InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ What Are You? ❯ Chapter 25 Alternate ( Chapter 31 )

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

Chapter Twenty-Five Alternate

Miserable

I was growing weary of all the looks Jaken was giving me, and how Aun always stepped between me and whatever youkai chose to attack.

Like right now. A demon had chosen this moment to come and attack me. I turned toward it, beginning to draw Tensaiga (remember that it had absorbed the power of Tessaiga), but Aun leaped in front of me defensively, then attacked the other youkai ferociously. I watched him, feeling rather annoyed. My power may have been getting slowly weaker day by day, but I could still kill this damned youkai with no trouble.

“Aun has been very defensive lately,” Rin commented. “I wonder why.” Jaken looked at me nervously. I kicked him. Not very hard, but with enough force to make him fall over. Rin frowned. She knew that I had never been particularly kind to the toad, but I had just kicked him for seemingly no reason.

Aun came back to us, the youkai dead. Ah sniffed at me in a manner I disapproved of quite a lot. Un looked at my stomach. They seemed satisfied and moved away. I had half a mind to kill them for that, but I didn't.

Rin looked from me to Aun and back again. “Um… Sesshomaru-sama, what was that about?”

“Hm.” I shot Ah and Un with a death glare as I passed them and continued on my trek toward my palace. We were almost to the borders of my land. Not that it helped much. Any demon that I could so much as smell, I went after immediately. Usually, I would never have done so, but I couldn't afford them smelling me right now. Except that any time I took off, Aun was right behind me, which was most infuriating.

I wasn't sure what I was more offended by—that they were protecting me, or that they thought I needed it.

I was running out of the medicine that the old herb woman gave me. There was an old healer on the palace staff that had been my mother's midwife. She could help me. I had never cared much for the old woman--too many childhood memories of her pinning me down and shoving some sickening concoction down my throat. And people called me evil. That was just sick. I would kill someone, but I wouldn't torture them like that.

Once, I had been poisoned by a demon when I was a child. The cure smelled like poached vomit. I allowed the memory replay itself.

“I'm not going to eat that,” I said, pointing at the cup in the healer's hand.

Mother and Father shared a look. At some signal I had not taken note of, they grabbed my arms and kept me in place. Despite my best efforts (kicking, scratching, complaining, transforming, biting, etc) their iron grips held fast. They made my transform back. I snapped my mouth shut.

“Would you rather get sick or drink the medicine?” Father demanded.

The poison hadn't hit me dead-on. As it was, I would have lived without the cure—I just would've been sick and in bed for about a month. I refused to answer, as I didn't trust him. If I opened my mouth, then the poached vomit would be poured down my throat. Why did her damn medicine have to taste so awful? Was it some unwritten law that medicine must be just as awful as actually being sick?

“Darling, you need to drink the medicine,” my mother said.

I shook my head, mouth clamped firmly shut. No way they would convince me to drink something that smelled like that.

Father pursed his lips and pinched my nostrils shut. I leveled my eyes, staring at him. “You can't not breathe forever.”

To hell I couldn't! I would pass out before I swallowed that damned thing. The funny thing is that my sense of self will was actually that strong; it surprised my parents when I fainted. However, when I woke up and was still only barely conscious, the healer poured that poached vomit down my throat, and it tasted exactly like it smelled. That I didn't just throw it back up was surprising.

Her remedies probably hadn't changed much since then, which meant that I was really willingly undergoing torture. Of course, what would be worse? Her concoctions, or the morning sickness?

That was a difficult conclusion to come to. Morning sickness was awful, and swallowing something that tasted like I should be throwing up was a whole new kind of sickness.

My entire pregnant life was going to be absolutely miserable.

I was going to castrate Naraku, damn it.

*****

Author's Note: Following Chapter is Chapter 23: Beautiful Death.