InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Sesshoumaru's Baby ❯ Chapter Six: The Truth Will Out ( Chapter 6 )

Sesshoumaru's Baby

 

Six: The Truth Will Out

 

Inu-Yasha had climbed out of the tree as meek as a mouse. Now he sat with his back against a tree, whilst across the clearing Kagome sat on the rim of the well. Her expression was maddeningly calm. She was also tapping her fingernails against the wood grain, like a beetle creeping along a twig, and he didn't dare tell her to stop.

 

“It's like this, Inu-Yasha. In my world, we have certain values about relationships and the common one is called `monogamy.' It's when two people who care about each other are in a relationship, and while they are together, they don't look at anybody else. The boy and the girl aren't allowed to do what Miroku does - chase after other people, asking them for sex or babies or what he thinks is fun, and they aren't allowed to do what you do - continue a relationship that is over while the other is still ongoing. In a case like that, a person has two choices. They can either have only the old relationship, or only the new. It is not acceptable to want or try to have both.”

 

“Why?” Inu-Yasha said, a touch foolishly.

 

Kagome gave him a gritted-teeth smile. “Because that causes people to get jealous, Inu-Yasha, and when people get jealous they do foolish things. Shall I tell you a story about jealousy?”

 

He didn't dare do anything but nod.

 

“There was a boy in my town who was in a relationship with a girl, and he loved her very much. But she didn't feel the same way, so she ended the relationship, and later she fell in love with somebody else. But the boy couldn't get over his feelings for her, and he ended up killing her so nobody else could have her love but him.” Kagome gave him a very level stare. “I fear, Inu-Yasha, that you may push me into proving that I am capable of killing you or Kikyo to show how dangerous jealousy is when it is stirred up in a person.”

 

Inu-Yasha nodded weakly.

 

“So now you know your choices. You can either have Kikyo, or you can have me. If you decide you want Kikyo, you go and be with her. You can stop expecting me to look for shards, because I'll go back to my time and I won't be returning. If you choose me, then you can't see Kikyo anymore. You can't just bugger off when she comes around to moon and tell her how sad you are and how much you love her still and want to die with her. If she wants to talk to you, she'll do it in front of everybody else like she's supposed to.”

 

“Kikyo is a person too,” Inu-Yasha protested. “Doesn't she get some say in this? Don't I get some say in this?”

 

“Inu-Yasha, you've had ample opportunity to make up your mind. So I'm doing it for you. The time when you `had a say' is past. And Kikyo is dead, like it or not, and the dead don't have rights. She's a corpse made out of other people's bones and clay, animated by a bit of my soul and the stolen souls of innocent people who should be in Heaven right now. It's only because you're too pathetic to view her objectively that you act as if she's alive. I know you love her…”

 

“I don't.”

 

There was a short silence. “What?” Kagome said quietly.

 

“I don't love her. I haven't for a while. But I have an obligation, Kagome, because it's my fault she died. Believe me when I say that I don't want to owe her anything, but I do. Sometimes for your life, sometimes for my friends' lives, sometimes for mine.”

 

She snorted with laughter. “Next thing you'll be telling me that you don't love Sesshoumaru!”

 

“I don't.”

 

Kagome almost gagged on her chortling. “You bastard.”

 

“Kagome - ”

 

“You bastard! So that's all this is to you, a little bit of fucking on the side? I thought I could stand it if you had some genuine bloody feelings behind what you were doing, but this is just about sex, isn't it? You've no real reason to do what you've been doing at all!”

 

Inu-Yasha hung his head. His hair draped over his shoulders and into his lap around his face, shielding him from her eyes. “I am sorry Kagome, I promise you I am. I don't love anybody like I do you.”

 

Silence. “Say that when you're looking at my face.”

 

He raised his head, and they stared into each other's eyes. “I love you, Kagome,” he said hoarsely. “There isn't anybody else in the world who means as much to me as you do. And the thought of losing you is enough to tear me in two.”

 

Kagome's fingers closed tightly around the rim of the well, squeezing as if she'd crack it in her grip. The wood creaked. “Then please explain why you slept with him.” Inu-Yasha swallowed. “Was it because you weren't having sex with me? All you had to do was say so and I'd have explained I wanted to wait for my wedding night.”

 

“I know that,” Inu-Yasha said gruffly. “I heard you tell Sango once.”

 

A single tear began to track its way over Kagome's cheek. “Then tell me why,” she sobbed, putting her hands over her mouth. “Why would you do that with him, if all you wanted was me?”

 

Inu-Yasha closed his eyes and fisted his hands against his knees to collect his thoughts. The truth was the only option here. And so he told her - he told her that he had never been sure of anybody's love in his life, because people had always betrayed him, even Kikyo, after all the trust he'd put in her. That he had tried everything to win other people's love and failed; and he didn't understand how real love was expressed.

 

“I didn't sleep with him because I loved him; rather because I wondered if he would,” he said honestly. “Okay, I'll admit that I enjoyed it. I liked that intimacy. I'd never had that with him. It wasn't the right kind, and I knew that, but at least it was something. It was the first time he'd wanted something from me that I could give.”

 

“But what is it you want from him?” Kagome said softly.

 

He paused. “Answers, I think. Perhaps even what I'm really after is everything I never knew. I never saw my father's face; I don't even know his name. I don't know if I have aunts or uncles, or cousins, or if I have brothers and sisters somewhere that Sesshoumaru knows about and I don't. If Dad made a will, I don't know if I inherited anything other than the Tessaiga. If he built a nursery for me in his home, I've never seen it. I haven't even see where he lived, where Sesshoumaru lived, where I might have called home.”

 

He smoothed his hands over his knees. “The only person with the memories is Sesshoumaru. I don't know anything about my family, or even about him. Does he have a wife somewhere? Does he have children of his own, and if he hasn't, why not? Does he live in my father's house, or in his own home, or nowhere? Where does he go when we don't see him? I don't even know how old he is. I don't even know my last name, or if I have one.”

 

Kagome felt her throat clutch. “I understand, Inu-Yasha. I…I just don't think what you did was right.”

 

“Neither do I,” Inu-Yasha said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I just don't know what is the right thing to do.”

 

There was a long silence. Leaves scuttled across the grass around Kagome's shoes, before she spoke again. “You want to keep Sesshoumaru here because of the baby, don't you? Really, I think, you want him as far away as possible now, if it weren't for the child. Because you have an obligation to it, because it doesn't know this.”

 

Inu-Yasha nodded. “That's right.”

 

Kagome sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair. “If I didn't believe you now, I'd say you were full of bullshit about your reasons for wanting him to stay. But I do believe you. And I think life is precious. If keeping him here will prevent him from destroying the baby until it has had a chance at living, then I'm happy for you to do that. Provided that after the baby's born, he goes.”

 

“He goes,” Inu-Yasha agreed. “And the baby…”

 

“We could raise it. My mum could. Or Kaede - or Myoga might know somebody who could look after the baby.”

 

They smiled shyly at each other. “So that's settled?” Inu-Yasha said.

 

Kagome nodded. “For now, I think, we've settled what I wanted to settle. We'd better go back to the village and talk this over with the others. I know you spoke to Miroku, but he and Sango need to get the right end of the stick on this…and Shippo is owed an explanation, too. He's been pretty mature about the whole debacle, you know.”

 

BOOM!

 

“What the hell was that?” Inu-Yasha shouted, one hand on the Tessaiga as he jumped up. Kagome pushed herself away from the well with a start, fingers reaching for a bow that wasn't there.

 

A column of darkening smoke was rising from the village. And tinny cries from the villagers: “Demon! Demon! There's a demon!”

 

 

 

A/N: Next time - Sango's Mistake! Has she exercised poor judgement after all once she hears Kagome out?