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Disclaimer: No own InuYasha et cetera et cetera.

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Jizen Kaerizaku

Before I Can Return

Chapter 7 - Sense - Advice Forcibly Administered

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Mattaki glared, though the boy couldn't see it and walked forward, smacking him upside the head with a satisfying crack. InuYasha yelped and did his best to glare, but since he was aiming to the left and too low, it didn't work. Needing to communicate, he yanked his son protesting by the arm to a wide expanse of dirt on a creek edge, snapped a stick off a nearby tree and wrote plainly in the dirt.

'You are an idiot.'

"What in the hell do you mean, I'm an idiot? I just told her like it was!"

He stomped the dirt where the words had been and wrote new ones, 'Fine. You are an insensitive clod then.'

"Hey!"

Another rub of the words and he started again, words smaller so that he could rant to his hearts content, 'I am not going to lie to you, pup. You mean a hell of a lot to that girl, though gods know why when you treat her so badly all the time, and you just looked at her like she had the plague. Now, my son, I may not have raised you but I will be damned if you don't listen to me now: you will apologize, and you will do it right. Got it?'

InuYasha stared again, then blinked at the words, "YOU LIKE HER BACK!"

Mattaki rolled his eyes and smacked his forehead, but deciding that wasn't good enough reached back and smacked the boy upside the head again. Mattaki smirked grimly and he rubbed out the words once more, 'I will not refute that, but if you continue looking at me in such a way, human or not, I will show you why I was feared as a Lord.'

InuYasha promptly gulped, but spoke anyway, "But you're dead!"

Mattaki almost choked on his own tongue as he stared incredulously at his youngest child, and had to restrain himself from kicking the crap out of him. He rubbed the words away and wrote in large letters, 'Didn't stop you, did it, my boy?'

InuYasha went through several facial expressions: confusion, flippancy, realization, and embarrassment, making his father smirk invisibly at him, though the man was sure he could tell, "That isn't the same thing. I…" he stopped and furrowed his brow, "She used to like me first, you know," he said childishly, scowling at the water.

Slowly, Mattaki thought out his next sentence, 'Is that it then? You assumed she would just pine away for you for the rest of her life? Do not be so selfish! She made a selfless wish on that blasted jewel that gave you true happiness, and this is how you repay her?'

The former hanyou had the grace to look ashamed and closed his eyes, "But…she doesn't need me anymore…"

And here was the crux of the issue. Mattaki sighed and prepared his makeshift paper, 'She feels the same, you know. We don't speak of you much, because it hurts her to think of you…and how little you are both in one another's lives anymore. She loved you very much, son, and though she needed time away to get over that, you kept pushing her farther every time she came back.'

InuYasha sighed and he felt the ghostly hands of his father cup his face gently, and he swore he saw a glimpse of a tall man in front of him with a sad smile. A feather light kiss was placed on his brow and then he was gone, the wind in the trees the only things witness to his thoughts.

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