InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 221

[ 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 220


In the little room where Haname still lay in her bed, Kaede, amused at her assistant’s excitement and quite pleased with the outcome, smiled at Kagome. “Yes, Kagome-chan, it definitely did work. Rather impressively, at that.”

The younger miko beamed. “I’ve never done anything quite like that. I could feel it in her. Something was protecting it, like it had a shield, so I couldn’t purify it directly. All I could do was nudge it out. It...I’m still not sure how I did it.”

“We’ll talk about it later, child. You can tell me everything, and we’ll see if we can’t figure out how you did it and how you might be able to use that skill later, but first, we need to take care of our patient.” Kaede said.

“I...you...” Haname said. Akina held her mother-in-law’s hand as Kaede began to check her more closely.

Kaede rocked back on her heels, and let go of Haname’s hand. “It’s remarkable. Your pulse is normal again, Haname-chan, and I can’t sense any of that darkness any more. You may be a little weak from being in bed for a week, but whatever was preventing you from getting well is totally gone.”

Kagome nodded. “There is no black in your aura any more.” Suddenly, though, her nose wrinkled, as if she just became aware of the stench filling the room.  She saw the smoking black fragment on the floor. “One last thing to do. Let’s take care of this nasty thing.” She began to head towards the fragment

Akina looked up at her, and then glanced at Kaede, looking alarmed at what Kagome was about to do. “Is that safe? I thought it was too dangerous to touch.”

“Not for someone with Kagome’s spiritual powers,” Kaede said. “Watch.”

While the women watched, the young miko bent over and picked up the dark crystal. As she picked it up, it stopped smoking. Resting in her hand, it began to glow pink with her purification powers, and slowly evaporated. Soon there was nothing in her hand, and the stench that had filled the air evaporated with it.

“What was that nasty thing?” Akina asked. “Why was it in Okaasan, and...” She ran out of words. “This...” Giving up, she looked at her mother-in-law and smiled. “Whatever. I am grateful.”

“It was the evil that was poisoning Haname,” Kagome said looking up at Akina. She turned to Kaede. “When I held it now - it felt just like purifying shards. It had to be some form of jyaki. Where did Morio get that amulet? It didn’t feel like something you’d expect a yamabushi to have.”

“That is a good question,” Kaede said, pursing her lips. “Later, we’ll have to let you look at it. But I suspected all along that it was more than he could have made on his own.”

“I believe you,” Kagome said. “He didn’t seem to have a lot of power of his own. But this is more than that...it feels like youkai instead of human magic.”

“We’ll deal with that later, child,” Kaede said. “I can see we will have a number of things to discuss. Now is not the right place.”

“Of course, of course,” the young miko said. She came and sat down next to Kaede, then looked at Haname. She gave her a big smile. “I may not know exactly why I was able to help you, Haname-sama, but I am glad I was.”

Haname started to lift up a hand, but dropped it, and began to struggle with what she wanted to say. She shook her head, then rubbed her hand across her lower face, trying to think of something. Suddenly her eyes glistened, as the enormity of what happened really hit her. “You have saved my life. I tried to attack you and you healed me,” Haname said, her voice soft. “I called you such bad things, but you saved me.” Her eyes were filled with awe.  

“It’s what I do,” Kagome said, bowing slightly. “I’m here to help.”

Haname looked at Kagome for several minutes. Then unassisted, she got out of bed under her own power for the first time in days. She swayed for a moment, but the color in her face was good, and she walked under her own power to stand in front of the young miko, then bowed.

“I’ll never quite understand you and the choices you have made in life,” Haname said. “But I know that no one dark could have done just what you did. I owe you my life. Thank you.”



The men outside froze as they heard Haname’s scream as Kagome healed her.  Tsuneo reacted first.

“Damn,” the elder said. “What was that?” Suddenly the sound stopped and his face went pale. “She better not be...”

“Kaede’s with her,” InuYasha said. His ears focused on the main house, but he could hear nothing of note. “And so is Kagome. They’ll take care of her.” His voice was more confident than he felt. “You know they’ll come get us if they need you.”

The elder shook his head. “I...” he stared at the house. “Kuso. Haname never sounds like that. That woman could have her leg cut off and she would barely make a noise.” Without a look at the others, Tsuneo started moving towards the big house at a run.

Michio swallowed a big gulp of air. “He’s right. Haname-obasan just doesn’t let people know she’s hurting. We better go see what happened.” InuYasha gave him a curt nod, and the two men hurried to catch up. Behind them, the other farm workers stopped what they were doing and began to follow.

Tsuneo, panting lightly, reached the door to the room where Haname was staying just as Amaya did.   

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking nearly as out of breath as Tsuneo. “I heard the most awful sound. I dropped a sheet in the dirt, it startled me so bad.”

“That’s what I’m here to find out,” the elder said, his face somewhere between adamant and panicked. He didn’t stop to knock on the door. As he opened it, Michio and InuYasha caught up with him. Amaya and the three men peered into the room in time to see Haname, standing up unassisted for the first time since the day that Morio’s magic took her over, bowing to InuYasha’s wife.

“Merciful Buddha, that’s not what I expected to see,” Michio said, looking up at the hanyou.  

InuYasha’s ear flicked, but he kept his face neutral. “Me, either.”

Tsuneo stepped inside, kicking off his sandals, jumping up on the wooden floor where he hurried to his wife’s side. As Kaede and Kagome watched, he took his wife’s hands in his.

“Haname-chan?” he asked. “What’s happening?  We heard...”

“Why does she look so well?” Amaya asked, looking at the two men standing beside her. “She looked like she was getting worse when I left her this morning to do the laundry.”

“Tsuneo,” she said, looking up at her husband. Her face was glowing, and although it was still marked with fatigue and the effects of being ill for almost a week, the pain and darkness he had seen there since the day Aki had gotten into trouble were gone. “Kagome-sama...she...”

The elder studied his wife’s face, and gently cupped her cheek. “Kagome-sama?” he asked, looking briefly at the young miko. “She did what?”

“She healed me.” Haname took two steps forward, and fell into her husband’s arms, out of breath from being in bed too many days, but glowing. She leaned against his chest. “An auspicious day indeed, my husband. The darkness is gone.”

“She...she did what?” Tsuneo said, brushing a stray hair, long and gray, out of his wife’s face.

“She purified something. We didn’t know it was there. It was in me, husband. Right here,” she said, touching the part of her chest where the black shard had resided. He rested his hand on top of hers. “It was in the place that was making me cough, and it wasn’t until she used her powers on it that I could cough it up. If she hadn’t done it, if she hadn’t used her powers, I might not have ever gotten better. It would have eaten up at me until I died.”

Tsuneo ran his fingers through his wife’s hair, and let one hand pull her closer to him, ignoring the onlookers, still trying to understand what had taken place. He looked up at the old miko.

“Is this true? She had something in her, and we never found it?” he asked. “You, I, Akina all have seen her, and none of us noticed she had a wound?”

“This is true,” Kaede said, nodding. “It wasn’t like a splinter of wood. It wasn’t... material. For a time, the fact that there was something else making her ill was hidden by the effect of the potion the yamabushi had given her. What she had...it was some sort of magical remnant. Today was the first day I could really begin to sense it. And then it was too faint for me to be sure. That’s more Kagome-chan’s gift.”

Other members of the household had reached the door and were standing around with InuYasha and Michio.

“Haname-obaasan is better?” Tadaki asked.

“Sounds like it,” Michio said. “Now that was something special. You don’t see things like that every day.”

“Keh,” the hanyou said, crossing his arms. While the other members of the crowd had their eyes focused on Haname, InuYasha watched Kagome. She was watching Tsuneo and Haname with some pleasure, but he could tell by the way she was holding herself, and by the look around her eyes that whatever she had done had tired her out more than she might want to admit. He began to move forward.

Tsuneo bowed towards the two miko. “Whatever it is, if you have saved my Haname, you have my undying gratitude.”

“It was...I don’t have the words to describe it. There was such a burning, while Kagome-sama was working on me. Fire, fire everywhere. That must have been when I screamed. It centered right here,” Haname said, tapping her chest.  “Then I started coughing. It was hard, like something burning was caught in my lungs. I had to keep coughing until I got it up, and I did.”

She shook her head, then looked up at Tsuneo. “It was choking me so bad, but finally, it just flew out of my mouth and landed on the floor right there,” she said, pointing to a place on the wooden floor that looked scarred. “That nastiness looked like black glass, but it was smoking, an awful smoke, almost like those shouki bombs that horrible youkai threw at the village four years ago. It smelled like the pits of hell. I was afraid to touch it, and Kaede warned us not to touch it. But Kagome picked it up. It glowed pink in her hand, and it just evaporated.”

Haname looked at the young miko, her eyes still filled with awe. “Even the smell went away. I’d never seen anything like that. Before I coughed it up, it felt like I was wrapped in lead. It was so hard to move, and everything felt heavy. It was even hard to breathe. Afterwards...it was like I had been let out of prison.”

The healed woman swallowed turned to Kagome. “I....I once had a horrible experience. I will always be marked by the horror of that day, and there are times I may act foolishly because...because I am back there, in that moment once again, and all I can sense are death and fear and the cries of my family.  But...even though I may act foolishly from time to time, and I cannot see with the same eyes you do, Kagome, wife of InuYasha, miko of our village, I will never forget that even after I attacked you, you still reached out and brought me back to the living. I owe you more than I can pay back.” She bowed deeply.

Kagome stood up and returned her bow. “This is my calling, Haname-sama. To help and to heal.”

“It is indeed, it is indeed,” Tsuneo said. He bowed as well. “Thank you for not holding what was done to you and your husband against us.”

There was a small scuffle at the entrance to the building. Akina and the two miko turned to watch while Tsuneo walked with Haname to her pallet.

“Get out of my way, Amaya,” InuYasha said.

“InuYasha?” Kagome said, trying to see over Amaya’s body.  “What?”

“No, you aren’t supposed to go in,” Amaya said, pulling on the hanyou’s sleeve as he started to push past her. “You mustn’t!”