Disclaimer: My dog's name is Duchess, not Inuyasha. (Not even Kouga . . .)
Summary: Home is more than where you sleep. It's where you wake up. InuSan
Author's Note: Dedicated to and inspired by Ayrith.
Home
I
When he was young, he'd wake to the scent of his mother gathering raindrops. She knelt at their open door and peered out into the wet and gray, deep hair fringing the deeper valleys of her eyes. And she'd be singing, though it was hardly recognizable: a trembling note for every glistening drop caught in her kimono.
That's how he knew he was home.
II
Inuyasha didn't know when he fell into Sango's house. Or maybe it was that she built her house around him.
Either way, it didn't matter. Because one day, he woke up and he was there.
III
At night, they lie awake (he sleeps on the floor because he is used to it, and she is on the bed because she is a warrior but also a woman, and he won't let her have her way). She puts her hand out into the dark; her fingers curl and then swoop. They are hardened from work and war.
Thunder looms low overhead, crackle-rumbling, and telling of rain. She says out loud, absently, though the sound of a human voice hurts him, "I better put a new door in soon."
IV
It is a simple law of human relationships that mutual need accidentally breeds love. He had experienced this first-hand, once with the miko, once with the tajii-ya. Somewhere there was also a schoolgirl.
He couldn't really remember the order anymore.
V
Sometimes, she takes naps in the grass, and it makes him nervous because youkai are around. And then he remembers that she's taiji-ya and that she doesn't need protecting; and even if she did, it'd most likely be from him.
Because while she's washing his clothes, or combing his hair, or holding him close because it-still-hurts, he is clutching her a little too tightly, so that in the morning she bears small crimson-crescent wounds on white arms.
"Do you think you can sleep now?" she asks kindly, though he doesn't, and he doesn't answer, and he resents that she can and that she does: in the day, in the grass, without him.
VI
Sango hated help; it embarrassed her deeply. And Inuyasha respected that.
They were more alike than they liked to admit.
Still, the lingering of her cares hung on her shoulders when she would come around, and he would ask her, cautiously, what they had said to her, and she would lie and say, "Nothing."
But he knew that among her kind she was ostracized, and it was because of him.
And on those days he would punish her further, though he angered himself so much he'd be ill. But he wanted her to snap away, to turn and run, flying, saying, "This is not worth it. You're not worth it."
But she stayed.
VII
She's strong, and that's hard on him. When he asks her if she needs help, she shifts the weight of her burdens and replies, plainly, "No."
She marches up the hill from the village well, two large water skins hitched over her shoulders. Long hair smooth-swaying, wet and sleek, like a waterfall. (He'd like to catch it.)
He feels hurt, so he goes away, and when he comes back that night to a darkened hut, she is sitting on the threshold waiting. He doesn't speak but alights to the roof, where he's made up his mind that he'll sleep tonight.
(The rain is coming. She better put a new one in soon.)
Standing cautiously, head tipped into starlight, her voice is tight with subdued pleading, "Come down."
When he won't until morning, and she's still awake, eyes red-raw and sleepless, he asks her harshly, "What's wrong?" a crude sneer on his crooked mouth.
But she is vulnerable in her closed way, replying, "I don't know when . . . I don't . . . but I can't sleep without you."
VIII
She put up with a lot of his nonsense, well-rehearsed in it, thanks to the monk. She put up quite a resistance, something she took away from bouts with Naraku. She put care into the way she built her house, and that is something she learned of herself.
She never ceased to impress him.
She never ceased to smile.
IX
At night, they lie awake (he sleeps on the floor because he has done so for so long and cannot do otherwise, and she climbs down to lie next to him because he is too tired to protest), and he peers at her in the dark, facing her, and says, "The women I love are cursed," and means it. Then he stretches his thought, full of significance, to finger her hair and enter her head.
And her eyes, dark as liquid tea-stains, wander around him, moths to a flame, flicker, and settle. She says, "Then stop cursing them."
He stiffens. Lies flat on his back so he can no longer look at her. Smells her regret the moment she says it.
He mumbles, "You better put the door in soon."
He's waiting for the storm to break.
X
In the morning, he lounges sleepily.
Then
he
finally
wakes
up.
Smells the clean-wet-green of rain. Leans up slowly on his elbow, eyes drawn to the absent door.
And she is there, with her hair down, and a feather in her hand, pushing-sliding raindrops around on the wooden post. She hums and braces her face to the misty spray.
And she must feel his eyes on her because she turns her neck slowly, deep bangs fringing the deeper valleys of her eyes.
He is still and blank-faced, but she is not dismayed. Her smile warms the rose flush of her cheeks and spreads to him. And there they are smiling at each other like a pair of fools.
Meanwhile, her eyes crinkle and sparkle a little – an invitation – before she turns back to catch glistening raindrops in her kimono.