I forgot the disclaimer on chapter one, so here it is for all chapters.
Disclaimer: Inuyasha and all related characters, settings, etc. are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. Would that we were all as brilliant as she…
Day Two.
Five hundred years and a few miles away, Kagome sat in a dress shop awaiting her turn with the seamstress.
"So I told him," Eri was babbling on to her companions, "that I absolutely refused to get married on some dinky boat in the ocean. My mother would have killed me if I'd agreed to that!"
Yuka and Kagome laughed, nodding their heads in agreement. "You know Kagome," Yuka began, "I always thought Eri would be the first one to get married, and you the last."
Not certain whether to be insulted or merely curious, Kagome's eyebrows raised in question.
"Oh, it's nothing bad," Yuka quickly covered. "Just that, well, you never seemed to have a handle on your man situation back in middle school. Then that 'bad boy' Inuyasha of yours pops out of nowhere and a couple of years later you're married!"
"Speaking of, it's a shame he won't be at the wedding," Eri chimed in. "Aki was really hoping to meet him."
"Yes, I'm sure we could have found a babysitter for the children. I'm amazed you left him alone with a newborn!"
Kagome fiddled nervously with the edge of her bridesmaids' gown, searching her mind for a believable excuse. Yes, well, I kinda thought the fuzzy ears would freak out the babysitter, she mentally scoffed. "Believe me, the toddlers are a handful and a half," she finally answered. "But Kano, he's such an angel. Barely makes a peep all night!"
* * * * *
"WAAAAHHHH!!!!"
Inuyasha ran to the nursery, quickly scooping his normally silent son into his arms and searching him all over for signs of injury. Finding none, he scrunched his eyebrows in frustration and began hopping up and down, hoping the movements would quiet the little one.
"Daddy? Why's Kano crying? Can't sleep!"
"Go back to your room," Inuyasha growled, his patience quickly wearing thin.
"But—"
"GO!"
Inuko shrunk back at the fierce look in his father's eyes, and stumbled in the darkened hallway back to his bedroom. Jiro, somehow, managed to sleep through the commotion. Were babies supposed to be so loud? Kano never screamed like that when Mommy was around, he thought to himself.
Back in the nursery, Inuyasha paced nervously, still rocking his wailing young ningen son back and forth. While Jiro had been colicky for his first five months, Inuyasha recalled Inuko had been a very quiet baby, just like Kano. Unless he got sick, that is. Inuyasha studied the young one, sniffing at the air around him but finding nothing off.
"You chose a wonderful time to start begging for attention, Kano," the hanyou sighed miserably. "Now what's that song your okaasan is always singing you to…"
Three hours and six half-remembered lullabies later, Inuyasha fell back onto the futon he and Kagome shared. In the distance he could hear the village roosters crowing the early dawn, and prayed that his hanyou sons' sensitive ears would tune out the racket for at least another few hours.
He wasn't quite so fortunate.
* * * * *
CRASH!
"Eek!" Inuko ran from the room while Jiro stood amidst a spray of glass shards. Frozen by shock, he didn't notice when his otou came running into the room.
"Jiro!"
"Chichi?"
"What happened here?" Inuyasha surveyed the room, folding his arms into his sleeves in the most menacing pose he could conjure. He could easily intimidate Inuko, but for some reason Jiro never seemed quite moved. Frustrating as it was, Inuyasha would admit – in private moments anyway – that his three-year-old's attitude reminded him very much of his own stubbornness.
The little one continued to glance from the mess surrounding him to the angry hanyou adult towering above him.
"Jiro –"
"Not me."
"Oh, who then?"
"Inuko."
Inuyasha stared him down, searching the boy's face for any sign of lying. He sighed. "INUKO!"
His eldest came timidly into the room, his hands clasped behind his back. "Chichi?"
"What happened here?"
The young hanyou's gaze shifted nervously from his angry father's face to the shattered vase and back again, his voice lost in guilt and fear.
"Well?" Inuyasha's foot began tapping impatiently.
"Broke."
"I can see that." If he weren't so mad, the hanyou might have laughed at the simple answer.
"Was playing wiff the ball."
"In the house?"
"Hai."
"Inuko bad," Jiro announced smugly.
Rounding on his middle child, Inuyasha growled lightly. He swept across the living room with his hand, indicated the various other misplaced items and crushed crayons he was just now taking in. "I suppose Inuko did all of this by himself?"
"Did not!" Inuko shouted, indignant.
"And was Inuko playing with the ball by himself?"
"Iie," Jiro answered quietly.
"Clean up this mess – both of you. I don't want to hear a peep coming out of this room until the crayons are put away and the blankets are in your room. And stay away from the glass, I'll get that myself." After extricating Jiro from the center of the shards, he walked toward the kitchen, grumbling about children and Kami's greatest plague on earth. Down the hall, Kano awoke from his nap and started screaming again.
* * * * *
"Kami please let him sleep a full hour this time," Inuyasha prayed silently as he laid his infant son back into the bassinette his mother-in-law had gifted them with. After inspecting the living room, he'd sent his older sons to play outside, threatening them with an early bedtime sans dinner if they chose to so much as tap a wall within ten feet of their younger brother.
Three more days. Three more days and then Kagome better come straight back with a smile on her face.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't entirely fair of him, he grudgingly admitted. After all, she dealt with this every day while he and Miroku went off on youkai hunts. Still, caring for the young was women's work, was it not? Inuyasha smirked as he imagined the sitting he'd receive if his thoughts were vocalized around his rather temperamental mate.
Oh yeah, I'd never walk again.
"Chichi?"
Inuyasha was abruptly dragged from his thoughts by the soft, hesitant voice of Inuko.
"Shh! What did I tell you about making noise indoors?" he whispered gruffly.
"Gomen… but… Jiro… got sick."
Blinking in confusion, Inuyasha allowed his eldest to drag him to the kitchen where, indeed, Jiro was heaving a lovely pile of brown-tinted bile.
"What happened?"
Inuko shrugged, scrunching his nose at the offensive smell. "Dunno."
Striding toward Jiro, Inuyasha suddenly guessed the cause of his son's nausea. The innocent looking golden wrapper on the kitchen table sparkled in the afternoon light, and just a small amount of its sweet contents remained hidden beneath.
"You ate your mother's chocolate?!"
Shivering with the aftereffects of his convulsions, Jiro nodded weakly. "Was good, Daddy."
Sighing in frustration, the hanyou silently berated himself for his carelessness. The sweet, a favorite of Kagome's, was lethal to dogs in large doses, particularly the concentrations found in dark chocolate. He'd built up an immunity to small amounts, but while Jiro was technically only quarter inuyoukai, he had no idea what his tolerance was.
A good deal of the offending substance had already evacuated his stomach; that was the first step. What to do next, however, had him stumped. As he searched his mind for something to do, a saving grace appeared in the doorway.
"Oyajii, how're you handling things?" Seventeen-year-old Shippou strode purposefully into the room, taking in the scene around him. "Oi, looks like I got here just in time. I knew you'd find a way to screw up. Kagome's going to be pissed."
"Shut up, Baka. If you can't help, then get out."
Shippou, duly chastened, came to stand next to his adopted father and watched the pitiful Jiro as he continued to cough up small bits of chocolate.
"You fed him chocolate?"
"No," Inuyasha ground out in annoyance, "he helped himself. Though I suppose it didn't help that I left it on the counter," he added silently to himself.
"Well he's already coughing it up, that's good," Shippou noted. "I'll run to Kaede's and see if she can give me some medicine to get the poison out of his system."
"Yeah, you do that," Inuyasha agreed.
"Be back in a bit."
Waving the kitsune off, Inuyasha pulled his son into his arms and brought him into the living room, laying him onto the couch and checking him over for signs of shock. Other than shivering from the stress, the toddler seemed fine.
He wiped strands of silvery hair from the boy's face, trying to comfort him until Shippou arrived. After what felt like hours, the kitsune returned, bearing a bottle of blackened ash which he called 'activated charcoal' and an empty syringe.
"Kaede said this is what Kagome brought to use when you got into her cocoa that one time," Shippou explained. "You have to squirt some of this in his mouth every three hours until nightfall and then he should be fine." He snickered a bit at his next revelation. "She said it's going to make a huge mess, especially if he spits it up, so… good luck!" Laughing his head off, Shippou almost felt bad for Inuyasha. Almost being the key word. A bigger part of him held barely suppressed glee at the idea of Inuyasha attempting to play nursemaid.
After getting half a dose into the chocolate-thieving boy, Inuyasha quickly discovered just how much of a mess the medicine created. The stuff spread like crazy, covering every suface it touched with a sheen of powdery black that reminded him of Naraku's miasma. The stuff was fast appearing on every surface, even showing up in places Inuyasha didn't remember touching!
Shippou took pity on the hanyou, and retrieved a rag from the kitchen, mopping up the mess wherever it appeared. Jiro finally fell asleep for his noontime nap, giving Inuyasha and Shippou the chance to sit back and relax.
"So what are you doing here anyway? Come to poke fun at me?"
"Pretty much," Shippou answered with a smirk. "Actually, I promised Okaa-san that I'd check in on you. She knew you'd be too proud to ask for help, so I came to see if you needed me. Good timing, ne?"
Grudingly, the hanyou nodded and agreed.
"So what other excitement have I missed?"
"You mean besides Kano screaming all night, the crayon mess on the floor, and some ten dogfights between Jiro and Inuko?"
Shippou's eyes widened, and he laughed softly. "Sounds like you've been having fun."
"I'd rather fight Naraku again," Inuyasha grumbled. A moment of peace settled between them before he spoke again. "How about you? Anything exciting?"
Shrugging, the kitsune toyed with his katana, a gift from Inuyasha and Kagome on his fifteenth birthday. "Not really. Things have been pretty quiet in my neck of the woods. I um," he blushed slightly, "I've been thinking of taking a mate."
"Oh really?" Inuyasha smiled an almost evil grin. "You really should talk to Miroku. I'm sure he'd just LOVE to share some advice with you."
"No, thanks. I think I can handle this on my own," Shippou quickly replied. Kami help him if Miroku caught word of his plans…
* * * * * *
The long day ended as the sun set, draping the world in a dark cloak of night. Having fed himself and Inuko, Inuyasha set about securing the hut for the night, checking in on Jiro who continued to sleep soundly on a futon in the living room.
"Time for bed, Inuko."
The young boy bit his lip and looked up at his father. "I want to sleep with you, Daddy."
"What did your okaa-san and I tell you about that?"
"I'm too big," he answered sullenly.
"Exactly."
"But Daddy… I'm scared. It's dark!"
"Just like your mother," Inuyasha groaned. "She used to be afraid of the dark too."
Giving a hopeful glance upwards again, Inuko was sad to see his father looking every bit as resolute as he had when he'd answered the first time. The man was not going to budge.
"Read a story?"
"Not tonight. Tomorrow, if you are good."
"But Daddy—"
"To bed. Now."
With a small huff, Inuko dragged his feet toward the room he usually shared with Jiro. Tonight, however, he'd have to fight the shadows alone. With a little sniffle he crawled under his covers and pulled them up tight around his head. No serpent demons were going to find him!
Across the hall, Kano shivered in his sleep. Had Inuyasha known to check, he would have discovered the faint scent of his infant son's first illness.
* * * * *
vocab:
ningen = human