InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Purity Short: Cacophony ❯ Lessons ( Chapter 10 )

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

By: Sueric

~Chapter Ten~
~Lessons~

~o~

“Okay, before you do anything, you always need to check over your equipment, and you need to do a maintenance check at least once a week. I’ll teach you how to clean it after your lesson on the firing range,” Cartham said, steering Kelly toward the gun shop where he was taking her to set the gun’s safety mechanism. They also needed to fill out the paperwork to register the weapon, too. Kelly had talked him out of applying for the concealed carry permit since she wasn’t entirely comfortable with that, but he had insisted that she get one once she was more comfortable with the weapon, in general.

She’d given up, trying to reason with him. She’d spent the better part of three hours last night, trying to explain to him that she really didn’t need to learn how to fire a gun, at all. He simply wasn’t going to hear of it, and didn’t that just figure?

And yet, as infuriating as it was that he simply didn’t want to listen to her on this, the idea that he was that adamant that she be protected was not lost on her, either. It was that alone that had convinced her to let him drag her all over Vegas so early on a Saturday morning, especially when he’d had the gall to wake her up at six a.m., banging on her bedroom door, which had almost been enough to make her demand that he go find a hotel when she was the one who had insisted that he stay with her, in the first place.

The gun shop carried the faint scent of the ammunition it carried, of gun oil and that sharp odor of metal. All of the guns were carefully kept in locked display cases that were likely bulletproof. The wall behind the cash registers were lined with boxes of ammunition, also behind secured glass. Glancing around as Cartham stepped over to the counter to speak to the attendant, she took note of the security cameras installed everywhere, the alarm system by the door.

“You’ll need a good gun safe,” Cartham remarked as he stepped back over to her. “This case is nice, but it’s not nearly secure enough, so I’ll call around to see about getting one for you later. Anyway, the manager’s on a call, but he knows we’re here, and he’ll get to us in a minute.”

She shot him a rather flat look. “You’re buying me breakfast after this, aren’t you?” she asked pointedly.

He chuckled, and his smile only served to carve those dimples into his cheeks—cheeks that could use a good shave if he didn’t look so damn nice with that light sheen of stubble. Her heart lurched suddenly, and she forced her gaze to the side. “I like breakfast,” he agreed.

She was saved from replying when the manager—a squat little man, decked out in jeans and a sports jacket—hurried over. “Sorry to keep you waiting! I’m Harvey Bush.”

“I’m Cartham, and this is Kelly,” Cartham said, shaking the man’s hand.

“Now, let’s get everything set up for you! Come with me!”

They followed him over to a door on the side near the registers. He sat down behind the desk and reached for the metal case Cartham was carrying.

Cartham pressed his thumb against the lock release, and the case popped open, revealing the ridiculously purple gun. Mr. Bush laughed, and Kelly stifled a sigh.

Mr. Bush keyed the serial number into his computer after entering his credentials to access the nationwide secured network created expressly for gun registry.

“Okay, I see that the information has been mostly filled in on this—Kelly Hendricks . . . address, phone number, date of birth . . . Looks like I just need your driver’s license and your social security number—and your thumbprint, of course.”

She dug the license and social security card out and handed them over. Cartham had explained to her that the gun’s safety mechanism prevented anyone other than the printed user and anyone they authorized to use the gun to fire it. It was something they implemented a few years ago to try to curb gun violence. So far, it had worked pretty well, given that all guns were made with grips that were programmed only to fire for those with recognized access to that given weapon. In her case, that would be Cartham and her, so even if someone else got their hands on it, they couldn’t use it because the only way to change the access was at a registered gun seller, like this one.

“Okay,” Mr. Bush said, handing back her license and social security cards. Then, he pushed a fingerprint reader toward her. “Now, are you right-handed or left?”

“Oh, right,” she replied, pulling the device a little closer.

“All right, then we need your right hand prints. We’ll start with the thumb—now.”

She did as he instructed, providing the prints of all of her fingers, logged by the computer.

“Done,” he said, sparing a moment to cast her a hurried grin before turning his attention back to the computer once more. “It’s going to take a minute for your print to be sent to the case and the gun, but once that’s done, we’re finished, unless you want to apply for the concealed carry permit?”

She glanced at Cartham, and he shrugged. “She’s all right for now,” he said. “She’ll come back if she wants the permit.”

“That’s fine,” he replied, pushing in the keyboard shelf on the desk before turning his attention back to her. The case beeped, and he reached out to close the lid. “All right, Kelly, if you would press your thumb against the sensor for two seconds to make sure it releases, then I’d say you’re all set!”

She did, and the lock released.

“There you go!” He handed her a business card. “Give me a call if and when you want to apply for that permit. It’s really nothing more than a couple of signatures since we already have all your information.

She nodded, slipping the card into a pocket inside the gun case before snapping it closed again. “Okay. Thanks.”

Cartham stood up and took the case as Kelly got to her feet. “Thanks,” Cartham said, reaching over to shake Mr. Bush’s hand again. Then, he led her out of the office. “Now, you need some bullets . . . Do you want a holster?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Do we really have to go to the range today? Can’t we do that some other time? Like six months or so from now?”

“Ha ha,” he muttered, dragging her over to look at the cleaning kits. “You’re not getting out of it, missy.”

She sighed, long and loud. Somehow, she hadn’t figured that he’d allow it, anyway.

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

Scowling in concentration as she steadied her hands and tried to clear her mind, Kelly carefully took aim and deftly pulled the trigger. This time, she didn’t flinch as the bullet was discharged—it was really hard, not to. She managed to hit closest to the center of the target as she had thus far, so that, in her estimation, was a pretty good improvement.

Carefully lowering the gun, setting it back into the gun case that was laying open on the waist-high counter, Kelly let out a deep breath and pulled the earphones off her head as she slowly spun on her heel to face Cartham, waiting in silence for his assessment. There were twenty other booths in the facility, and Cartham had mentioned that the Las Vegas police department used this range pretty exclusively, but today, it was early enough that they were the only ones there, which was probably a good thing since the sound of other people, firing guns, might have been a little daunting during her first lesson.

He was slower to pull off his headphones, and he hung onto them as they dangled around his neck. “Not bad. You need more practice, but that’s probably enough for today. The trigger’s a little stiff on that one, and your hands are small, so I imagine it aches a little.”

Kelly didn’t comment as she slowly flexed her right hand. Her index finger really did feel pretty stiff, and the tendons were protesting the movement, but she knelt down to retrieve the spent casings since the list of guidelines for the use of the firing range included the collection of such things.

“You did pretty good though, especially for your first time,” he added, sounding thoughtful. “Keep practicing, and you’ll be a deadeye.”

She sighed, reaching up to brace herself on the shelf and to help push herself to her feet once more. “I’m telling you, Cartham, I’ll never be able to point this thing at a person—at any living thing—and pull that trigger.”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “All the same, you need to have some kind of protection, and I’m guessing you’d rather not learn how to fight. Or would you?”

“Fight?” she echoed before she could stop herself, pinning him with an incredulous stare. “As in, physical fighting?”

He nodded, hitting the button that pulled out a new paper target. “I could teach you, if you’d prefer. I’d rather that you master this, though. No one’s going to argue with a girl who’s got a gun.”

She let out a deep breath that blew her bangs straight up off her forehead. “Cartham . . .”

She trailed off when he unsnapped the button that held his gun secured in the holster and drew it in one fluid motion, bringing it up, taking careful aim, and firing off about four shots in quick succession that hit the target dead center and only left one slightly larger hole than the first one, all in a matter of seconds.

“How did you do that?” she blurted before she could stop herself as she peered around his rather beefy arms.

“Do what?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Draw and aim and fire that fast,” she explained. “That was . . . That was . . .”

‘Hot?’ her youkai-voice added helpfully.

‘Uh . . . Uh huh . . . Un, no! No, no, no, no, no!’

‘Hell, yeah! I mean, da-a-a-a-amn . . .!’

‘Well, yes, but no . . . No, I cannot say that out loud, so shut u-u-u-u-up!’

“It-It-It was . . . That was . . . That was amazing.”

He blinked, turned his head to stare down at her as though he were trying to decide if she was pulling his leg. He caught her stare and didn’t look away as her breath caught somewhere deep in her chest. Something intense in the depths of those violet eyes, in those rugged, yet still youthful, features . . . Even so, the intensity of his gaze was mesmerizing, and she felt her mouth, open and close a few times, but no sound came from her, no words would form . . .

And the seconds stretched out into the most tenuous of moments, of minutes, of a time that existed without a clock, without a changing of cadence. Nothing made sense, nothing seemed to permeate the fog that had engulfed her brain. It was as though he were trying to tell her something, saying something that she was just two steps behind in comprehending, and it felt like she ought to know, but yet . . .

His eyes slowly dropped to her lips, lingering there before they slipped back up to meet hers once more, and this time, the raw longing that lit his stare was clear and absolutely hypnotizing . . .

It was maddening, really. The strange sort of electricity in the air seemed to permeate everything around them, such a dizzying feeling that she knew, deep down, that something had to give, that something had to happen or she would end up, going mad. The sound of his blood, pumping through his body—or was it her own?—seemed to thunder in her ears. As though unaware of his own actions, he reached out, so gently pushed her hair back, hooked it behind her ear, but his fingertips lingered against her cheek, sending the most inebriating current, straight through her from such simple contact, an overwhelming sense of emotion that nearly made her knees buckle. He could see her—only her—and it was evident in the way his fingers shook just the slightest bit that what she was feeling . . . He was, too.

And that one moment seemed to spin on and on in such a mystifying sense of prolonged agony, tinged with a chaotic whirl of the senses that slipped through the silken strands of her mind before she could catch them, to savor them, to file them away to mull over later. She wanted to keep them, to cherish them, but the moment was fleeting, terrible, beautiful, all at once . . .

And then, he cleared his throat, and just that simply, the moment was lost. Stuffing his gun back into the holster, he took what felt like a long, long time, securing the weapon before reaching for his jacket that was hanging off a hook on the wall. “We, uh . . . We’ll practice again the . . . the next time I’m in town,” he offered without looking at her. To her ears, he sounded a little gruffer than normal, a little rougher. “You did good for your first time.”

She had to clear her throat, too, and her hands were visibly shaking. Somehow, the idea of her first time wasn’t lost on her, either, and she wondered vaguely if it he had felt it, too . . . Something so much deeper, so much more profound, than she’d ever felt before . . .

And, as crazy as it was, she had a feeling that he . . .

That he had felt it, too . . .

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

‘You’r e stupid—really stupid. So stupid that I just don’t even think I want to be your youkai-voice anymore. Have I mentioned just how stupid you are? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!’

Stifling the urge to growl at his annoying youkai-voice, Cartham deliberately concentrated on cleaning the barrel of his gun instead. ‘Shut up.’

‘In my next life, I want to be paired up with someone who isn’t as stupid as you, Cartham, just so you know. I can’t believe you passed that up. How stupid are you, seriously?’

‘I wasn’t being stupid. I was being noble. There’s a huge difference there, and you really ought to know that much.’

‘Nope, just stupidity at its finest. There wasn’t a damn thing ‘noble’ about it, just so you know. Damn, you’re such a wiener.’

Setting the cleaned gun aside for the moment as he gathered up the contents of his kit, Cartham grunted derisively, but opted not to respond to that. After all, what was the point, especially when a very large part of him actually agreed with that?

That look on her face, the absolute sense of vulnerability that she didn’t even try to hide, even as the emotions flickered to life in her eyes . . .

He let out a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet, retrieving his gun to put it away again. As he passed by the doorway to the kitchen, he heard Kelly, humming softly to herself while she washed the dinner dishes. He’d offered to help, but she’d told him in no uncertain terms to go away. He had cleared the table and put away the leftover lasagna that they’d picked up at a nearby Italian place along with some fresh bread sticks. It was probably one of the best ones he’d had, ever, though, if he stopped to consider it, that might well have had more to do with the company he was keeping than it did with the meal itself . . .

After securing the gun back into the holster, Cartham ambled off to the kitchen to see if Kelly was about finished, but he stopped short when he got a good look at her—or, more precisely, her arms. She’d pushed her long sleeves up out of the way. It was the first time he’d actually seen any part of her, he realized with a jolt, other than her face, her hands. The scarring he could make out seemed to run the length of her arm, disappearing under the sleeve cuffs that were gathered just below her elbows and extended down her hands, albeit in a much thinner line. Those scars were much pinker than her normal skin tone, but they were too straight to be anything other than residual scarring from her skin grafts, and, in that moment, he understood.

She hated them, didn’t she? Hated to look at them, hated for others to see them, too, and if she had them on other parts of her body, he could understand that well enough. They didn’t bother him, no, other than the idea that they could potentially still be painful for her, but for Kelly? Just how badly did the sight of those scars trouble her? Given that he’d never seen her wear anything that didn’t completely cover her, he had to guess that they bothered her a lot, and even that was likely an understatement. And he had a suspicion that those scars were also a lot of the reason why she’d opted to run away, in the first place, too . . .

The scowl on his face attested more to his thoughts than to his reaction as he ambled forward, reaching for a dish towel to start drying without a word. He could feel her instantly stiffen beside him, watched without a word as she dropped the plate she was washing in favor of shaking down her sleeves, trying to hide her arms from him, he guessed, even though she had to know he’d already seen them.

“Your sleeves are going to get wet,” he rumbled, purposefully striving for a nonchalant kind of tone.

“Oh, uh . . . It’s . . . It’s okay,” she muttered.

He’d have to be stupid not to sense her acute discomfort, and if he didn’t do something fast, there was a good chance she might just freak out on him, and he knew it. “Those the scars from your skin grafts?” he asked, ignoring the tiny voice that was insisting that bringing it up so abruptly might well have the opposite effect of what he was going for.

“Y-Yeah,” she stammered, plunging her hand into the soapy water to retrieve the plate. Her hands were working in overtime as she scrubbed it furiously.

“I’ve never burnt myself like that,” he admitted almost philosophically, “but I imagine that it hurt like a bitch . . . You don’t still hurt, do you?”

For a moment, he didn’t think she was going to answer. Finally, though, she did. “Sometimes, they . . . twinge a little . . .”

He nodded slowly, reaching for a glass to dry. “Are you hiding yourself, Kel?”

He was pushing his luck, but for some reason, he had a gut feeling that she needed to say it all out loud, even if she didn’t want to do any such thing. “I . . . I look like Frankenstein,” she grumbled. “Like a weird, patchwork quilt or something. They said the scars would fade eventually, but . . .”

“Then they will,” he assured her.

She was having none of it. “Yeah, sure. Just give it another . . . hundred years, right . . .? And until then, everyone who sees them thinks I’m some kind of sideshow freak, like I did it to myself or . . . ” She sighed. “Maybe I . . . I really did . . .”

He shrugged. It bothered him more than he could credit, to hear her talk that way, and yet . . . “I think you look like a girl who’s been through a hell of a lot,” he told her. “More than most grown-ass men—definitely more than you should have had to.”

She sighed. “You have no idea,” she said, her voice seeming to thicken as emotion tightened around her. “Everyone stares at you like you’re some kind of creeper, like you’re some kind of monster . . . and then, you look in the mirror, and it’s not even you that you see. It’s someone who kind of looks like you, but it’s not your face. Everything just . . . just slightly off, and . . .” Trailing off as she choked a little, she quickly shook her head, ducked her chin, making it impossible for him to actually see her countenance at all. “And you hate it,” she added in a whisper. “You . . . You hate yourself . . . because you . . . You . . . You . . .”

“You, what?”

She heaved a tumultuous sigh, as though she were trying to make sense of things, but couldn’t. “It . . . It was my own fault,” she admitted in a quiet whisper. “I was high, and I was careless . . . Mad at my parents because they’d grounded me for sneaking out one night, and . . . and if I had just . . .” Wincing, she waved a hand, as though to dismiss her entire line of thinking, and Cartham had to wonder if it weren’t the first time she’d actually said any of this out loud.

“Accidents are never anyone’s fault,” he told her. “The brain tries its damndest to convince you otherwise, but it’s true. There’s no truth to it, no reason behind it. It happened, and your only real job is to decide if you’re going to let it beat you . . . or if you’re going to get over it, get past it, and find your own way out of it.”

“If it were that easy,” she grumbled, her anger, spiking in the invisible surge of her youki. “Belle said that it doesn’t define me, that I’m going to be fine now, and every time she tried to give me that pep talk of hers, I . . . I resented her just a little more. She didn’t know, and . . . and I didn’t want her to know, but . . . but . . .”

“But . . . some part of you can’t stand her because she isn’t suffering with you, right?”

The deadly accuracy of his quiet statement forced a soft groan from her. “No! Yes . . . Maybe . . . I just . . .” she flinched. “And . . . And every time I think that? I . . . Oh, my God! I hate myself because I love her, and I know that she . . .”

What she said made a chilling amount of sense, and he despised it, anyway. Scowling at her, he set aside the glass and dropped the towel on it so that he could grasp her arm and turn her to face him. Reaching out with his free hand, he gently lifted her chin with a crooked knuckle, but she wouldn’t look at him, and she looked suspiciously close to tears. “Do you still? Hate yourself?” he asked quietly.

She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let go of her arm, and she sighed. “I . . . I don’t know,” she admitted. “Some days . . .”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t know what to say, what to do, to make her feel better. All he really knew was that her pain, her sadness, her sense of absolute desolation, hurt, and that hurt was something that went deeper than bone, deeper than flesh, deeper than soul. He could feel it, the waves of it that she couldn’t hold back, and he wished like hell that he could make her understand that what she felt . . . It was normal, wasn't it? Ugly, yes; hurtful, yes, but normal, all the same.

Letting go of her with a heavy sigh, he pulled her tightly, but gently against his chest, tucked her head under his chin, his cheek, and closed his eyes as he held her. She resisted him for a few moments, stubbornly refusing to accept the simple comfort that he offered her. Suddenly, though, with a choked sob, she flung her arms around him, held onto him as though she were afraid to let go, and he knew deep down that she really was. All he had to offer her was a little piece of his soul that rattled and shook and fractured.

Her fists, tightening around handfuls of his shirt, her words that held no form, that imparted no sense of reality . . . All of the confusion, the pain, that she’d carried around for so very long, seemed to flow out of her, hanging in the air like an ugly and toxic cloud, and he squeezed his eyes closed, tried to calm her in a clumsy and broken kind of way. Somehow, maybe, it was enough, even if he felt pathetic and small in the face of her rampant emotions . . .

And she cried as the shredded bits of his heart seemed to fall away, just for her.

And she cried.

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TheWonderfulShoe ——— Elizabeth ——— cutechick18 ——— minthegreen ——— monsterkittie
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Final Thought from Cartham:
Damn …
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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Cacophony): 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~