InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity ❯ For Daily Bread ( Chapter 10 )

~~Chapter 10~~
~For Daily Bread~ 

-==========-

"For the last damn time, the fucking thing just took off!  I didn't do a thing!"

Leaning back in the thickly cushioned office chair, Sesshoumaru looked completely nonplussed by InuYasha's blatant assertions that he had nothing at all to do with the accident that had landed him at the police station—again.  "Only you, InuYasha, could actually claim that and believe it is the truth."

InuYasha snorted, crossing his arms over his chest and looking like he was trying to come up with a suitable argument.

"I have told you this before, baka, but if there is something that you do not understand, best to ask the questions than to break everything you get your hands on," Sesshoumaru went on.  "Do you even begin to appreciate just how much trouble you caused yesterday?"

Uttering a terse growl as he narrowed his eyes on his half-brother, InuYasha clenched his jaw so tightly that it ached, the scrape of his teeth reverberating in his head as he fought back the desire to light into Sesshoumaru for the blatant slight.

Sesshoumaru wasn't impressed with the show of righteous indignation.  "Just try to keep yourself out of trouble, InuYasha.  Do I need to hire a babysitter to ensure that you do?"

"Keh!" InuYasha scoffed, shooting to his feet and stomping toward the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Sesshoumaru called after him.

InuYasha didn't pause in his step and stretched out his arm to smack the door open, instead.  "As far away from you as I can fucking get!" he snapped.

'Damn!' he fumed as he strode down the hallway, toward the front door.  Just how the hell was it his fault, really?  He hadn't asked that idiotic contraption to take off with him, now had he?  Was everyone really dumb enough to believe that he'd wanted to crash it, too?  He snorted and kept moving, wrinkling his nose subconsciously when he stepped outside.  The reek of the city pervaded his senses, and he snorted inwardly.  At the moment, he was having distinct trouble in figuring out exactly why he'd wanted to be on this side of the well.

Then he sighed.  Kagome was here, damn it, and he wanted to be with her; just with her.  If everyone else would get the hell out of his way, he'd be a lot closer to his goal, too.

Amnesia.

Snorting indelicately as he broke into a sprint across the wide expanse of grass, heading toward the high wall that surrounded Sesshoumaru's estate, InuYasha tried to make sense of everything he'd been told.  Kagome had amnesia; that much he understood.  It meant that she couldn't remember him, right?  It meant that she couldn't remember a lot of things . . . The time that they'd spent, searching for the shards of the Shikon no Tama . . .? The friends they'd made that they'd left behind . . .?

Vaulting over the wall, he leaped onto the next building without a clear destination in mind.  Hell, where was there to go?  The only place he wanted to be was the one place where he couldn't be seen—at least, that was what they'd told him.  Still, the desire just to see her was a painful thing.  Her smile, her laughter, the sense of comfort that her proximity had always allowed him seemed so far away . . .

He'd forgotten, hadn't he?  That sense of loneliness, of solitude, that he'd come to know had been all but forgotten when she'd tumbled into his life, and here in this time and in this place, those dormant feelings were back in spades, looming ever-closer, growing just a little stronger every day . . .

"Damn!" he growled as he sprinted from one rooftop to the next.  She'd said that she always wanted to be by his side, hadn't she?  So why the hell had she left him . . .?

'Stop it,' a voice in the back of his mind hissed, and he made a face.  Getting himself all worked up over the situation wasn't going to do any good, and he knew it.  Common sense told him that he ought to try to make the best of things; that he needed to do the things that everyone kept telling him were necessary in order to adapt to the time he'd chosen.  Going back to the mansion and sitting through hours and hours of lessons, however, was just a little beyond his capabilities at the moment.

Of course, that was a bit of a double-edged sword.  Damned if he could stand to sit around, doing nothing, while Shippou tried to explain things to him that InuYasha didn't care about, but the faster he learned all that crap they were force-feeding him, the faster he could get the hell out of Sesshoumaru's house, too . . .

He snorted.  Any way he looked at it, he was totally screwed, wasn't he?  'Talk about being born under a bad sign . . .'

Stopping short, InuYasha scowled at the landscape around him.  He wasn't entirely sure where he was—he should've paid more attention to the city during his brief visits with Kagome—which just figured.  With his luck, he'd end up lost somewhere, unable to rely upon his sense of smell to get him back to Sesshoumaru's house again.  No doubt about it, getting used to the unfamiliar scents of everything around him was going to take some doing.  Learning how to separate out everything that he wasn't used to, especially when the odors were all built upon each other, wasn't going to be easy.  He didn't doubt that he could do it, of course—eventually, anyway . . .

Pushing himself off the roof onto the next building, InuYasha's scowl deepened.  Too bad there weren't any renegade youkai around that he could unleash some of his frustrations on.  As weird as it was to admit as much, he had to allow that he did rather miss that about his time, as well.  It sounded stupid, sure, but there was nothing like getting a good workout while preventing those bastards from causing trouble, either . . .

No doubt about it, it was going to take a while for him to get used to this century.  Unfortunately for him, it was starting to feel like he might have all the time in the world to do it, too . . .

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"See you tomorrow, Kagome-chan!"

Kagome waved as Eri and Yuka headed down the street in the opposite direction.  Ayumi had told them earlier that she had to stay later since it was her turn to help out with the school flower garden, and Houjou had baseball practice, so Kagome was alone for once on her walk home.

She had to admit, at least to herself, that she wasn't unhappy about it, either, even if her homeroom teacher had warned them just before dismissing class that the school was advising that all students travel in groups and stick to the main paths while the Tokyo mugger was still at large. For some reason, she couldn't help the feeling of restlessness that seemed to cling to the edges of her psyche.

She couldn't put her finger on it, no matter how hard she tried.  It was as if there was something missing; something that ought to be there that just wasn't.  Heaving a sigh as she re-shouldered her backpack, Kagome bit her lip and kept walking.

'What's wrong with me?' she berated herself, her pace unconsciously quickening.  It was stupid, wasn't it? Everything was perfect—perfect—right?  She had a good family, good friends, attended one of the best academies in Tokyo, and to top that off, she had a wonderful boyfriend, too—a boyfriend that many of the girls at school would love to have.  In fact, there wasn't a thing in the world that she could possibly ask for that she didn't already have, so why . . .?

The crisp spring breeze suddenly shifted, and Kagome stopped.  A strange sense of well-being seemed to swell up from somewhere deep inside her, bringing with it a peace that she couldn't quite explain.  She'd felt that way a few days ago, hadn't she?  The day she'd gone shopping with Yuka, she'd felt it then, too . . .

Lifting her face, she glanced around at the street she'd walked down a thousand times before.  Nothing seemed different; nothing at all had changed.  Surrounded by the same little shops that lined the street, the same buildings that rose up behind them as far as the eye could see, she welcomed the sense of familiarity while people passed her by.

Smiling to herself, she started walking once more.  Maybe it was all in her imagination, but in any case, she was all right with that, too . . .

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

He was stupid—maybe beyond stupid.  There really was no other explanation for it, was there?  Stupidity had to be the sole reason for it, and that just kind of figured . . .

Walking along the rooftop, careful to keep back far enough so that she couldn't see him if she looked around again, InuYasha made a face as he matched his pace with that of the girl so far down below on the sidewalk.

He wasn't sure how he'd found her school, and it had been a bit of a shock when he figured out where he had ended up.  He'd spent the last two hours, sitting on the roof of the building where he'd known instinctively that she was, and he'd had to remind himself a million times that he couldn't approach her, despite the nearly overwhelming desire to do that.

It figured.  It really did.  He had to be stupid, following her back to the shrine when he couldn't let her know that he was there.  But it was so hard to believe, too.  She couldn't remember him?  If she saw him, she wouldn't know him?  How was that even possible?

He sighed, grimacing and then grinding his teeth together when the unsettled tinge in her aura reached out to him.  It felt as though a part of her was searching for something, even if she didn't realize it herself.  'Kagome,' he whispered somewhere deep in his mind, and he bristled when she stopped abruptly and slowly looked around.

But she smiled and started walking again, only this time, she seemed to be a lot calmer, and that had to be good enough.

A part of him wished that the walk home was finished, so attuned to her as he was that the idea that she was right there both comforted him, just as the rise of desolation hit him full-on.  So very close, and yet . . . The rest of him wished that it'd take forever.  He had wandered down the same streets with her before since the academy she attended was very close to the middle school she'd gone to when he'd first met her.  If he had realized the last time that he would be here like this now, would he have paid more attention?

Hunkering down on the roof across the street from the long staircase that led to the shrine courtyard, InuYasha sighed again, ears flattening as he dug his claws into the cement.  She looked so small as she ascended those steps . . . so small and so alone . . .

It was ridiculous, really, if he stopped to think about it.  All he'd wanted to do was to get to her—to reach her—and to stay with her forever, but even if he had known what was in store for him when he'd followed her through the well, he had to admit that he still would have done the same thing.  There wasn't really a question, as far as he was concerned.  He'd protected her for so long that he couldn't just walk away.  At first, he'd done it because he'd wanted to recover the pieces of the Shikon no Tama, but he wasn't sure when he'd started protecting her because he wanted to do it.  Somehow, and in her own quiet way, she'd changed his life—changed him: everything about him . . .

He should have tried to tell her how he felt.  He should have done it before she'd gone and made her own assumptions, especially considering how very wrong she was.  Sure, he still cared about Kikyou.  How could he not?  He loved her, too, he supposed.  At least, he loved the Kikyou he'd known from so long ago.  A part of him would always care about her, and he couldn't help that.  Did that mean that he couldn't care about Kagome just as much, even if it was a different kind of feeling?

That had always been the trouble.  Kagome always thought that his feelings for Kikyou somehow diminished his feelings for her.  If he stopped to think about it, he had to admit that those feelings he had for Kikyou—the ones he still felt—was a blind kind of emotion: a pitiful sort of thing.  Kikyou was kind, strong, and she was the first person to truly accept him.  She had given him a sense of self-worth that he'd never felt before, and the love he'd felt for her had stemmed from that.  The way he felt about Kagome . . . He snorted, glowering across the street at the house where Kagome had disappeared.  The way he felt about that particular woman was vastly different.  It was more . . . His scowl darkened as he tried to articulate his own thoughts.  'More . . . everything,' he mused, irritated that he simply couldn't quite explain it the way he wanted to.

No, the thing that he knew well enough as he considered it all was that Kikyou was his past.  Kagome was his future—if he could get her to remember him, anyway . . .

Pushing himself to his feet, albeit with a measure of reluctance, InuYasha slowly turned and started back the way he'd come.

It hurt to leave her.

He had to force himself to move.  With every step, he couldn't help the feeling that he was somehow going against everything he'd ever believed.  Leaving her, even if she was in the relative safety of her family's home, just felt so very wrong.

Not that it mattered, because it didn't.  He couldn't do a thing about it; not yet.  Until she remembered him, it wouldn't do a damn bit of good for him to dwell on the things that he couldn't change.

Sprinting across the rooftops once more, InuYasha shook his head.  With his luck, that damned half-brother of his had probably sent someone to tail him to make sure that he didn't get anywhere near Kagome.  The last thing he needed or wanted was another confrontation with Sesshoumaru, especially since the bastard was hell-bent on treating InuYasha like he was little more than an ignorant pup.

It just figured, didn't it?  As if Kagome's weird case of amnesia weren't bad enough, it grated on InuYasha's nerves that he was beholden to Sesshoumaru for anything.  They all treated him like he couldn't do a damn thing for himself, and that pissed him off, too.  Hell, he'd spent years, fending for himself, hadn't he?  But now, even something as basic as food was provided by Sesshoumaru.

InuYasha sprang from the top of a building, over the busy street, ignoring the idea that he could possibly have been seen.  He landed in a tree on the outskirts of a park and dropped to the ground with a sigh.

He'd been here before.  After leaving the shopping center with Rin, they'd walked through this park to get back to the mansion.  It belonged to everyone, she'd said, and was a place where a lot of people liked to come to watch the sakura blossoms in the spring or to think or just to walk and enjoy nature.  She hadn't said as much at the time, but he had the feeling that she'd opted to take the path because she thought that the quieter atmosphere in the park might be more palatable for him, and it was.  The trees added a buffer against the city that surrounded it, and InuYasha almost felt normal as he wandered along the stone path—almost.

The place was strangely empty, too—something else for which InuYasha could be grateful.  He was used to garnering weird looks from people, sure.  He'd gotten those all of his life.  There was something different about the way that they looked at him now, though.  They didn't exactly stare at him with distrust and hatred, not even the scorn that he'd grown accustomed to over the years.  No, the looks he got now seemed more curious than anything, and sometimes, they almost seemed to approve of him, which was just odd, no doubt about it, especially when those expressions tended to come from women.  It was almost more unsettling than the abhorrence that he used to discern easily enough.  He just wasn't sure what it meant.

Brushing the unnerving thoughts aside, InuYasha followed the faint sound of water until he came to a small stream.  Something about the sight of it was reassuring to him.  Surrounded by the fresh foliage of spring, it could have been a stream that he'd seen back in his own time.  It gave his flagging spirits a much-needed lift.  Sure, he could still smell the underlying and pervasive stench of the city, but at least here, it was muted, and that was good enough.  Breathing deep, he was satisfied with the earthy smell of the dampened ground, of the water that flowed over it, and he wandered along the stream instead of searching out the path again.

It was getting late, almost dusk.  An uncomfortable churning in his stomach reminded him that he hadn't bothered to eat any of the lunch that Sesshoumaru's cook had made for him, either.  He wasn't sure how much time had passed since he'd made his unceremonious escape from Sesshoumaru's house, and he didn't really care if he ever went back there again, either.  He didn't want to stay with them, anyway, and he was pretty damn certain that Sesshoumaru didn't really want him there, in the first place.  Besides, it wasn't like Sesshoumaru ever had been a benevolent being, after all, and somehow, InuYasha doubted that he could have changed his ways, even if five hundred years had passed.  What he didn't know was exactly what Sesshoumaru had to gain from his intervention, and that was enough to irritate InuYasha beyond all reason.

Maybe it was all some sort of elaborate ploy so that Sesshoumaru could demand something ridiculous later—something like Tetsusaiga.  InuYasha wouldn't put it past him, bastard that he was.

"Keh!" he snorted, unconsciously reaching for the hilt of the sword in question.  Wrapping his palm around it, tightening his hand so hard that his fingers turned white, that the crunch of the leather wrapped grip groaned in his ears, he scowled at the scenery around him.  'The day he gets his fucking hands on Tetsusaiga is the day I fucking die . . .'

Opting to stalk through the tunnel under a small footbridge instead of going around it, InuYasha ignored the water that splashed up to splatter his bare feet, his jeans.  He hadn't thought to stop long enough to put on the shoes he'd been coerced into getting, not that it bothered him in the least.  If he had his way about it, he wouldn't wear those damned things, ever.  The jeans and stuff, he could tolerate, but those?  He highly doubted he'd ever be okay with them . . .

The stream dropped off a little rock-lined cliff, only to pool in a small pond below, and InuYasha hopped down with a curious frown.  The path came down from the left and circled around the pond to the right, but the area was fairly secluded, almost like a small niche, carved out of the main area.  The cliff was reinforced by a stacked stone wall, and the same stones lined the pond, as well.  The floating lotus leaves barely stirred as the cascading water fell from above into the crystal-clear pool below.  That wasn't what caught InuYasha's eye, though.

He frowned as he looked around once more before striding across the smallish meadow.  There was plenty of dried debris under the trees, too, and he wasted no time in gathering up an armload of it before returning to the pond once more.

It was a lot easier to start fires with the matches that Kagome tended to carry around, but it wasn't too hard to get a good-sized blaze going.  Pulling out a few straight sticks, he sharpened them with his claws then turned to the pond once more as his stomach rumbled unpleasantly.

"Keh! Why the fuck should I have to accept that bastard's help, anyway?  I can take care of my damn self," he grumbled as his hand shot out, grabbing the closest fish that was lazily swimming around.  They were fat—really fat—and huge, too—tons bigger than the ones that he usually caught back in his time.  'Whatever,' he thought as he made quick work of cleaning and gutting the fish, 'who the hell cares?'

It didn't take long for him to catch another one, and a few minutes later, he had his dinner skewered and roasting over the open fire.

To hell with staying at Sesshoumaru's house, and to hell with Sesshoumaru's 'help', too.  After all, hadn't Rin said before that this park belonged to everyone?  If that was the case, then he could just stay here.  He'd never had a problem with sleeping in trees before, and he certainly could catch his own food.  After he ate, he'd go back long enough to reclaim his real clothes, then he'd get the hell out of there . . .

So, all in all, he felt pretty damn good as he gave the fish a half-turn.  The scent of the roasting meat was enough to set off another round of hunger pangs, and he grimaced.

No doubt about it, the people in this era were a pampered, lazy lot, weren't they?  They all opted to go to the nearest store to buy their food instead of putting any effort into catching it themselves.  He'd thought that it was weird when Kagome had flipped out the first time he'd gutted a fish in front of her.  She'd nearly turned gray, and if he hadn't given in and moved around to the far side of a tree to finish his task, she might well have passed out, too.  He supposed that he could understand that now.

Well, whatever.  It didn't really stop her from eating the food he'd caught.  As long as he'd cleaned it before giving it to her too cook up, she was all right with it.

Of course, the Kagome he'd first come to know was so much different from the woman she'd become.  He liked to tell her that she was weak, that she needed him to protect her, but she didn't; not really.  The strongest miko, ever . . . that's what she'd become.  She didn't need him, but it was all right because she liked to let him think that she did . . .

The soft sizzle of the roasting fish drew him out of his reverie, and he sighed.  One way or another, he'd get her to remember.  Then he'd . . . he'd . . . Well, he wasn't sure what, but he'd do something . . .

Snatching up the nearest stake, he bit into the fish without bothering to wait for it to cool off a bit.  Blinking back tears as the scalding flesh burned his tongue, he stubbornly kept eating and started to take another bite.

"Hold it right there!"

InuYasha's ears twitched as he slowly turned to face the voice, and he blinked.

"What do you think you're doing?  You're eating the koi from the pond!"  The man's eyes widened.  InuYasha knew him, didn't he . . .?  The officer from the other day . . . "You again . . .?"

InuYasha blinked again, and he reached for the other staked fish and held it out to him.  "Want one?" he asked dryly.

Officer Yamura stared at him in apparent disbelief then slowly shook his head.  Then he sighed—a long, tired kind of sound.  "I think you need to come with me," he said.  "Again."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A/N:

-==========- 

Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Purity): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize. 

~Sue~