InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 18

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

I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi


Chapter 18


Kagome was alone.  She stood in front of her house and expanded her miko senses, trying to feel InuYasha’s youki, but she couldn’t feel him anywhere nearby.  

She walked back into the house, feeling odd and not quite sure what she should do next.  “This is the first time I’ve been really alone since I got back,” she said out loud, just to hear something besides the wind and the empty room.  “I don’t know if I should be happy to have a moment to myself, or feel abandoned.”

Sighing, she bent over to pick up InuYasha’s teacup, and felt her throat tighten and her eyes water as she looked at it.  “I know he wouldn’t abandon me.  Stupid imagination,” she said.  “InuYasha has always been there for me. I guess today’s been  too much.  Even I need to get away and think sometimes.  I’m sure that’s all that he’s doing.”

Taking care of the the tea things they had used to get them out of the way, she dried her hands. That had only taken a few minutes.  Looking at the little house, she was at a loss at what to do next.  “Now what, Kagome?”

First she ran her mop cloth over the floor, but that didn’t take long, as small as the house was.  She took the rag outside to dry, looked up at the sun, expanded her senses, and sighed.

“I’ll start dinner, I guess.” She went back into the house. “He’ll still be hungry whenever he gets back.”   Going through her small stock of food, she frowned.  “There’s not much left.  I’m going to need to talk to Kaede and Sango about that.  At least there’s enough here to make soup and rice.”

She put some dried fish in a bowl to soak, and in another put a piece of kombu, and then washed some rice to cook for dinner.  Taking the slop water outside, she peeked back at the wood pile, hoping to see him there, but nothing was there but a stray bird hopping on top of the stack. Glancing at the trees, she saw no flash of red and went back in.

It was time to start the rice cooking, so she added the wet rice and fresh water into a pot, and put it on a trivet over the hot part of the fire.  “I’m so going to have to find something to do with my time, when I have free time,” she said, staring at the pot, waiting for it to boil. “Now I know why Mama was always doing things like quilts.”  

Once the rice began to boil, she knocked the coals out from under its trivet, and put the lid on the pot.  “Time to make the soup,” she said, and got up to get water from the bucket.  “Not enough water left to make one cup of soup for me, much less enough for InuYasha.  Nothing to do but go get some.  He must have not realized how low we were after he emptied all that bath water out.” Sighing, she picked up the bucket, and, as an afterthought, grabbed her quiver and bow and headed down to the stream to get some water.

Kagome went to the stream and filled the bucket up. “Water weighs too much,” she said as she lifted it up.

Something to the left caught her eye.“Oh, look at those greens!  I didn’t know any of those were growing here.  I’d bet they’d taste good with dinner.” Putting down both the bucket and her bow, she knelt down to gather some.  While she was gathering them, a smile touched her lips.  Shortly thereafter, a shadow fell over her, and she looked up.

InuYasha stood there.  He had his serious, why-are-you-doing-that look on his face. “Good thing I wasn’t a troublemaker or a rogue youkai.”

“I knew it was you.  I can always tell your youki,” Kagome said, flashing him a brief smile. His ear flicked, but his face stayed serious. She dropped her eyes and went back to her work.

“Feh,” he said, squatting down next to her. “Glad you brought your bow with you, just in case.”

“Went hunting?” she asked. She looked up, and this time, he gave her a faint smile.

“Yeah,” he said.  “What you got there?”

She looked back up. “Hakobera.  I just happened to see it growing here when I came for the water.  I thought it might be nice to have something that wasn’t dried or pickled.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Not much fresh yet. That’ll be nice.” He brushed her cheek with the knuckles of his right hand. “I’m sorry I went off like that.”

She met his eyes.  They looked down on her with amber-colored uncertainty. “I knew you were different before I came back, InuYasha,” she said, picking up the bottom of her wrap skirt to make a pocket to hold the greens in. “Nothing Myouga said bothered me.” Satisfied she had enough, she stood up.

He rested a hand on her waist and looked up.  “When I got back to the house and you weren’t there, I got scared.  I wondered if maybe you had decided to go home.”

“All I did was go get some water so I can finish fixing dinner. We used almost all the water in the house when we took our bath.” She brushed her fingers along the base of one ear, lightly, and felt his ear flick against her palm. “Home is where I’m going now to finish cooking.  You didn’t have to worry.”

He got up, studying her face, and searched for the right words to say.  “It’s stupid . . . part of me is scared if I do the wrong thing or act stupid or something, you'll be gone, and I just dreamed you came back.  And running off like that . . . ”

She leaned against him. “I've been back for four days. That's a long time for a dream.”

He rested his cheek on her head. “Doesn't mean anything. I was in a bad dream for three years.”

“That dream's over for good, InuYasha.” She looked up at him. “You want to tell me what got you so upset?”

“I never realized how complicated things could be. Today’s been . . .  I was scared to say something wrong, something that’d screw everything up until I had some time to think.” He untangled himself from her and grabbed the water bucket. “What Myouga said.  After everything this morning. I just couldn’t quit thinking.”

Wrapping the greens more securely in her skirt so she could hold them with one hand, she laced the fingers of her free hand into his. “About what?”

“Oh, my childhood. Stuff. About maybe having a kid who can never be accepted. About us, maybe never being accepted.  What it could do to you.” He looked away from her.

She squeezed his hand, but didn't say anything.

“I . . . I don't know if I want to raise a kid who has to go through what I went through.”

“You won’t have to raise a child who has to go through what you went through.” Kagome looked up and saw the doubt and uncertainty in his eyes, tinged with the shadows of old memories.  She smiled reassuringly. “We have friends here.  You think Miroku and Sango would raise their kids not to accept ours?”

He sighed, and looked away again, not meeting her eyes. “My mother . . . she had almost nobody who really stood with her once my old man died.  She was a hime, and they treated her like an outcast. I remember how sad she seemed when she thought I wasn’t looking.”  He took a deep breath.  “I never want that to happen to you.”

“That won’t happen to us, InuYasha. We’re not alone.”  She reached up and kissed his chin.  “You hungry?”

“Yeah.  You in the mood for rabbit?”
 
Later that evening, after dinner was done, and the dishes put away, InuYasha sat behind Kagome as they watched the fire. The bed was rolled out for when they were ready, and they had taken off their outer clothes, sitting there only in their light under kosodes. He wrapped his arms around her, and nested her between his legs.  Her head rested against his chest.

“Hope tomorrow’s not as wild as today,” InuYasha said.

“It might be,” Kagome said.  “We’ve still got to talk to Kaede-obaachan, and maybe to Tameo-sama.”

One of his hands slipped upward and gently cupped her left breast. A bit nervous about the fact she even let him touch her after what he had done earlier, he was happily gratified when she leaned even closer to him.

“Tameo’s all right,” he said.  “If it hadn’t been for him, I probably wouldn’t have this house.” He let his mouth taste the sweet skin along her neck and his thumb brush across her nipple.

She shivered  under his touch, and gasped at the sensation.  “That’s good to know.”  She leaned her head to one side to give him better access.  “I’ve never talked to him very much.”

For a little while, he let his hands gently explore her body through the thin fabric, one hand slipping down across her tummy and to the top of her thigh. “He claims I saved his life one day when he was a boy.  He got in the way of some stupid oni that was after the Shikon.  He says I grabbed him and pulled him out of harm’s way.”

His hands began working on the tie that closed her kosode.  “Did you?” she asked, her eyes closed as he nibbled on her ear lobe.

“Don’t remember,” he said, tossing the tie to the side.

Kagome pressed against him, running her fingers along his thighs.  He gasped as she touched a particularly sensitive area behind his knee and she gasped in turn, then moaned as he parted the linen of her robe and found the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. InuYasha shifted her in his arms, cradling her so he could see her face. His hand cupping the back of her head, he lowered his mouth to hers, gently brushing his lips, then his tongue across the soft welcoming warmth of her lips.

One of her hands slid into his silver hair and wrapped around his neck. Her lips parted as his kiss deepened, and they drank deeply of each other’s taste. One kiss led to the next, and then another.

The firelight painted them with warm highlights. Pausing to catch her breath, Kagome reached up, ran fingertips across his cheek, gazing into his darkened amber eyes. She brushed the back of a knuckle across his lips. Catching her hand, he kissed each fingertip, then picking her up, laid her on their futon, her black hair cascading like a fan behind her.

He knelt over her on his hands and legs, tossed the bulk of his silver hair over one shoulder. It teased her skin where it brushed up against it. Gazing intently into her grey-blue eyes, heavy lidded and welcoming, he breathed deeply of her scent, listened to the way her pulse quickened.

“I want you,” he said. His eyes were twin pools of bronze need, his voice hungry, but asking.

“Then have me,” she replied, nudging apart the white fabric of her kosode.

“Woman,” he moaned.

Gently he traced the line around the neckline of her garment. He eased her up enough to remove it as his mouth brushed her lips.  Throwing the garment to the side, he ran a gentle line of kisses down her throat to her collarbone.

Kagome's fingers  found the knot to his obi and untied it, pulling the strip of fabric free.  As the kosode fell open, she ran her hands under the soft linen, beneath his silken hair and across the strong planes of his back.  He sat up long enough to remove the offending robe, tossing it to join hers, then lowered himself into her waiting arms.

“Promise me,” she said.

He brushed her bangs out of her face.  “Promise you what?”

“That you won’t doubt us ever again.  That you won’t let whatever anybody says make you doubt what I want to be, where I want to be.”  Her eyes were intense, determined, but she slid her arms around his back, waiting.

“I promise,” he said, and the kiss that followed said everything his words could not.

As his thighs settled between her legs, she wrapped her legs around him.

“Home is here,” she said. And as they became one, he knew she spoke the truth.