Chapter Twenty-Five: Stuck in a Moment
Lugging an overstuffed gym bag over her shoulder, Kagome entered her room and leaned back against the door until it shut behind her. Exhausted, she slumped until the bag fell onto the floor. When it thumped, her gaze drifted to it. A ribbon of plastic jutted through the teeth of the main zipper, evidence of the trash bag inside, one that held Sesshoumaru's bloody and tattered clothes.
When they had finally made it back from the hotel, he had insisted on visiting the woodworking shed. And when he had emerged, he sported fresh clothes with the bag in hand. The change hadn't done much for the blood that matted his hair or streaked his neck. Or the bile crusted on his chin.
But none of it had mattered. The video of the suicide rescue was trending.
Souta had clung to him for twenty minutes straight before he was able to convince him that he would be okay.
Water rushed through the pipes in the wall. The shower was on.
She pushed off the door and walked over to her bed. Her fingers found the straps of her vest and undid them. She tossed it onto her comforter and pulled off her hoodie next. Soon, she was stripped down to her underclothes. Opening her dresser drawers, she pulled out her yellow pajamas and put them on. They felt cozy and loose, liberating after hours trapped in Kevlar.
Her gaze fell to the gym bag again. She lingered there.
Water still rushed through the pipes.
"All right," she said to herself, making her decision.
Nudging the bag out of the doorway with her foot, she headed out into the hallway. Downstairs in the living room, she could hear two people talking.
"Why do I have my shirt off?" Tora asked, his voice trembling slightly.
"You said that you were shot in the chest," Mama explained.
"I was wearing the vest."
"And I had to check and make sure that there were no injuries. The vests aren't perfect."
"Hey, hey, hey!" he objected, half-laughing, "That tickles."
She giggled.
"Okay, yes. I have two full-sleeve tattoos. And yes of course, they're of tigers. But you don't need to—" He squeaked and then laughed nervously. "But you don't need to trace them with your finger."
"Your cheeks are the same color as your hair."
"I wonder why. Can we get back to fixing my face?"
"Maybe. What's your real first name? I know your last name but not the first."
He stuttered. "Yeah, well… What's yours?"
She giggled again.
Someone grumbled behind Kagome and she looked back to discover Grandpa.
He scowled. "That punk…"
She smiled and gave him a kiss on his forehead. "Tora's not bad, and I'm pretty sure that he's the one being hunted."
He grumbled again.
"Besides since I'm the teenage girl, I'd think that you'd be more worried about me than about mama."
"It's her job to worry about you. It's my job to worry about her."
She chuckled. "And who's going to worry about Tora? Would that be Souta?"
"He has enough on his plate with Sesshoumaru."
Her smile cooled.
Giving him a pat on the shoulder, she left him to stew. Crossing the hallway, she headed downstairs to the living room.
Inside, Mama and Tora sat by the table. And as promised, he was shirtless. A more robust build than expected, he bore a dark spot midway down his chest on the left side, a bruise from the bullet. Twin tigers coiled through jungles down both arms, the details reminding her of a beautiful woodblock print. And in contrast, his swollen face was ugly with bruising. With one eye puffy and half-shut, Mama dabbed at it with a cotton ball held by a pair of forceps. Butterfly bandages pinched the gashes around his eye sockets closed.
"Give me your hand," Mama said.
Tora did as commanded and held out his right hand.
She discarded the soiled cotton ball into the pile on the table. After swapping it for a fresh one, she applied some antiseptic and began cleaning the cuts on his knuckles.
"Need any help, mama?" Kagome offered.
"No, I think we're doing fine," she said warmly.
Tora's cheeks turned red and he felt for his shirt with his free hand.
"Stay still," Mama said.
"I'm in the lions' den," he said under his breath.
Her smile turned devilish. "And there's no escape."
Kagome paced the room, lightly nibbling at her fingernails, her mind on the gym bag sitting on her bedroom floor.
"Is there something wrong?" Mama asked her, squeezing some triple antibiotic ointment onto a swab.
At her question, Kagome collapsed onto her knees on the other side of the table. "I don't know what to do. I thought I understood things, but I don't. I'm not sure if I ever have. I don't even know if I understand myself."
She smiled, peeling a butterfly bandage from its wrapper. "What don't you understand?"
"Sesshoumaru, I guess. Or how I feel about him."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Not like that," she groaned, waving her hand.
She chuckled.
Kagome grew quiet, toying with a roll of medical tape on the table. "I don't think I really knew how angry I was with him. For how he treated Inuyasha."
"Ah."
"Maybe it's always been there. Under the surface. And tonight is when it all came boiling up."
She nodded. "You've always been passionate. Idealistic. What's right is right. And what's wrong is wrong. And as you grow older, you'll find it harder to be that in a world of grays."
"I know that I'm stubborn and idealistic," she sighed, tired of the explanation she'd heard a thousand times. "Maybe when Sesshoumaru decides to take up needlepoint, he'll make me a pillow with that memorialized on it."
She laughed. "And it will be exquisitely done."
She smiled.
Mama reached across the table, taking Kagome's hand. "I'm sorry. What you're going through is something complicated and has less to do with who you are as a person. If it's anything, it's more about who we are as people."
"Who we are as people?"
"Think about this. When we consider all the people we meet over the course of our lifetimes, it's a rare experience to know them beyond that moment of intersection. We connect with them at a point in time, blind to what came before or to what will come after. Your anger towards Sesshoumaru isn't misplaced or wrong, but it is ignorant. It doesn't care about why he was cruel to Inuyasha. And it doesn't care if he regrets it now and wishes that he could have done things differently."
"You're saying that I'm stuck in a moment," Kagome said, not missing the irony, "The time-traveling girl."
"I think that's the point, isn't it? The moment hasn't really changed for you. It's been barely a year since you came back from Naraku's defeat. Your perspective isn't unreasonable. Except that it's been five hundred years in real time."
"I guess." She sighed. "What do I do?"
"Something you haven't had a lot of experience with." She smiled. "Forgive him."
"Just forgive him?"
Mama nodded.
Kagome flicked the roll of tape across the table. "How do I do that?"
"Talk to him. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something you both need to do."
The gym bag shoved its way back to the forefront of her mind. "Yeah."
Mama twisted the cap onto the bottle of antiseptic. Then she started packing the medical supplies back into the first-aid kit, leaving the tools out that still needed to be sterilized.
"It was scary tonight, mama," Kagome admitted. "I mean, the usual violence aside. He was scary. I'm worried that he's going to get himself killed and that he doesn't care enough to stop it from happening."
"I know," she said, pausing. Something painful haunted her expression. "I had hoped my conversation with him last time would have been enough, but his trauma runs deep. Beyond any oath or honor."
"Start with forgiveness?"
Mama squeezed her hand and let her go before nudging the kit towards her. "Start with forgiveness."
They looked at Tora.
He looked back at them.
"Did you have anything that you wanted to add?" Mama asked him.
He shrugged. "I was just hoping that this was like Jurassic Park where if I stayed still, everyone would forget that I was here."
She laughed.
"Can I put my shirt back on?"
OOOOOOOOOO
With the first-aid kit in hand, Kagome rapt lightly on Sesshoumaru's door. "Can I come in?"
A moment passed, then a deep voice replied. "Yes."
She opened the door.
The warm glow of incandescent light illuminated the room. Tucked in a spare futon, Souta slept, oblivious to the lamplight and the first streaks of morning sun streaming in through the window. Beside him, Sesshoumaru sat on his bedding, scrolling through another history book on his phone. Water droplets trickled down his neck to dampen the collar of his yukata robe.
"Ready to get that bullet out?" she asked, her head tilted slightly.
Setting the phone down, his eyes fell to the boy. He gave her a nod.
She walked over to kneel behind him and set the first-aid kit down.
As she opened the case and gathered her supplies, he loosened his robe and shrugged out of the top half, exposing his back to her. Her fingers glided over his skin, still damp from his shower. Pink and ragged, she was drawn to the wound under his shoulder blade. After the siege, she had been mystified as to how he had managed to be shot in the back, and then she had seen the vest. Studded with misshapen slugs, it was a miracle that it had stopped as many as it had.
Using her thumb and forefinger, she pried the wound open and shined her penlight inside. The beam caught the glint of gunmetal. It hadn't gone deep. It was just lodged at a terrible angle.
"Lean forward," she said as she gently pushed on his back.
He did as requested, and his muscles tightened over his frame as he stretched forward to rest his elbows on the floor.
She slid to the side and picked up the forceps in her right hand as she held the penlight in her left. "Get ready."
He nodded.
Biting her lip, she angled the forceps into the wound. Using them as a lever, she pushed up against his shoulder blade to get at the bullet wedged under it.
His body tensed and a soft growl rumbled in his chest. But when Souta turned fitfully in his sleep, he quelled it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. The jaws of the forceps grasped the bullet, and with as much care as possible, she tugged it free. She dropped the slug onto some gauze and used some other strips to wipe up the blood and fluid trickling from the wound. Again, she peered inside, but found only the sensation of youki churning within. "It's out."
He sat back up.
"Now let's have a look at the rest of you."
Before he could object, she shined the penlight along his scalp until she came across a patch of hair still tinted pink despite his earlier shower. Using her thumb, she swept it away, revealing the rough flesh underneath. Youki swirled and his skull seemed intact.
"Are you still nauseous? Are you experiencing any dizziness?" she asked.
"At times," he admitted.
She frowned.
"Do not concern yourself."
"Yeah, yeah," she said, scooting on her knees to sit in front of him. She held up the penlight. "I'm going to shine this in your eyes. Just one last check before I don't concern myself, all right?"
His expression was inscrutable, whether he was indifferent or irritated, she couldn't tell.
The light beam panned up, and as it centered on his eye, the oval of his pupil narrowed into a slit.
A beast. A person.
A lord. A pauper.
A villain. A hero.
"I was afraid when we found you," she confessed, letting the light beam travel to his other eye, satisfied when its pupil contracted as it should. The penlight clicked off. "Terrified is probably more accurate. I wanted to leave you there, sealed. All I could think about was this face." She touched his jaw gently. "And the pain I had attached to it. The dread. And somewhere deep, the anger."
Her hand left his face as she slid to the side again, her focus on his flank.
Following her line of sight, he leaned away from her and moved his arm back to expose his torso.
"I don't know if you remember," she continued, clicking her penlight on to examine the healing wound, "But I lashed out at you when you woke up. I was so scared that you were going to start fighting. That you were going to start hurting people, so I hurt you first. I called you the Lord of Nothing. It was spiteful."
Her finger grazed the rough mark that was once a through-and-through wound. His flesh twitched. Ticklish, but no pain.
Scooting down, she headed towards his lower body.
Leaning forward, he swept just enough robe out of the way to reveal his thigh.
"Mama says that I'm stuck in that moment," she explained, her finger running over the dimple that spoiled his thigh. It was a larger wound than the others, evidence of the added injury that he sustained digging the bullet out. "The point in time when you were violent and cruel. When you only cared about respect and what you deserved. What you as a son deserved. Not what you as a brother were supposed to give."
Her hand slipped down the side of his outer thigh and she gave it an upward nudge.
He rolled onto his side, repositioned himself, and then laid down on his stomach.
She took the hem of his robe and folded it up just high enough to expose the back of his other thigh and his last wound. It shared the same exacerbated condition as the other, only this one was fresher. It tunneled deep into the muscle. But the youki was there. He was healing.
"I think you're stuck there too, but not in the same way. You regret what you've done like I regret how I've treated you since we broke the seal."
"You have no reason to feel guilt," he said quietly. "I am what you feared."
"No, you aren't. That girl tonight. I demanded to go on this mission to save her because I wanted her to know that someone cared. That she wasn't alone. That Tora cared. That I cared. But you're the one who saved her. You understood her." Tears welled in her eyes and her voice trembled. "I know that if I had been the one to find her, she would have died. Whether she had jumped yet or not."
He sighed, stretching his elbows forward. Turning his head to the side, he rested his cheek on his forearm.
"She lived because of you," she continued. "Because you aren't the same person. And I want you to know that I forgive you. I forgive you for who you were in that moment of time. The time when you were cruel. And if you can, forgive me for the times that I've been cruel since then."
He lay there silently, and time passed.
She closed her eyes, disappointment encroaching on her heart.
"For every year of life lived, I spent a year sealed, lost in the deep," he said wistfully, "It was an existence without thought. Without dream. But there was feeling. It was something distant. At first, it seemed like it belonged to the deep. But I realized that it was an echo. A reflection of a singular feeling. It was loss. My loss. My creation."
She sniffed.
"I accept your forgiveness, and I forgive you."
"And for yourself? Can you forgive yourself?"
The morning light grew brighter through the gaps in the blinds.
"One day."
She touched him on the shoulder. "Promise?"
He looked back at her, and then away again, his expression gentle. "Promise."