Bird in a Cage
AU. Suspected criminal Inuyasha wakes up from stasis sleep to find himself fifty years into the future. But that doesn't mean the past will leave him alone.
A/N: So, here is the first chapter of this story. It's the first fanfiction I've written in a while, so I'm pretty excited about it. I love AU fanfiction, but it can occasionally be incredibly frustrating-you all know what I'm talking about. You are in the middle of it suddenly wondering why you didn't just go to the library, check out a romance novel, scribble out the names of the main characters and replace them with "Kagome" and "Inuyasha."
So, saying that, I did my best to construct a background story that would bear enough resemblance to the original to establish the characters as "as themselves" as possible. This will necessarily involve going over some familiar territory in the first few chapters, but hopefully it will be integrated into the story well enough that nobody will mind. Also, in case anyone is thinking "Oh, no, this is going to be one of those AUs where Naraku/Onigumo is 'secretly' the villain so what's the point of reading it…" I haven't entirely decided on Naraku's role in this, and there's a distinct possibility he might not even make a real "appearance" in the story or if he does it will be in a very minor (but possibly pivotal) role. The way things are trending now he probably will not be the main villain. Because ::drumroll:: sometimes that's boring. Not always. But sometimes.
Final notes: I took the liberty of imagining a Japan sixty years into the future…so if you are confused, don't worry. Everything will be explained! Hopefully! Also: I will not be writing any graphic love scenes in this story, anything more intense than a peck on the cheek will involve a scene change. This is the one thing I am immune to suggestions on. Just for your information
DISCLAIMER: Inuyasha is not mine. Sadness.
BIRD IN A CAGE
CHAPTER ONE: Upon Waking
Truly thou dost set them in slippery places;
thou dost make them fall to ruin.
How they are destroyed in a moment,
swept away utterly by terrors!
They are like a dream when one wakes,
on awaking you despise their phantoms.
-Psalms 73:18-23
It was like someone had opened up a door onto the darkness. The video of dim, calming dreams that had been playing in his mind ever since the lights had gone out were washed out by a small square of brilliant light which lay in the distance. He wanted to run towards it, but he couldn't. His body was gone, and he was formless in the void.
Have I died? About damn time…
But he couldn't have died, because he was beginning to hear something. Not just an imaginary something, either, but the faint murmur of an actual, physical voice, and a kind of scrabbling as if someone was trying to open a box.
The pinpoint of light suddenly expanded and flooded his vision, but receded into darkness just as quickly. But as he opened his eyes he realized he was back in his body. He still couldn't see anything, though. Am I blind? What the f-
"Are you awake? Oh my gosh—please tell me you're awake. Oh my gosh. They're going to kill me, please help." A pair of hands shook him by the shoulders and he realized he was not blind. The lights were simply off. He groaned.
"You're awake. Get up, hurry. They're coming back, they're going to kill me!" The hands—and arms—began pushing as if they were trying to help him sit up. He squinted at the possessor of the hands and the arms. What—or specifically, who—he saw was enough to wake him up completely. As if he hadn't heard that voice—or seen that face—in the half darkness, on the border of sleep, dozens of times before.
"Why the hell," he growled as she helped him to sit up "would I help you now? Keh!"
The arms pulled away from him, and he saw her darkened figure step back.
"What are you talking about?"
"What am I talking about? Fuck, Kikyou, what d'you—" He was abruptly cut off by the sound of bullets raining in the distance. Whatever was going on, it certainly didn't sound like this was a place he wanted to be. He attempted to lever himself out of the metal box-coffin, what was this?—but his arms weren't strong enough, so he settled for throwing a leg over the edge and trying to roll out. He would have hit the floor hard if she hadn't started trying to help him again, but instead of him hitting the floor he hit her "OW!" and they rolled together. She ended up half on top of him. Another memory hit Inuyasha's heart intensely and his muscles stiffened. He moved to push her away.
His first clue was when before he even lifted his arms she scrambled away from him like he was on fire.
The gunshots sounded again, and this time, they seemed even closer. She was breathing hard. He sat up, leaned himself against the coffin, and squinted at her once again. What was she wearing? She was too old to go undercover as a schoolgirl, but that was definitely some sort of uniform—though the skirt seemed much too long—
That was his second clue.
"Kikyou…" he began warily. His third clue was when she crawled back towards him, and her face, inches from his, and bright eyed in the dim blue glow, hissed "Listen—I'm not her. I'm not her." And he realized, with shock, that the face and voice were that of a teenage girl. She must have seen the dawn of this realization on his face, because her own face relaxed and she drew back.
What the hell. What the hell. If that's not Kikyou, then who—then where—fuck, fuck, fuck…
"What's going on?" he rasped.
"I can't explain before they get here." She shoved something enthusiastically in his guts. A semi-automatic. "You know how to use this, right?"
He looked at the gun. Yes, he did know how to use this. Mechanically, he checked the magazine. Almost full. Briefly he looked down at his body and realized, uncomfortably that the only thing he seemed to be wearing was a pair of white boxers. The girl seemed to have noticed this at the same time, and she looked away.
A crashing sound from the doorway interrupted the brief moment of awkwardness.
"Get behind the coffin," he ordered. She looked puzzled for a moment, then complied. He followed.
The crashing sound again. Were they just throwing themselves bodily against the doorway? What kind of idiots—
A couple of shots and the room filled with light. The girl next to him stopped breathing. He glanced over at her and saw her knees pressed tightly against her chest and her hand pressed over her mouth. Her eyes gazed not at him but forward, blindly.
He nearly shouted himself when an alarm began blaring throughout the room and the overhead lights kicked in. Instead, he leaned around the coffin and shot three casual shots towards the men fleeing from the doorway. They clipped one of the men in the leg and he went down, and was abandoned by his fellows. He jumped up and flew towards the hallway. The man was scrabbling toward his gun—what was he wearing, a dress?—but he forced his arms behind his back and pinned him. The man struggled and kicked.
He rethought his strategy and cracked him over the head with a fist. The man slumped down, and he looked around for something to tie him with.
There was a touch on his shoulder and he spun violently but it was just the girl's hand, holding out some duct tape. He mouthed a thank you, and bound the man.
By the time he was done, the alarm had faded off and all that was left was a flashing red light in the corridors and the sound of sirens blaring in the distance. He pulled himself against the wall of the hallway and winced. Just last week, he thought blearily, he could have gone on running and shooting for another hour or more. But now, he felt like sleeping for the next hundred years. He dropped his head to his hands. He felt like he should be running for it—running for his life, running from the cops. Instead, he just felt like he wanted to know one thing. He looked up.
"So who the fuck—" His mouth went dry and he swallowed and finished more softly "—are you?"
He had thought that her minor resemblance to Kikyou had to be just that—a faint similarity that the trick of the light, and the disturbance of his mind had brought about. But the teenage girl standing in the door …her face shaped the same way, her eyes narrowed the same way, her lips curved the same way… even the arch of her eyebrows and the luxurious, unusual length of her hair…it was Kikyou. But it couldn't be.
"Quit the swearing and I'll answer."
"Keh. Whatever. Who are you?" He began to stand up again, and she backed further into the doorway.
"Kagome."
He frowned.
"I'm not gonna hurt you, girl. Just tell me your name."
"I just told you, Kagome. My name's Kagome. KA-GO-ME," she enunciated, inching further away.
"OK, Kagome. Like I said, I'm not gonna hurt you. Keh! I just saved your life, for fuck's sake."
"Excuse me, but you just shot this guy." She lightly kicked the man with her shoe. "How do I know what you're going to do? And stop swearing! It's disgusting!"
The police sirens hit a fever pitch and he realized that they must be outside. He checked both sides of the hallway, suddenly feeling anxious to get away from this little Kagome bitch Kikyou clone, and from the cops. It suddenly struck him hard in the stomach that he really, really didn't want to talk to the cops right now.
The girl—Kagome—saw him looking.
"You're not going to make it if you run." She sighed. "And I have an exam tomorrow! I'm so stupid!" She seemed to have lost all of her fear of him after her scolding, and emerged from the doorway to sit down in the hallway across from him. He sat down as well, but not before he also gave the prone man another kick in the shins.
He heard shouting echoing through the building. He quickly disarmed himself and threw the gun down the hallway.
"Hey, girl." He had a question for her. It was strange—she sounded angry with herself, for even being here but she was looking at him intently. Not checking him out, either—just looking at his face.
"Yeah?" she said eagerly
"Do you have on an undershirt –OUCH!" The answer to his question was a swift kick to his own shins.
"Pervert!" she muttered.
"No, that's not—" He heard the confirming shout and saw the cops finally running down their hallway. He put his hands on his head.
"Inuyasha." He looked up, shocked. She knew his name. Kagome gazed at him seriously as the police finally closed in on them.
"It's the year 2073. Don't tell them I woke you."
"So, tell me again…" The woman started over, her eyes narrowed.
Inuyasha sighed. The only thing he was truly grateful about at this point was that they had given him clothes before they had frogmarched him outside to the police cars. Even before this interrogation proceeded, he had been poked and prodded by a team of doctors in all kinds of uncomfortable places. Something that had never happened to him before after an arrest, even when he was bleeding pretty bad. And then a priest had come in—why it was a priest, Inuyasha didn't even care at that point—and gently broke the news to him, again.
The last thing Inuyasha remembered was the look on Kikyou Higurashi's face as she booked him for a list of charges that both of them knew were a pile of horseshit. But the last thing he should have remembered, the priest told him, was being briefed on what was about to happen to him—being placed in stasis as a temporary hold until work on his trial could begin. Due to unforeseen complications, the priest explained, he had never been brought to trial—Inuyasha got the impression that some kind of vague national or even international tragedy had occurred—and the government had only just now, fifty years later, begun reviewing cases and setting people free.
The stasis technology had been developed in the latter part of the 2010s by China, as they began the run up to the first manned mission to Mars. By the time Inuyasha reached his majority as a career criminal, it had developed a wide variety of other uses as well. Notably, increasingly debt-ridden governments working to reduce their prison populations began placing inmates who might otherwise be waiting years in prison for a trial into stasis. Inuyasha had never exactly understood how this saved space or money, but since stasis counted as time served, criminals begged for it.
There were two downsides to stasis. The first was that you could legally only go under once. Going under more than that had serious health consequences, since stasis was a kind of induced system failure beyond even a heart attack and just short of brain death.
The other downside, which was much more bizarre, was that in stasis you didn't age a day. No one knew exactly how the Chinese figured it out, but it was universally assumed that they had put an infant under to see what would happen.
"You're very fortunate to have been placed in stasis at that time," the priest had said seriously. "Five years later, civilians were executing criminals in the street. The government was able to protect those taking the Long Sleep—move them outside government complexes to various anonymous warehouses, or even office buildings. The others…" He crossed himself. "They never had the chance to prove themselves in court." He'd left on that cheerful note, and a smartly dressed female policeman had come in to begin the real fun
It's 2073. Not 2023, not 2024, not 2025. 2073. Keh, isn't that just like the government to fuck up something like that. And everyone else…Kikyou…they're dead, aren't they? They're all dead. Or old as balls.
His interrogator cleared her throat and began again.
"So, how did exactly did you…"
He banged a fist on the table. This girl and her secrets—why did he feel like he had to keep them?
"I told you," he gritted his teeth "what fucking happened. I told you. I woke up, heard all those gunshots, the girl was there, I fired to protect her. That's it. End of story. Are you deaf or something? Keh!"
"I'm sorry, but there seem to be some inconsistencies—"
"Inconsistent this." He flipped her the bird. The interrogator looked at him, not with anger, but something more like…confusion? What was that? She coughed, and knocked on the glass window behind her.
"Miroku, you're up. I can't make sushi out of this."
The door opened almost immediately, and man in a well-fitted suit with a small ponytail-not another dress, thank God—sauntered into the room. He stopped in front of the table and peered over at Inuyasha.
"Well, he's not exactly lying…just leaving things out. I think you should probably leave it alone for now. I'm pretty sure he hasn't done anything wrong. In fact, we should probably give him a medal for taking down that suspicious looking character. Not that I've seen the, er, shoot-ee, but I'm sure he's suspicious looking." He smiled. "You're extremely lucky. You might not have been woken up for another three years at the least, the rate they're cycling through cases." He draped his hand ever so casually across the back of the interrogator's chair. She sat up straight as a jackknife and her nostrils flared quickly from suppressed anger.
"Now that we're done here, what do you say to dinner? Ms. Shinyoukai." He beamed down at her, putting extra charm in his smile, Inuyasha noted to his amusement.
"I say no." The interrogator stated flatly. "As I have for the last…what, two years?... that you and I have worked together. I'm sure Rosamunda will be glad to take my place." She gathered her papers together and straightened them out against the table. "And may I say once more that your practice of asking me out in front of suspects is extremely unprofessional."
"Unprofessional? I was thinking it was more suspect myself." Miroku punned in what he seemed to think was an artful fashion.
"If you weren't a policeman, idiot, I would deck you for that," Inuyasha informed him. The interrogator grinned and winked.
"Well, as a matter of fact," Shinyoukai said "he's not a policeman. Just a Consultant."
Inuyasha stood up and firmly boxed one of the man's ears with his handcuffed hands. He sat back, smirking, to wait for the rest of the policemen to rush in and grab him. Instead, the man rubbed the side of his head, and the interrogator matter-of-factly handed him an ice pack, which had apparently come from an invisible first aid kit somewhere below the table.
Well, he wasn't going to argue in favor of more policemen, though the longer he spent in 2073, the more confused he got.
A knock on the door. These must be the policemen. He began to put on his best devil-may-care expression, but instead of policemen, a stout, older woman came in, dressed in a formal kimono.
"We have a problem." She shut the door behind her, and looked over at Inuyasha, frowning. He immediately sat up straight, not just because the frown was a little bit scary, but because he recognized her. He recognized her.
She continued talking, as if she hadn't noticed his reaction.
"There's no record of this individual ever being placed in stasis. Not even a secret one, which is what I always suspected. And Kagome is refusing to answer even basic questions like 'what were you doing on the other side of Tokyo' or 'how did you end up inside a securely locked room' or even 'what did you eat for breakfast.'"
"Interesting… not even the data miners could come up with anything from the old servers?" Miroku asked thoughtfully.
The older woman shook her head. "And we have our best team on it, too."
Inuyasha gazed down at his fists, which were resting on the table. If this really was her then Kikyo… His stomach twisted uncomfortably and he clenched his hands. He looked up.
"Kaede Higurashi?"
All three of them turned to look at Inuyasha, but Kaede—because it was Kaede—was the only one who didn't seem surprised to hear her name spoken aloud
"Yes, Inuyasha. I've been wondering what happened to you for a long, long time."
A/N: Stay tuned! The next chapter is finished, but I am probably going to stagger my posts so that I stay a chapter ahead at least. Don't worry if you think things are too similar to canon right now—they are going to start evolving in the next few chapters. Obviously, Kagome's background is a little more complicated, and she is going to start out a little more mysterious, than in canon. I am trying hard to still make this fit in with her canon character, however. In a way, I think, she is the hardest character to write, because it's so easy to project yourself onto her. I'm not saying the other characters don't have their complexities, but they do have "springboard stereotypes" that let you ease into writing them.
One thing I love about her character, though, is that she starts out in the manga as very ordinary, but then as it goes on she develops a real capacity for suffering—which is what in the end really differentiates her from Kikyo, I think, since it always seem like Kikyo is right on the edge of giving up. In this version of the story Kagome is a little older and wiser so she doesn't resemble the Kagome from the first ten volumes so much as she resembles the one from the later volumes. Well, I hope she resembles her, anyway. Please review! Let me know what you think!