InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strength ❯ Coming Clean ( Chapter 12 )

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

Upon their return to the shrine that afternoon, Kagome and InuYasha entered through the back door and into the kitchen. Kagome’s mother was sitting at the table having a cup of tea. Her eyes were red as if she had been crying.

Kagome looked to InuYasha. “I think Mama and I need to talk.”

“Keh, I guess I’ll go see if the old man needs me to move any more boxes from one side of the room to the other,” he said. “If you need me…”

She raised herself up onto her toes and gave him a quick kiss. “Thank you.”

He just nodded and disappeared back outside. Kagome went to the cabinet and got herself up a cup and joined her mother at the table. She poured herself some tea and sipped at it while she gathered her thoughts. The last thing she had ever wanted was for her family to have to worry about dangerous youkai or the Shikon no Tama, but she knew that she no longer had any choice.

“I guess I should start at the beginning,” Kagome said. “But before I do, I need you to know that the only reason I kept things from you is because I didn’t want you to have to worry about me.”

“I’m your mother, it’s my job to worry,” Asami replied reaching across the table to take her hand.

Kagome took a deep breath and started at the very beginning with Kikyou and how she and InuYasha fell in love. Her heart broke all over again for her beautiful hanyou as she told her mother about Onigumo and how he had coveted Kikyou and become Naraku and then tricked them both into thinking that they had betrayed each other.

She told her mother about his fifty lost years pinned to the Goshinboku and how she had been pulled into the well by a demon that had been able to regenerate because of the power of the Shikon Jewel inside of her. Kagome smiled as she remembered seeing him for the first time and rubbing those adorable ears.


Outside InuYasha had just finished sweeping the area he had just cleared of boxes. He leaned the broom against the wall and pulled down the bandana that he had been using to keep the dust out of his nose and mouth. Kagome’s emotions were all over the place and it was making it hard for him to give her the space she had wanted to talk to her mother alone.

He could almost hear her detailing the dangers they had faced on their quest to restore the jewel. There were moments when her heartbreak was nearly unbearable and it took all of his willpower not to run inside to console her. He sighed and pulled the bandana back up. He would just try to say busy and have faith that she would call for him if she needed him.


Asami refilled the kettle and heated some more water while Kagome took a small break. She couldn’t believe she had been so blind as to how much danger her daughter had been in while in the past. She had however noticed a common theme in all of Kagome’s harrowing tales and that was InuYasha’s absolute willingness to fight and if necessary to die to protect her daughter, throwing himself headlong into danger to keep her safe.

She brought the boiling water back to the table and refilled both of their cups. After a few sips, Kagome continued her tale. No doubt she was leaving out some of what had happened, but Asami could tell that she wasn’t holding back anything important.

She listened as Kagome spoke to her of so many different youkai and so many different battles and how Naraku had continued to grow in power. She also spoke often of Kikyou and the pain in her voice was a palpable thing.

Both women looked up as the back door slid open. InuYasha stepped inside and Asami hurried over to him and wrapped him tightly in her embrace. “I had no idea. Don’t you ever doubt your place as a part of this family.”

InuYasha flushed. “Keh.”

When Kagome’s mother released him he went to her side and knelt down. “Sorry, I couldn’t, not with the way you were feeling. You were telling her something about Kikyou, weren’t you?”

Kagome swallowed hard and nodded. “I know she’s gone and that you love me…”

“I should have said this before,” he told her, taking her hands in his. “I’m sorry for all the times I said or did something that made you feel less than she was. I was stupid and confused-”

“And hurt,” she said quietly reaching out to touch his face. “Stay and help me finish?”

He nodded and got up so that he could sit in the chair beside her. She smiled at him as he took her hand under the table. She took a deep breath and then picked up where she had left off. She realized that she should have had him with her all along. Everything seemed so much easier to talk about with him by her side. The sun was well on its way to setting by the time InuYasha finished relating the night he had pulled himself through Kagome’s window by the power of his will alone.

“I had to tell you all of this because where we went today…Mama, we think Naraku is still alive,” Kagome said.
Kagome’s mother looked between them. “But I thought you said Kikyou destroyed him.”

“I thought she had,” InuYasha said quietly. “I had the jewel and he was gone, but now it looks like I was wrong. The kazaana is back, and we caught his scent coming back into the city.”

“We think that Kikyou hurt him badly enough that he had to go into hiding to recover, and then he just waited for us to show back up in time with the jewel,” Kagome added.

“Keh, so basically things are probably going to get a whole lot worse before it’s done,” InuYasha said.

Asami reached out with both of her hands. Kagome took one of them immediately while it took InuYasha a minute to realize that the other hand was meant for him. “I’m going to worry about you both. I can’t help it.” She brought their hands together and set InuYasha’s on top of Kagome’s. “But I will worry less knowing that you two are together, taking care of each other.” She pushed away from the table and stood up. “Now I had better get dinner started.”

Kagome got up and offered InuYasha her hand. He took it and she led him upstairs. She sat on her bed and pulled the jewel out from under her shirt. She slipped it off over her head and held it in her hand. She felt the bed move as InuYasha came to sit beside her.

“It’s hard to believe that something so beautiful has caused so much trouble,” she said. “I just wish I knew how to destroy it without causing more.”

“Keh, you’ll figure it out,” he said.

She looked at him with a soft smile. “I wish I had as much faith in me as you do.”

He took the jewel and dropped the chain back over her head. “I could say the same thing.”

She put a hand on the side of his face and then leaned into him, kissing him softly. “I guess we’ll just have to keep believing in each other then.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Sounds good to me.”

He scooted back so that his back was resting against the wall and then opened his arms. She smiled and hurried to snuggle up against him. He wrapped his arms around her and she rested her head against his chest. She toyed with the tie that hung across his chest.

“We should really see about getting you some clothes,” she said. “I’m sure we can find something that will help you blend in better that isn’t too uncomfortable.”

He snorted. “You saying there something wrong with the way I dress?”

She looked up at him and realized that he was teasing her. She slapped his chest lightly. “Jerk. The fire rat is fine at the shrine and if we know we are going after a demon, but I just thought it might be nice to attract a little less attention on a trip to the market.”

It took Kagome less than ten minutes to realize that InuYasha wasn’t going to be any less likely to attract attention in modern clothes than he was in his fire rat. The first time he stepped out of the fitting room dressed in a form fitting red t-shirt and a pair black jeans and all the sales ladies started whispering she understood what her mistake had been. His long silver hair and golden eyes only made him more attractive to a generation of young woman who were moving away from the culture of conformity and looking to stand out.

She glared at one particularly brazen shopper who had pulled out her cell phone to take a picture. Her only consolation was that InuYasha was totally oblivious. “If you don’t like it, we can just forget about this whole thing.”

He shrugged and then moved his arms around. He ran his hands over his chest. “Keh, it’s not so bad. I thought it would be too restricting but this material really lets you move.”

Another round of giggles finally drew InuYasha's attention and he frowned. Kagome could feel his insecurity even as he schooled his expression so that it was carefully blank. He thought they were laughing at him.

She stepped closer to him. She touched his chest lightly, not caring if it was too intimate a gesture to be considered polite. “I don’t think I can let you wear modern clothes. I don’t know if I can stand all the women who will be staring at you, wishing you were theirs.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked around. She could feel the exact moment that he realized that they were all attracted to him and jealous of her.

He smirked and slipped one hand around her waist. “They can wish all they want. It won’t change the fact that I’m all yours.”

“We have your size now,” she said. “If you don’t want to try on anything else we can just grab a few things in your size and go.”

He arched an eyebrow at her, and she realized that he liked the idea if her being jealous and that the reaction of these women, their attraction to parts of him that had always made him an outcast was another layer of balm on old wounds that were still healing. How could she deny him that?

She lowered her voice. “On the other hand, I kind of like knowing I’m the only one who will get to see you take these off later, and it really isn’t fair of me to keep you all to myself.”

“Keh, go grab something you like that you know I would never agree to wear,” he told her.

She covered her mouth with her hand as she giggled and then nodded. He went back into the fitting room. She didn’t hesitate before going directly to a rack on the far wall. She knew exactly what she wanted to see him in since he was offering and she wasn’t going to waste this change. She could feel the eyes of all the women in the store on her as she grabbed the items in his size.

She knocked lightly on the fitting room door and he opened it just enough to take the clothes she had brought him. She heard him snort as he got a look at them, but he didn’t protest. She stepped back to wait, more than a little excited to see what he would look like, but when he came out she found that she was completely unprepared for the sight of him.

She had expected the silver sleeveless shit to be a good match for his hair, and that the black leather pants would leave little to the imagination, but not that the combination would leave her breathless. He shrugged on the leather jacket she had given him and then winked at her and she lost all sense of propriety. She pushed him back into the fitting room and pressed herself against him, her mouth seeking his desperately. He growled and pulled her even more tightly against him with his hands on her behind. She nearly had his pants unbuttoned when someone knocked on the door.

“Excuse me, miss, but you can’t be in there with him,” a woman said. “It’s against the rules.”

Kagome forced herself away from him, her face red and her lips swollen. She took a shaky breath as she reached for the door knob. InuYasha, she noted, had his eyes closed and was taking deep breaths as he tried to recover from her assault. She opened the door and stepped out.

“I’m very sorry,” she managed after clearing her throat several times. “I just, um… He was… I won’t do it again.”

“Then you have more self-control than I do,” the woman whispered with a laugh as she leaned close.

Kagome was momentarily shocked but then giggled. “Okay, so that wasn’t exactly true. I should have said I won’t do that again while we’re here.”

InuYasha opened the door, this time in a pair of khaki cargo pants and a white t-shirt. “Would it be possible for him to wear these out?” she asked.

“Of course,” the woman replied. “Just select the items you want to wear and I’ll collect the tags so that I can ring them up.”

Kagome started gathering up the clothes he had tried on. She picked up the leather pants, jacket and silver shirt, and a wistful sigh escaped her. “I’ll put these up if you can get the rest and take them to the counter so we can buy them.”

He put a hand on her wrist. “We’re getting those, woman.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at him and noticed the faint pinking of his cheeks. Her heart beat faster as she felt what he was thinking about. Her reaction to him in those clothes had been just as exciting to him as seeing him in them had been to her. She didn’t know if would ever agree to wear them outside of the house but she knew he would wear them for her and that was reason enough to buy them as far as they both were concerned.

She nodded and placed them in his arms. “I’ll go grab a couple more t-shirts and a couple more pairs of those first jeans you tried on and meet you up there.”


Kagome’s mother greeted them as they entered the house. “So how was the shopping trip? Did you manage to find something you both liked?” Of course the question was perfectly innocent, but both InuYasha and Kagome turned bright red and Asami studied them with a shrewd eye.

“It was fine, Mama,” Kagome said quickly before her mother could ask anything else. “We’re just going to go put this stuff away in my room.

She grabbed InuYasha’s hand and practically dragged him out of the room. She swore that she could almost hear her mother laughing and wondered not for the first time if she was part psychic. They made it up to her room and Kagome folded his new clothes and put them away in the closet space she had cleared out for him. She smiled looking at his section of the closet. She knew it was silly, but somehow this made the fact that they were living together like a married couple more real.

She turned around to find him sitting on her bed, leaning against the wall one leg out in front of him and the other bent up so that his elbow was resting on his knee. She got on the bed and curled up against him. His arms closed around her and she smiled.

“Do you think we should call Sesshomaru and see if he’s found anything yet?” she asked.

“Later,” he replied burying his face in her hair.

She lifted her head and pressed her lips to his as she reached up to rub one of his ears. He pushed her onto her back and covered her body with his own. She gasped one of his hands slipped down between her thighs. “Later works.”

He growled softly and she gave up on worrying about anything other than how good what he was doing to her felt. She tugged at his pants and a cry of triumph escaped her as it came free. She slipped her hand into his underwear and stroked him firmly. He groaned and then he continued his assault on her sanity with a renewed vengeance.

She pushed at his pants trying to get them down over his hips and had almost succeeded when someone knocked lightly on the door. Kagome heard herself let out a frustrated growl and above her InuYasha chuckled lightly.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sweetheart, but Sesshomaru-sama is on the phone,” her mother called through the door.

Kagome sighed. “Okay, thank you, Mama. We’ll be right down.”

InuYasha rolled off of her and lay on his back beside her. He was taking slow deep breaths and she genuinely felt bad for him since she could feel just how turned on he was and probably had as good of an idea as any woman ever had about what it felt like to be left hanging once a certain level of excitement had been reached.

“Fuck,” he said as he sat up. “I really hope he found Naraku because I really need to kill something right now.”

Kagome couldn’t have agreed with his sentiment more. She got up and got a new pair of panties since hers had somehow gotten torn almost completely off. It was a good thing Sesshomaru had made sure that InuYasha had the money to support them because at the rate she went through underwear they were going to need it. By the time she was done doing that and righting the rest of her clothing he was standing at her bedroom door waiting for her.

“No fire rat?” she asked.

“Keh, figured we should see what he says first,” InuYasha replied. “He might just be calling to let us know he hasn’t found anything yet.”

She nodded and they went downstairs to answer the call. She grabbed the handset and held it near her ear. InuYasha leaned close so that he could listen as well. A part of her hoped that Naraku had been found so that they could kill him and end this once and for all and another part of her was terrified.

“Sesshomaru-sama?”

“I believe we have found the location of Naraku’s lair,” he told them. “I am certain he was there at one time, but I did not want to investigate further without your presence in case he is actually inside.”

Kagome wrote down the directions to the building Sesshomaru believed to be where Naraku was hiding out and then hung up. InuYasha left her to go change into his fire rat robes and to get the Tetsusaiga. She forced herself to think positively. Naraku with no jewel shards wasn’t as strong as she and InuYasha and Sesshomaru working together, but even as she thought it she realized she had no idea how much stronger he might have become in the last 500 years.

Her mother came over to her and hugged her tightly. “Be careful, dear.”

Kagome nodded as she hugged her back. “We will, Mama. “InuYasha and I will protect each other just like we always do.”

“Even so, I think I will have Jii-chan say a few prayers,” her mother told her.

InuYasha appeared in the doorway. Kagome could feel the hum of his youki. There was so much going on inside him that it was hard to separate one emotion from the next. He was anxious and excited, afraid and determined and underlying all that was a hunger for the fight, the thrill of battle. She wondered if it was always like this for him.

“We ready to go?” he asked.

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” she replied.

They headed for the backdoor and once she had her shoes on she grabbed her bow and arrows and they stepped out into the setting sun to once again face their destiny.