InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Purity Short: Cacophony ❯ Enemies ( Chapter 4 )

~~Chapter Four~~

~Enemies~

 

~o~

 

Kelly dropped the remote control and shot Cartham a surreptitious glance, only to frown, momentarily forgetting that she was trying to ignore the man as she turned to watch while he quickly and efficiently tore down a handgun that she hadn’t realized he had.

He’d taken off his jacket when he’d finally let himself back into the hotel room, and she’d noticed then that he wore a leather shoulder holster not unlike the kind that some actors wore in those silly detective dramas in the movies and on television.

It had surprised her, but she’d refused to ask any questions then.  Now, however, watching as he cleaned and oiled the firearm, she slowly shook her head.  A gun?  She thought that youkai were above using such things.  Then again, she really couldn’t say, given that she hadn’t actually had the opportunity to find out any such thing, but Belle had mentioned before that even Kichiro had a sword . . . “You’re a hunter, aren’t you?” she heard herself asking before she could stop herself.

He grunted something unintelligible, but it sounded like a positive response, and he didn’t look up from what he was doing, either.

“Is that why you’re—quote, end-quote—good at your job,” she went on, unable to keep the hint of derision out of her voice.

“Points for trying to offend me,” he mumbled in an almost preoccupied kind of way.  “You’ll have to try harder, though.”

“Do all of his hunters use guns?”

“Nope.  None of us do,” he replied simply.

“Oh?”

He gave a little shrug, but didn’t look up from his task. “I carry one, yes.  Do I use it?  Never have—yet.  Well, never have on a job, nope . . . I do practice with them, though.  Damn good shot, if I do say so myself.  Besides, there are some youkai who aren’t exactly honorable, and on the off chance that I run into one of them?  I believe in being prepared.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes as she snatched up the remote control once more.  “You’re so noble,” she muttered sarcastically.  “While you’re being so noble, how about you let me leave without chasing me down?”

“So you can go back to that homeless shelter?  Those places aren’t safe,” he informed her in a tone that indicated that she ought to know that much already.

“It’s safe enough,” she countered.

“No, they’re not,” he stated.  “Just because no one’s bugged you yet doesn’t mean that they’ll leave you alone forever.  Tomorrow, we’re going to find you an apartment, and we’re going to get you settled in.”

She made a face, but he missed it since he was still more interested in his gun than he was in her.  “Tomorrow, I’m going to work, and after that, I’m going back to the shelter, and—”

“Okay, then I’ll pick out your apartment while you’re working, but I’m not promising it’ll meet your high standards.”

“I’m not living somewhere that I didn’t pick out myself,” she gritted out, her irritation, rising fast.

He finally looked up at her, but the expression on his face was inscrutable.  He looked like he was caught up, somewhere between boredom and all-out irritation with a strange kind of near-amusement, tossed in for good measure.  “Suit yourself,” he told her, sounding just a little too agreeable to credit.  “Then I guess I’ll give Zelig a call in the morning—tell him that you’d rather that he flies out to get you settled.”

“You wouldn’t,” she grumbled, narrowing her eyes as an indignant flush exploded under her skin.

“If you don’t want to cooperate with me, that’s cool.  I’ll pack it in, head back to Maine, and Cain’ll take care of everything.  Your choice.”

Clamping her mouth closed on the retort that was fast forming, she jerked her head back toward the television and furiously clicked through the channels again.

It seemed like it took an inordinately long time for him to finish reassembling his gun, and she ground her teeth together as she tried to ignore the grating sounds of the weapon as he put it back together.

“So, I talked to your ma before I came out here,” Cartham said in an entirely too-conversational tone.  “Said she was worried about you.”

“Did she?” Kelly countered, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone despite her best efforts to maintain a neutral tone.  The immediate and intense flare of outright indignation was harder to quell.  Worried about her?  She stifled an inward snort. More like she was concerned about what anyone else might think, wasn’t it?  After all, Helen Hendricks was damn good at pretending to be the downtrodden mother, now, wasn’t she?  She’d been doing it for years . . . “Did she tell you what a disappointment I am, too?”

Cartham let out a deep breath and stood up, clicking the safety on the weapon before replacing it in the holster that he then hung on a hook on the wall beside his jacket.  “Seemed pretty concerned about you,” he went on, opting to ignore the underlying hostility in her words.  “You want to give her a call?”

“You know, that’s really none of your business,” she snapped, unwilling to discuss her relationship with her parents with a virtual stranger, especially a stranger who had forced himself into her life, in the first place.  Bad enough that he was willing to sink low enough to use Cain Zelig as a not-so-subtle threat, but to drag her parents into it, too?

In fact, the more she stewed it over, the more irritated it made her.  If he thought that her parents were the fairy tale type, he was sorely mistaken.  More than once over the course of her life, she’d wondered just why they’d bothered to have her, in the first place.  She wasn’t the child that they’d ever doted upon, and even if they’d had the money to do such a thing, she knew damn well that they wouldn’t have.  She had one friend growing up who was about as poor as they came, and yet, her parents had always done their best to give her their attention, their very obvious affection.  Trips to the free beach about half an hour away, lots of trips to the city park . . . Sleepovers with a trip to the dollar store for cheap snacks and television recordings of lots of cartoons and movies . . . Sheila’s mom and dad, when he wasn’t working at a local factory, would push the rather threadbare furniture in the living room back and use chairs and tables to build blanket forts, camping out with the girls . . . She remembered a lot of laughter during those moments, and Kelly had been so jealous of that.  Even now, she still thought about Sheila, who had moved away when she was seven.

“You’re right,” he admitted, but he didn’t sound at all sorry for the perceived faux pas.  “She seemed pretty concerned about you, though.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not,” Kelly gritted out, flicking off the television and dropping the remote before flopping down in the bed on her side, facing away from him and yanking the blankets up over her head.

She heard Cartham sigh, but he didn’t try to stop her.  He did turn off all of the lights except for the one beside his bed, and she heard the springs groan as he stretched out.

The silence the filled the room was deafening, ringing in her ears in a nearly-painful way.

‘You know, she might really be worried about you.  Just because you don’t see eye-to-eye with your parents doesn’t mean that they don’t think about you.’

Kelly squeezed her eyes closed a little tighter.  It wasn’t the first time that her youkai-voice had tried to soften her opinion about her parents, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last, either.  It didn’t matter, not when she knew deep down, just how little they had ever really cared, unless she was in trouble, that was.  When she got in trouble for this or that over the years, they’d been upset enough, and then, they’d scream and holler and tell her, just how put upon they really were.

But they’d perfected the whole act where they’d look good to the public.  From parent-teacher conferences in school to dragging her to church every Sunday morning and evening, and it all looked so nice on the outside, didn’t it?

‘It wasn’t what they did to you; it’s what they never did for you, Kel.  Your mom and dad have never been demonstrative people.  It wasn’t within their abilities to give affection without a reason, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t love you.’

She didn’t know what to think about that, either.  Besides, was it really her responsibility to make excuses for them?  Why did a child have to try to rationalize their own parents’ inability to connect?  It wasn’t so much that they were bad parents, really, but they were indifferent, and that was painful in its own way.

And it was all stuff that she couldn’t rightfully explain to anyone, let alone, to herself.  When she did try to put it into terms that were easier to understand, it only made her angry.  When she did things the way they wanted—their version of the ‘right’ way—they said nothing, just left her alone.  When she messed up?  Oh, she certainly heard about it all then.

There was a lifetime of instances that didn’t seem that significant until they were all lumped in together.  From scraped knees that went ignored because her father said that she was, ‘too old to carry on like that’, to the times she was caught, breaking curfew and things like that and the hours-long lectures that she’d been made to endure . . . There were so many things that seemed so petty, and maybe anyone else would think that she was just making a mountain out of a molehill, she didn’t know.

But explaining all of it to someone like Cartham . . .? No, she couldn’t do it—didn’t want to do it.  There was no good way to describe it all without sounding needy or worse, pitiful, and Kelly . . . Well, she’d be damned if she’d allow that, ever . . .


Stepping out of the hotel with a heavy sigh, Kelly braced her hands against the small of her back and stretched with a grimace.  She’d had to clean twenty rooms, and she’d hurried through them since she was paid the same, regardless of how much time it took to do them.  Once she finished her daily cleanings of the rooms assigned to her, she could leave for the day, which was great on most days.  Today, however, it seemed like the rooms in her charge required more effort than usual, and despite trying to be as thorough and as fast as possible, it had taken her just over nine hours to complete them all.

She stifled a groan when she spotted Cartham, striding toward her.  It was too much to hope that he’d forget about her.  Bad enough that he was already wide-awake when she woke up this morning.  Then he’d walked her to work, much to her chagrin.  She had no idea what he’d done while she was working, either, but the few times she’d looked outside, she hadn’t seen him.  It didn’t mean he hadn’t been waiting around for her.  Even so . . .

“Zelig set up some more appointments,” he said, skipping the pleasantries as he reached over and neatly plucked her backpack out of her grasp, slinging it over his shoulder casually and completely ignoring the low growl that she uttered.  “One’s not far from here, and we’re a little late.”

“I can carry my own bag,” she muttered, trying to tug the bag back without having much luck in the doing.

“You look exhausted,” he countered evenly as he adjusted the bag and kept walking.  “Anyway, this place might be all right, but Cain was a little iffy about the building’s security, so if you want it, I’ll see what I can do about getting a better system installed.”

“Didn’t we already discuss this?” she muttered.  “Never mind, I know we did.  I told you, I don’t want his help.  I don’t want anything at all from him, and I sure as hell am not going to be beholden to him, either.  I’m saving up money, and I’ll get a place as soon as I can, so I—”

“And I told you, I can’t leave here till you’re settled into something safe.  Look, if it’s Zelig’s involvement that you object to, then I’ll loan you the scratch.  Whatever works.”

“Why would you do that?” she demanded sharply as he guided her across the busy street and toward an apartment building between a couple small shops.

He rolled his eyes, the heels of his boots, thudding heavily against the pavement.  “To get you the hell outta my hair.  Why else?” he shot back.

She snapped her mouth closed as an uncomfortable flush exploded in her skin.  “I don’t need anyone’s charity,” she bit out, balling her hands into fists as she crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly.

He sighed, dragging his long fingers through his hair, his exasperation, very clear.  “No one’s offering you char—Okay, Zelig could be considered charity.  It’s a reach, but all right,” he allowed.  “I’m not, though.  It’s a loan.  You’ll pay me back.”

“Why?” she snapped.  “So you can lord it over me every chance you get?”

That stopped him in his tracks, and he turned to eye her in a completely chagrined kind of way.  “So I can what?” he growled.

Common sense told her that she was treading on dangerous ground.  She didn’t really know anything about him, but something about her accusation had hit him hard.  Even so, it didn’t stop her.  In truth, it couldn’t stop her.  A lifetime of memories, of being reminded, time and again, just how much she owed this person or that person for every tiny bit of help she’d ever received, especially by her parents, had taught her the lesson so very well.

“I won’t be your puppet,” she spat, stepping back, trying to put some space between him and herself.  “Owe you money so you can yank my strings, tell me what I owe you, what I need to do because you were nice enough to help me?  Go fuck yourself, Cartham, and tell Cain Zelig—tell my so-called family—that I don’t need anyone—anyone!”

Then she wheeled around and broke into a dead sprint, unsure where she was going, only knowing that she had to get away from him, yet knowing deep down that it was a futile effort.  In the end, it wouldn’t matter, would it?  No matter how far she ran, where she ended up, he’d find her, wouldn’t he?  A hunter, for the love of God . . . A hunter that ran on the long leash of Cain Zelig . . .


‘What the fuck . . .?’

Standing in complete shock for a long moment, watching in mild disbelief at both Kelly’s unleashing of her temper as well as her unscripted and unceremonious escape.  Sure, he’d realized early on that she really did possess that kind of volatile nature.  It was more of the venom that she’d spewed that had taken him entirely by surprise, the speed with which she’d exploded.

“Owe you money so you can yank my strings, tell me what I owe you, what I need to do because you were nice enough to help me?  Go fuck yourself, Cartham, and tell Cain Zelig—tell my so-called family—that I don’t need anyone—anyone!”

Something about her words . . .

‘Worry about that later, Cartham.  You need to go find her.  In her current state of mind, there’s really no telling, just what she’ll do, and if she manages to hop on a bus or something, you’re going to spend another God knows how long, having to track her down again, and next time, it won’t be nearly as easy as it was this time.’

That thought got him moving, and he uttered a terse grunt as he took off after her.

Darting down a nearby alley, he leapt onto the building, opting to gain an upper view of the area as he followed her very noticeable trail.  From what he could tell, she didn’t seem to have any real destination, seemed to be running blind.

He really didn’t know why his offer to help her had set her off.  To him, it had been clear that she simply hadn’t wanted help from Cain for whatever reason, so he’d offered the next logical thing, and somehow, it had been even worse, hadn’t it?

‘No, it makes sense, if you stop and think about it.  If her parents are the type to, as she put it, lord it over her whenever they’ve helped her before, then maybe it’s what she expects.  If someone did that to you, especially someone who ought to try to help you if they can, simply because they are your parents, then you might feel the same way, too.  Just think about it.  What if Ben or worse, Rhen had treated you that way?  If you remember, that’s why you hated being at your uncle’s place . . .’

His frown deepened.  That . . . was true.  After his parents had died, when he’d had no choice but to go live with his uncle . . . It had been exactly that way, hadn’t it?

Behave because they’d deigned to take him in, because they were spending their money, such as it was, to take care of him, another mouth to feed, another back to clothe . . . He remembered those lectures well enough.  He remembered the whippings he got when he broke their rules until he grew too big for those to work on him, anyway . . . He remembered . . .

It was a whole different world back then, and growing up wasn’t the same as it was these days.  His uncle-by-marriage likely believed that it was what Cartham needed, and yet, he also couldn’t recall ever hearing a comforting word, couldn’t recall being on the receiving end of a compassionate gesture . . . Arlan Dode either couldn’t or wouldn’t know how to do such a thing, and Caroline Cartham Dode?  Well, she never, ever spoke against her mate, either . . .

So, he’d been told over and over to be grateful that he had a roof over his head, that he had food on the table and clothes on his back, especially when he’d hit an almost unnatural growth spurt at the age of eleven, maybe twelve . . . That’s when he’d outgrown Arlan, when he’d refused to allow his uncle to punish him in that kind of way.

Kelly might not have been born into the same kind of home, but maybe in the end, it was more similar than he’d first thought.  He didn’t know either side of it well enough to make any kind of judgement call, but what did it matter if that’s how Kelly perceived it?  No, all he had to do was to figure out, just how to get her to listen, how to get her to agree to accept the help that she very obviously needed, but first, he had to find her . . .

It only took a couple blocks for him to spot her.  Sitting on a bench on the edge of an open area, a park, in the loosest sense of the word, that was more of an open, grassy field with a large water fountain in the center, some straight sidewalks that all converged around the fountain, a few wood-and-iron benches, scattered here and there along those paths . . .

He dropped off the building into another alley and strode across the street.  If Kelly sensed his approach, she didn’t give any indication, and when he finally closed in on her, he shrugged off her backpack and dropped it onto the bench beside her.

She said nothing, but she did reach over, yank her bag into her lap, wrapping her arms around it, holding it against her chest protectively, her shoulders, slumping forward, almost as though she were protecting it with her entire body, and, given that it contained everything she owned, he figured he could understand that.

“Okay, let’s talk,” he said, rounding the bench and sitting beside her.  “First off, if you think I’ve got the damn time to bug you about money you borrowed from me, you’re wrong,” he told her, purposefully inflicting enough nonchalance into his tone to hopefully keep her from bolting before she gave him a chance to diffuse the situation.

He could tell from the way her back stiffened, even though she didn’t sit up or really move otherwise, that he had pretty well hit the proverbial nail on the head, but at least she seemed willing to listen, so that had to mean something.  He sighed.  “Just pay me back within, say, a year—maybe two.  Guess it would depend upon how much I lend you.  Fair?”

She snorted.  “Why?  Why do you want to help me at all?”

“Everyone needs help sometimes,” he replied almost philosophically.

Again, she snorted.  “Yeah, well, you look like you’re two steps away from a homeless shelter yourself,” she shot back.  “Those jeans look like they’re ready for the trash.”

To her surprise, and maybe to his own, he chuckled.  It wasn’t a sound that he indulged in often.  “I’ve got money enough,” he told her.  “I suppose if I dressed like it, though, I’d kind of stand out in the places I tend to go for my job, don’t you think?”

She seemed to consider that for a moment.  Then, she shrugged.  “Every single person who’s ever, ‘helped me’ has only done it so that they can toss it in my face later, like, ‘I did this for you, so, you owe me’.”

“I doubt Zelig’s ever done such a thing,” he countered mildly.  “His daughter, either, for that matter.”

The mention of Cain and Bellaniece was enough to get her hackles rising again.  He could feel it in the abrasive lash of her youki as it collided with his.  “Yeah, if Cain cared so damn much, why didn’t he ever show his face at the hospital?  Never, not once, and—” Cutting herself off abruptly, she drew a deep breath and stubbornly shook her head, refusing to finish her statement.

But it was enough for Cartham, and he drew his own conclusions from it.  It wasn’t so much that she resented Cain, per se, it was more that she really might feel abandoned by him, and maybe . . . maybe by Bellaniece on some level, too.

“All right, then,” he said instead, wisely opting to let the current thought alone, “you don’t want his help, and I get that.  You and your parents don’t seem to have a great relationship, and I get that, too.  As I see it, you have three options, and you’ve gotta take one of them because leaving you here in a homeless shelter isn’t one of them.  You can either let Zelig help you, and I know you don’t want that one.  You can come back to Bevelle with me because, again, a shelter is not an option.  Or you can accept my loan.  I’ll make sure you’re set up and safe and have what you need.  Fair?”

She finally turned her head to face him, her emerald eyes, churning in a turbulent kind of way.  “And just how would I pay you back?  You, beating on my door for payments?  Going to give me your address so I can mail them?  What?”

That gave him pause because honestly, neither of those possibilities really had occurred to him.  “I don’t give out my address to anyone,” he told her.  “In my line of work, it’s never a good idea.  How about this: I hunt all over, and I hunt around here often enough.  If I’m in town for work, I’ll stop by, check on you—make sure you’re okay, that you don’t need anything.  If you have money for me, great.  If you don’t, then that’s fine, too.  I won’t ask you for it.  You’re a damn adult.  You can figure it out.”

At least, she seemed to be listening to him, and, more to the point, she seemed to actually be considering it.  “And . . . And you won’t lord it over me?”

He shrugged.  “I got better things to do with my time, Kel.  I thought I told you that already.”

The thoughtful expression on her face lingered for another long moment.  Suddenly, though, she shook her head.  “How do you know I’ll pay you back?  You don’t know me from Adam.”

Scratching his chin for a few seconds—he could use a shave, but that was nothing new—he shrugged again.  “Well, if you don’t pay me back within the agreed upon time limit, then I’ll just go to Zelig and have him reimburse me, and that’ll mean that you did let him help you, and, given how much you seem to hate that idea, then you won’t let that happen.”

She snapped her mouth closed so fast that he heard her teeth slam together, and he wasn’t surprised to see the almost-instant flush that blossomed in her cheeks, either.  “I . . . I don’t want to go back to Maine,” she muttered, shaking her head as her arms tightened around her bag once more.

He nodded slowly.  “Aight, then . . . Do we have a deal?”

She stood up, paced the ground before them for a minute as she considered her options—or at least, the options he’d so eloquently laid out for her.  At this point, he’d laid his cards out on the table, and to be honest, he really didn’t know if she’d bite or not, and if she didn’t, he had no idea, just how to get her to agree.  He’d played his last and best hand, as it were.

Finally, she sighed, stopped right in front of him, a frown on her face.  The general distrust was still there, but, for the first time, she actually looked almost . . . almost hopeful . . . “O-Okay,” she said, her voice, cracking, faltering, attesting to just how much it cost her to make even that much of a concession.  “Okay . . .”