InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Lucky Ones ❯ Chapter Ten ( Chapter 10 )

The Lucky Ones

By Terri Botta

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Sole copyright belongs to Viz and Rumiko Takashi. I'm poor so don't sue.

Rating: R for later chapters.

Pairing: Inuyasha/Kagome, Miroku/Sango

Summary: Sometimes Fate hands you a gift you never thought you'd ever get, and it's up to you to accept it for what it is.

Email feedback to: tci100@psu.edu

Webpage: http://www.wordsmiths.net/Botta

*******

Chapter Ten

Morning came too soon and she greeted it with eyes that felt like they'd been glued shut with sandpaper. Blinking slowly, she looked down at the reason she'd awakened, and found that Yukio had tired of waiting for her to get up and had taken matters into his own mouth, worming under her pajama top and finding the nipple by himself.

His insistent sucking was what had brought her out of her uneasy sleep, and now she looked at her clock. It was eight-thirty. She had an hour and a half before she had to leave for the doctor with her mother. Cupping Yukio under his bottom, she sat up, yawning, and ran a hand through her dirty hair. She needed a bath.

`I'll hand him to Inuyasha once he's finished eating and go take one,' she decided.

No sooner had the thought left her mind when she heard a tentative knock at the door.

"Kagome?" Inuyasha's voice called.

"Yes?" she replied.

Without warning, Inuyasha entered the room. She squeaked and dived under the blanket, dislodging Yukio in the process and earning an unhappy yowl from him for the sudden `breakfast-interruptus.' Amazingly, though, she didn't `sit' the impatient hanyou for coming in without asking first.

"Agh! Sorry! Sorry! I didn't peep! I swear!" he stammered.

She blinked out from underneath her coverlet and saw that he was flaming red with embarrassment. The look on his face told her that he fully expected to be `sat,' probably multiple times.

"It's okay this time, Inuyasha, but next time ask me before you come in."

He blinked at her, shocked, but nodded. Then he took off his haori and offered it to her, laying it on the mattress and turning his back so she could put it on.

"Here."

"Thanks," she said, accepting the garment and donning it, lifting the fussing Yukio back up to where he wanted to be. He grabbed on roughly as if frightened that he'd be pulled away again. She winced but didn't scruff him. She probably should have, but it was her fault he was upset, so she forgave him.

"You can turn around now," she told Inuyasha.

He did so and sat by her bed, facing her. "How are you?" he asked.

His eyes were open and unguarded, and Kagome thought he looked a little traumatized.

`Hmmm, sleeping away from me was hard on him too.'

"I'm fine. Not looking forward to going to the doctor, but there's no helping it."

He nodded, his face serious and unhappy.

Yukio finished with the first breast and she switched him. He was gentler this time, probably figuring out that momma wasn't going to take his teat away.

"Once he's finished, would you watch him while I take a bath?"

Inuyasha crinkled his nose. "Change him first."

She chuckled. Diaper changing was the one thing the adult hanyou avoided at all costs.

"What are you going to do if he soils his diaper when I'm at the doctor's?"

He gave her a hopeful look. "Wait until you get home?"

"Inuyasha…" she warned.

"The old man? He's changed pups before, right?"

"Inuyasha…"

"I'll mess it up. I won't do it right! My claws will rip the cloth and the moss will fall out. You'll come back to find the diaper on his head. You know it."

"Inuyasha…" she almost growled. He was really pushing it.

He flattened his ears and submitted. "All right. I'll change him if he soils."

She gave him a bright smile and a pat on the head. "Good boy. I'll bring you extra ramen for being so brave."

"Feh," he snorted.

"Kagome?" her mother's voice called, and she looked up to see her standing in the open doorway. Inuyasha had never closed it from his earlier entrance.

"Yes, Mama?" she replied.

"You need to get ready to go."

"I will as soon as Yukio's finished, Mama. I'll change him then go take a bath."

"I'll have breakfast ready by the time you come down," the older woman said.

"Okay. Thank you, Mama."

Her mother nodded and walked away, leaving the door open.

Yukio finished eating a few minutes later. She burped and changed him, then gave him to Inuyasha to watch while she gathered clothes and went to bathe. When she came out of the bathroom, she was surprised to see that Inuyasha had not gone down to breakfast. Instead she found him lying on his back in her bed with Yukio draped on his chest and one hand resting lightly on the baby's back. The baby had his fists curled into the cream fabric of his adopted father's kimono and was sleeping peacefully. Inuyasha had his eyes closed as well, and the scene was so endearing that she wished she had a camera to capture it forever.

"Inuyasha," she called and his eyes cracked open immediately. She offered him his haori in exchange for the baby. "Here."

He accepted the trade and she wrapped Yukio in his blanket before heading downstairs.

Breakfast was about as fun as dinner had been, and no one spoke. Souta had already left for school so it was just her, Inuyasha, Jii-chan and Mama.

"How long will you be gone?" Inuyasha asked as she prepared to leave with her mother.

He was holding Yukio and looking very domestic.

"A couple of hours, I think. What will you do?"

He shrugged. "Try to get some sleep and hope the pup doesn't soil his diaper until you get back," he replied with a small smile.

She gave him a light slap on the shoulder, then a soft stroke on his cheek. "I promise we'll come straight home from the appointment."

He nodded gratefully and touched his forehead to hers for a brief moment. "Okay."

"I'll see you when I get back."

"Be safe, Kagome."

She gave him a reassuring smile. "I will. I promise."

"Let's go, Kagome," her mother said.

Kagome gave him a little sigh and a shrug, then followed her mother out.

They took the train and neither spoke as they traveled. Kagome fiddled with the hem of the skirt she had put on. It was longer than the skirts she usually wore, but she was feeling exposed and the extra cloth gave her some semblance of protection. When they arrived at the OB/GYN office, Kagome gave the nurse her name, and was told to wait in the full waiting room. Apparently one of the partners had been called to the hospital for a birth so there was a backlog as the remaining doctors tried to make up for the loss of a staff member. As a result, Kagome would not be seeing her mother's gynecologist, but another doctor instead.

After two hours of waiting, she and her mother were finally led back to an examination room. There Kagome was instructed to remove all of her clothing and don the flimsy examination gown. She sat on the examination table, shivering in the cold room, with her mother studiously not looking at her and making her feel dirtier than she already did, for another hour. When the doctor finally came in, she was practically to the point of tears from all the nervous waiting and cold treatment.

Kagome had never been through a pelvic exam before. Her only consolation was that the doctor was female, thus sparing her the trauma of having to submit to being touched there by a strange man, but it was a small comfort. The exam was uncomfortable, and the speculum the woman used was cold and hurt her when it was opened. And while not overly rough, the doctor wasn't gentle either and had a disapproving look on her face for most of the exam, making Kagome feel like she had committed some form of terrible sin. Her disapproving look deepened when she examined Kagome's breasts, and she wanted to just crawl into a hole and hide forever.

When the doctor finished, she pulled off her latex gloves as Kagome slowly sat up and faced her mother, keeping her back to Kagome.

"Well, Mrs. Higurashi, I am happy to tell you that your daughter remains pure," the doctor said matter-of-factly.

Both Kagome and her mother flinched, and Kagome felt even worse.

"Excuse me?" her mother replied.

The doctor seemed slightly put out. "I assumed since you were so insistent on having your daughter seen today, that you had reason to believe that she was no longer pure. I am telling you that her hymen remains intact and there is no evidence of any vaginal penetration."

Kagome felt the heat rise in her cheeks and she gripped the edge of the table, her stomach flip-flopping in her gut.

"That's not…" her mother began to say, but was cut off by the doctor turning around to face her patient.

"However, it is obvious that she has been engaging in some rather aberrant behavior," she said angrily, glaring at Kagome.

"Aberrant behavior?" Mrs. Higurashi repeated.

"Yes. Since there is no possible way she could have given birth, yet it is clear that she is lactating, I can only assume that she is breastfeeding a child that is not hers. Just whose baby are you nursing, girl, and what the hell do you think you are doing?"

Kagome stared at the doctor in shock. "I…" she stammered.

There was no way she could tell the truth, and the doctor wouldn't believe her if she tried.

"So it is possible for a woman to breastfeed without having become pregnant," Kagome's mother said.

"Of course. The hormones that govern lactation are pituitary, not ovarian. Even a woman who has undergone a hysterectomy would be able to lactate if stimulated. A number of adoptive mothers undergo hormone therapy in order to induce lactation to breastfeed their adoptive infants, but milk production can be induced by nipple stimulation alone," the doctor informed tersely. "Since I am assuming no doctor in their right mind would provide this girl with hormone therapy, I can only conclude that she is allowing a baby to nurse from her and has been for quite some time. Which brings me back to my original question. Whose baby is it?"

Kagome shrank back from the hard gaze, clutching the front of the flimsy examination gown closed over her breasts. She was close to tears and a hair away from exploding; not something she did often, but she was feeling extremely trapped and threatened. Her mother must have seen the look on her face, and her protective maternal instincts finally kicked in because she stood up and positioned herself by her daughter's side.
"My niece recently had a baby," her mother lied smoothly. "Kagome's been baby-sitting for them a lot."

"Tell them they need to find a new baby-sitter. What your daughter is doing cannot be considered child abuse, but it can be classified as molestation."

"Molestation?!" Mrs. Higurashi exclaimed.

Kagome thought she was going to faint.

"Of course. She is putting a strange baby to breast, and she has done it often enough to not only induce lactation, but she is producing significant amounts of milk. The amount of nursing required in order to warrant that much milk, especially because she is a still a virgin and has never been pregnant, means she is doing it repeatedly on at least a daily basis. This is a severe interference with the parental-infant bond, and I have no doubt that the parents will be horrified to find out what their baby-sitter has been doing to their infant."

The doctor turned her hard gaze to her again. "Now, girl, you are going to stop nursing this baby. Do you hear me? Because it is a family affair and you are a minor, I will leave it to your mother to deal with you. You are just going to have to wait until you have your own baby to nurse, but I strongly suggest you wait until you are least nineteen and that you get some psychological help in the meantime. What you are doing is not normal and is considered deviant behavior. Now go get dressed. I want to speak to your mother alone."

Humiliated, hurting and numb, Kagome slid off the examination table, gathered her clothes and went into the bathroom. She felt filthy, her skin crawling where the doctor had touched her, and cold from the lubricant gel that was still on her body. She sat on the toilet and wiped herself clean repeatedly, using paper towels moistened with warm water from the sink, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn't get rid of the feeling of slime on her flesh. She was shaking so badly, she could barely balance on one foot to slip on her clothes, and she had to fumble with the zipper of her skirt five times before she finally got it. When she finally finished dressing and made her way slowly to the waiting room, her mother had already completed the check-out paperwork and was ready to leave.

She shook all the way home, her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed. People stared at her on the train and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood just to keep from screaming. Her mother watched her with concerned eyes and stayed close by, her attitude completely different from that of the morning. If it hadn't been so sick, Kagome might have started laughing.

She practically threw herself out of the train when they reached their stop and hurried up the stairs and down the street, making her mother walk double-time just to keep up. When she saw the welcome sight of the shrine stairs, she broke into a run, ignoring her mother's worried call. She had only one thought: get to Inuyasha. Inuyasha would keep her safe. Inuyasha would make it all better. Inuyasha wouldn't look at her as if she were some deviant, baby-molesting filth to be locked away.

She hit the stairs running and took them two at time, her arms crossed tightly over her breasts to support them because all-in-all she'd been gone more than five hours including travel time, and it was well past time when she needed to nurse the baby. She cleared the top of the stairs, passing under the shrine archway, and raced across the paving stones. A flash of red and silver appeared in her view and she saw him: her salvation, her sanity, standing at the other end of the shrine grounds. He was holding their baby, his face pale and worried as he watched her coming towards him. Her tears had already started to fall, and the sobs were building in her throat as his stunned figure grew closer and closer. He must have realized that she had no intention of stopping until she had literally run into him, because she saw him lift one arm to hold the baby out of the way while the other opened out to her.

She hit him full force, thanking God he was so strong because he didn't even flinch, and his open arm came around her, cocooning her in the red folds of his haori as the floodgates opened and she sobbed great wracking sobs into his shoulder. Yukio answered her sobs with howls of his own and it was impossible to tell who was louder.

"Kagome," Inuyasha breathed, his voice full of worry, heartbreak and fear.

She couldn't bring herself to stop sobbing long enough to answer him. Instead she gripped the front of his haori so tightly her knuckles turned white, and clung to him as if he were the only thing on earth keeping her alive. He was certainly the only thing keeping her standing, and he supported her easily, nuzzling into her hair in a useless attempt to comfort her.

Yukio's cries finally reached her and she pulled back long enough to take him into her arms and hold him close.

"Shhh. Shhhhhhh, my baby. Kaa-san is here, and Outo," she choked through her tears, kissing his red face and little puppy ears as she wept. "We're here and we love you. We love you. We love you. We love you."

Free from holding the baby, Inuyasha now wrapped both arms around her and Yukio, pulling them into a tight embrace, holding them as if the force of his will alone could make everything all better. Little did he know that, at least for her, he was absolutely right. Inyuasha's arms were safe. Inuyasha's arms were where she belonged and no one would ever take her from them.

She knew immediately when her mother entered the shrine grounds because Inuyasha began to growl menacingly and pull her closer. Then he was moving them, dragging her along with him as he snarled his warnings, and she realized that he was headed for the well-house.

"No," she managed to tell him. "My room. Take me to my room."

He gave an unhappy grunt and growl, but obeyed. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her bridal-style into the house and up to her room, slamming the door shut with a kick of his foot. He deposited her and the baby onto the bed, but still did not let go of them. Instead, he got on the bed with them, pulled them with him as he braced his back against the wall, and wrapped himself around them as much as it was physically possible for him to do.

Yukio was still whimpering little cries of worry, upset and hunger, and she quieted him by giving him her breast, not caring if Inuyasha might be able to peep and see her. He nursed desperately, his little fists balled against her, finding both comfort and nourishment in the action. Inuyasha peeled her from him long enough to cover her with his haori the way he always did, then pulled her back into his arms. She continued to cling to him and cry heartbroken sobs until she finally stopped because she was too exhausted to cry anymore. Drained, heart-sore and still very much in shock, she just lay in his embrace, breathing softly with the occasion sniffle and hitched gasp.

"Kagome. Kagome, tell me what happened. You were gone such a long time. We were worried," he begged softly.

Shuddering at the memory, and feeling the emotion welling up over her again, she drew a shaky, halting breath and answered him. She spoke in broken sobs and stuttered whispers, but she told him everything that happened- from the moment she arrived at the doctor, all the way up to the estrogen therapy the doctor wanted her to take that she had no intention of taking to suppress her milk and dry her up. She could feel his anger growing and knew he was practically vibrating with rage by the time she was finished her tale, but he wouldn't let her go.

Yukio had finished eating and was already sleeping in the cocoon of their embrace when the stress and strain of her horrible day, plus that fact that she hadn't slept well the previous night, caught up with her and she felt herself losing consciousness. Inuyasha noticed it too and rocked her a little, lulling her to rest. She fell asleep to the sound of his soft breathing and his heartbeat in her ears.