InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strictly Taboo ❯ But to Whom Do They Belong? ( Chapter 39 )

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

*Song for the chapter: Windmills of Your Mind by The Parenthetical Girls*
Inuyasha had woken up in a nightmare. The last thing he remembered was Kikyo shooting at Kagome, and feeling so angry he thought he’d burst. Then suddenly he was remarkably satisfied and relaxed, feeling as he had never felt, like everything was finally good and right in the world. Which was precisely when he smelled it. Blood. Kikyo’s blood, and another person’s. He picked her up, forcing himself to touch her corpse. Somehow, he knew this was his doing. Kikyo had never had a happy moment with him, and now he had ended her happiness forever. He should have controlled himself, he should have been kinder.

He certainly should not have killed her.

Fragments of bone poked his arm and he shuddered with the realization that he had bashed her head open. It all became too much, the smells, the sights, the feelings. If he stayed in the room any longer, he was sure to vomit like Kagome had.

Kagome.

His head whipped around and he saw her on the bed, face down with her arms extended. Had he…? He shook his head. Demons were incapable of killing their children or their sires. Still, she was covered in blood and hardly breathing. She needed to go to a hospital, someplace where they wouldn’t ask too many questions. But where? He gathered her in his arms, carrying her like one would a sleeping child, her head lolling on his shoulder. Fleeing the room of horrors, slipping almost comically in the puddle of blood as he did so, he ran to his car, realizing they were both naked. His dread of going back inside overwhelmed his desire to clothe himself and the injured girl. Opening the glove compartment, he fished around for the spare phone he kept in case of emergencies, and this certainly qualified as one. Myoga needed an update. Balancing Kagome in his lap, he dialed the number from memory, not having it stored on this phone. The old man answered instantly, and the background noise let him know he was in public, at some sort of party. It came to him again that it was New Year’s Eve. Or day. He wasn’t sure.

“You have a lot of work to do, old man,” Inuyasha said wearily, not taking his eyes off of Kagome’s still and bleeding form.

“Can’t you just take holidays off from your shenanigans?”

Inuyasha shut his eyes in annoyance at his subordinate’s flippant attitude. “This isn’t a fucking joke. Onigumo’s dead in his office by my hand, and Kikyo and her boyfriend are dead in my basement under the same circumstances. That’s what happens when you deny me your help.”

The sound of the crowd on the other end diminished, signaling that Myoga had retreated to a more private location.

“Oh, Master Inuyasha, this is not good. Definitely not good,” the flea demon fretted. “You just killed three very powerful people! This isn’t going to just go away.”

Inuyasha struggled to keep his voice down. “I know it’s not. That’s why I called you. Now quick, give me that doctor Kaede’s home address.”

“What do you need a human healer for?”

“Kagome.”

His servant paused briefly, a tense silence filling the line. “…You didn’t—“

“I can’t. And I wouldn’t. She’s my daughter, Myoga, and I can feel it even though I can’t smell it.”

Myoga sighed and ended the call.

Inuyasha got a text with the address he had requested and immediately put it into his car’s GPS. Not willing to let go of the girl he loved, he drove with her curled up in his lap, going as fast as he dared. When he arrived at a quaint little brick house on the edge of a small neighborhood, he knew even without his GPS telling him that he had arrived. There were a few people outside in the street, talking too loudly and enjoying each other’s company, carrying red plastic cups and sometimes holding hands. He carried Kagome out, ignoring the stares and joking wolf whistles. He pounded on the white door, the blue television light from inside telling him that he had gambled correctly and she was home. It took a while, during which time he did not stop his furious knocking, but eventually the elderly woman came to the door. She glared at him straightaway, and once she recognized him and his precious cargo, her glare intensified. Without asking a single question, which he greatly appreciated, she led him inside, entering a small guest room and pointing to the bed, where he gently laid Kagome down. Kaede leaned over the girl and began her examination, poking and prodding her and rolling her over halfway to check her back.

Finally, the woman straightened and faced him. “Well, it doesn’t take an idiot to know what happened to her.”

“What?” he asked urgently, his heart beating like a bad club song. “What’s wrong with her?”

The elderly woman glared at him with enough force for two eyes. “Don’t act innocent now, you filth. You can’t tell me you don’t remember marking the girl!”

Inuyasha stilled. He had marked her? Pushing Kaede out of the way, he brushed Kagome’s hair aside, baring her throat. There, on the side, covered in dried blood, was the mark. The fang punctures looked larger and deeper than his, but the aura certainly belonged to him. There was no mistaking it. They were mates now.

“And you forced yourself on her. Why you would bring a girl you brutalized to a powerful priestess who cares for her boggles my mind, half-demon.”

Inuyasha flinched but did not move from Kagome’s side. He could feel the old woman gathering her power, and he knew she was following through on the promise she had made. She was going to kill him for hurting the girl they both loved. He wouldn’t object; he wanted to kill himself for hurting her. What had possessed him to do these things and why couldn’t he remember? If he was dead, she could live a normal life, the one she wanted. Maybe Hojo would forgive her and take her back. It was better this way. Leaning over Kagome, he pressed his lips to hers, dimly hearing the countdown end on the television. He smiled.

He had finally gotten his new year’s kiss.

With a yell that he could tell was a battle cry, the priestess behind him released a blast of energy, and even though it was across the room he could already feel his skin burn. Without warning, he was rolled over and pushed down, Kagome’s face looming above him, her eyes still closed. Kaede gasped and Kagome absorbed the power, falling onto his chest.

“Kagome?!” the old woman cried, panicked. “Kagome, was the power too much for you?”

“She was unconscious the entire time,” he whispered, awed.

Kaede sneered and turned to bustle in a chest of drawers. “That’s not possible.”

Inuyasha glared at her back. Kagome was sweating from absorbing that much foreign power. Another thing she’d have to recover from.

“A demon’s child will always protect its sire, no matter the circumstances.”

Inuyasha remembered his father, and how he, even as young as he was at the time, had a bad feeling about him going away that day. His father laughed and just patted him on the head, explaining that it was just a routine trading expedition and he would be back in a month. Three days later, Inuyasha woke up in a cold sweat, a feeling of utter desolation and failure in his stomach. He knew. A week later, his mother received a messenger telling her that his father had been attacked and killed by a rival merchant. Inuyasha had sought out the demon on his next birthday, killing him with his bare hands. His first kill. Only then did he begin to regain some sense of normalcy again. It explained why Kagome’s priestess powers had never hurt him before, only healed him as they would a human.

Kaede stopped rustling through the drawers. “Are you telling me what I think you are telling me?”

Inuyasha ignored her hushed question.  “What are you looking for?”

“Ammonia inhalants.”

“Smelling salts?”

“I want to hear what happened from Kagome’s mouth. I will deal with you later, since apparently I can’t kill you with her nearby.”

Inuyasha smirked. “If you do kill me, she’ll come after you. It’s something we feel we have to do. We can’t go on living until we get our revenge.”

Kaede disregarded his arrogant claim and broke open a small plastic tube, waving it under Kagome’s nose. She immediately started coughing and gasping for breath, turning onto her side. Kaede handed her a glass of water, which she swished around in her mouth and then swallowed. Inuyasha caressed her back, wanting to hold her but not knowing how she’d react. She had looked at him as though he were the vilest thing on the planet when Kikyo had dropped the bomb of truth on her.

“Where am I?” she asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

Kaede instantly shifted into grandmother mode, pulling a blanket from nowhere and bundling her in it.

“You were hurt, so I brought you to Kaede’s,” he said softly.

“I had the strangest dream,” she whispered, her voice sounding lost and vague.

Inuyasha could tell she remembered but did not want to confront the memories. He had been hoping that maybe things had been so traumatic she had blocked them out or something, not for any selfish reasons but because he didn’t want her to carry that pain.

Kagome looked at him with that same unsure gaze before turning to Kaede. “I need to talk to him alone, please.”

Kaede nodded, then he felt a quick, sharp pain in his upper arm.

“Ow, what the fuck!”

“Ouch! What was that?” Kagome said, rubbing her upper arm.

Kaede said, “I took a small blood sample from the both of you. You can stay overnight and I should have your paternity test ready by tomorrow evening at the earliest. I have a lab staffed by fellow priestess healers that owes me a favor. They’re the best when it comes to combining science with spiritual powers, and we’ll need their help if we’re to discern whether or not the two of you are related. Beings of demonic descent have a different make-up, so it’s quite difficult to compare and they have to use different methods regular humans pay no attention to. In addition to your blood, they’ll be comparing your auras, which leave a trace in your blood cells. Have a good rest, Kagome, dear.”  

And then she bustled out, leaving him with a crying Kagome. She sobbed into the pillow, curling up into a small ball. Everything had finally caught up with her. Inuyasha stared at her guiltily, every tear like a knife in his heart.

“I don’t know what to say to you, angel. I don’t know how to make it alright.”

“You can’t.”

“I love—“

Kagome covered his mouth. “Just stop,” she begged, her eyes big and watery. “After everything, you don’t get to say that anymore.”

Inuyasha shook her hand off his face. “But I do. Listen, I know we were going to wait to mark you, but I couldn’t control myself, and—“

“You marked me?!”

“Yeah, I thought you knew.”

Kagome was angry now, her tears still on her face. The blanket fell and revealed her naked breasts, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Inuyasha, I didn’t even know what it was for most of my life. When you held me down and bit me, was that it? Was that a mating mark?”

He nodded.

Kagome placed her hand on his and entwined their fingers. “I thought you were trying to kill me. You were so different and after seeing what you did to Mother and him, I-I—“ She started to cry again. Inuyasha took her in his arms, his love sharper than before now that it was strengthened with the bond and mixed with grief and guilt.

“I don’t remember. I know what happened, but I don’t remember,” he said in a tortured whisper.

“And then after you… you did that to them, you were on top of me and it hurt so bad. When you were done, you didn’t even look at me, you just went straight for her and you held her and I couldn’t even talk—“

Inuyasha kissed her head, rocking her back and forth. It was apparent that she was about to start having some kind of panic attack.

“We can talk about it later,” he said, trying to be soothing.

“No, we talk now. The mark… you said when you marked me, I’d stay that age forever. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

Kagome’s head fell forward onto his shoulder despondently.

“It’s not so bad, Kagome,” he said reassuringly. “A lot of humans wish they could go back or stay sixteen forever.”

Her head whipped up again and her eyes were full of rage. “Not so bad?!” she yelled. “Sixteen is ‘not so bad’? Sixteen means always being self-conscious. Always caring about things you know don’t matter. Sixteen is acne in weird places and crazy hormones. Sixteen means I can never have a real job, so I can never be a nurse now. Sixteen means my bones haven’t finished forming. Sixteen means my brain has not matured to its full potential. Sixteen is terrible,” she finished, her voice cracking and the corners of her mouth twitching downward.

Inuyasha rubbed her back. “Kagome, I’ve been twenty for a few hundred years. It’s not so bad. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

She was silent for a long time, and he was just grateful that she was allowing his hands to touch her after they had done so many terrible things in her presence.

After a while, she said, “Was what Mother said true?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Is it true?”

Inuyasha sighed. “I felt… close to you from the very beginning. I thought that meant it was fate. It was only that night, where I… when Kikyo and I got into that disagreement and you told me about your father in the kitchen that I finally put two and two together. I didn’t want it to be true, Kagome, but then I didn’t care.”

She pushed away from him. “If it’s true, then I want to die,” she said, shuddering in disgust.

He grabbed her by shoulders, shaking her desperately a couple times, as hard as he dared. “Don’t fucking say that! What does it matter? What difference does it make if it’s true or not?!” he yelled.

Kagome shook her head and laughed like someone five times her age. “It makes all the difference. How can you even say that?”

“I love you enough to not care,” he said boldly, earnestly.

Kagome covered her face with her hands and he took the opportunity to embrace her again.

“It can’t be true,” she murmured. “We would have known if it was true.”

Inuyasha said nothing, thinking that telling her about protecting him even while unconscious would just have to wait until she was ready to hear it.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and bright. “It’s not true, right? She was just saying that to hurt me.”

Inuyasha kissed her cheek, glad to see that she was no longer crying. “You should rest, Kagome. We’ll deal with it all in the morning.”

“I can’t! I keep thinking about Mother and what she said and what she looked like when—when… Did you really not know what you were doing?”

He felt like slapping her for that comment, surprised at himself for his reaction. Pointedly, he reminded himself that she had been through what was probably the worst night of her entire life and she needed comfort, not anger.

“I really didn’t. I can’t remember anything after she tried to shoot you.”

Kagome began to cry again, slow and tiredly. “I wish I didn’t remember. I don’t want to remember it.”

Inuyasha turned to shut off the lamp that was on the night stand. Gently, he took Kagome in his arms and lay down with her.

“Just stop thinking about it. The details will fade away someday and then this will seem more like a fact out of some textbook than something you actually went through.” He spoke from experience.

Kagome turned in his arms to face him. “I want to believe you.”

“Then do it.”

She closed the short distance between them and kissed him softly, sadly on the mouth.

Inuyasha broke away, saying, “I’m not sure we—“

Kagome interrupted him with another kiss, and even though it felt good, he remembered that she had thrown up not too long ago. He supposed it doesn’t matter too much since he couldn’t taste it, but it was still kind of gross.

Breaking the kiss again, he whispered, “Just let me take care of you. I’ll make you feel better and worship every bit of your body until I’m the only thing you can remember.”

Kagome smiled. “Not in Kaede’s house, Inuyasha.” Giving him a chaste peck on the lips that signaled there would be no arguing, she whispered, “It can’t be true, right? It’s not true.”

Kaede came into the guest room in the morning without bothering to knock, bringing them both a change of clothes. She had gone out and bought Inuyasha sweatpants and a bright purple shirt from Walmart or something, which pissed him off. Kagome was wearing something much more upscale, a lilac summer dress with brown sandals. At least the colors they wore matched. Sort of. Inuyasha’s phone rang as soon as they were finished dressing, and he went back into the guest room and closed the door to answer.

“Sir, the official story is that Suikotsu killed Kikyo in a fit of rage after she told him she was breaking it off with him. They had a secret room within the very house, and were very diligent about meeting when you were not there so you would neither hear nor smell them. We had to get the police involved since they were both human and Kikyo was well-known, but you were interrogated thoroughly and gave a satisfying alibi and have been cleared of all suspicion.”

Inuyasha groaned. He didn’t even want to know how much money he had just spent on bribes. “And Onigumo?”

“The man had a lot of enemies. The official story will be that he has disappeared, but it will be strongly hinted at that he was murdered by drug dealers for an outstanding debt.”

“Good. And what about Kagome?”

“As her only living relative, she’s yours.”

Inuyasha sighed in relief. Everything was going well. There was bound to be a lot of talk, though. It was certainly sensational, when one thought about it from a detached point of view. A wealthy heiress murdered by her lover on the one-year anniversary of her marriage. It would become one of those things people obsessed over, their morbid desire for details fueled by the media’s speculations, which would certainly involve him.

As an afterthought, he said, “Pay some news outlets as well for favorable coverage. Make sure they don’t start making rumors.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up, glad he had been stressing about nothing. Kagome, hearing the end of the conversation, came through the door, wrapping her arms around him.

“Who was that?” she asked, not waiting for an answer before she gave him his first kiss of the day, lazily exploring his mouth.

“Just Myoga. He’s telling me about stuff. I think we should lay low for a while.”

Kagome nodded. Inuyasha marveled at her change. The broken girl from last night was nowhere to be found. She was sunny and smiling, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her mark on display. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disturbed.

Smiling brightly, she said, “Kaede says she got the results back quicker than expected. They made us a priority and worked on it overnight. She’s got some pretty impressive connections.”

Inuyasha nodded and she kissed him, letting their tongues dance, sucking his before pulling away. It was like she couldn’t get enough of him and only her respect for Kaede was keeping her from jumping him where he stood.

She moaned in regret as she pulled away. “I just know it’s good news!”

Kagome skipped out of the room and he followed her, dread in the pit of his stomach. What would happen when it wasn’t the news she wanted to hear? He sat down at the small round table in a corner of Kaede’s kitchen. The old priestess sat very still, her one eye scanning the document in her hands almost as if she didn’t believe what she was reading. He sat across from her, next to Kagome who was shuffling her feet and tapping her fingers impatiently. Finally, the aged priestess put down the paper and sighed.

“So?” Kagome said, almost angry in her hurry. “What is it?”

“Are we… am I her father?” Inuyasha asked awkwardly.

Kaede’s mouth was set in a grim line, her eye avoiding both of them and staring at the wall behind their backs. Her mouth opened and then closed, and she stretched her neck and squared her shoulders, seemingly gathering her strength, appearing very nervous. Whatever it was, one of them wouldn’t like the answer.
Note: Cliff hanger. I don’t do them as often as some, but I did here. Ha. Also, Kikyo’s finally dead, like for real, and it’s final. Woohoo! And I didn’t have her fall off a goddamn cliff a dozen times and end up alive somehow like in the actual series. Points to me.