InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ As Fate Would Have It ❯ Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 

Sango and Kagome stood next to the ruined hut while Miroku and Inuyasha saw to the burial of the Wolf youkai remains. The two women stared at the wreckage in silence for a long time.

 

“That explains a few things,” Kagome said softly. Minako had finally fallen asleep, but it had taken Kagome a few minutes to calm the infant hanyou down. She sure was sensitive to Kagome's emotions…

 

“It would seem that Minako's parents really were a Wolf youkai and a human,” Sango agreed, slightly surprised. “Usually it is a human woman who takes a male youkai to mate, but in this case we have the opposite.”

 

So she isn't Kouga's child, Kagome thought, somewhat in relief. She didn't return the Wolf youkai leader's vows of love, but she did care for him as a friend and didn't like to think that he would callously father a child and then abandon it and its mother. It really didn't fit his nature.

 

“Everything is taken care of,” Miroku said as the two males approached. “I just pray she is at peace.” He handed Kagome the baby blanket that the youkai had held in her hand. “I thought perhaps you would like to keep this for Minako, for when she is older, as a keepsake of her mother and father.”

 

Kagome gently took the blanket, noticing the time and care that someone (Minako's mother, probably?) had taken to soften the cloth and stitch it just right. She straightened her spine and looked at Miroku, nodding. “I'll wash it and keep it just for her. She'll want to know someday.”

 

Inuyasha felt something odd in his heart. His life as a hanyou had been nothing but loneliness and hatred, and he had nothing to remember his mother by except fading memories. His father he never knew at all- yet he had the Tetsusaiga to remind him.

 

This little hanyou girl might have grown up to know the malice and loathing that he himself had experienced, yet Kagome had swooped in and saved her from such a fate with her usual self-sacrifice. She cared nothing about her own needs- she cared more about others and what they needed or wanted.

 

As she did for him. She cared so much, that she sacrificed her life, her “education” in her own time to come here day after day and stay with him. She had even told him so- that she wanted to be with him. Did she… love him?

 

He almost “keh”-ed out loud. He watched silently as Kagome put the baby blanket in her pack, carefully folding the dusty cloth as though it were fine silk.

 

Love… he had no real concept of love. His father had loved his mother and then he died. Inuyasha himself had loved his mother, and she had died. Then he had loved Kikyou, and she died. Death seemed to follow love everywhere in his life. If he loved Kagome, would she die too?

 

He was afraid to take that chance. Better to not love at all than to risk losing his heart again. But he was also afraid that it was too late for him. He wondered if he was already in love with Kagome.

 

He shook his head as his cheeks turned pink. He quickly turned away as though bored by the silence so that no one would notice his blush. He was afraid he already knew the answer.

 

“Come,” Miroku said gently as he put his arm around Sango's shoulders. “I think we should go to the Wolf youkai den next.”

 

“To those mangy wolves?” Inuyasha spat out, turning back suddenly. “What in all the hells for?”

 

Kagome glared at him, but it lacked real anger. She had hoped that he would come around, but he seemed as prejudiced against the wolves as ever. “You shouldn't call them `mangy' anymore, Inuyasha,” she scolded. “They are Minako's family, which is more than we are.”

 

Inuyasha blushed furiously again and jammed his hands into his sleeves. “Feh! Fine!” he snorted. “But I don't have to like it.”

 

Kagome and Sango shared a feminine grin. He sounded just like a spoiled child. He turned and led the way back into the woods without sparing a glance backward.

 

Kagome stopped at the edge of the woods and looked back at the ruins of the hut. She bowed respectfully one last time, then turned and followed the others into the forest.

 

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It was almost two days later when they finally arrived at the waterfall that housed the last three members of the Wolf youkai pack and the true wolves they commanded. Kouga's two tribesmen, Ginta and Hakkaku, were nowhere to be seen, which in itself wasn't that odd. They were usually following their leader wherever he ran off to.

 

Inuyasha sniffed, making a face. “He's here, all right,” he said with a grin. “And he's got company.”

 

“Company?” Kagome said, confused? She looked at Inuyasha for a moment, and then her attention was brought back to the entrance of the cave behind the waterfall by two figures in a heated argument.

 

“I told you, Ayame, I love Kagome!” Kouga yelled in the face of the attractive redhead Wolf youkai. She glared right back at him.

 

“And I told you, she won't have you! She said so herself!” she yelled back. “So just marry me like you promised!”

 

“I….!” Kouga began, but broke off as he noticed the audience watching them in amusement. Kagome and Inuyasha stood slightly apart from Miroku and Sango, and Kouga, of course, only had eyes for Kagome. He rushed to her and clasped her hands in his, looking ever-so-lovestarved. Ayame stood back and watched helplessly, fuming silently.

 

“Kagome, my love!” he said boldly. “I knew you couldn't stay away from me for too long! I know how…much…..you…….” He looked down then and saw the little black-haired hanyou asleep in the sling carrier on Kagome's front. “….missed me?”

 

Kouga's feral blue gaze went in disbelief to Kagome's eyes to downright ire at Inuyasha's. Before Kagome could really blink, Kouga was standing in front of Inuyasha, challenging the inu-hanyou once again.

 

“So you took what was mine, eh, dog-shit?” he growled. “What did ya do? Seduce her and give her your pup in thinking that I wouldn't want her anymore?” Ayame looked confused. Then a flicker of hope entered her leaf-green eyes.

 

Inuyasha was confused for a minute as he growled back in Kouga's face, and then it all began to sink in. Kouga thought the little hanyou was Inuyasha's pup.

 

With Kagome.

 

Oh ho ho…Inuyasha almost laughed out loud. Instead, he straightened up, crossed his arms, and took on his best “I'm-a-badass” pose again, complete with grin.

 

“She was never yours to begin with, dumbass,” he said smugly, that grin still plastered on his face. Kagome just watched the two of them, a totally confused look on her face. What was happening here?

 

“I claimed her first, therefore she was mine!” Kouga yelled in Inuyasha's face. The inu-hanyou continued to look unconcerned at the furious Wolf's ire.

 

“Apparently, I `claimed' her first,” Inuyasha retorted complacently, calmly examining the claws on his left hand.

 

Kagome almost died of mortification on the spot.

 

Miroku and Sango exchanged a glance and then slowly began backing away from Kagome as she fumed. Ayame noticed the look in Kagome's eyes and she too backed up a bit. Inuyasha never saw it coming.

 

“OSUWARI!” she screamed, scaring little Minako awake. “Osuwari, osuwari osuwari osuwari OSUWARI!!!!”

 

WHAM! Inuyasha was flattened out of his smug-ness by a mouthful of dirt. As the “point” was driven home (wham, wham, wham, wham, WHAM) and he was driven deeper into the ground, Minako began her howling.

 

Kouga paused, listening intently. “Wait a minute,” he muttered in disbelief. He walked over to where Kagome stood, still radiating fury. He stood a few feet away in caution of her anger and looked at the baby more closely. He sniffed.

 

“HEY!” he cried out in surprise. “Where did you get that baby?! It's not yours!”

 

Miroku stepped forward cautiously. “Interesting, Kouga,” he said in a pacifying tone. “How can you tell that the baby isn't Kagome's?”

 

“Duh! Any fool can tell that this is a Wolf youkai cub!” He growled at the houshi. “But what I want to know is why it smells like a Wolf from my pack!”

 

Kagome made soothing noises to the baby howling in her arms.

 

“If you and Ayame and willing to sit down peacefully with us and listen, we'll tell you what we know,” Sango said. “Maybe,” she added quietly, “you'll be able to help fill in some of the holes.”

 

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“So,” Sango finished saying while Kagome rocked Minako on her shoulder, “we know that her mother was a Wolf youkai and her father was a human. What we don't know is who that Wolf youkai was or the human's name either.”

 

Kagome reached into her backpack and pulled out the dusty baby blanket that Miroku had saved. “This is all we have left of them.” Kouga took the blanket and took a delicate sniff.

 

Kouga closed his eyes in sorrow, sighing softly. “Kasumi.” Ayame looked pained.

 

The others glanced from one Wolf youkai to the other.

 

“Kasumi?” Miroku asked. What did mist have to do with this?

 

Kouga looked up, his face stricken. “Kasumi- she was my older sister,” he explained. “She was not raised to be leader because she was not the male, but she was trained well to be a powerful alpha female.”

 

His blue eyes took on a faraway look. “She was sought after by male Wolf youkai in every tribe to be their mate. She was so lovely. Long black hair with large sapphire blue eyes. No man could resist her.”

 

“She had followed my grandfather up into the mountains when I was taken for my training,” Ayame continued softly. “But a few years later she suddenly vanished.”

 

She looked at Kouga sadly. “We had thought the worst, but we had no proof. We mourned her and moved on.”

 

Kouga looked at the blue-eyed baby hanyou on Kagome's shoulder with a hint of disgust. “And now you have brought her cub back to us,” he said. “Why?”

 

Kagome snapped her head up, looking at Kouga with a trace amount of… fear? Miroku saw the worried look on her face and quickly spoke up to clear up the misunderstanding.

 

“We did not know the child was your niece, Kouga,” he said, putting his hands up in a peaceful gesture. “We had not planned on coming here at all. It was only after we saw that her mother was a Wolf youkai that we decided to come and question you. That's all.”

 

Ayame looked at Minako with more than a little longing. Kagome saw this and quickly dampened the twinge of possessiveness that pricked her heart. She smiled and held out the pink sleeper-clad baby to the Wolf youkai. “Would you mind holding her for me? My arms are so tired!”

 

Blinking in surprise, Ayame nodded once and took the little hanyou in her arms. Immediately her face softened as she looked into Minako's sapphire eyes. The baby stared in mute wonder back at Ayame's face. “Why doesn't she smile?”

 

Kagome smiled and started to shake her head, wanting to explain that maybe Minako was probably just too young to really smile yet, when Inuyasha appeared by her side and spoke up.

 

“She smiles. She laughs too.”

 

Everyone except Miroku looked up at him, incredulous, and Kouga even scoffed. “And how would you know that, mutt?”

 

Inuyasha reached down and shockingly, picked Minako up out of Ayame's arms.

 

“You better watch how you use that word, wolf, because your niece is a `mutt' too.”

 

Kouga growled as Inuyasha held Minako up in front of him, her little legs kicking air. Blue eyes met gold once again and the kicking stopped. Once again, blue eyes looked up and spied the familiar white doggie ears. Inuyasha twitched his ears, causing everyone watching him to freeze in shock.

 

Minako squealed in delight and smiled wide, reaching out her hands for a hug from Inuyasha. He smiled back at her, and then settled her in his arms so she could snuggle.

 

He turned around and, smiling smugly, struck his famous “I'm-a-badass” pose again, although this time the result was somewhat different because of the baby giggling in his arms. “Told you.”

 

Everyone fell over.