Disclaimer: Inuyasha and all characters from Inuyasha do not belong to me. They can be credited to the ingenious Takahashi Rumiko. The song 'Your Daddy's Son' is from the musical Ragtime and is sung by Audra McDonald. It's a gorgeous song and I highly recommend downloading it… the climax is so …just huge!... and wonderful!
Warnings: Angst
Your Daddy's Son
By ineXpressible
Daddy played piano, played it very well.
Music from those hands could catch you like a spell.
He could make you love him 'fore the tune was done.
You have your daddy's hands.
You are your daddy's son.
He seemed entranced, Kagome decided, as she watched Inuyasha discover her piano for the first time. His fingers trailed over the ivory and ebony keys, delicately, as if they were fragile, like a newborn child.
The first note he'd ever played was a high d above middle c. The shock on his face as the note struck a chord with his heart; she'd never forget it. He'd turned to her with wonderment on his face and asked quietly, "Kagome, will you play for me?"
How could she say no to such sincere eyes?
So she'd played, it was a beautiful song she'd learned in her early years of playing the piano. 'Shallows' was the title of the song if she remembered correctly. Inuyasha had loved it; had loved her for playing it.
Kagome would never have guessed that Inuyasha had an affinity for music beneath his harsh layers of obstinacy. Yet, he surprised her with his love for her playing. The one thing only she could give him.
It was only natural that he ask her to teach him to play.
And so she did.
He was a genius on the timid instrument to say the least. Each note Inuyasha played; he poured his soul, his heart, into it. Kagome would sit noiselessly on the futon, in a trance, and listen… watch. She could see the pain on his face as he relived memories of exile from his childhood; reminisce in his mother's consoling embrace.
He'd always finish with tears in his eyes. However, they never left their moist haven. He was too proud for that. So Kagome cried for him, with him even. She did the one thing he never could:
Cry.
She'd always loved him from the depths of her soul but she supposed it was this new intimacy through music they shared that finally brought them together.
The sheen of sweat on his soft golden skin as he showered her in kisses and whispered timid words of love.
How naïve a girl in love is…
Daddy never knew that you were on your way.
He had other ladies and other tunes to play.
When he up and left me, I just up and run.
Only thing in my head-
You were your daddy's son.
It was the day Kagome came to terms with the gap left by Kikyou in Inuyasha's soul that she realized she would never be enough for him. He loved the other just as much as he loved her and, though she wished she could force him to choose, Kagome could never find the strength to harm him in such a way. She would never bring herself to intentionally inflict pain upon the one she loved.
Loves
This was the reason she never told him of the one thing she possessed that Kikyou never could.
His child.
Were she to tell him that she was pregnant with his child, Inuyasha would have to choose between the two loves of his life and he would be unwilling to leave Kagome to raise the pup on her own. Some obligations were greater than promises.
Some obligations were simply that, obligations.
Kagome would raise her child alone before she became an obligation to the one she loved.
If Inuyasha knew, he never told her, although Kagome was certain he was aware of her pregnancy and that he was the father. A month into the pregnancy his protective nature over her increased ten-fold and five months later, when the jewel was finally complete and Naraku defeated, he didn't beg her to stay.
He simply bid her farewell, tears pooling in the depths of his amber eyes as he stared at her swollen stomach, transfixed.
She could never admit it, but Kagome knew she was not the one Inuyasha was saying goodbye to; it was the child he'd never know that he was addressing.
And so once again, Kagome did the one thing Inuyasha could never do. She cried for him, for their child, but most of all, she cried for her broken heart.
Couldn't hear no music.
Couldn't see no light.
Mama, she was frightened-
Crazy from the fright.
Tears without no comfort.
Screams without no sound.
The month before the child was born, Kagome slipped into a deep depression. The well was still open to her for some unknown reason but she refused to return, refused to confirm that her nightmares were more than horrific dreams.
She was a disappointment to all those who knew her and somehow, she couldn't find the strength to care. The only person that she wanted to acknowledge her had made his decision.
Inuyasha had made his decision.
He would not love her or her unborn child. If he had truly wanted to raise his child with her and make a life with her, he would have traveled through the well to drag her back with him. He would have loved her as he had said he did many times before in intense moments of passion.
And so Kagome locked herself away from the world. She closed her heart off and threw away the key.
The key to her heart.
The key to his heart.
She gave up piano.
Only darkness and pain,
The anger and pain,
The blood and the pain!
The child was born at home, in Kagome's bedroom, on her bed. She refused to be taken to the hospital.
What would they, the doctors, say if she gave birth to a child with honey coloured eyes of an unnatural shade, hair the colour of a shimmering spider's web, and two tiny silver appendages similar to dog-ears atop his head?
And so Kagome's mother delivered the baby and, after six months of trying to determine the father's identity, she was given her answer.
She received her answer in the tiny canines that gnawed gently on her forefinger, in the delicate fingers that grasped her hand in a timid grip and dug jagged nails into her wrist, and in the two amber eyes that stared up at her with the same expression he had stared up at her with the first time they had met.
"Oh Kagome…" She'd cooed, staring at her shaking daughter's form.
Someone finally understood Kagome's pain.
No one understood why she took his life.
I buried my heart in the ground!
In the ground-
When I buried you in the ground.
And so Kagome took her son's life. At the age of two days, the only son of Kagome and Inuyasha died.
She buried him in the Sengoku Jidai after she'd killed him. Contrary to what she told herself, her son should be buried near his father, the real reason Kagome buried the young unnamed child in Inuyasha's era was because she wanted, needed, an excuse to return to the time-period that had been such a large part of her life.
Daddy played piano, bet he's playin' still.
Mama can't forget him, don't suppose I will.
God wants no excuses; I have only one:
You had your daddy's hands.
Forgive me.
You were your daddy's son.
Inuyasha never came to her. But sometimes, when she stood by the grave where she'd buried all hopes of a future with him, Kagome would see him hiding behind the tree where they had first met, watching as she did the one thing he never could.
Cry.