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Writing on the Wall
Chapter 25: Sour Grapes
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Inuyasha doesn't make it two bites in before Miroku shoves a newspaper at his face. He sends him a glare, batting it away. "What the fuck? I'm trying to eat here."
Miroku scowls, pushing it towards him forcefully. "Look."
Sango sits in the seat adjacent to him, setting a traditional earthenware teapot on the tea tray. Inuyasha recognizes it as one of Miroku's family heirlooms—the one that usually only gets pulled out for important occasions. "He's not going to stop, you know," she says, pouring the first cup. "And you really should read it."
Grumbling, Inuyasha snatches it from his hand—hoping it will get them off his back already. Then he looks at it and stops. Stares. The picture on the front page looks like a completely normal family, but they're standing on the front steps of his house. It's the yellowed age of the paper, the style of the school uniforms, that clues him in. A glance at the date in the corner would prove his suspicions, but he can't take his eyes off the young woman in the middle. The one he knows has to be Kagome. "She… looks like Kikyo."
He hasn't thought of Kikyo in for-fucking-ever, but he dated her long enough (and loved her hard enough) to recognize when her god damn doppelgänger is staring him in the face.
Sango selects a piece of bok choy from her bowl. "Well, she would, wouldn't she?"
Miroku, still hovering beside him, looks aghast. "That's what you're hung up on? Really?!"
Inuyasha ignores him. He's way more interested in what Sango's talking about. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She rolls her eyes. "They're cousins. Kaede would have been Kagome's aunt."
What? "Are you fucking serious?"
Miroku jabs a finger at the article beneath the photo, cutting in before Sango can answer. "Did you even read it?!"
He hadn't. He'd been too distracted by her face—by finally knowing what she looks like—to really care about what a bunch of reporters had to say. "Who cares? They probably got it all wrong, anyway."
Miroku stares at him, appalled. "She killed them. She killed her family."
Inuyasha's blood runs cold, and his eyes quickly scan the article looking for a contradiction. He doesn't find any. "This—it can't be right. I told you, they got it wrong." They must have—no way Kagome could have killed them. There's just no way.
The couple shares a look over the table. Sango's the one who breaks the deafening silence. "But what if they didn't?"
Inuyasha hates that her words stick with him, a weighted seed that grows and twines around his heart till his faith starts to sour and curdle into doubt.
AN: Dun dun duuuuun! :D
Word Count: 451