InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Fruition ❯ Lull ( Chapter 30 )

"So, nii-san . . ."

"What?"

"If I hadn't come out to get you . . ."

"What?"

"Would you have claimed your mate right there in the water?"

" . . . Shut up, Kyouhei."

Kyouhei chuckled, watching as Charity disappeared into the house ahead of them.  She'd mumbled something about checking on the girls before darting away as fast as she could go, very obviously embarrassed at having been caught kissing Ben like that, if the becoming blush that stained her skin had meant anything at all. "Nii-san?"

Ben didn't answer.  Instead, he peered over his shoulder at him.

Kyouhei still looked entirely too amused, and that just figured.  "You've waited over seven hundred years to find her, didn't you?"

Somehow, Ben had the feeling that he wasn't going to like whatever his brother was trying to say.  "Yes . . ."

He nodded, as though something made perfect sense to him.  "Then might I suggest that when you do get around to claiming her as your mate that you do it somewhere a little warmer than the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of November?  Wouldn't want shrinkage, now would you?"

Ben uttered a terse grunt and kept moving, praying that his irritating sibling couldn't see the trace redness in his cheeks.  "I thought you were only going to be here long enough to say goodbye, Kyouhei."

"My plane leaves tomorrow.  Is that soon enough for you?"

Stepping into the house, Ben scoffed.  "No."

"Ah, Ben!  Good to see you!" Steve Vasquez greeted, stepping forward to offer a warm handshake.  "Can't remember the last time you came down this way . . . It's been, what?  Twenty years?  More?  And, if memory serves, you were here on vacation because Zelig told you to go and not to come back until you'd unwound yourself, right?"

Ben snorted.  "I believe the term he used was, 'get the stick out of my ass', but yes."

The Mexican axolotl-youkai chuckled.  "Get me a drink while we talk shop, Ben," he said.

"Uh, I'll get them," Kyouhei offered, striding past Ben and over to the kitchen bar.

Steve scratched his head as he narrowed his gaze on Kyouhei.  "Friend of yours?"

"No, worse.  He's my brother," Ben muttered.

Steve blinked, shot Ben a questioning glance.  "I didn't know you had a brother."

"Yes, well, live and learn," Ben replied acerbically.

Crossing his arms over his chest as he blatantly stared at Kyouhei, Steve frowned.  "He's really . . .  pretty. . ."

"Kind of looks like a girl, don't you think?"

Steve nodded.  "Got any sisters?"

"Just that one."

Steve nodded again.  "That's a shame."

Ben nodded, too.  "It is."

"Don't suppose he'd be willing to have a sexual reassignment done?"

"Nope, but thanks for the offer," Kyouhei remarked without looking up from his task of pouring drinks.

Ben flicked a hand in dismissal.  "He's just playing hard to get."

"So . . . I should offer dinner first?  Is that what you're saying?"

Ben nodded again.  "Yes."

"Here you are," Kyouhei said, handing both Ben and Steve each a glass of scotch.  "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've an early flight out tomorrow.  In case I miss you in the morning, thank you for your hospitality, nii-san."

Rolling his eyes as Kyouhei offered him a low bow, Ben broke into a wan smile as he turned his attention to Steve once more.

Steve, however, was scowling at Ben in an entirely thoughtful, if not somewhat creepy, kind of way.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Ben demanded after a long moment.

Steve shook his head slowly.  "Just trying to figure out how you look like you, and he looks like . . . her?"

Ben snorted, but broke into the vaguest of smiles as he sat on the sofa and lifted the drink to his lips.  "Because he looks like hahaue—exactly like hahaue."

"I see . . ."

"I look much more masculine.  Just lucky, I guess."

Steve made a face.  "No-o-o-o," he drawled slowly, stroking his chin as he considered Ben's words.  "No, you're definitely on the pretty side, too—more of a dark and brooding sort of pretty, though . . ."

Ben rolled his eyes again.  "Go to hell, Vasquez."

Steve chuckled and lifted his glass in silent salute.

Tightening his grip on the beat-up old duffle bag, Hecht brushed aside the trace weariness as he stepped out of the shadows of the squat adobe buildings of the tired yet quaint little village.  He'd hitchhiked most of the way, flagging down a few truckers who had been happy to help him out.  When he'd gotten close to the border, though, he'd opted instead to use his youkai form.  At his age, he wasn't much larger than a regular cougar, so he'd managed to slip over the border undetected.

Now, the real problem would begin.  Truth be told, he didn't have a hell of a lot to go on, and even then, he didn't know much in the way of Spanish, either.  All in all, it had started to seem like it might well be impossible to figure out exactly where he needed to go—until he'd remembered Diego, a young jackal-youkai who came from Mexico and who used to hang out with Hecht and his crew until they'd gotten busted on a hot weapons charge.  After his stint in the federal lockup, Diego had been deported back to Mexico.  He lived here, in this village, and he ran batches of untraceable handguns through the country and up into the States in a small enough operation that he was successfully able to stay under the radar for the most part.

Checking the address, scrawled on the back of a bar receipt, Hecht scowled at the numbers on the door and gave a curt knock as he stuffed the paper into his pocket once more.

A tiny woman answered after the third knock.  Raven black hair, coal black eyes, and a rich olive skin tone, she looked him over in a generally distrusting fashion.

"I'm looking for Diego," he said, hoping that the woman spoke at least that much English.

"Diego?" she repeated, her eyes lighting up with a sense of recognition.  "You . . . You Unker?"

Hecht nodded.  "Yeah, yeah . . ."

The woman nodded, too, stepping back to allow him inside.

The place was dark but not unwelcoming, exactly, and containing a bare minimum of very old furniture.  The woman caught a small child that ran through the house, shifting him onto her hip as she gestured for Hecht to follow her.  The child spoke in rapid Spanish, refusing to take his gaze off of Hecht.  She shushed him with a hand over his mouth, glancing over her shoulder at Hecht to see if he understood, he supposed.  "He says you look like . . . like scarecrow from Wizard of Oz," she said with a grimace.  "He only—" she held up two fingers.  "—This many.  Sorry."

Hecht didn't comment.  Being told that he looked like a scarecrow?  Well, he supposed there were worse things . . .

She stopped outside of the door at the end of a short and narrow hallway and stood back, waving her free hand to gesture Hecht inside.  With a curt nod of thanks, he slipped past her, spotting Diego sitting on the bed with his cell phone up to his ear and a half-burnt cigarette dangling from his lips.  He nodded at Hecht and held up a finger, speaking in Spanish in a no-nonsense tone of voice.  After a brief exchange, he hung up and dropped the phone onto the rumpled blankets beside him, then dropped the spent cigarette butt in the ashtray.  "Hecht!  Long time, no see!" he exclaimed, rising to his feet as he held his arms out.

Hecht hesitated for a moment, but hugged the man quickly, patting him on the back before letting go and stepping away.  "Sorry about that," Hecht muttered since the last time he'd actually seen Diego in person was just after they were arrested years before.

Diego made a face and brushed off the apology as he flopped back down on the bed once more.  "You still runnin' shit for your ol' man?" he asked, shaking out another cigarette before tossing Hecht the crumpled pack.

He pulled one out and caught the lighter that Diego chucked at him.  "Thanks," he muttered, lighting the cigarette and scowling at the burning end.  "Not that shit, no," he said with a shrug, ducking his head, letting his shaggy hair fall to cover his face.  "Was wondering, though . . . You got connections here, right?"

Diego wiped his mouth on the neck of the white wife-beater he wore and nodded.  "Yeah, of course.  King of the information superhighway, south of the border style.  You looking for info?"

Hecht nodded.  "Hi's dead," he said in a completely flat tone of voice.  "Challenged the Zelig and lost."

"Damn," Diego muttered, shaking his head as he knocked the ash off his cigarette into a mud-brown earthenware dish.  "Man, that sucks . . . The Zelig?  He ain’t no joke . . . What was he doin', being so stupid?"

Hecht shrugged.  "Anyway, his old lady gave the babies—twins—to the Zelig, and he gave them up to some guy named Ben, and Ben brought them down here to Mexico—something about an island he owns?  Think you can hook me up with some leads?"

Scrubbing a hand against his shoulder-length yellow hair, Diego made a face.  "Why you want 'em back?  I mean, they're just cousins, right?  No biggie."

Steeling his voice, Hecht shrugged again.  "Jeet wants 'em back.  He's got some lady lined up to . . . to buy them."

"Youkai trafficking?" Suddenly, Diego uttered a sharp laugh that was full of derision and a little irony.  "Ol' Jeet's hitting the big time, huh?"

"They're kin," Hecht muttered, taking a long, deep drag off the cigarette and leaning back as he blew out a steady stream of acrid smoke.  "They . . . They should be raised by kin . . ."

Diego's charcoal gaze narrowed as he stared at Hecht.  "What are you planning?" he finally asked.

Hecht snorted.  "Can you help me out or not?" he asked, ignoring Diego's question.

Smashing the cigarette out in the bowl, Diego let out a slow stream of smoke.  "A guy named Ben that owns an island, you say?  Well, ain't that many of those—at least, ones that can be owned by one individual.  Lemme make a few calls, yeah?"  He stood up, waved a hand to indicate that Hecht should, too.  "Come on, kid," he said, grasping Hecht's shoulder and propelling him toward the door.  "Emilia’s making tacos, and you look like you ain't had a decent meal in a decade."

Ben dropped another log on the fire and turned to face Charity as a small, almost bashful smile quirked the corners of his lips.  "You want something to drink?" he asked when she met his gaze.

"Sure," she said, sitting on the floor, but leaning against the sofa with her elbow propped on the seat and her temple resting against her balled-up fist while she stroked Emmeline’s golden-brown hair.  It was still wispy and a bit on the fly-away side, and the baby slept peacefully on the floor beside Charity.  Nadia was sleeping, too, cuddled up beside Emmeline with her knees drawn up under her and her butt up in the air.

Chuckling to himself as he hurried over to pour two glasses of wine, Ben glanced out of the open windows at the heavy curtain of night that had fallen.

All in all, he had to admit that he was feeling pretty damn mellow, as though a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders that had everything to do with the kiss he and Charity had shared.  Maybe things weren't completely back to where they were before the debacle of Halloween night, but it was a close thing.  The image of Charity, standing in the shallows as the sun set in front of her was a powerful thing, sneaking unbidden right back into his head.

He'd gone out there to tell her that Steve was on his way, but had forgotten about that completely as he'd stopped, as he'd stood there, watching her, seeing the absolutely breathtaking way that her little dress had floated around her, the flirt of a skirt lifting and floating around her on the breeze as the sun bathed her in a golden glow that had lent her an entirely ethereal kind of radiance, lending her a fire that emblazoned itself upon his very soul.  As he'd watched her, the dress seemed to melt away, hadn't it?  The peach crinkled-cotton, as sheer as gossamer in the light had hidden absolutely nothing about her, not from him, and he'd reacted on a purely primitive level.  And he knew, didn't he?  It wouldn't matter how long he lived, wouldn't matter what he'd see in the future yet to come, that insular image of her would remain in his memory forever . . .

"Here," he said offering her a glass that she took before he sank down beside her.  Leaning on the sofa in much the same way that she was, he reached out, let his fingers sink into her hair as she flashed him a little smile.  "Your eyes are sparkling, Cherry," he mused.

She bit her lip as her cheeks pinked prettily.  "I was just . . . thinking . . ."

"About?" he prompted when she trailed off.

She laughed softly.  "It's been a good day," she said.

"Any particular reason?"

She gasped then giggled and shook her head as her pink cheeks deepened in color.  "None that I can think of," she quipped.

Ben sucked in a sharp breath and winced.  "That was harsh," he complained.  "Ouch . . ."

"I . . . I'm glad I'm here with you," she said.

"Oh, yeah?"

She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded as her timid little smile widened.  "I want to kiss you again," he admitted with a sigh, "and I would, I promise—if we didn't have babies between us."

As if on cue, Emmeline uttered a little half-whine, scooching around as she awoke with a start.  Ben picked her up before she could start fussing in earnest, and he sighed.  "Why is everyone trying to ruin my best ideas today?" he complained with a chuckle.

Charity giggled as she set the glass aside and stood up.  "I'll get their bottles.  It's about time for them, anyway . . ."

Ben watched her go and heaved a sigh, fully appreciating the turn of her ankles, the shape of her legs . . . She wasn't tall by any means, but damned if she wasn't entirely perfectly proportioned . . .

"All right, Em," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, as he dragged his attention off of Charity and held up the baby, instead.  "We need to talk.  You want to help Daddy, don't you?"  She blinked, her bottom lip sticking out to attest to the fact that she still wasn't entirely happy with the given situation.  He took the blink as agreement.  "I'll make you a deal.  If you and your sister will give Daddy a chance to spend some, 'alone time' with Mommy, I'll see what I can do about making her a more permanent fixture in our lives.  Fair?"  Emmeline heaved a petulant sigh, and Ben chuckled, cuddling her against his chest to wait for her bottle.

"Here you go," Charity said, hurrying back over with two bottles and handing one to Ben.  He took it as Emmeline kicked her feet and reached out with swinging fists.  Charity giggled and scooped up Nadia, who was more than happy to start eating without bothering to open her eyes.

The sounds of greedily eating babies drowned out anything else, and Ben chuckled as Emmeline struggled against sleepiness.  "Oh, no," Ben said, setting the empty bottle aside and lifting Emmeline against his shoulder as he grabbed a burp cloth off the floor beside him and tucked it under her head.  "No sleeping until you burp."  He'd tried putting her to bed without forcing the burp out of her before, and it had ended up badly, he remembered as he gently patted her back.  Nadia didn't always burp, and she was fine, but Emmeline?  Unless Ben wanted to deal with washing babies and changing sheets in the middle of the night, then it wasn't a good idea to let Emmeline go.

It didn't take long, anyway, and Ben made a face when the child spit up enough to run right off the rag and soak into his shirt in a hot gush of formula.  "Eh, thanks," he grumbled as Charity giggled and tossed him another rag.  "Sometimes you're a little gross," he told Emmeline, wiping her face carefully.  Nadia burped, too, and she spit up, but not anything close to Emmeline's version of the Coming of the Great Flood, Part II.

Charity laughed as she took Emmeline and leaned over far enough for Ben to kiss the baby on the forehead before shifting herself so that he could repeat the process with Nadia.  "I'll put them to bed," she said, wrinkling her nose.  "You kind of stink, Ben," she pointed out.

He snorted.  "I swear you do that on purpose," he accused.

"Do what on purpose?"

He spared her a look. "You always end up, feeding Nadi because you know that she doesn't hurl every time she eats."

"Em doesn't hurl," Charity retorted despite the smile still on her face.  "It's spit-up, and all babies do it."

Ben grunted.  "I think you shake her up or something first . . ."

Charity's laughter trailed behind her as she headed out of the living room.

Making a face as he glanced down at the wreckage of a perfectly clean shirt, Ben made quick work of unbuttoning the garment and yanking it off.  Then he gathered up the rags and the shirt and strode into the kitchen, rinsing out the shirt and cloths and setting them on the side of the sink after wringing out as much water as he could.

"Out like little lights," Charity commented as she wandered back into the living room again.

Ben wiped his chest down with a dampened cloth and dropped it into the sink before turning on his heel and moving back into the living room once more.  "Till three or so," he allowed.

She laughed when he grabbed her hand and tugged her down onto the sofa beside him.  "When I talked to Mama earlier, she said that we can check with the pediatrician to see when we can start feeding them some cereal.  She said that when she gave it to us, that's when we finally started to sleep through the night."  She shrugged.  "It's probably going to sound dumb, but I kind of like it when they wake up, though . . . It's so nice to feed them and snuggle with them . . . There's something wonderful about the stillness at night, like . . ." She trailed off for a moment, trying to find the words she wanted to explain her feelings.  "Like there's nothing else on earth but us."

"You're probably the only parent who ever said something like that," he teased.  "But I see what you're saying, and I think I've appreciated the same things, although, I’m not going to lie.  Sleeping through the night would most definitely be a plus, in my opinion."

"Yes, but I'm trying to find the positives in the situation.  I read a book that said for every stage that babies pass, the parents often feel as though they gain some things and lose others, and it makes me a little sad to think that, in gaining the ability to sleep all night, I'll also lose those quiet moments.  That's all."

Something about the way she said things, the words she chose, never ceased to give him pause.  He understood, just from knowing her over the years, that she tended to be an optimist at heart, combined with an innate gentleness that spoke to him.  He supposed that was the thing that Toga had mentioned, the thing about Charity that made inspired such a level of protectiveness.  It wasn't at all that the woman was weak, no. It was more that she was something rare, something beautiful and precious, and it was that optimism in her that made people want to shelter her, to buffer her from the harshness that thrived in the darker corners of the world.

She stared at him as she quietly sipped the wine, a slow sense of pensiveness slowly creeping over her, making him wonder exactly what she was thinking, and would she tell him if he were to ask?

"What are you thinking?" he asked, reaching out, resting his palm on her cheek.

She leaned into his touch but sighed as the darkness in her eyes seemed to spread.  "Is it . . .?  Is it okay?  Sending Kyouhei-san back, just to spy on your father?  It doesn't seem like a fair position to ask him to put himself in.  If it were me . . ."

"He knows what he's doing.  He understands what is being asked of him.  It's . . ." Trailing off, Ben let out a deep breath and took Charity's empty glass to set it aside before tugging her over, tucking her against his side.  "We were raised in a completely different environment than you were, and that's a good thing.  The way you were brought up was the way that everyone should be.  We . . . Well, I—I guess I cannot speak for him—but I get the feeling that the way Kyouhei was raised was not that vastly different from how I was."

"And how were you raised?" she asked.

Ben sighed.  "I've told you, haven't I?  My parents were very hands-off.  They allowed me a freedom to seek and discover my own answers."  He frowned, idly rubbing her shoulder, savoring the warmth of her skin, the vibrance of her youki.  "I was never treated like a child—not really that unusual back then, I think.  Often times, I would come home from a day or two of exploring, only to be asked what lessons I'd learned.  Chichiue did nothing to guide me, but he did nothing to hinder me, either.  The only real instruction I gleaned from him was in fighting, and even then, he pulled no punches; didn't take into consideration that I was, in fact, still a child.  But I learned my lessons well enough.  I could hold my own against him by the time I was a teenager."

"That's not so different," she remarked.  "We were taught basic skills early: tracking, hunting, self-defense . . . When we got older, we were taught how to fight, and some of us took it more seriously than others.  I can hold my own, even if I don't think I ever could fight someone for real."

"Your family taught you those things in the hopes that you would never have to use them," he concluded.  "Chichiue . . ." Ben sighed, and whether she understood the reluctance in his voice or if she simply knew that, on some level, he just didn't like to talk about it, he didn't know, but he felt it, didn't he?  The way her youki reached out to him, cloaking him with the same gentleness, the same understanding with which she lived her life . . . He cleared his throat, tamping down the uneven edges that were somehow ingrained with the memories.  "He taught me so that I could defend him—his life, his family, his ideals . . . Ironic, isn't it?  Those things that he wished for me to learn were the things that compelled me to follow Zelig, and my parents . . . They never understood that where I wanted to be, what I wanted to do with my life, had nothing at all to do with them.  As for Kyouhei . . . He holds his own beliefs about what is right and what is ultimately worth fighting for."

"But he's still your father . . . Surely—"

"I am not innocent, Charity.  I've made mistakes, and I've hurt people, whether intentional or not, it really doesn't matter.  What my father believes—who he is today—is my fault.  He blames Sesshoumaru for taking me away from him, for compelling me to leave them all behind, which hadn't been my intention at all, even if the end result had been exactly that.  Over time, that anger grew, that resentment sparked the rage that resides within him now.  Because Sesshoumaru offered Keijizen the position of tai-youkai, because I chose to go with Keiji . . . To my father, it's one in the same.  I chose to turn my back on my family.  I chose to walk away.  I ended chichiue's dynasty before he had a chance to see it flourish."

She slowly shook her head, her brows drawn together, her gaze full of an awful sadness.  "That's . . ."

He shrugged.  "It's the way of it," he concluded.  "I may not have wanted for things to happen the way they did, but there's nothing that I can do about that now, and, to be completely honest, I really cannot say that I regret my choices.  By the time I left Japan, I understood what was right in front of me, and I had already learned the things that were most important—the things that I would gladly fight for."

"And what things are those, Ben?  What is worth fighting for to you?"

"Back then, I'd fight for my friends, for those whom I loved.  Now . . .?  Now, I . . . I've discovered other things: things more precious to me than my own life."

"Nothing is more precious than your life," she countered with a marked scowl.

"You are," he said, his gaze dropping to meet hers, a ferocity in his eyes that he did not try to hide.  "You . . . our daughters . . . The things that ensure that their world will remain as steadfast as it has always been . . . You, them . . . You're more precious to me than anything is . . . or ever will be again."