Author's Note: Wow. Yesterday I started with 1 review, now I have 10. I guess I was wrong and people are interested in this story. Thanks so much! Please keep them coming!
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
Bread Crumbs
Chapter 5: A Bit of Chocolate
He left Kagome's store and carried on down Main Street until he came to Poplar Road. Poplar Road was the last street in town before the highways that crisscrossed the country and connected the bigger cities. Inuyasha turned left on Poplar, away from the highways and down into a quiet valley. Eventually the houses of the town gave way to huge grassy fields and sparse shrubbery.
He reached the cabin that he was now occupying just as the sun was going down. He ran the final stages of his journey, the clanging of the items in the garbage can announcing his arrival. It assured him to see Kikyo come through the door way to wait for him.
They embraced each other upon his arrival, the garbage full of goodies forgotten for a moment.
"I'm home!" he called mockingly. Kikyo smiled at him. The cabin was hardly a home, rather a place to stay. "I wonder if we will be able to ever do that for real?" he asked absently, a rare moment of nostalgia settling in.
"Eventually." Kikyo assured him. "For now, though, we'll have to pretend." He didn't miss the sadness in her voice.
"Keh, who needs to pretend? For now, we can make this our home." He was trying to shake the feeling of nostalgia off. It unsettled him to feel this way, especially after such a good day. "Wait 'till you see what I brought back for us." He took her hand and led her back into the cabin.
He didn't make it past the door. The sight before him had paralyzed him with shock and took away his breath. The shack was … clean. Kikyo gripped his hand tighter. "I told you I'd have this place so clean you wouldn't recognize it." Her voice was merry, a change from this morning.
"Wow, Kikyo…this is…this is amazing."
The floor had been scrubbed and scraped to reveal an old, but serviceable lattice-works of wooden floorboards. The walls were of a similar type, the cobwebs cleaned out of the corners and their largest blanket strung up to cover the huge hole in the gaping roof. There were cupboards that he hadn't noticed before, but they had long ago lost their doors. He could see the careful organization of all the food and small items they owned lined up on the interior shelves of the cupboards. To one side, a few of the floorboards had rotten away, so the whole had been filled up with dirt and lined with some spare wood. Three tin cans, rusted with age, stuck out of the dirt, each holding an assortment of burning grass, twigs and fabrics.
"I had to use two of the blankets, one for the roof and one for the cleaning. The cleaning one because so gross that I'm burning. It was hard work but I got it done. Although, sleeping might be a bit uncomfortable, since we only have two blankets and a hard wooden floor." Nevertheless, she was proud of her afternoon accomplishments. The blisters on her hands and the pain in her back had been worth it, just to see his reaction.
"That's fine. Jeez, this place even smells nice!" He wandered around inside for a few moments, exploring. Finally he sat down next to the fire pit, dragging the garbage can over with him. Kikyo sat down next to him, eager to see what he had brought home.
"This work thing might not be so bad. It's pretty easy, and she's paying me a ridiculously large amount. With the money I'm making we'll be richer than we ever have been since we left the city!" He took all the food out from the garbage can and placed it in between them. Then he placed the garbage can on the pile of dirt, intending to make a fire in it later.
Kikyo stared greedily at the cinnamon buns, the chocolate bars, and pasta. She thought back to the afternoon, when she ate the bowl of ramen that Inuyasha brought back earlier. If she kept eating like this, she'd either be sick or fat! She held her hand up to her mouth and coughed. "This is wonderful Inuyasha." She told him.
"Dig in!" he told her, going over to the cupboards to get the bread and ramen from this morning. Kikyo picked up the thermos and began to much away of the pasta, which was a little cold, but still delicious all the same.
"Did Kagome make this herself?" she asked Inuyasha who was still at the cupboards, bread in hand but searching around for something.
"I think so. It's good isn't it? Where's the ramen?"
Kikyo froze. Ramen had always been Inuyasha's favourite, and she had unthinkingly eaten it while he was gone. "Um… The ramen is gone."
He sat back on her heels and stared at her. The look in his eyes was akin to that of a lost puppy. "But why is the ramen gone?" he asked confused.
"Because I ate it" she said very quietly before forcibly putting another pasta noodle into her mouth. Inuyasha came back to where he was before.
"What was that? I didn't quiet catch it." He picked up a cinnamon bun, but didn't open it.
Kikyo swallow the pasta. "I ate it." She said a little louder.
"You ate the ramen!" he yelled.
"I was hungry!" she yelled back.
"I was hungry all afternoon, but I didn't eat the rest of the pasta! You had almost a whole loaf of bread you could have eaten!" He chucked the cinnamon bun at her playfully. It bounced off her head harmlessly, but her eyes widened with mischief.
"It's just bread. It gets old after awhile. I didn't want to eat all the bread…" she grabbed the cinnamon bun off the floor and chucked it back at him, but he caught it.
"Oh, not the bread, just the ramen! Damn it Kikyo, even when we have nothing you're still as picky as ever!" they were both laughing at each other while trying to maintain a visage of seriousness. The fight had progressed to include such projectiles as the chocolate bars, the water bottle, even a wayward spoon.
When the bombardment stopped, Kikyo finished her pasta and Inuyasha made some sort of a sandwich with two piece of bread and a cinnamon bun, which was slightly squished from the fight.
"What is that?" Kikyo asked, pointing at the sandwich and picking up her own cinnamon bun.
"What?" he asked, his mouth full of bun and bread.
"That concoction in your mouth, what is it?" she clarified, although she wasn't surprised. For as long as she had known him, he was always eating weird combinations of foods and drinks.
"Oh. It's food. I could be eating ramen, but no, someone already ate it." He glared at her and pushed the last bit of the sandwich in his mouth. Together they put away the remaining food, and pulled out the blankets, making something that resembled a bed.
They made idle chit chat about their days as Inuyasha got a bigger fire going. He told her all about Kagome's hobo phobic tendencies and his work at the store. With the sun fully set now, the air had gotten a bit chilly. Kikyo was wearing his sweater but he could tell she was shivering a bit.
"Do you ever regret leaving?" she asked suddenly.
He was taken off guard by the question. It wasn't like Kikyo to feel reminiscent about the past. "What kind of question is that?" he asked, unwilling to answer.
Kikyo had wrapped herself in a blanket. She coughed and looked at him. "If we never left the city, we wouldn't have fought about food. We wouldn't have gone hungry for days. We wouldn't have to walk long distances for days on end." It was true. Leaving had been hard, and life after they left had been harder.
Inuyasha was quiet for a moment. The fire was in full swing in the garbage can. The smoke drifted up and out of a conveniently placed opening in-between the real roof and the blanket. He crawled back beside her, wrapping his arms around her in a comforting hug. It was a long while before he spoke. They could hear the crickets chirping
"I don't regret it." He told her. "If we didn't leave the city, you know that we never would have been able to be together."
"Yes. It's just been so hard." She whispered. Sleep tugged at her eyes and she yawned. "It would be nice to sleep in a real bed."
When they had first met, Kikyo had been one of those high matinence girls who wore designer clothes and ate only at expensive restaurants when she wasn't eating food prepared by her family's personal chef. Homeless life had been hard on her, especially during the first few weeks. Since then though, they had both toughened up.
"It's certainly not the romantic fairy tale we thought it would be." Inuyasha stated simply, before pulling the blanket around him. "I'm just grateful that you're still with me."
"I love you." She told him before closing her eyes, finally falling into a state of sleep.
"I love you too."
It was a long while before he fell asleep. The past was just that, the past. It couldn't be changed, but that didn't stop him from reliving the days of his youth in his mind.
