InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 231

[ 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 230

Sango and Kagome got Maeme off the damp coverlet and moved onto the sleeping straw they had piled in one corner of the sleep room, and covered her with dry blankets.

Sango rubbed her forehead. “I think...I think I’ll go and start lunch. I need something...well...normal to do.”

The young miko gathered up the cloths they had used to dry the unconscious woman and bundled them up. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Sometimes when things get crazy, it’s the normal things that make us feel more like ourselves.” She stood up. “I’ll go hang these up and see what to do next.”

“A good idea,” Sango said. “If Maeme wakes up and needs anything, I’ll hear it and come get you.”

The two women filed out of the sleeping room, and Sango quietly slid the door closed behind them.

As Kagome stepped out on the verandah, she found Mariko sitting there, looking sad and thoughtful as she watched the twins play with Rin and her friends. InuYasha and Miroku sat underneath Miroku’s favorite tree, along with Daitaro and Genjo.  

Mariko looked up as Kagome came outside. She sucked on her bottom lip a moment, looking slightly embarrassed.  “I’m sorry, Kagome-chan,” she said.  “I meant to come back in, but I ...I...”

“It’s all right, Mariko-chan,” Kagome said, nodding at the woman. “We moved her into the bed. She’s dry and comfortable, but still seems to be out of it.” She gave the woman a gentle look and an understanding smile. “Besides, it’s not a good day for you to dwell on sad thoughts. You have Shinjiro’s wedding to get ready for.”

“Still,” Mariko said, sighing. “It’s just that...”

“Sango told me about your obasan.” Kagome said.  

Mariko nodded. “It...It brought back many memories,” she said. She sighed, then clasped her hands, bringing them up to her face. “I hate feeling helpless to stop something.”

Kagome put the wet things down for a moment, and sat down next to her. “We’re not going to be helpless on this one anymore,” she said with great determination. “It is an auspicious day. We have the chance to make a difference.”

Mariko nodded, her look lightening at Kagome’s suggestion. “Maybe making a difference with one person’s life  is worth something...”

“If that’s all we can do,” Kagome said. “It’s better than pretending it away.” She picked the clothes back up. “I’m going to go hang these wet things up.”

The other woman nodded, but didn’t say anything more, and Kagome stepped off the verandah. Her face lost the edge of determination as she walked, and instead, she chewed on her bottom lip, thinking about what could be done. As she walked around to the clothesline, she could hear the men talking.

“Seiji had Susumu convinced that there was oni treasure up on his father’s cowshed roof,” the old farmer said.

“How old were they?” Miroku asked.

“Oh, eleven or twelve, I think,” the old farmer said. “He got Susumu to get to the top of the roof. Just then, he saw Toshiro coming down the street. I don’t know if he panicked, or if that was his plan all the time, but he knocked down the ladder and left the boy stranded up there. Stupid boy.”

InuYasha spotted Kagome as soon as she stepped out. Not really interested in Daitaro’s tale, his ears focused on the conversation on the porch. He only caught part of it, but it was enough to get him to stand up.

“Hey, InuYasha, don’t you want to hear the end of the story?” Miroku asked, looking up at the hanyou.

“I’ll be back,” the hanyou said. As Kagome began to walk around the building to where the clothesline was, he followed.

Daitaro turned to watch, and caught a glimpse of the young miko. “Woman troubles?”

“Don’t know,” the monk said, looking at his two friends.

“Woman troubles seem the order of the afternoon,” Genjo said, spotting the way his wife was sitting. “Maybe I should go send Mariko-chan home.” He stood up.

“You might be right, son,” Daitaro said. “Send her back down the hill. Your okaasan will want to know what happened anyway, and it might help her to get busy. But you stick around.”

The young man nodded, and headed for the verandah.

“This is not how I expected today to turn out,” Miroku said. The ball the girls were playing with escaped and rolled next to him. He picked it up and tossed it back to Tazu.

“Neither did I,” the old farmer said. “Still, it’ll work out, and probably for the better.”

“Let’s hope so,” Miroku said, willing to let some of Daitaro’s optimism rub off on him. “So what happened to Susumu?”

InuYasha, wanting to keep his talk with Kagome as private as possible, let her get around the corner before he caught up with her. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself,” she said. “Daitaro keeping you entertained?”

“Mostly Miroku, I think,” the hanyou said. “Probably a good thing. I think he’s trying not to think about what to do next. The old man’s keeping him from brooding. Plus he’s smart.”

“A break is good sometimes,” Kagome said. “It’s nice to have someone who can keep you from overthinking.” They reached the clothesline, where Sango’s wash from earlier in the morning still hung up, as well as Maeme’s wet things. She went to a place in the line where there was still some room and threw the coverlet over the rope.

“I guess,” InuYasha said. Something about how she was acting made him edgy, and he stuck his hands in his sleeves. “So . . . ”

“So what?” She looked up at him from around the edge of the cloth. “You look like you’re almost dry already.”

InuYasha shrugged. “Fire rat cloth doesn’t stay wet long,” he said. “Rin could tell I had been in the water, and now I’m almost dry.”

Her fine hands tugged on the damp cloth, smoothing it across the line.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Dry. Unconscious,” she said. Not yet ready to meet his eyes, she focused on the coverlet instead, pulling on it to make sure it hung there as even as possible.

InuYasha didn’t like how she was avoiding looking at him. He grabbed and tugged at one of her hands, pulling her into the circle of his arms. “Looks like Miroku’s not the only one trying to overthink. Want to tell me about it?”

“I...I...” she started. “Tell you what?”

“I can tell you’re upset,” he said. “It’s about Maeme, right?”

She looked up at him for a moment, to read what she could from his look. His eyes were filled with concern and little more. Kagome rested her head against his chest. “I’m not sure where to even start,” she said.

“Pick a place,” he said, running his fingers through her hair. “Whatever you found was bad. I can tell from how you’re acting.”

“What has she been living with?” Kagome fisted handfuls of InuYasha’s jacket, almost burying her face. “She has scars and bruises everywhere. Some of them are marks from old beatings. I’ve never seen someone who wasn’t in an accident or who wasn’t in a fight bruised the way she is.”

He pulled her close. “I...I...I didn’t know...She never was around much.”

“I bet that’s because he wouldn’t let her out much.” She sighed, and looked up at her husband. “That’s the way people who do this to their family usually behave. They don’t want them to have anything to do with anybody else, in case they lose that...that control over their victim.”

InuYasha glanced back toward the village. “And he calls me a monster. I never yet hit a woman that wasn’t attacking me in honest battle.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Her voice was very sad. For a moment she just pulled her husband close. Swallowing, she looked up. “Is there anything we can do? Can the elders fix it? Nobody should have to live like that. Whatever he’s been doing to her, it’s been going on a long time. No wonder she wanted to die.”

He frowned, and took a deep breath. “If they won’t, Miroku will, and I’ll back him up. He’s just as upset as you are.” He gave her a hug back and kissed the top of her head.

“Miroku likes women too much to be happy about people doing things like that to them,” Kagome said.

InuYasha pulled back. “Heh. His hentai brain thinks women are for...well, not for abuse.”

“There was a time when we were on the quest that I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t the one wanting to be abused,” Kagome said, the tiniest of grins on her face.

“You weren’t the only one who thought about that,” InuYasha said. His grin was a bit larger.   

She reached up and touched his cheek. “So what do we do?”

“You stay here for right now,” InuYasha said. “Someone probably needs to be around in case she wakes up. I’m going to go down to the village.” His face was solemn. He ran his hand along the line of her cheek, and into her hair, a reassuring gesture that separated him from an animal like Maeme’s husband.

“You’re going to tell Kaede?” Kagome asked. “She’ll know what to do, what medicine might help. Tell her she’s unconscious still.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll tell her that. She might even be on her way already. I bet Furume’s told everybody she could find.”

Kagome nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“After that,” the hanyou said, “I’m going to have a talk with Tameo. Maybe it’s time to use some of that warrior rank they keep saying I have.”

He gave her one last hug. In a flash of red, he turned and was gone.



As InuYasha talked to Kagome alone and Mariko started heading down the hill, Sukeo circled around the edges of the village, not really willing to talk to anybody. He too found himself on a hill, one overlooking the garden behind the headman’s home. He sat down on the grass with a heavy sigh.

“Haha-ue's off hiding somewhere. Chichi-ue's going to want to beat me up. Obasan wasn’t home.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it down the slope. “I don’t know what to do. But not doing something is just going to make it worse. What did I do to deserve this?”

A breeze blew up suddenly. It carried the scent of summer flowers, something sweet and clean. The boy looked around and didn’t see anything much that might have made such a scent. What he did see, though, was an old peasant walking his way, a hoe over his shoulder. He was too close for Sukeo to get away unseen, so the boy just sat there, resting his head in his hands.

“My luck today must be horrible,” he said.  

He thought he said it too softly to be overheard, but the man walked up to him and stopped.

“Luck’s a funny thing,” the newcomer said, in a soft, but friendly voice. “Sometimes, what we think of as horrible luck turns out to be just the start of something wonderful, and what we thought was good luck bites us in the ass before we know it.” The farmer squatted down next to Sukeo, a position where he could look the boy in the eye. “And which type of luck are you having today?”

“It’s not any kind of good luck,” Sukeo said.

“That bad, huh?” the stranger said.

Sukeo nodded. For some reason that he didn’t quite understand, as he looked at this man, someone he didn’t even recognize, he felt the need to unburden himself. “Chichi-ue sent me to get Haha-ue, and I can’t find her anywhere. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know who to tell, and my otousan’s going to be furious.”

“Did you tell the headman about it?” the farmer asked. “He’s the person whose supposed to help when people go missing.”

Shaking his head, Sukeo sighed, and buried his face in his hands. “My otousan’s there. If he catches me, he’ll be ready to beat me for not finding her.”

“He’s that type of person?” the man asked.

Reluctantly, Sukeo nodded.

“What’s he doing at the headman’s place? Tameo-sama’s a good man. He doesn’t usually put up with that type of thing.”

Sukeo looked up at the man. The old farmer looked at him gently, concerned. “I...” the boy said, chewing on his bottom lip. “I can’t talk about it.”

The farmer rocked back on his heels, rubbing his hat back and forth across his head as he thought. “You wouldn’t be the son of that man in the lockup, would you?”  

Curling small as he could, Sukeo covered his face with his hands and sighed deeply.  He gave the farmer one brief nod. “You...you heard about that?”

The farmer patted the boy on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to hear you’re having such an awful day. Sometimes, they’re just impossible to get away from.”  He stood up.  “Still, there’s more than one way to handle things, usually. If it’s going to rain in June, plant barley instead of wheat.”

Confused, Sukeo looked up at his companion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” the old man said, scratching under his chin. “You need to talk to the headman.  You don’t want your otousan to know you’re there, right?”

The boy nodded.

“I don’t know if you know it, but there’s a back way into his yard.  I just came from there.” The old man used his hoe to point at a large dark boulder.  “You see that rock?”

Sukeo stood up. “I don’t remember that being there.”

“It’s been there long before you were born, boy,” the farmer said, smiling at the youth. “Before the headman was born, too. Sometimes, people have to point things out before we notice.”

The boy looked at the farmer, and rubbed the back of his neck. “If you say so, Ojiisan.”

The old man laughed. “Oh, I do. So, how about I show you where the path is? If your okaasan is really missing, you should tell Tameo-sama. He might need to get the guard to look for her.” The man put his hoe back over his shoulder and began walking.

“He would do that?  And not tell my otousan?” Sukeo said, falling in behind him.

“I suspect keeping your otousan quiet is something he’d really value right now,” the old man said. “Seemed like he was making a lot of noise when I came up here.”

The boy sighed.  “He does that sometimes.”

The two reached the rock. Leading away from it, a narrow path, seldom used from the looks of it, meandered down the hill and into the garden that housed the small family shrine at the back of Tameo’s complex.

“I suspect you can find the way from here,” the old farmer said.

Sukeo nodded. “I just never saw this before.”

“Sometimes,” the farmer said, “things seem to be hidden right under our eyes.” He patted the boy on the back. “Now, you get going. Maybe this will change your luck today. Tell Tameo-sama that Old Kazuo-ojiisan will come later on after the wedding to see how everything turned out.”

The boy nodded once again. He headed down the hill, but realizing he hadn’t thanked the kind man who set him on the path, he turned around, but there was no sign of the farmer.  He paused a moment, and felt a cold chill pass over him. Shrugging it off, he continued down the path to the headman’s house.