Lies, Letters, and Calloused Fingertips.

Lies, Letters, and Calloused Fingertips.



Chapter Twenty-Five: Blue.



He snickered as he came up close behind her; wrapping his arms around her slim waist, he tugged her backward, crushing her back against his chest. She giggled, slapping his arm teasingly. “Careful, baka! You’re going to make me drop the roller!” She laughed wholeheartedly with him at that.



When the laughter subsided, he settled his chin on her shoulder, surveying her hard work. “Don’t you think it’s a little… dark?” he asked her.



He felt her huff. “I think it’s pretty,” she said simply, shrugging him off. Unaffected by her obviously dissatisfied gesture, he stepped around her, forward, and took a closer look at the freshly painted wall. There was something about it… He had to know what was so strange about it; he just couldn’t look away.



“Kagome?”



She looked up, blinking lazy brown eyes at him. Inuyasha noticed her suddenly tired expression when he looked at her over his shoulder.



“Why blue?”



She blinked at him. “What?”



His eyes narrowed at her. “Why blue?” he repeated.



Slowly, she set the roller down in the paint and stood straight; stepping away from it, she walked across the room to stand right beside him.



“It reflects your mood these days,” she answered.



Inuyasha watched her closely. “What does that mean?”



She turned her head, smiling brightly up at him. “It reflects you, Inuyasha. It’s as simple as that.” Kagome kept her eyes trained on the drying wall in front of them, and Inuyasha turned his head, looking at it with her.



He gasped when something started to run through the middle of the sea of quickly drying blue – a thick line of dark red. Suddenly, right before his eyes, more red gushed from the corners and the trim, covering the blue with its dark malice. Spinning around with Kagome’s name on his lips, Inuyasha froze when he felt the familiar pulse – his silver hair turned black, his claws and fangs disappeared, his eyes went from gold to violet instantaneously.



Inuyasha swallowed as he watched the red recede, sliding back up the wall and disappearing into the trim.



“What the hell?” he cried out. Suddenly, he doubled over in excruciating pain, calling her name: “Kagome!”



Opening his eyes, there she was; her tired face was the first thing he saw. As his eyes adjusted to the light and his brain focused on the situation, his memory of what happened slowly returned.



He knew instantly what his wife was up to as she glowed against him. Kagome… he thought sadly, reaching forward and taking her hands. The blood stain on his stomach terrified him, and he knew that if she continued purifying the venom from his body that she might die. It was too much stress for her body – she was only human, after all. Delicate. Fragile.



He tried to stop her, but her will was stronger than that. He should have known better; that last little burst was probably what caused her sudden, eventual collapse at his bedside. It still amazed him that she could call up the strength to zap him in human form when she was already so weak. That just meant that was he had seen of her spiritual powers so far was merely a fraction of what she could really do.



For days, he was still weak. In purifying the venom from his body, she had also turned him human – which had happened before, but it usually faded after a day or so.



Four days later, he sat at Kagome’s bedside as she slowly came to – still human. A part of Inuyasha was genuinely afraid that he would be stuck like this forever – but as he watched her, sleeping so peacefully, he felt that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.



The sun was setting when she finally opened her eyes. They fluttered a moment before finally focusing on him, the pupils dilating as she regained full consciousness.



“Where are Moriko and Kaji?” she asked, her voice slightly hoarse from lack of use.



For a moment, Inuyasha just watched her, his eyes betraying nothing, his expression holding no emotion. He was so blank that, for that one moment, Kagome was afraid of his answer.



Then he smiled, looking down at the floor, and chuckled. “They’re fine,” he said. “They’re with your mother – who is not very happy with us at the moment.”



Kagome slowly started to sit up but stopped when Inuyasha shook his head, his eyes trained on her once more. “The docs ‘round here said that’d be a bad idea. Somethin’ ‘bout too much stress on your already stressed body.”



She turned her head, biting her lip and looking out the broad window. “How long?”



Violet eyes finally blinked. “How long what?”



Kagome sighed, her eyes tearing up a little. “How long have I been out? How long have you been human?”



He didn’t answer for a minute. Then, “Four days.”



She remained silent.



Inuyasha’s fist clenched suddenly, and he rose quickly to his feet, gritting his teeth angrily. “You’re such a stupid bitch, you know?” he cried out, glaring down at her. Kagome didn’t react; she just continued to stare out the window. “After all this time spent away from each other – waiting for each other! I waited five hundred Kamis-damn years for you, woman, and I can’t be forgiven for one little indiscretion?”



Kagome scoffed quietly. “‘One little indiscretion…’” she murmured, smiling slightly. She turned over to glare right back up at him. “If my obaasan was an ‘indiscretion,’ then what the hell do you call Kikyo?”



“Kikyo’s nothing!”



She gasped, blinking at his outburst. He went on, “She was something, yeah! But you…” Inuyasha broke off into a snarl. “You’re you, dammit, woman! You’ve always been something so different from Kikyo, and from Keiko… Just because I noticed the similarities between you doesn’t mean that I’ve always just sit back and let myself become deluded with thoughts of having you replace them!” He looked away from her. “They’re irreplaceable, yes…” His eyes darted to the side, honing in on her with his head still turned. “But so are you, Kagome! And you’re here, and I’m here, and I’m tired of all this drama and fucked up tragedy… I jus’ wanna live with you and the babies and be happy!”



Kagome watched, awestruck by his sudden downpour of emotion, as he collapsed back into the chair. It was then that she noticed Inuyasha still wore the hospital gown. “Am I really that horrible a person, Kagome?” he whispered. Her eyes widened as she saw a few stray tears make their way down his face, and he swallowed. Looking up at her, she tried to stay angry, tried to see that asshole that had betrayed her for other women time and time again –



But all she saw was a tired, worn-out man in need of a break and a good hug.



That was all her Inuyasha was at that moment – a man.



“Am I really so horrible a person that I don’t deserve a little peace? A little happiness?” Finally, he looked away from her again, shaking his head. “I guess not…”



“And what about me?”



Looking at her again, Inuyasha was taken aback at her tears. She glared at him with wide brown eyes awash with anger and sadness and agony. “What about me, Inuyasha?” she wanted to know. “Am I worthy of happiness, too? That’s all I ever wanted from you – and, at every single turn, it seemed like you weren’t ready to give it to me.” She bit her lip. “I love the twins, with everything in me…” Squeezing her eyes shut, the tears flowed freely, and she screamed at him, “But I’m nothing without you, baka!”



Inuyasha’s heart both sank and rose at her words.



“So stop running off to your damn sake bottle when the going gets tough!” she yelled, launching herself into a sitting position. “Stop recounting these tales of idiotic ideals you shed while trying to figure out why the hell I would purposely leave you – because I wouldn’t! I didn’t work so hard for years of my life to win your trust only to have you throw it all completely out the window just because you have self-esteem issues! I’m tired of telling you over and over how absolutely breathtaking you are, in everything you do, Inuyasha! You need to start figuring out for yourself that you are a great guy – a good guy, and not the sleaze that you’ve made yourself into! Be a man already, Inuyasha! Be a-!”



Kagome broke off suddenly, her eyes widening as she choked. Blood spilled past her lips, and she turned to the side, vomiting suddenly. Inuyasha, quick on the uptake as always, already had the bucket waiting.



As she emptied her stomach, her husband sighed.



“I seriously wonder why you always call me the baka,” he mumbled, reaching over her head to lightly rub her back. The contact offered Kagome a strange sense of comfort and normalcy – something she knew already that she desperately needed in this situation. “After all, you’re the one that always used to go off and get herself kidnapped and nearly killed – even now, in the modern era!” He shook his head. “And now you’re stuck here with me, both of us in worse shape than ever, because you decided suddenly that you can’t live without me and nearly blew yourself up from the inside out just to keep me!” Inuyasha sighed as Kagome wiped her mouth, sitting back up. She quirked an eyebrow at the return of his trademark smirk. “Sounds like you’re the baka.”



Her eye twitched, annoyed. “Did I really?”



Inuyasha laughed lightly. “Yeah,” he replied, setting the half-full bucket down on the floor next to the bed and leaning back in his chair. “It was amazing… Or it would’ve been, had you not collapsed.”



Kagome grimaced.



“They had to rush you straight into the OR, Minoru said – you ruptured something… your appendix, I think. And they all said that, if you’d continued to use your powers at such a dangerous level, other organs would’a been taxed and ruptured.” His eyes became slightly hazy as he whispered, “They said you would’a drowned in your own blood.”



Kagome closed her eyes, her heart clenching at those ominous words.



She started when she felt a hand slide over hers; opening her eyes, she looked down to see Inuyasha’s large, rough hand covering hers, his fingers begging to intertwine with her own. Smiling at him, she complied; mate and mate sat together and watched the sun set fully.





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“If it was you, I’d have done the same thing!”



Minoru stared at Suzume in complete and utter shock. Those were not words he’d wanted to hear in the middle of this argument. The doctor wasn’t even entirely sure what had started this fight; all he knew was that it had escalated quickly, like all the rest of them.



“Suzume, don’t be stupid!”



“Oh, now wanting to save your life is stupid, is it?”



“Kamis-dammit, woman! You’re being an ignorant bitch!”



The musician’s face flushed a deep, angry red; she stomped her foot. “Don’t call me a bitch, Minoru! You don’t know how bitchy I can be!”



He threw his hands up in the air. “That’s exactly it! We don’t know each other, Suzume – not at all! You’re not Sango, and I’m not Miroku! You’re not a demon slayer anymore – you’re a singer! I’m not a monk, I’m a doctor! I’m not a pervert, I’m not a womanizer, and I’m sure as hell not an idiot!” He sighed, slumping into a nearby lounger, his face in his hand.



Suzume stood in the doorway, staring at him with shocked, widened eyes. “Wh-what do you mean?” she whispered. When he didn’t answer, she stepped forward. “What are you talking about, Minoru?”



He hesitated. “I’m saying that we’re just… Dammit, Suzume, we’re just not that same.” He dropped his hand and turned his head, looking her right in the eye. “We shouldn’t be together.”



Suzume waited for it. She waited anxiously for the collapse, the clenching, the tears. She waited, terrified, for the shattering, debilitating heartbreak that she knew from past experience was imminent.



As she stood there, barely in the living room, it never came.



Minutes passed, and nothing happened. There was no breaking, no falling, no hurt or anguished cry threatening to escape from her lips.



Suzume… was okay with separating from Minoru.



He was right, she realized; they weren’t the same people from their previous life. It had been a good run – for them both. But she wasn’t Sango, and he wasn’t Miroku; as such, they’re romance had become frozen in time, something to be cherished as it had been when they were alive. It wasn’t something that should need to be forced, and she knew that this break up had been a long time coming.



Releasing the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, Suzume smiled at Minoru. His expression morphed into one of confusion.



“Okay,” she said.



He blinked. “Okay?”



She nodded, still smiling brightly. “Okay, Minoru. You’re right. We shouldn’t be together anymore – though I’ll always love you.”



Finally, he chuckled, smiling back at her. Standing, he crossed the room and hugged her tight, eliciting a girlish giggle from the vocalist. “And I’ll love you.” He kissed the top of her head before releasing her to grab his coat. Nodding to her, they both said goodnight, and Minoru left.



For some reason, Suzume felt better than she had in quite some time.



Next time:



Chapter Twenty-Six: Little By Little