InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Tale of Sesshoumaru ❯ The Future Hurts ( Chapter 57 )

Disclaimer: I do not own copyright to any of the Inuyasha characters. Wish I did. I make no profit off of my fan fiction. Wish I did.

 

Disclaimer #2: I do own the characters of Akanesuji/Akane, Smart Ass, Hizumeha, Kuza and Manatsu. If you would like to borrow them, please contact me at skycladstrega@yahoo.com for permission.

 

Disclaimer #3: This fan fiction is rated R for violence, sex, gore and supernatural yummy goodness. If you are under the age of 17, I suggest getting your parents permission to read this. I am not responsible for any psychological damage my rantings might bring you :^P

 

 

Mrs. Higurashi thought it would be a lot of fun to take Akanesuji out shopping, as they were close in age and she had only a few friends. Her husband gone, she found herself lonely and the pregnant woman was good company. During the days when Kagome was gone, when Akanesuji wasn't watching television or reading, she was deep in prayer at the shrine or talking history with her father. She played a mean game of go with her and knew the Chinese game of Mah Jong.

 

It was a funny little relationship they had developed. Mrs. Sesshoumaru never addressed Mrs. Higurashi by her first name. Mrs. Higurashi never addressed Mrs. Sesshoumaru by hers. They were mostly prim and proper ladies. Mrs. Higurashi still at times beside herself over Mrs. Sesshoumaru being a noble.

 

Akanesuji wore the same floral dress she had worn the day before, her loose sandals making noise as she walked along side Kagome's mother as they made their way to the bus stop. She kept her hands to herself, her mouth shut but her eyes peeled. At any moment she expected Sess to come around some corner having freed himself from her future self. She also expected to see herself telling her to go back to the house.

 

The bus thing was confusing. People walked in. The doors shut magically. It moved like a lumbering beast over the strange gray roads. There were so many people everywhere and no grass. Men, women and children barely looked at her. They registered that she was there, just another body to not run into and passed on. Akanesuji felt incredibly alone in a sea of bodies.

 

It was when she saw young men and women with pink and blue hair, piercings in their faces and odd looking clothes that she realized why no one seemed to look at her too funny. “Mrs. Higurashi,” she asked worriedly, “where are all the youkai?” She had not run into a single one all day and it was beginning to really bother her.

 

“They are all gone, Mrs. Sesshoumaru. Or they are in hidden, I guess. Like your husband.”

 

She didn't say much else until Mrs. Higurashi led her to some place called a baby store. Opening the heavy glass and metal door the two women wandered in and Akanesuji was astonished by all the little clothes. There were shoes with ties, little shirts and pants, styles of clothing she had never see. “What do you think of these?” the human woman asked her, lifting up something called a “onesie”.

 

“I've never seen anything like it,” she honestly replied, rubbing the fabric between her fingers, curious. It was soft and kind of silky, a strange color of pale green with little yellow ducks. She couldn't imagine dressing her little boy in yellow ducks. Where were the puppy clothes?

 

“What is this?” she asked, holding up a plastic bottle with a rubber nipple.

 

“That is a baby bottle. You know...for feeding babies.”

 

“Why would I use a bottle? Babies suck on teats.” Akanesuji looked at Mrs. Higurashi like she was stupid. What kind of dumb thing was that? Feeding babies from bottles....gaaa

 

“Oh..oh I get it. I guess back then every mother breast fed their babies.”

 

“You mean you have a choice in it?” Her nose wrinkled up on one side as her head tilted. She didn't get the concept at all.

 

“You put milk or formula in the bottle,” she instructed. “Then you don't have to breast feed.”

 

“Well that's just stupid. Everyone breast feeds. You don't get pregnant again so fast.”

 

Mrs. Higurashi was next to tilt her head in confusion. Didn't they have birth control back then? “How old are you Mrs.Higurashi?”

 

“Two hundred and twenty five.”

 

“Oh.....Um...in human years?” The human woman went from thinking about birth control to just how old her companion was.

 

“Two hundred and twenty five.”

 

“No. I mean...like...you look like you're only nineteen or twenty.”

 

“You mean like how mature I am? ....well...I have the body of a young woman, but my mind is two hundred and twenty five.”

 

Mrs.Higurashi just nodded her head and pulled her lips into her mouth confused and not knowing how to formulate the various ideas that were running through her mind. “How old is InuYasha?” she asked next, nervously tapping her fingers around the handle of her purse.

 

“He's like...a hundred something. I don't remember. He was gone from the estate for a long time and so was I. After a while, time just starts to look all the same.” The demoness shrugged her shoulders and started looking at the baby things again, coming up to little mittens and giggling at them. Humans had really dumb ideas towards babies.

 

“No offense, Mrs. Sesshoumaru, but don't you think he's a little old for my daughter?” she asked, thinking that one hundred something was awfully old.

 

“Oh no. His mind is still very young, even though his body isn't. Hanyou's don't age quite the same as youkai do.”

 

“But won't Kagome grow older than him?”

 

“Well...yes. But that's to be expected. She's just a human after all.”

 

“Just a human...” Mrs.Higurashi was suddenly very offended.

 

“Don't worry. I know he'll take care of her as she grows old. He loves her very much. I'm sure he won't take a second wife until after she's dead.”

 

Mrs. Higurashi was getting the bigger picture now and she wasn't too sure if she liked it. Her daughter would grow old while her husband would not and even worse, Kagome would mature and grow up over the next ten years while InuYasha would stay that young cute young man. She doubted her daughter knew what she was getting into. “And what about children? Will they live forever too?”

 

“Oh heavens no. Lord InuYasha is only a half breed. His children with Kagome will only be quarter breed. They probably wont survive five-hundred years or so.”

 

“Five...hundred...years...”

 

“Yes, it's very likely that somewhere here in modern Japan, some of your grandchildren are running around, just like my future self is.”

 

“Does Kagome know this?”

 

“I'm sure she does. She's not a stupid girl. In fact, she's really special. She is one of the most powerful miko's I've ever seen. I expect great things out of her and InuYasha's pups.”

 

“Pups?”

 

“Well yeah. You know...dog ears.” She put her fingers up to her head and made like a pair of ears. Mrs. Higurashi didn't seem to take that sentence too well. All this talk of demons and dogs and puppies and immortality was really beginning to bother her. The little boy who had come and visited her so many times was now looking pretty scary. Did Kagome really want to be birthing a litter of puppies some day that would “suck on her teats”? Mrs. Hagurashi wasn't entiredly prepared for grandchildren with dog ears. She physically shivered.

 

“Mrs. Sesshoumaru. You're a youkai right?” the woman asked to the other, her stomach becoming a knotted pit.

 

The pregnant woman nodded in reply, skimming over baby blankets and cloth diapers.

 

“How come you don't have dog ears?” Maybe there was some way the ears could be avoided.

 

Akanesuji started to laugh. “'Cause I can control my outer form. I just look like a human because I want to.”

 

“What are you really?” the human woman asked, stopping dead in her tracks and staring hard at the woman's pointed pale ears and striped arms. What once looked like weird tattoos were now looking a lot more sinister.

 

“I'm a dog of course. You know. Dog ears?” She made the funny fingers over her forehead and smiled. “Bow wow. Bark. Bark?”

 

“No,” she said incredulously.

 

“Yes. Bow wow. Bark. Bark.”

 

“No.” This time Mrs Higurashi started shaking her head in disbelief. “You look just like me.”

 

“Kagome hasn't really told you about what goes on on the other side of the well has she?”

 

“No....”

 

“We have a lot to talk about then.”

 

The rest of the day was spent over a restaurant table, the two women sharing cups of tea. It took Akanesuji a while to convince her that InuYasha was pretty harmless and so was she. Realizing how fragile the human woman's mind was, she decided to skip the how-her-husband-lost-his-arm story and how InuYasha's human mother died because she had fallen in love with a youkai story and how Kikyo was a clay body and tried to drag him to hell story. No wonder Kagome had never filled her mother in on much, it panicked her mind and made her worry too much.

 

Humans were funny things. All of the humans she loved and cared for in her buffer land home had grown up with youkai around them and thought nothing of it, but Mrs. Higurashi and this modern world had a big void, a whole missing population. Something was wrong with the future. Mrs. Higurashi was afraid of a word that had become a myth, a story, a way to make children behave. She and InuYasha and her kind were the “big bad demons” who ate little children in the night.

 

Growing sad, she was glad to go back to the house. Depressed she was glad to curl up on the floor and turn the television back on and watch movies. Movies about her kind that only perpetuated the stories. The movies were fantasy, some sick retelling of a time gone by.

 

The world of magic was gone.

 

“Kagome,” she choked out when the girl came up the stairs and entered the room.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Where are all the youkai?” A tear fell down her cheek as she pushed the mute button on the remote.

 

“I don't know. Maybe they've all gone to sleep. Or they are in hiding. Sess and Akane look just like normal people.”

 

“I didn't smell any all day, but there were thousands and thousands of people.”

 

“I don't know Akanesuji. Maybe your kind have died out and the humans have taken over.” Kagome realized what she had said, a thought that she had never considered from a non-human's point of view before. If it were true that the youkai had died out, then it would be possible that all the youkai she knew and loved were gone. She knew there was Sess, Yasha and Akane, but what about all the other friends she had made along the way? What about the ones who didn't look like humans..the ones like Kirara. She put her hand on the woman's shoulder to comfort her as she sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn't mean to say that. I...I'm sorry Akanesuji. Maybe it just all spells to keep from getting detected.”

 

More tears ran down Akanesuji's pale white cheeks. What would become of her son? What of Shippo and Hizumeha and his wives? Were they making it alright in this modern world? What about the countless others who only wanted to live side by side their human counterparts, get a little land, have a little farm? What about the ones who just wanted to raise their babies in peace? Where were all the youkai? Where had her people gone? Akanesuji's heart broke. Somehow, someway, she had failed her people. She had failed as Lady of the Western land. She had failed to serve Inu No Taisho. She had gotten her husband, her one true love, but she had lost everything else.

 

“I want to go home now. Please take me to the well.”