep breath that hit the glass pane that was warmed from the outside by the summer sun yet cooled on the inside by the house's central air, he narrowed his bright green eyes as he continued to watch her—to watch them.  'That woman . . .'

The bright lights of the many chandeliers hanging so high above in the opulent hall of the New York Grande Hochfort Hotel cast a million glittering stars all over the crowd assembled at the annual Zelig Foundation gala as Ben struggled to comprehend the slip of a woman in his arms as he held her at a respectable distance and turned her around the highly polished dance floor to the swelling sound of the string quartet that Gin had hired for the festivities.

"Gin says you're enrolled in college here?" he said, latching on to something to say, painfully aware of exactly how rude it must have seemed to her when he hadn't spoken at all since they'd started to dance.

Charity nodded, casting him a shy, uncertain little smile.  "Hai . . . Um, yes," she corrected herself with a slight wince.  "I'm trying to get used to speaking in English all the time," she went on to explain.  "Chelsea and I wanted to get away from home, and what better way to do that than to attend college here?"

"The world's a big place," he agreed.  "You haven't seen much of it yet, have you?"

She shook her head, but her smile widened the tiniest bit as the myriad of lights all seemed to pool in her eyes in a million sparkles and shimmers, like stardust in the night sky—the kind of sky he hadn't seen in entirely too long a time . . . It brought to mind the past, before the world had grown and evolved into more of a dying shadow of the one he'd walked for the last seven hundred years.  Funny how the population had skyrocketed as the earth had slowly started to decline . . .

"You look . . . sad . . . Why is that?" she asked softly, gently, her smile faltering, floundering, disappearing, only to be replaced by a furrowed brow and a very real air of genuine concern.  Head leaning to the side, she regarded him with the kind of frankness that only the young ever possessed.  It was one of those things that was invariably lost or veiled as one grew older, as one learned the art of tact and even mild subterfuge.  This girl . . . She hadn't yet learned how to hide her emotions, how to shield them from those who would try to exploit them.  He figured it was only a matter of time before she mastered that skill.  It was a necessary one that he'd learned, as well, even though he wasn't quite as good as it as he supposed he ought to be.

"Do I?  It's nothing," he lied, brushing aside the melancholy feeling that had wormed its way into his brain with the realization that Charity Inutaisho was most definitely out of his reach, despite the awful draw of her—a feeling he had never felt before.  'Such a baby . . . A beautiful baby, but still just a child . . . wrapped up so neatly in a woman's visage . . .'

Pushing away from the door as he brushed aside the memory, Ben strode toward the kitchen.  That was the first time, and it was in that moment, when he'd held Charity so close . . .

He sighed and moved over to the counter and the makeshift bottle station he'd set up shortly after their arrival in Maine.  It had been a couple hours since the twins had last eaten, so even if they were still sleeping now, chances were good that they wouldn't stay that way much longer.

It didn't take him long to measure out the powdered formula and mix it up before adding the mineral drops that Isabelle had sent.  Making a mental note to stop by Isabelle and Griffin's house before leaving Maine to pick up more of the drops, he closed the bottles and gave them a good shake.  He had considered making up a larger container of the formula before, but the twins seemed to like it best at room temperature—and they didn't like waiting for him to heat up the bottles under warm water, either.

'They didn't get their impatience from me . . . must have gotten it from Charity,' he mused.

His youkai snorted loudly, but didn't respond to that.

Gathering the baby bottles in one hand and a couple of water bottles in the other, he headed outside.

It really was a beautiful afternoon, warm and sunny, but much cooler than it was in the city.  That might have been due, in part, to the fresh breeze that blew off the ocean not far away, and the pervasive mugginess that had blanketed New York City for days wasn't affecting the weather here.  Charity had asked that they stay here an extra day, even though they could have traveled back.  She wanted to give the girls a day of sunshine and fresh air, she'd said, and Ben couldn't really argue with that.

"Here," he said, offering her a bottle of water.

"Oh, thanks," Charity said, taking it and snapping the seal with a good twist of the cap.  She shot him an almost timid smile, and Ben chuckled as he sank down beside her.  "I love it here," she said, closing her laptop and setting it aside.  "It's so fresh and clean . . ." Her smile widened.  "It's not like this in Japan, even in InuYasha-ojii-chan's forest, and it's definitely not like this in New York City, either . . ."

"Their cheeks are rosier," he commented, nodding at the sleeping babies on the blanket between them.

Charity laughed softly—a sound that Ben found entirely soothing and wholly welcome.  "Fresh air is good for them," she remarked.

"I don't have anything pressing on my schedule if you'd like to stay here a week or two," he offered.

She smiled, but sighed.  "I wish I didn't," she admitted.  "I've got to get my report together on the vestulus pharosa, and the sooner, the better.  Dean thinks that they might be able to get funding for the further research of the plant if my presentation is compelling enough."

"Do you do the research, too?"

Taking her time as she swallowed a series of gulps of the water, she shook her head.  "No.  They'd be looking for ways to utilize it.  I just study the genetics and relationships of them—classifications, similarities as well as differences in the plant itself—that sort of thing."

He nodded.  "I see."

He could feel her gaze on him.  Something about the intensity of it, though, was entirely unsettling.  "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" she finally asked.

Opening his mouth to argue with her, one glance at her face convinced him otherwise, and he snapped it closed and broke into a wan smile as he slowly shook his head.  "Okay, no, I don't," he confessed.

She laughed at him, catching her hair as the breeze caught hold of it.  "No one does," she assured him.  "Chelsea thought I was crazy when I declared my major."

"The two of you are as different as day and night," Ben remarked, his gaze shifting out over the freshly mowed grass.

"Twins usually are," she said. "There's a little truth in the idea that one is always the good twin and one is the evil one."

"And the evil one would be Chelsea?"

She giggled.  "I'd hardly call her evil . . . A little misguided sometimes, but her heart is always in the right place.  She's a lot like you said Sebastian was—too impetuous . . ."  She made a face but laughed, anyway.  "We got into so much trouble, and it was always Chelsea's fault . . ."

"She's a lot different from you," he said.  "I think . . . I think I prefer you—no offense intended toward your sister, of course."

"You do?"

He nodded.  "I like your sister just fine.  She's a nice girl," he said.  "Don't get me wrong.  But you . . ." Suddenly looking away, he wondered vaguely if she could see the slight heat in his cheeks that he could feel.  "You're . . . You're special . . ."

A sudden squeak interrupted Charity before she could reply, and she picked up Emmeline, kissing the infant's cheek before settling her in her lap.

"Here," Ben intoned, handing over one of the bottles that he'd brought outside.  "It never hurts to be prepared."

She laughed and set it aside since Emmeline wasn't quite ready for it yet.  Staring at the baby with a soft smile illuminating her features, Charity rubbed her finger over Emmeline's tiny fist.  "I . . . I still can't believe it," she admitted quietly.

"Can't believe what?"

Her smile twitched slightly, but didn't dissipate.  "I just can't believe they're ours," she said.

Stretching out on his side next to Nadia, who showed no signs of waking up anytime soon, Ben chuckled, too.  "I wouldn't want to share them with anyone other than you," he said.

Charity blinked, turning her face to stare at Ben, her golden eyes uncannily bright, and just for a moment, he thought that she really might cry.  She didn't, and the smile that she gave him made him forget to breath, just for a moment.  Slightly flushed cheeks, lips dusted in a rosy hue, and those eyes that could see so deeply into his soul . . . "I wouldn’t, either . . ."

"What's this?" Charity asked, eyes crossing as Ben dangled a card entirely too close to her nose.  She took it between her index and middle fingers, lowering it to inspect it more thoroughly.

"I called the security company, but they're booked solid for another couple weeks," he said as he sat down at the table in the New York City townhouse and reached for his coffee cup.  "Until they come out to get you added to the system, you can use that to let yourself into the house."

"It's a house key," she mused as she turned it over in her hands.  "You're going to trust me with this?"

Ben laughed.  "You're not really a guest here anymore," he told her in a tone that indicated that she ought to know as much already.  "You don't have to call or anything first, either," he went on after emptying the mug and flipping it to the side for a refill.

Eddie rolled her eyes and grunted something unintelligible, grabbing the carafe off out of the coffee maker and striding around the counter.

"All right," she agreed slowly, setting the card aside as a thoughtful frown creased her brow while she grasped her coffee cup and turned it idly in her hands.  Eddie reached over her shoulder to refill it before dumping more coffee into Ben's waiting mug.  "Thank you . . ."

"Not a problem," Eddie assured her.

"Thank you," Ben echoed.

"Drop dead."

He chuckled.  "Is something the matter?" he asked, ignoring his housekeeper's sensibilities and raising an eyebrow at Charity's pensive expression.

She started to look at him, opening her mouth to say something, then blinked as her cheeks blossomed in a very attractive shade of rosy pink. "Are you in that towel again?" she blurted before she stopped to think about it.

Ben blinked and glanced down, realizing a little too late that he was, indeed, wearing his customary morning attire—the towel he'd slung around his hips after his shower.  "No," he drawled, fighting down the blush that threatened and slightly irritated that he should feel the need to blush, in the first place.  "It's a totally different towel."

Her mouth dropped open at his flip response, but she snapped it closed as her flush darkened, though he had a feeling that chagrin might be the culprit now.  He still managed to keep his amusement in check, which was probably for the best.

She shook her head and sighed.  "Way to quibble the incidentals," she retorted dryly.

"Would you like for me to go get dressed?"

"No," she said with a wave of her hand.  "Like I said before, it's your house, after all."

Deciding that it was in his best interests just to let the subject drop, he took a drink of the coffee and waited for her to get around to saying whatever it was that she had on her mind.

"I came over this morning because I thought we should probably talk about . . . stuff," she finally said, avoiding his gaze as she fussed with the hem of her shirtsleeve.

"What stuff?"

Blowing an errant lock of hair back out of her eyes, she finally looked at him.  "You know," she muttered, her cheeks pinking up once more. "Living arrangements and stuff."

A sudden swell of foreboding washed through him, and he frowned.  "What do you mean?" he asked slowly, carefully, not really caring for the direction the conversation was moving in.

"I mean . . . I'm going to need a week or two to get the nursery set up, but I think it's fair to split time between my apartment and here. I don't know if you'd rather do every other day and see how that goes?  But then, that seems like it could be pretty unsettling for them, but a week at a time seems like a long time . . ."

"Wha-a-a-at's wrong with the current arrangement?" he drawled in what he hoped was a neutral tone of voice.

"Oji-san said 'shared custody'," she pointed out.

"Custody, yes, but that doesn't mean they have to physically live in both places, does it?"

"Yes.  Yes, I think it does," she said, her voice taking on a clipped, almost irritated, bite.  "They're my babies, too, aren't they?"

"Of course, they're your babies, too, Charity.  I just don't think there's anything wrong with the home they have here, and they need stability.  They don't need to be shuffled back and forth like a pack of playing cards—"

"So, what?  I just come over when I can because you're Daddy and you said so?" she countered quietly—dangerously.

"That's really not what I said," Ben countered.  "You can be here as much as you like, as often as you like, but upsetting their schedules by toting them back and forth?  How would that be good for them?"

Rubbing her forehead, she seemed to be trying to get a grip on her rising irritation.  "That's not really what we'd be doing, Ben, and you know it.   There's nothing wrong with the idea of sharing the responsibilities, and you have to agree that it just makes the most sense instead of making it a pride-thing where you have to be right because you're the man and you make the rules, don't you think?"

Ben hesitated for a few seconds before responding, mostly to get control of his rioting sense of panic.  "That doesn't even make sense," he insisted, sounding a lot calmer than he was feeling.  "I just told you that you're welcome here whenever you want.  I really don't think—"

"Oh, for the love of God!" Eddie cut in, her tone rife with obvious disgust, having apparently heard enough of the escalating argument.  "You two are arguing about your babies—the children that you both love, right?  Then stop acting like bickering kindergarteners and figure it out!  Come up with something better—something that doesn't involve cutting your children in half, Solomon!"

Rolling his eyes at Eddie's judicious use of the Biblical story, he snorted, drumming his claws on the table top as his irritation spiked.  "I don't think anyone said anything about doing something so stupid."

"Oh, shut up!  You haven't got the sense to put clothes on in the morning instead of shaking what your mama gave you in front of God and sundry, so you don't get to make the rules!  Might as well have suggested cutting your babies in half," she grouched, pinning Ben with a formidable glower.  "The whole thing is entirely ridiculous!"

"Oh?  And just what do you suggest, Eddie?" Ben growled back.

"I don't know, but you'd think that the two of you could figure it out!  Miss Charity's a smart woman, even if you are duller than a box of bolts!  It's not that hard, you know!  Just ask Miss Charity to move in, and stop acting like a damn knuckle dragger!  Then you'll both be with the babies all the time, no need for visitation or split custody, and everyone's happy!  Think of those babies instead of yourself, you heathen exhibitionist!"

Dead silence fell over the kitchen as Eddie's words hung thick in the air.

It was a possibility that hadn't occurred to Ben, though it might have, had he thought for even a moment that Charity was considering something entirely different.  Daring a quick look at the woman in question, he took it as a good sign that she actually seemed like she was considering it, too.

Ben cleared his throat.  "I do have more than enough room," he offered.

She sat back, scrunched up her shoulders, chewed on a delicately tapered claw as her ears flicked in a decidedly nervous sort of way.  "I wouldn't be an imposition?  I mean, it would be best for the girls . . ."

Ben nodded.  "It would be," he agreed.  "We've been over that before, Charity.  You're never an imposition."  Breaking into an apologetic little smile, he shrugged.  "I'm sorry I overreacted."

"No, you didn't," she told him. Then she sighed, and when she did, her ears flattened out to the sides for a moment before popping up again, at least, partially, anyway.  "I wasn't trying to make you think that I was going to take them away or anything.  I just . . ." Trailing off with a grimace, she sat up a little straighter.  "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he told her as he stood up to pick up the babies, who had been unceremoniously disturbed by the raised voices.  They weren't crying yet, but they weren't happy, either.  Ben figured they'd calm down quickly enough as soon as they figured out that everything was all right.  "When do you want to move in?"

Charity rose from her seat to take Nadia, cuddling the infant close and uttering soft words meant to quiet her while Ben sat down again with Emmeline held against his shoulder.

She sighed.  "If it were up to me, I'd do it as soon as possible, but I imagine I should figure out what to do with the apartment."

"Are you leasing or do you own it?"

"I own it, but . . ." She shrugged.  "Then again, Chelsea always stays there when she's in town, so it won't matter if I just leave it, as-is."

Ben considered that.  He had a few calls to make today, but he could do those at any time, and none of them were of that much importance, anyway.  "If you'd like, I can go over there with you and help you get the things you need."

"Okay," she replied, finally breaking into a wan, but genuine, smile.

"All right, then.  Do you want me to empty a guest room for you?  You can have two of them if you need space for your own office."

"Would it be all right with you if I just left all my furniture and stuff?  That way it's all ready whenever Chelsea is in town."

"That's fine," he said.  "Whatever you want."

"Thank God," Eddie said, flipping the sausage links in the skillet.  "Now that you're both done acting foolish, I'll have your breakfast ready in a minute."