InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Fruition ❯ Aftershock ( Chapter 37 )

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

Ben sat on the sofa, frowning as he slowly leafed through some of the sample sketches that the architect he'd hired had sent over.  They all looked decent, as far as he could tell, and the samples of the sketched out basic floor plans were all right, even if they weren't yet to-scale or anything, but it didn't really matter what he thought, either, since he figured that Charity really ought to have the final say in it all.  After all, it was her house, too, and he wasn't nearly as picky about it as she might well be.

'Yep . . . If she'll ever talk to us again, that is . . .'

Heaving a sigh, Ben's frown deepened as he dropped the sketches onto the coffee table.

One whole week.

One week since that fateful night in Mexico, and if it wasn't something direly important, the woman actually hadn't said one damn thing to him since, either.  If someone had told him before, just how stubborn Charity Inutaisho could be, he might not have believed them, but there it was.  She could hold onto a grudge better than any man he'd ever met, and, at least at the moment, they were still not really speaking . . .

'Maybe you should try to apologize without adding a quantifier to it,' his youkai-voice intoned.

Ben snorted, striding over to the portable playpen where the twins were currently napping.  Charity was out Christmas shopping, and then she was planning on taking the babies over to Zelig's house for 'a play date', though how babies that were only about a month or two old could play with the twins, he wasn't sure.  He hadn't been invited, actually, mostly because all the women in the family?  Yep, they all sided against the men and with Charity, which basically meant that all the men of the family were plenty pissed at Ben, too . . .

Apparently, it was a common belief in the women's camp, anyway, that the men of the family—and Ben had somehow gotten rolled into that one—were just a little too overprotective a little too often, and this time had apparently been the straw that had broken the proverbial camel's back . . .

The phone rang, and Ben sighed as he dug the device out of his pocket.  "Hello?" he answered without bothering to look at the caller ID.

"Good morning, nii-san . . . It is morning there, right?"

"Yes," Ben replied.  "For the moment, anyway . . . What's going on?"

"Do I have to have a reason to call you?" Kyouhei countered mildly.  "Can't I just call you because you're family, and I simply want to hear your voice?"

Ben snorted.  "No," he stated flatly. "No, you cannot."

Kyouhei chuckled.  "I take it your better half still won't speak to you?"

"Is there a reason you called?" Ben asked pointedly, completely ignoring Kyouhei's question as he stalked over to the fireplace, reaching out to straighten his swords that hung crossed above the mantle.  He'd stopped by the townhouse in the city long enough to grab his important papers and things like that, including his weapons since they were going to be staying in Maine, at least, for the foreseeable future, and Eddie would be coming there, too, as soon as her holiday was over.

"They're getting ready to move."

"What do you mean?"

Kyouhei heaved a sigh.  "I can't give you details right now, but I'll be in the States next week to take care of a few things for otou-san.  I'll tell you then."

"Next week is Christmas," Ben replied.  "Will you be here for the holiday?"

"A few days," he said.  "Now, more than ever, I cannot afford to be seen too close to you.  You understand."

"Yeah," Ben said, knowing that what Kyouhei said was entirely because of the whole situation, but hating it, just the same.  "All right," he muttered.  "Give me a call when you get here."

"I will," Kyouhei promised.  "And nii-san?"

"Huh?"

Letting out a deep breath, Kyouhei didn't answer right away.  When he did, though, his tone was strangely dark.  "Keep your head down, okay?"

". . . Okay," he agreed.

The connection ended, and Ben scowled at the phone.  There was something ominous in his brother's parting words, aside from what could potentially be taken as a warning of sorts . . . It would be easy to say that he was simply being overly cautious, but somehow, Ben had a feeling that there was much more to it—something that Kyouhei wasn't at liberty to say.  If their father had realized that Kyouhei was feeding information back to them, then it could put him in a fairly bad spot . . .

Except . . .

A knock on the door interrupted Ben's thoughts, and he brushed the conversation away as he strode through the living room and into the foyer to answer it.

"Ben Philips?"

Ben nodded at the delivery man, who held out a sealed shipping envelope.  "Sign here, please."

Ben complied and took the package.  "Thanks."

"Merry Christmas!"

He nodded and watched the guy lope down the steps and over to the delivery truck before stepping back into the house and closing the door once more.

Ripping open the mailer, he smiled when he pulled out the large, manila envelope inside, stamped with the official seal of the adoption court.  From there, he pulled out the court decree—the papers that officially named him and Charity as the girls' parents forever.

"Ugh . . . Court papers," Hecht remarked as he stepped off the stairs, staring in obvious distaste at the papers in Ben's hand.

Ben chuckled.  He'd come to terms with the young man in the days that followed the altercation on the beach.  It had taken awhile for him to calm down enough to really listen to what Hecht had to say, but when he finally did, he understood exactly where Charity was coming from.  Damned by being born into a family that just didn't care, and yet, there was something decent about him, too.  After discussing what would be best for him, the general consensus was that he needed to 'die'—at least, as far as his family was concerned.

Hecht had insisted that his friend, Diego would help him, and to that end, he'd explained what needed to happen.  Diego had agreed to act as liaison, informing the Unker's of their son's untimely demise when his attempt to kidnap the girls had backfired.  Ben was officially taking the blame for that because it made the most sense, and to his surprise, Toga had offered to take Hecht back to Japan with him when they left after New Year's, but in the end, they'd decided that he needed to be gone as soon as possible, so he was leaving on an early flight in the morning where InuYasha and Kagome had offered to pick him up and let him stay with them until Toga and Sierra returned.  He'd arrange for Hecht to be issued a whole new identity, giving him a clean slate, and after that, they'd figure out just what Hecht could do or could be trained to do . . .

Until then, however, Ben had offered to let Hecht stay with them, but he'd cautioned Hecht, too, that it'd be best if he stayed here, that he didn't try to leave just in case.  After all, Ben wasn't entirely convinced that the Unkers would be content, just to let things go, which was also why Charity was even more irritated at him of late: he'd requested that she always be accompanied by some kind of security detail if she wanted to step out without him, at least, until they were certain that there wasn't going to be any kind of action forthcoming from the Unker camp . . .

Today, that dubious honor had fallen upon Grey Silvera, one of Cain's newer hunters—and Charity couldn't have been more irritated about it, either . . .

"This?" Ben asked, waving the papers at Hecht.  "These are good court papers—the adoption decree."

Hecht's expression perked up as the reluctance drained away.  "Oh, yeah?  So, they're officially your daughters for real, then?  Nice!"

As if on cue, the sudden and shrill screech signaled the end of nap time, and Ben chuckled, heading back into the living room once more before the happy sounds shifted into something far more ominous . . .


Charity breezed into the house with a gust of frigid air that smelled like the trees, like the land, like snow though the skies had yet to drop any of that today.  The news on the radio had reported a very good chance of a decent winter storm by nightfall, so she'd called to cancel the play date, figuring that Ben would have a fit if she tried to drive all the way up to Bevelle with a storm coming in.

Setting her bags next to the small table near the door, she dropped her purse on the stand and leaned on the wall to kick off her hiking boots.

The sounds of happy babies drew her toward the living room, and she paused in the doorway, just long enough to watch for a moment as Ben and Hecht sat on the sofa, watching a football game with the girls on each of their laps.  Ben wasn't really that into sports, but Hecht seemed to be.  One of the players fumbled the ball, and seven grown men dove for it.  "Oh!  No!  Can't you hold onto anything?  Bastard!" Hecht yelled.

Emmeline, who was on his lap, blinked and craned her neck to stare up at him.

Shaking her head, despite the smile on her face as she shoved herself out of the doorway and wandered forward to retrieve her daughter before Hecht forgot that she was on his lap, in the first place, she caught sight of the papers on the coffee table and bent over to retrieve them.

"Oh, you're home.  Were the roads okay?" Ben asked.

"Fine," she replied primly, flipping the pages as she looked over the document.  "Did this come today?"

He nodded.  "It's all official—Mommy."

"Good," she said.  "I'll put these on your desk."  Then she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "You're not going to drop her, are you, Hecht?"

"Wha—?  Uh, no, of course not!" he scoffed without looking at her.

She rolled her eyes but smiled as she headed out of the room again and around the corner into Ben's office.

She could feel him following her, though she didn't look back to confirm it.  Ordinarily, she might well have wanted to something special to mark the occasion, but the irritation over the whole idea that he and the other men had known about the danger to her babies and hadn't felt like telling her had yet to actually go away.  And it was more than that, too.  Ben really had been doing all of that from the start: playing puppet master or whatever he thought, however he tried to explain everything away.  He'd done it for so long that it had become second nature to him, and even though a small part of her could understand his reasoning for why he'd put her off for as long as he had, it didn't make her feel any better about the years when he'd left her to wonder and worry and believe that she simply wasn't good enough . . . No, if they had a future together, then the rules had to change because Charity would be damned if she'd be a bystander in the most important decisions of her life . . .

Ben sighed behind her as she carefully set the papers on the desk.  "I really am sorry," he said, his tone soft, gentle, coaxing.  "I swear that I'll never, ever keep something like that from you again . . . Will you please forgive me?"

She made a face, crossing her arms over her chest as she slowly regarded him.  "Did you practice that?"

He rolled his eyes and sighed.  "No, I didn't," he told her.  "Can we at least have a truce for the holidays?"

"You go Christmas shopping with Grey following you around, who, by the way, is about as noticeable as a bull in a China shop, and we'll talk about 'truces'.  I can take care of myself, you know.  I'm not a baby, and if anyone tried to attack me, I assure you, I can most certainly hold my own."

"And I just don't want you to have to do any such thing, Charity," he countered.  "Just because you can do something doesn't meant that I want you to."  He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair, his bangs falling through his fingers, only to drift back into place in such a slow, mesmerizing way.  "I wasn't trying to discount your feelings. That was never, ever my intention.  I know the girls are perfectly safe with you . . . I just didn't want you to have to be all concerned when there wasn't any proof in the beginning that the Unkers really were that big a threat . . ."

She leaned back against the desk, crossing her ankles as she slowly regarded him.  "And the next time something happens?"

"I swear, I won't keep anything like this from you ever again."

She sighed.  "I forgive you, Ben.  I forgave you days ago . . . What I can't do is to make it okay for you to do this kind of thing again.  I want to be with you, but I need to know that my opinion matters to you, too.  For years, I didn't know why you pushed me away, and maybe you didn't think you had, but that's what it felt like to me . . . I understand your reasons, and on some level, I am grateful, too, because you were right: I did grow and change during those years, but . . . But there were so many times when I felt like I just wasn't good enough, and you have no idea what that feels like—I don't want you to know what that feels like . . . I . . . I need to know that I matter, that's all."

Ben heaved a sigh, his gaze falling to the side as a hint of a blush crept into his cheeks, and he stepped toward her, drew her into a hug.  "I'm sorry," he said again.  "If I had realized . . . If I had known . . . I . . . I'm just sorry."

She sighed, too, resisting for only a moment before she gave in and leaned against him.  "All you men seem to think that we women will just fall to pieces if you tell us things," she remarked, but her voice lacked any of the irritation that should have been there.  "We won't, you know—and we probably could even help.  We're pretty smart."

He snorted, resting his cheek against her head.  "Probably a lot smarter than we are," he allowed.  "Give me a break, though . . . I was born over seven hundred years ago, and back then, it was called chivalry."

"Oh, is that what they called it?"

He nodded.  "Hecht told me that you managed to blast the door into bits," he remarked.  "Wish I could have seen that . . ."

She finally giggled.  "It was badass," she said.

He chuckled, giving her a little squeeze.  "Hecht said that, too."


"Any of them you like?"

Charity glanced up at Ben and shrugged as she turned her attention back to the house sketches once more.  "A few of them," she said.  Then she sighed, settling back against the fluffy, thick pillows on the huge bed.  "There are things I like about each of them—and things I'm not too keen on, too."

"Make a list of the things that you like and the things that you don't, and I'll take it to the architects—or we can do it together."

"I was thinking . . . I like the idea of having split bedrooms for the girls.  I mean, right now, they want to be together, and if they're like Chelsea and me, we stayed in the same room until we were teenagers, so it'd be nice to have a set-up where the nursery is adjacent to their bedrooms with their individual bathrooms—we never would share the bathroom, either—so when they get older, they can have a common room between to hang out and stuff . . ."

He grinned.  "So, you're saying that their rooms are going to be more extensive than the master bedroom," he teased.

She smiled, too. "Probably."

"And how many bedrooms do we need?" he asked, reaching for the remote to turn on the television.  "I'm not implying that we, you know, would have cubs right away or anything, but it doesn't hurt to think ahead, does it?"

She bit her lip.  "You . . . want more . . . babies . . .?"

He flicked through the channels, totally missing the careful neutrality in her voice.  "I like babies," he replied.  "I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty positive that I won't mind making those babies, either," he added.

"Ben!" she gasped as she dissolved into a fit of giggles, her cheeks pinking very prettily as she smashed her hands over her face.

"All right, I'm sorry," he relented despite the grin still on his face.  "I wasn't trying to embarrass you.  Seriously, though, how many babies do you think you want?"

She cleared her throat, her cheeks still red, and shook her head.  "I don't know . . . I mean, at least one or two more, but I . . . I'm not in a hurry . . ."

Ben shrugged.  "Me, either," he agreed.  "With my luck, you'd end up having twins, then we'd have four babies, all in diapers, and I just don’t think I'd want to do that . . ."

"No, I don't think I'd want that, either," she admitted with another laugh.  "But what if we had a couple more, and they were girls, too?  Would you want to keep trying for a son?  Most men do, I think . . ."

"I don't know," he said slowly, "I hadn't really thought about that."

She held out one of the drawings and leaned in so that she could point something out to him.  "See how this one is set up with the open area up here?  I like that . . . It's rather dramatic, don't you think?"

"To tell the truth, I'm not really that picky," he admitted.  "Whatever you want is fine with me."

"Hmm . . . and what kind of price range are we looking at here?  I mean, I have money, too—"

"Keep your money, Cherry," he said.  "I have more than enough to cover whatever kind of house you might want."

She wrinkled her nose.  "You know, back in the olden days, people maintained separate bedrooms for the lord and lady of the manor, and they only shared a room long enough to make an heir.  Maybe we should do that."

Ben snorted, dropping the remote on the bed between them.  "Yeah, no."

She giggled as he reached over to tug her against his side, as the sketches fell over the side of the bed, scattering into a careless heap on the floor.