InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Sacrifice ❯ Pappa ( Chapter 8 )

 

 

BallofFlame, you asked some rather interesting questions in your review. Some I hadn't even truly thought of. This chapter is dedicated to you.

 

 

 

Shippou stood before the youkai sitting beneath the hundred year old oak tree, its numerous leaves chattering in the early morning breeze. The young fox child bit his bottom lip, his tiny fangs peeking out over the flesh as he worried it, his nervousness keeping him silent and his movements slow and hesitant as he inched toward the male.

 

There was no mistaking who the youkai was, or to whom he was a father to. His shimmering red gold hair and pale face made him an older but still nearly identical version of the tiny kitsune in front of him. Even with his eyes closed there was no mistaking the relation of father to son.

 

“Pa…pappa?” Shippou asked his voice soft and nervous.

 

“Why are you so nervous with me my son?” the elder kitsune youkai asked as he opened his emerald eyes slowly and looked upon the pup in front of him. “You never held such fear before.”

 

He watched as his son's eyes fell to the grass beneath his feet. He had witnessed his son's reaction to finding the human woman alive. Even though the girl had no memory at the time, his son still saw the world in the woman he called `mother'. He had seen and heard the way the hanyou reacted and treated his son, calling the fox `pup' and had at one time heard his son call Inuyasha `pappa'.

 

“Before the girl made her wish my son, I had been dead for four years. You watched me die, though I wish you hadn't. I may not seem entirely happy right now, but appearances are deceiving. Had you not moved past my death, had you not found comrades and eventually adoptive parents in the hanyou and miko I would be upset far greater than I am now.”

 

“Pappa…I didn't know you were ever going to come back,” Shippou offered the explanation quietly as though he thought he had betrayed his father.

 

“Shippou, your mother would be so proud of you right now, as I am. You are so young, but already you have proved your strength and cunning in battle. You have found and belong to a pack…but most of all my son, most of all you have found happiness. I am not at all angered, nor do I feel betrayed by any of this. It is simply something I shall have to adjust to. I will always be your father, but no longer am I your `pappa'. That right now falls to Inuyasha, as the right of `mamma' falls to Kagome.”

 

“You-you're not…mad?” the child asked as he lifted his eyes to his father's smiling ones, though the expression was bittersweet.

 

“No,” he answered softly. “I think Shippou,” he said as he stood and lifted his son into his arms. “That I shall go visit your mother's grave.”

 

“When will you come back?” Shippou asked as he was placed in a low hanging branch of the oak tree, eye level with his father.

 

“I don't know.”

 

“Will you come back?” Shippou asked his lip trembling as he thought he was losing his father for a second time.

 

“I shall return in time. But first, I think I should like to explore the old kitsune village I was once a part of. I'd like to see how this world has changed since I've been absent from it.”

 

“I'll see you again?” Shippou asked a small smile beginning to pull at his lips.

 

“Yes my son, we shall see each other once again. Know this; your new parents have my blessing to be such, as they know it, so too do you.”

 

“I'll miss you father.”

 

“As too shall I miss you my son.”

 

Shippou watched in silence as his father walked off into the horizon, his steps graceful and steady. The young fox perched in the tree continued to watch his first father - his birth father, walk away until the brightness of the sun turned him into a ghost his eyes could no longer bear to watch. As the child turned away, rubbing eyes that felt strangely sun burnt, he blinked rapidly and saw Kouga talking amongst his returned pack.

 

Hoping gracefully from tree to tree as he had witnessed Inuyasha do so many times before, the young kit moved close enough to be able to overhear the conversation taking place. It seemed that Kouga's returned tribesmen felt as though they should not be there within the village. They too, like Shippou's father, wished to return to their place of origin or at least back to the cave behind the waterfall.

 

 

 

“You may return there if you wish, any of you,” Kouga spoke as he looked around at the return youkai. “But know this: humans are off limits for hunting or pleasure killing. If I find any of you have killed a human in anything other than self defense, the defense of your pack - and it better be because the humans attacked you first, or killed one human in defense of another human…then I will not stop Kagome from coming after you. Do you understand me?”

 

“Yes Kouga,” came the joint, off key and somewhat chattered reply from the nearly fifty youkai.

 

“Good. Travel well my friends,” he said and touched each youkai on the shoulder, hand or in a warrior's embrace as they moved away. “How much have heard pup?” Kouga asked as he watched his men move out of sight.

 

“Enough,” Shippou answered softly. “My father left too,” he offered in shared loss. “Why don't they want to stay here with us?”

 

“It's different for them,” Kouga said as he plucked the youkai child from the tree branch and walked with the pup in his arms. “They don't have a reason to stay, they don't have ties to anyone except you or I here in this village. To be among so many humans must feel wrong to them.”

 

“But then why has Toga stayed?” Shippou asked as he looked up at the wolf youkai that was looking down at him.

 

“Inuyoukai are different…As legend tells it, nearly a millennia ago, there was a great battle between a human village and a youkai village. Some of the wolf youkai decided to help and battle alongside the humans and together they won the war. After the war, some of the wolves stayed in the human village, some fell in love and began packs, and others simply enjoyed the company of humans and lived in the village, leaving the wild caves behind. That is how inu came about. We are not so much two different youkai as much as we are one youkai from different packs. Toga also has two sons, one of which he was never allowed to know before now. And with the recent development between Inuyasha and Kagome, he also has a new female to look over, to help guide her through a youkai courtship.”

 

“But hasn't Inuyasha been courting her ever since she came through the well?” Shippou asked in confusion. “I mean when I first met them she smelled a bit like him, but by the time we met Sango his scent was so heavy on her that it smelled like she belonged to him.”

 

“Yeah, that may be. But he never marked her before pup that makes it different now.”

 

“Oh,” Shippou looked down at the ground as the wolf continued to carry him as he walked toward the Goshinkobu where Miroku and Sango sat talking with one another. “Kouga…my father…he said he wasn't mad that I have new parents…but do you think maybe he is?” the pup asked softly, fearfully as he turned nervous green eyes up to the wolf holding him.

 

“I don't know pup. I can't say for certain, but I think maybe it'll just take some getting used to. I know that if I had a pup, and I died and left them behind with no family or pack, I'd want them to find another pack, to find someone to take care of them.”

 

Shippou's only response was a soft thoughtful hum. The child had so much on his mind that it made him feel tired, his head too full of his own thoughts to handle the reality of the waking world around him. He yawned as they neared Miroku and Sango, the wolf patting him gently on the back twice before rubbing his small back and soothing him to sleep.

 

 

 

“Oh hello Kouga,” Sango said as she looked up when his shadow fell over her.

 

“Join us please,” Miroku offered as he moved his staff out the grass where it had been lying and leaned it against the old tree they were sitting under.

 

Kouga inclined his head in a silent show of gratitude and sat down among the two humans, the sleeping fox child still in his arms. Several minutes were spent discussing the departure of his returned men and Shippou's own father, or at least what the wolf had been told by the child. It had been only moments after Kouga had finished his discussion that he looked to Sango and asked her of her brother and how the boy was handling things.

 

“He isn't well,” Sango admitted quietly, her voice sad. “I wish it wasn't so but, he remembers - everything. His part in slaying what remained of our family, the lives he took while under Naraku's control…there's so much more that he won't tell me about. So many things haunt his eyes and darken his spirit. I asked Miroku to look in on him, to talk with him,” she said and leaned her aching head against the monk's shoulder quietly. She closed her eyes as the man wrapped his arm around her side and pulled her closer, but she didn't sleep.

 

“The boy is willing himself to die,” Miroku said quietly, sadly. “I don't think he ever had any wish of being brought back to life, of being returned to his sister. It seems that he truly wishes for his death. He refuses food, has lost the ability to sleep…if he continues as he is, then it will not be long until he passes.”

 

“Is there anyway to bring him out of this depression?” Kouga asked in concern for the woman that had become a sister to him and what remained of his pack.

 

“There does not seem to be. He has not spoken since he woke up in this village nearly a month ago. Nor has he moved since his arrival.”

 

“He is no more than a dead man as he is now,” Kouga spoke sadly.

 

 

 

 

“Kikyou,” Kagome said softly as she approached the woman harvesting herbs that grew between two boulders near the stream.

 

“Hello Kagome,” she said greeted with a soft smile.

 

“Are you…are you - happy that you're alive?” the girl asked softly as she knelt down to help her pluck the herbs from the crevice.

 

“Why would you ask me such a thing?” the woman asked her voice even though friendly.

 

“You didn't seem happy to be brought back the first time. And now, I've brought you back a second time. Are you happy?” the girl asked her voice soft and nervous.

 

Kikyou sighed slowly and sat back on her heels. “It is a strange and horrible thing Kagome, to be brought back and have only a piece of your soul placed into a body made of clay. If feels truly sickening to know that the only way for you to remain alive is by feeding off the souls of dead women like yourself. Urasue gave me a dead life amongst the living. You have given me true life, true existence. For that I am grateful.”

 

“But you're not happy?” Kagome asked softly and looked to the woman. “I'm sorry,” Kagome whispered seconds before fleeing as tears filled her eyes.

 

“Kagome!” Kikyou shouted after her but made no move to follow. “Kagome I was not even happy when I lived the first time,” the resurrected miko whispered forlornly.

 

 

 

“Kagome where are you going?” Inuyasha asked as he found her standing next to the well.

 

“I just want to go home Inuyasha. I want to get my pictures, and my camera. I want pictures of my puppy,” she said and turned around, burying her face in his chest as she hugged him and breathed his scent in deeply. “I shouldn't be long.”

 

“Alright wench,” he said as he hugged her. “You just come back quickly.”

 

“You gonna wait for me?” she asked with a teasing smile.

 

“Well I want to, but a few of the villagers are building a hut for a new family and asked me to help. I said I would,” he said his cheeks pinking at the girl's proud smile.

 

“My Inuyasha, always thinking of everyone else,” she gushed and kissed his cheek.

 

“Feh,” he said, as he blushed darker. “Just come back before it gets dark ok?” he asked her and kissed her when she nodded.

 

“If its dark will you come get me?” she asked with a soft smile.

 

“Damn right I will wench,” he said with a playful growl and she giggled.

 

“Well, I'd better go, it's already getting late.”

 

“Mmhmm,” he said as moved her hair aside, revealing her mark and tracing the pad of his thumb over it feather light.

 

“That's not fair,” she complained as a shot of tight heat ran through her body as he caressed the mark that claimed her as his.

 

“Sure it is wench,” he said as he nibbled on the opposite side of her neck while continuing to rub the mark with his thumb. “Just like when you rub my ears.”

 

“Cranky puppy,” she teased and pushed him away. “I've got to go if I'm going to get back before dark, and you have villagers to help.”

 

“Spoil all my fun, why don't you?” he grumbled.

 

“Thought I would,” she teased back. “See you tonight Inuyasha,” she said before slipping into the well.

 

 

 

 

 

“Grandpa,” Kagome breathed out happily, as she exited the well house and ran up to hug the elder Higurashi.

 

“Kagome,” the man said in surprise. “We were told you were dead girl,” he said his happiness giving way to the pain he and the rest of the family had felt at the thought of her death.

 

“No,” Kagome said as she backed away from him slowly, able to feel his rising anger. “I wasn't dead, the jewel just…it misplaced me,” she offered quietly at a loss for any other way to explain what had happened.

 

“You misplace a pen girl!” he nearly shouted at her, his face beginning to turn red. “You don't misplace a person!”

 

“Grandpa, I don't -”

 

“Don't call me that,” he said to her harshly and Kagome gasped as she stared at the elder man wide eyed. “You ungrateful girl, you dishonor this family with your deceit!”

 

“What?” Kagome asked the word barely mare than a whisper of breath as she felt as though there was no air left in her lungs to breathe. “I didn't deceive-”

 

“If that is true than why do you bear the mark of a youkai on your neck? You have dishonored us for the last time girl! Gather your things and leave; you are no longer welcome here!”

 

“What do you mean? Grandpa?”

 

Kagome gave a startled whimper when the back of his wrinkled hand came into sharp hard contact with her cheek, her head snapping to the side. Pain radiated through her face, through her cheek and jaw and she looked upon the man with wide tear filled eyes.

 

“I have no granddaughter. The Kagome I knew is dead. Gather your things and go, you have two days before I have to return to my family in Okinawa. So be quick girl, get your things and get out. Don't even think about upsetting my daughter further with your treachery!”

 

Kagome panted harshly as she struggled not to sob, silent tears already streaming down her face. Her teeth chattered as she ran quickly into the house and up the stairs into her room. She took a black duffle bag from under her bed and threw as much of her own clothing, pictures and diaries into it as she could manage. Her pillows, stuffed white plush dog, and favorite blanket sat up onto and were stuffed down as she closed the long zipper.

 

“This isn't my home anymore,” Kagome said as she fell to her knees beside her bed.

 

“Are you done girl?” the elder man said as he came into the room and noticed the closed bag on the bed.

 

“Yes,” Kagome whimpered out as she stood and slung the bag onto her shoulder by its long strap.

 

“Know this girl: should you return here again, I will do everything to keep you from them. You've hurt them enough.” He followed her, almost threatening in his walk and attitude, to the well house. “If you return here, you will never again step foot in that house.”

 

Kagome nodded silently as she sat on the lip of the well and then found herself pushed in by her grandfather. Seconds later the familiar lights of the time slip enveloped her and took her through to the other side, five hundred years in the past.

 

Unable to completely understand what had happened and more importantly why, Kagome sat at the bottom of the well, her bag at her side. She didn't hear the voice that called down to her moments later and gasped as she felt herself wrapped in strong arms as her bag was taken from her. Kagome found herself lifted out of the well in one great leap, her bag set aside as she was moved to sit in someone's lap and rocked slowly as she cried silently.

 

“Kagome what happened?” Toga asked the girl he held in his arms.

 

“I…I…I - he - he threw me out,” she said quietly as her silent tears turned into harsh sobs, her face buried in the inuyoukai's chest.

 

“Oh sweetheart,” he said and wrapped her tightly in his arms as he rocked her. “Shhh. Pappa's here Kagome, Pappa's here.”