Written: 5 December 2006
Posted: 19 December 2006. Version 1.1, 4 January 2007. Disclaimer correction, one word added.
Category:: AU/IY-RK Crossover.
Summary: A potter and a housewife connect over the parenting of legends.
Disclaimer: The characters and story of Rurouni Kenshin are the property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shonen Jump, et al. The characters and story of InuYasha are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Viz, et al. Used without permission. This work is for entertainment only, and no profit is intended.
Notes: This was written to celebrate 1000 hits for my InuYasha story Bloody Barbarians. I love Inu & Company to death, but I'm mostly a Rurouni Kenshin writer, so I was ruminating over how to combine the two settings to mark the occaison. It just struck me that Mama Higurashi & Hiko would have a lot to commiserate over, and hence this little late-night conversation.
Glossary: At end of document.

Alone Together

It was one of those strangely telling airport conversations, the kind where fatigue, too much time away from the ones that matter, and a surfeit of isolation drive perfect strangers to have intense, meaningful exchanges.

Or maybe it’s just boredom, and the certainty that the perfect stranger will be perfectly unable to throw your words back in your face.

A tall man with the face of an angel, the hands of an artist, the body of brute force personified, and and the ki of a raging dragon sat in an anonymous row of standeard-issue airport black leatherette-and-chrome seats. It was late in San Francisco—or possibly unthinkably early--and there were two hours remaining of a four-hour layover on the New York to Tokyo flight.

Next to this physical expression of human contradiction sat a most retiring woman who, at first glance, had every checkmark for the stereotypical Japanese housewife. Quiet manner, quiet dress, unremarkable hairstyle.

They had struck up a conversation when he pulled out a Japanese language magazine, and she had timidly asked if he could perhaps understand the occasional booming announcements, as her limited English couldn’t seem to keep up.

“No,” he’d replied with a mild huffing through his nose that might, possibly, have been a snort, “it’s against the laws of the universe for any traveler, in any transport terminus anywhere, to understand critical announcements. They must be rattled off too fast, through a speaker system with the response range of a crumpled tin cup, by someone whose accent no one, especially native speakers, can understand. Wouldn’t do for the traveling public to get needed information in a comprehensible form.”

She’d surprised him with a slight smile, a graceful tilt of her head, and the quiet observation that this was indeed, universally true, especially when one is most anxious to return home.

That of course had lead to a desultory exchange of information about their destinations: Tokyo, for her, on to Kyoto and then up to the mountains for him. They were both, oddly enough, returning home to see progeny who had turned up, unexpected and unannounced after several years absence.

Not that her daughter, Kagome, was entirely at fault there; apparently she was committed to some sort of social improvement project whose location, and tasks, changed on a day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour basis. It seemed that she had unique skills that were vital to its success.

“How long has she been on this project?”

“Oh, let’s see: seven years now, since her 15th birthday.”

He made that mild huffing noise again, but this time, it was almost wistful, if it were possible for a snort to be so.

“Sounds familiar. My Kenshin went off to war when he was just 14. I’ve not seen him in 15 years, and then I get a call when I was in New York at an exhibit opening. Shishou, please come home, your baka deshi needs you. Or rather,” he added with an edge of bitterness, “the government wants to exploit him yet again and he’s decided he needs to finish his training after all.”

There was an oddly nonjudgmental silence. Slowly, he tilted his head to look fully at her.

“You’re not going to ask,” he said flatly, with a seasoning of surprise.

“You didn’t,” she responded.

“But you’re not even thinking—”

“What a bad parent you are? No. You obviously love him, just as he is—”

“How do you know?”

“You left the exhibit opening. You seem to be bitter about the government’s involvement, but not at him—”

Another mild snort. Interrupting each other was becoming a habit.

“And I thought I saw a little understanding when I told you about Kagome’s commitment.”

“Which is?”

“As a miko.

“Shikon no miko.”

She seemed to flatten and withdraw as the last phrase left her mouth.

He gave it a soft silence to fall into, and tried to find an offering in return.

“He,” he swallowed his words, started over, “he’s a swordmaster. The government uses him as—”

“He’s the shadow legend.”

He was rather surprised at not being surprised she knew that. It wasn’t something anyone was supposed to know at all, but somehow it was fitting that she did.

They sat in their own private silence for a few moments.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” she asked, ”to know that your precious little hatchling is really a phoenix in the eyes of the world.”

“Well, except mine was a dragon,” he murmured under his breath.

“It’s hard when she comes to you full of adventures and trust and naïveté, not knowing that she’s about to see the world and fight the devil, and lose certainly to one or the other.”

“It’s hard, not to grab him and bind him and make him stay.”

“You perhaps might make a child’s body stay—but once her heart has left, she’s really
no longer there. You can imprison her body, but her heart will fight all the harder to escape,” the woman said breaking the silence that had fallen between them since their last exchange.

“But finally, finally you can only hope harder than you ever have, and do what you can when he finally takes that fall.”

It was just an airport conversation, in which one potter and one loving mother learned that even those with legends for children could share a parent’s joys and sorrows with someone.

Owari

Glossary

Baka—idiot, dummy, stupid, fool
Deshi—pupil, apprentice, disciple
Ki—spirit, essence, presence
Miko—shrine attendant or shrine maiden
Miko no Shikon—Shrine Maiden of the Four Souls or, loosely, “Priestess of the Sacred Jewel”
Owari—The end