InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Present Perfect ❯ Chapter 12 ( Chapter 12 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Chapter 12:

 

 

They got started on the rest of their lives right away, each unaware of the other's vow to do so. It led to some awkward moments, especially when one of their youkai friends happened to drop by with their oh-so-discerning senses. Inuyasha didn't care, and Kagome was learning not to let it bother her.

 

Inuyasha and Kagome differed in their outlook on school. Inuyasha figured, why bother, if he wasn't going to be around that much longer? He didn't want to waste a minute of the precious time he had left going to classes for a future that would never come true. Of course, he didn't put it quite that way to Kagome.

 

“School is stupid,” he said stubbornly. “I'd rather stay right here with you, or work on our house.” He stopped short of telling her she should drop out too, and re-enroll later, after he was gone. He knew that wouldn't go over too well.

 

Kagome had another opinion. “We made a commitment,” she argued. “How can you just quit after you've come so far? And we don't know for sure what will happen next September.” Her voice dropped down so that even he had to strain to hear it. “Besides, it gives us something to focus on,” she murmured.

 

“I'll give you something to focus on,” he said half-jokingly, and he grabbed her around the waist and tossed her onto their bed. She bounced quite satisfyingly.

 

Making love took on a whole new meaning as they each pushed each other higher and higher, combining spiritual powers with physical ones. For Inuyasha, it was a joyful time, and he reveled in the feel of their bodies together. The best were those mornings they spent up at the house, which was almost finished now, greeting the dawn. They were always careful to leave before the workmen got there in the morning.

 

Kagome found herself touching Inuyasha every chance she got, casual touches, possessive touches. She ran her fingers lightly down his arm as they stood in line at the cafeteria. She leaned against him whenever he was near, and held his hand when they walked between classes.

 

Inuyasha glowed at all her little attentions. His face lit up with joy and dawning pride that she was displaying her feelings for him so openly. When she saw how happy it made him, Kagome wished she had done it a lot sooner. She loved him, she loved him so much. It shouldn't have taken the threat of losing him to make her finally show him.

 

She reached out and pulled him to her by the two locks of hair that hung down to cover the place where his human ears would have been. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and she had surprised him by waiting for him outside his classroom. She surprised him even more by kissing him. In public. In front of other people. He liked it.

 

“Can we go home?” he murmured into her ear, knowing there wasn't much chance because she had another class yet.

 

She laughed low in her throat, making him shiver. “Can't you wait?” she asked huskily.

 

“No.” He was getting all kinds of signals that needed to be acted upon.

 

“Then let's go.” She wrapped her hands more securely in his luxuriant hair and breathed in the scent of him—something he'd done to her often enough, since scent was so much a part of his sensory world—but for Kagome to do it—she couldn't know what it did to him.

 

As soon as they had passed the main crowds of people, Inuyasha crouched down so that Kagome could climb onto his back. He had no intention of waiting for a bus. He tensed, preparing to spring into the air, when he felt her breath against his ear, his real ear. “Not that home,” she whispered.

 

Inuyasha readily turned towards their mountain. Since Kouga had left a week ago, they had begun to leave the restraining beads in the top drawer again so that they could slip off to the house any time they wanted to. He let the transformation begin, but Kagome yanked sharply on his hair, causing him to solidify once again.

 

“What?” he asked her, confused.

 

“I want to feel you under me.”

 

Oh. All at once, Inuyasha became hyper-aware of Kagome riding on his back. They never made it all the way to the house. Inuyasha plummeted down into a bright green meadow. All he could smell was grass, small wildlife, and Kagome. Her scent was fast overwhelming him.

 

He laid her down in the new grass, but the girl wouldn't lie still. He liked that, too. She worked breathlessly to get his clothes, then hers, off, and she pushed him back into the grass, becoming the aggressor. He really liked that. The noises she made were driving him wild, and his eyes flashed from gold to red while the markings on his cheeks remained permanently visible. If anything, it made her `attack' him even more. He really, really liked it!

 

They missed supper that night. In fact, they eventually did go up to the house and spent the night there after the workers had gone home. Inuyasha hunted for Kagome, and they had a quiet fire-cooked meal just like in the old days. It would be nice to hunt on his own land to take care of Kagome, and maybe go into town once a month or so for ramen.

 

Later they lay on the floor of what would be their bedroom, facing the glassed-in wall that overlooked the cliff. It was the exact same place where Inuyasha had once built Kagome a lean-to.

 

Inuyasha sighed. Today had been perfect. This whole year had been perfect. He should have known it couldn't last. Maybe he just wasn't destined to be happy. He didn't mind the thought of dying, he really didn't. But he had just found her again, and he was going to lose her—again. He sighed once more.

 

“What is it, Inuyasha?” asked Kagome. She stroked his bangs away from his forehead and gently kissed his eyelids.

 

“Kagome,” Inuyasha propped himself up on one elbow and peered searchingly into her face. “I won't leave you. Even if—even if we get separated,” he refused to say the words out loud that would make it real, “I'll find you again. I promise.”

 

“I know you will,” she murmured. They wouldn't get separated because she was going with him. “I told you a long time ago that I would stay by your side.” Even if it meant dying with him. They were destined to be together.

 

A faraway look came into Inuyasha's eyes, and he lay back down beside her, pillowing his head on one arm. “Yeah,” he said quietly. He couldn't let her go back with him. Nobody remembered Kagome being there when he disappeared, which meant she had not returned with him. He could accept his own death—in no reality could he contemplate hers.

 

“I booked the tickets. Mama knows we're coming.” Kagome tried to put a brighter spin on the conversation. “It will be nice to see Shippo after all this time, won't it?”

 

“Mmm,” replied Inuyasha distractedly. He had a lot of things he wanted to do once they went back to modern Japan, like trying to narrow down the exact date when he supposedly went back through the well. He knew it was in the summer—this summer—because Ayame and Sango had both been pregnant when they'd left in January.

 

Kouga's story had filled in a few of the blanks. He now knew he had drawn the youkai into the bone-eater's well on purpose, and then used his meidou zangetsuha. He could even guess why—to protect his friends from the awful damage the meidou could wreak if he had released it in their vicinity. But it bothered him that the meidou had utterly destroyed the well. Wasn't he tampering with the future if he destroyed the well in the past? What if Kagome never ended up discovering the time portal? What if she never unsealed him from the tree? Inuyasha's heart jumped into his throat. What if it was all a dream and he was still pinned to the tree?

 

No, fate couldn't be that cruel. Why dream that the jewel got shattered? Why dream Naraku? Why any of it? No, it was real, and he was real, and so were all the terrible things that had happened back then. Because, if none of that was real, then this moment wasn't real either, and he really needed to believe in this moment.

 

“Kagome,” he said, his voice catching.

 

“Shhh.” She put her finger to his lips. “I'm here.”

 

 

Morning came, cloudy and dark. Inuyasha's ears twitched once, twice, and he suddenly sat up, dragging Kagome along with him.

 

“Shit,” he said. “We're late.” Two pickup trucks crunched the gravel right outside. Doors slammed, metal clanged. “Kagome, get dressed.”

 

Kagome scrambled for her clothes, wondering how they possibly were going to sneak out without being seen by the workers. Technically, it was their house, and they had every right to be there, but she didn't want to have to explain how they'd got there with no car. Inuyasha was muttering under his breath about their damn youkai, and why didn't they warn him. Kagome blushed. She had strengthened the barrier last night so that she could have Inuyasha all to herself. She was going to take it down this morning. Who would have believed they would both oversleep?

 

“Inuyasha, how--?” she began to ask, when he flung her on his back and pushed open their bedroom window. In some ways it was worse than when he had jumped out of the New York City apartment with her on his back. That was only six stories. Today he jumped out of the second story overlooking a cliff that stretched impossibly far below. All she could see, when she dared to look, were the spiky tops of pine trees rushing up towards them. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed a scream.

 

Halfway through their freefall, Inuyasha transformed briefly to his energy state, then right into the Great Dog form of his heritage. He leveled off and shot eastward. They'd take the long road home.

 

 

Fenn knew something was up with Inuyasha. Peter and Noriko had filled him in on Kouga's visit, and the resultant problems at dinner with Susan. Fenn was sorry he had missed it. But it wasn't even that—it was something in Inuyasha's aura. He pulled him aside just as Inyasha was about to enter the cafeteria for lunch. Inuyasha growled.

 

“What're you doing?”

 

“I want to talk to you about that Japanese youkai. Who said you could tell other people about my illusion?” Actually, Fenn didn't care about that. He was fine with other youkai knowing his special power, and he didn't even mind Inuyasha's humans knowing, now that he was familiar with them. He just used it as an excuse to get Inuyasha to talk. Inuyasha might be hot-headed, but he was as uncommunicative as his brother when it came to having an actual meaningful conversation.

 

“Yeah? Well. . . how come you never told me about Misty!” Inuyasha countered.

 

Misty, Misty. The old youkai by the sea. So Inuyasha had stumbled across her, had he? The boy was full of surprises.

 

“Do you expect us to tell you about the existence of every youkai in the area?” Fenn asked, with a raise of his eyebrows.

 

“Yes! What use am I if I don't know what's going on?”

 

“What use? Inuyasha, you're like a breath of fresh air for us. Please forgive us if we are slow to trust. We have centuries, for some of us millennia, of answering to no one but ourselves. There hasn't been a taiyoukai among us for a very long time.”

 

Taiyoukai? Fenn meant him! Inuyasha hadn't really thought of it like that, even after he had mastered the transformations. “So what's your problem? I warned you I wouldn't let our friends fall for your tricks. So now they know about you.”

 

Fenn relented. “That's fine.”

 

“That's it?”

 

“Sure. I wasn't really mad to begin with. Inuyasha, is something wrong? You don't seem your usual abrasive self.”

 

Inuyasha glanced to the left and right, then pulled Fenn over to the low stone wall outside the cafeteria. “I have to go back to Japan,” he told him, leaving out the part about returning to the past. “It may be dangerous, and I may not come back.” He owed it to these new world youkai to be honest about that much, at least.

 

It was not what Fenn had expected to hear. He really liked Inuyasha and thought he was good for the local youkai. He didn't want to lose him so soon. “Is there any other way?” he asked quietly. “Do you have to go?”

 

“If there was another way, believe me, I wouldn't be doing this.”

 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“Not now. Maybe some day, if it all works out. Don't say anything to Peter and the others. They think we're just going home for the summer. You can tell the other youkai—in fact, you probably should tell them.”

 

Fenn looked thoughtful. “I think it's time you met the rest of us,” he said. “Would you be able to take a short trip with me before you leave? Some of these youkai haven't left their homes in centuries, so we'll have to go to them. Are you up for it?”

 

“Sure I'm up for it! It's about time,” said Inuyasha, thinking at the same time how he was going to broach the subject with Kagome. “Er, can we go on the weekend?” Inuyasha would just bring Kagome along. These youkai ought to get used to her, too. She was going to be their miko. He decided not to say anything to Fenn about Kagome just yet.