A Hanyou in Tokyo

By socchan

Seven: Recovery

Inu-Yasha stood anxiously outside the door to Kagome's mother's room. He had been waiting there the last couple of hours, not knowing the time Mrs. Higurashi normally started her day, and reluctant to wake her up. Kagome he had left in her bed when he had done all he could for her. Hovering over her and waiting for her situation to improve wouldn't do her much good, and it might well drive him to the brink of insanity. It was in times like these that one turned to a mother, because like it or not, in most cases, Mother Knows Best. Even if she couldn't do much to help Kagome directly, there were other things she could do to support her daughter. So, with this in mind, Inu-Yasha waited.

A rather sleep-muffled and tired Mrs. Higurashi opened the door at last to find Inu-Yasha waiting patiently for her. She stopped mid-yawn, and waited expectantly. Inu-Yasha wasted no time getting to the root of the problem.

"We had a little incident last night, and Kagome used up all her power. She's unconscious right now, and will probably remain that way for a while. It would be best to pull her out of school today so she can recover. And unless the old man knows how to treat a miko for magic drainage, I'll probably have to stay home, too."

Kagome's mother blinked, digesting the information. "Very well," she said, "I'll call the school to tell them you're not coming. I doubt Grandfather knows anything helpful, and even if he did, I wouldn't trust him not to mix and match inappropriate cures." She smiled at him, and Inu-Yasha breathed a sigh of relief. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Inu-Yasha nodded. "Cinnamon. You're not going to believe it, but she needs cinnamon. Lots of it, too. I'll write up a short list of some other stuff I'll need, but cinnamon's a good start."

Kagome's mother pondered. "We have some cinnamon sticks in the pantry. Shall I bring them up?"

Inu-Yasha nodded, gratefully. "Thank you, Mrs. Higurashi."

She smiled warmly. "It's no problem. I trust her in your care. Just one thing."

"Name it." Inu-Yasha said, and meant it.

"Call me 'Mom'? It'll be like having another child in the house."

The look on Inu-Yasha's face was hard to place, but if Mrs. Higurashi had to call it something, it might've been hope. He smiled, tentatively. "Sure thing, Mom." His eyes were alight with something that could have been tears. "I'll be up in Kagome's room."

Mrs. Higurashi nodded, her eyes glittering suspiciously. "Of course. I'll bring the cinnamon right up."

"Thanks, Mom."

Kagome's mother knocked lightly on her daughter's door. A muffled "Come in!" sounded from inside, and she opened the door, shutting it softly behind her. Inu-Yasha was seated in a chair by Kagome's bed, dressed hurriedly in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He had a book open in his lap. He looked up and smiled when Mrs. Higurashi entered the room.

"I brought the cinnamon up," Mrs. Higurashi said, holding out the jar. Inu-Yasha thanked her and took it. He marked his book and unscrewed the lid, sniffing lightly over the top. He smiled in satisfaction when he was sure the contents were fresh. He took out a stick gently, and tapped a little of the spice loose from the end of it into Kagome's partially open mouth. "How is she?" Mrs. Higurashi asked, unable to keep the question in any longer.

"She's doing okay," Inu-Yasha said after a pause. "She hasn't woken up yet, and probably won't for a while now, but she's doing better than I suspected. She's getting her powers back faster than anyone I've ever seen. She should be fine by this afternoon. That's sooner than the powerful and highly trained priests and priestesses I've seen in this situation."

"You have the list ready?"

Inu-Yasha nodded, and dug a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He smoothed it out the best he could, and handed it to Mrs. Higurashi. "I don't know how hard it is to find some of these right now, but they'll help Kagome recover her strength faster. Without them, it could take up to a week for her to be up to one hundred percent again."

Mrs. Higurashi took the list and scanned the old, precise handwriting. "Right. I'll bring up some breakfast for you before I go. You want coffee?"

He smiled, briefly. "Yes, please."

"Alright then. I'll see you in a bit." Mrs. Higurashi left, and closed the door behind her.

For a long time, Inu-Yasha just sat there, staring at Kagome. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically with her breathing, and her dark hair haloed out around her head on the pillow. Softly, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Don't leave me, Kagome." He whispered. "Not yet. Not before we have a chance to get that jewel out. You're stubborn; you've proved it to me already. Don't give up on me." He withdrew his hand.

His forehead wrinkled in a slight frown. "She looks so much like Kikyo, it's almost scary. But they act almost nothing alike. Well, when you get to the basics, they're sort-of similar, but Kikyo was more withdrawn, more sorrowful. Kagome is more carefree and happy. It's almost as if they're two different versions of the same person." He sighed, and brought a hand up to rub his temples gently. "Kikyo is dead. I'll never have to face her again. Kagome on the other hand, is alive, and for now, I plan to keep it that way. No matter what it takes." The distinction made, Inu-Yasha leaned back in his chair and opened the book again. There was a lot of waiting to be done.

A few miles outside city limits, Naraku had again found something he'd been looking for. This one had been a bit easier to find, but harder to get to. After all, while locations of near-death experiences are generally easy to remember, they tend to be harder to face.

Picking his way carefully over the grounds, he at last found the grave he was looking for. In it was buried the woman who had 'killed' him.

She'd been a lively little thing with long dark hair and eyes. She wielded the boomerang like nobody's business, and was a fair hand with a sword, too. Still, in the end, she had died, and not of natural causes, either.

They had really taken one another out, and Naraku had found pleasant irony in how similar these events were to something that he had enacted some fifty years prior. After the exterminator had blown him to pieces, he had watched events unfold with a curious eye. First, the exterminator had died from the poison he had inflicted on her system. Her little brother, seeing she was dead, had gone on a rampage, destroying more demons than Naraku would have thought possible with his war-sickle. When the battle had drawn to a close, he cried bitter tears at the loss of his sister, and buried his war-sickle with her in place of the boomerang. His days of using the war-sickle were over, and by learning to use his sister's weapon, he reasoned, perhaps a part of her would live on with the survivors, lending them strength. With heavy hearts, the remaining taiji-ya left to form a new home. Months after this, Naraku at last pulled his pieces together, and, cursing the grounds and all taiji-ya, he left.

Now he had returned at last, but not to reminisce. Instead, he came to gather strength. Focusing his power, he held out a hand, and twisted it. The earth that had once been a living person lifted from the ground, bones inter-mingling with it. He directed it to a wooden chest at his side. Following the earth was a war-sickle, battered and worn by time. It flew to rest in his outstretched hand. Smiling slightly, Naraku summoned his wasps to carry him and the chest away.

Kagome was very disoriented when she awoke. She couldn't recall the last thing that had happened to her, and she felt downright strange. When she lifted a hand to wipe the sleep away, she got something on her eyes; there was an oil of some sort on her palms. Confused, she sat up. Someone pressed a cup into her hands. "Drink." A familiar voice commanded. "It'll make you feel better." Frowning, Kagome did as she was told. Sweet cinnamon tea flowed past her lips. She blinked a couple of times to clear her vision.

"What time is it?" she croaked.

"A little after two in the afternoon." Kagome turned her head in the direction of the speaker, and Inu-Yasha came into focus.

"Two o'clock?!" Kagome yelped, sitting bolt upright. "I missed school!"

Inu-Yasha clapped his hands over his ears. "Ow! Bitch. Keep it down, would ya? You could break something with that voice."

Kagome scowled. "That's beside the point. The point is—"

"The point is," Inu-Yasha interrupted, "that last night you totally drained yourself, and even if you could have gotten up to go to school, which wasn't possible by the way, you would have been falling asleep in class the entire time. It defeats the purpose of going in the first place!"

"No, I wouldn't have!" Kagome argued. "I could've stayed awake!"

Inu-Yasha opened his mouth to argue some more, then closed it and scowled at her. "Fine. You think you know more about magic than I do? Then you can just take care of yourself next time." He picked up his book, stood, and stormed out of the room.

Something had fallen from his lap when he got up. At first Kagome only glared at it in defiance, but curiosity eventually got the best of her. She leaned down and picked it up.

It was a thick ring of inter-woven wire. Glass beads were attached around the outside rim, each with a different symbol carved into it by what she assumed was one of Inu-Yasha's claws. A loop at the top connected it to a string made of some type of red fabric. Frowning, Kagome recognized it as being similar to the cloth he'd been wearing when they'd first met. Distantly, she felt a strange energy radiating from it. When she tried to read what the energy was designed to do, she found that not only could she not make it out, it gave her a fierce headache.

Absently, Kagome reached out to take a drink from the cup she'd been given earlier. To her surprise, as soon as the liquid entered her system, she felt stronger. Kagome blinked, and took another sip. This time, she could feel her power flair as the liquid flowed down her throat. Cautiously, she tried again to read the energy pattern from the ring. She still couldn't quite make it out, but it was getting clearer, and it no longer gave her a headache.

A wave of guilt washed over Kagome. Inu-Yasha had been right about the tea; he'd probably been right about everything else, too. He'd been trying to help her, and she'd thrown it back in his face. Straightening, Kagome resigned herself to apologizing. She got to her feet—

--and promptly fell right back on the bed. "Maybe I'd better drink some more tea before I confront him." Kagome muttered. After all, it wouldn't do if she passed out while trying to apologize.

Fifteen minutes, twelve cups of cinnamon tea, and a trip to the bathroom later, Kagome went searching for Inu-Yasha. She found the dog-boy outside, lounging—or sulking, she couldn't tell which—in the higher branches of one of the trees. She stood under the tree a moment, debating action.

Inu-Yasha beat her to it. "What do you want?"

Definitely sulking, Kagome decided. "I came to say I'm sorry." She called up to him.

"Oh, really?" Sarcasm dripped from his words. "How amusing."

Kagome was starting to feel slightly miffed, and being in the position of one trying to repent for past deeds didn't help much. "Look," she said, irritably, "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. You were right. I wouldn't have been able to get anything done in school even if I had been able to make it there in one piece. I was wrong. I guess I'm just not used to not knowing what's going on or what to do. I'm not the expert; you are." She had gotten quieter as she made this speech. The next thing she said was so quiet, Inu-Yasha almost had to strain his ears to pick it up. "And… I also wanted to say thank you… for taking care of me."

He waited a few minutes for her to say something else, but she remained silent. "Is that all?"

"Well, no." she admitted. "You dropped something when you left, and I wanted to return it to you." She dug the ring from her pocket, and held it up to him.

He glanced down at her, trying to seem nonchalant. "Oh, that." Inu-Yasha shrugged. "You can keep it."

"Huh? But, I thought you'd want it back." Kagome looked rapidly between the necklace and the hanyou. It was lovely, certainly, but she was sure he'd need it for something.

"Nah." He dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. "I don't want it. I made it for you anyway."

"Oh." Kagome was silent for a moment. Then, "What's it for?"

Inu-Yahsa sighed and dropped deftly from the branches. "It's a protective amulet." He explained. "The symbols on the beads are to keep you from completely draining your magic again. The amulet will also store excess magic for you, so you'll recover faster."

"Ah." Kagome smiled shyly at him, and slipped the necklace on. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "It's nothing, really. Now, we need to get some more cinnamon in you." Kagome moaned.

=^-,-^= End Chapter Seven =^-,-^=

This one was kinda a filler chapter. I also worked with trying to make Inu more of a jerk, but I guess I'm not very good at it ^^; Probably comes from that nasty habit I have of always trying to see the good in people. Really need to work on that. Anyhow, sometime I'm going to go through and re-do this so I can really bring out his jerky-ness, so if you have any other suggestions while I'm at it, I'd love to hear them. So far my best characterization of Inu has been during fighting scenes ^^; I wonder why…

Teo: Hang on a sec... * thinks a moment * You're right; I am being confusing. My bad, Shippo is not the same age as he was in canon; he was born at the same time, tho. That would mean he's grown up since the feudal era. I did mention that Kagome could 'sit' Inu with the necklace; it's in the beginning of the third chapter.

Tenshineko: Ah! I absolutely adored that last review. I went back and read it three times. Can I alter it and use it as my summary ^_^? Pretty please with a dedication on top?

ArtemisMoon: I'm honored to get reviewed by you, and sad if you've stopped reading. I guess I'm just not creative enough to keep Inu in character on the first try. Or second, now that I think of it. Ah, well, third time's the charm (I hope). I think I will use that idea you suggested. Don't worry—you'll get credit. Hope you aren't too put off by this to give it another try when I've re-vamped it a bit.

I think that's everything. Oh, and the next arch will feature Sesshy, Rin, and the Tetsusaiga. Plus that annoying kid who sits next to Inu-Yasha in class. How do they all fit in? I guess you'll have to read and find out ^_~.

Disclaimer: If I owned Inu-Yasha, I would probably have done a much worse job with him and the rest of the crew than Takahashi-san has done. For this, I thank her. But I don't own it, and that means that it is the wonderful story we all (supposedly) know and love. Thanks for listening!

Edit (1-1-04): Changed number of cups of tea Kagome drank.  I was picturing a rather small cup (like the kind in Chinese restaurants) but realized, with Teo's help, that even then seventeen was a rather large number of cups to have drunk in such a short amount of time.

-socchan