XCI

Pater Familias

His balance is totally fucked.

Inuyasha can't decide from one minute to the next if the problem is that his left side is too light, or his right side too heavy, but really it feels like it's both. His left side is missing an arm, and his right hand holds the sword, which he refuses to put down. He still doesn't understand it, but he has no intention of putting it aside. Or rather, he understands that it wants him to protect Kikyou, or likes him to protect her, or likes that he wants to, or…

Okay, so he doesn't understand it. But he's damn close, and it's a problem whichever way the sword wants things, isn't it? Because what if he doesn't want to drag her all over Nihon with him? What if he wants her to stay safe at home, sometimes, while he goes out to do what he does best? What if that's what she wants, too? "You could help, you know, if you just did the thing."

He waves the sword at nothing, unbalances himself, tries to catch himself with a hand that doesn't exist, and only barely manages to pull himself back on to his accustomed branch without dropping the sword.

Scowling, not daring to move too much this time, Inuyasha glares at the sheathed blade as if it's somehow at fault. And this thing belonged to the old man, huh? Wonder where he got it from. Wonder if he named it Tessaiga, or it already had a name. Wonder if he knew what it was when he found it, or if he thought it was just a rusted piece of shit when he picked it up, too. My father's sword…

He lets his head thunk back against the trunk of the tree. My father. Wonder what he was really like? More like me, or more like my brother? Wonder if he thought about what would happen, when he put this damn thing in my eye. Wonder if he knew what Sesshomaru was gonna grow up like, if he knew he'd be willing to bite off my fucking arm-

He can feel the clenching of the fist that isn't there, feel Sesshomaru's poison melting flesh that already vanished into smoke. How does it hurt more now when the arm is gone than when the bastard bit it off? He forces himself to take slow, deep breaths.

Sorry, sword. Bet you wish you had a stronger wielder, huh? But you shoulda let Sesshomaru take you if that's what you were after. Why pick the hanyō? The only good thing about me is… her.

It has a heartbeat in his hand. He blinks at it, but this isn't the first time.

"She thinks I don't know, you know. What they're saying. Like I could miss it even from here. But I already knew they thought I was a monster. An animal." He glares darkly in the direction of Edo. "I'd marry her if I could, but how do you marry a miko? What could I give her, a tree branch? And anyway, would she let me? There's this other woman, you know, a normal human one. Kagome. She's with this Wolf…"

He's silent for a long while, remembering how badly he'd made a fool of himself. It had just been so shocking, seeing her there, life in her face and her heart beating, flaring with miko brightness and shikon no tama. "For a minute, I wondered if maybe I could go after her, if she would be like Kikyou used to be. But she's not like her, she just looks like her. And she's got her Wolf, anyway. But Kikyou was there, when I hurt her. She knows I'm not safe. That girl's a brat, you know? But I should've just left her alone. That's how I got these."

He tugs at the beads around his neck, and smiles a little bit. "Should hate 'em, I know, but… she made them. Kikyou did, a long time ago. A gift for me, even if she thinks I don't know. Kinda like that, even if she mostly wants to keep me under control." A tiny smirk twists his lips. "Kinda like that, too. At least she cares enough to bother, right? Fucking stupid of me to love her, though."

The pulse of the sword feels sharper. He still doesn't know what it means; is it agreeing? Disagreeing? Just… letting him know it exists? That it can read his mind, or hear him talking, or… what? "Just my luck, I get the weird heart-beating sword. Can't complain, though, can I? Since you saved my life." Yawning, he leans his head against the hilt. Yeah. A good weapon. Have to learn how to use you, but I've still got an arm left, right?

"Tessaiga."

Inuyasha jumps a foot in the air, turns and snarls, looking for the source of the voice. "Where are you? Who said that?"

The wind moves. The leaves of Goshinboku. Clouds. All else is still, the night noises brought to silence by the threat of his presence. Here, in his forest, his territory, everything that lives knows his power and submits. And there is silence.

Just. Silence.

Slowly, very slowly, he sits on his branch again, gripping the sword across his body, but he can't bring himself to close his eyes. There's nothing there, and he knows it, but he no longer feels alone. Something is where nothing should be instead. "Least I got you, just in case."

"Tessaiga ! "

"What the fuck is- Who is that? Where are you? How do you know the name of my sword?" Violently, the sword in his hand rattles in its sheath.

"Tessaiga! I am the fang !"

Inuyasha feels the name in his palm, in the pulse of the sword, in his own heartbeat. A gleam of gold light comes from the visible sliver of blade, brighter and brighter, until he draws it, and it transforms for him, still shivering in his grasp.

"The General's Fang!" And then, more quietly, but still a blazon in his brain, "The General is coming. The General is coming to make arrangements for his son."

The General? But Inuyasha remembers his father's title then, and in the pillar of amber light that erupts from Tessaiga he sees the shadow of a great Inu, cast in anti-color against the night and staring at him from one gleaming eye.

It's the shadow that speaks to him then, not the sword. "Do you mean it, Inuyasha? Would you bind yourself to this yōkai miko? Would you protect her for all time?"

"Yōkai miko?" The words startle him more than the shadow itself. "Kikyou isn't yōkai."

"Are you so sure? She is no longer human, Inuyasha. Perhaps her spirit is, but at best that makes her like you. Only half. Now, answer the question my son. The moon is rising, and there is not much time."

His ears are dazzled. Like me? Kikyou is like me? Only then do his father's questions strike him, each one an arrow. Marry her? Protect her? "Course I would, if she'd have me, anyway. I love her, even if that's the stupidest thing I've ever done. Even if I never get to have her, I love her, and… and even if she doesn't want me, I'd protect her anyway."

"You have learned a little wisdom, Inuyasha. When the time comes to fulfill the contract I will write for you, go to Kamakura. There, you need only toss down a bell. The Fang is my gift to you, my son, your Inu inheritance. The wealth to live a mortal life comes from your mother's line. It is their repayment to you, for her life that was lost untimely."

"Bells?" But the shadow strides down from the sky, and disappears into the darkness between the trees, moving toward the village.

"Look to the Fang, Inuyasha. And wait here, until the morning moon goes down."

Inuyasha looks at Tessaiga, and under his attention it transforms again, returning to the shape of a battered, rusted blade. Otherwise, it looks the same. "I don't get it –" He takes half a step, and his foot brushes something on the ground. Bells. The black-lacquered sheath of the blade is wrapped up with golden wire now. It traces out the shape of samadhi fires, like the altar on which he found it, buried with his father's bones. It's in the curves of the flames that there are hung dozens of suzu bells, their bright gold brightly chiming.

They remind him of Kikyou, dressed in her butterfly-embroidered chihaya for the kagura dances, holding a bell tree in one hand and turning slowly in leaf-spangled light. "Could I really… marry her?"

A whisper, an echo of the voice that has disappeared into the distance, comes from the sword and caresses his ears. "Why not, Inuyasha? Are you not the General's son? Why would you not be worthy of the one you love?"

A thousand reasons come to mind immediately. He doesn't say any of them out loud. He thinks, since he can't believe in himself, he will believe in her. In Kikyou. In what she wants, what she chooses, what she says.

At the edge of the forest, Inuyasha crouches, his gaze on the horizon, and waits.

Since spring came, thin and early, Edo has become a village of whispers. Daily, new rumors write themselves in puffs of breath, lingering in a damp, grey chill that refuses to rain or frost over. "There will be a wedding soon," some of them say. "No," say others, "no wedding for those two." And the rest, crueler in their intentions, say, "Do the beasts of the wood do more than rut?"

Darker murmurs linger beneath those, about where Kikyou came from, when they know she died, and where Inuyasha runs off to, when he's a threat to all their lives… and if the two of them, together or not, should really be allowed to stay.

Kikyou hears them, though she wishes not to. She thinks Inuyasha doesn't, but not because he can't, or shouldn't. He spends most of his time in the forest now, training with his sword, trying to make it awaken under his control.

"I need to know I can still do something useful, don't you get it? I can't just sit around here, no matter how many arms I have. The villagers don't trust me, you know that. You've seen that. Maybe they're right not to. But either way I'm not trainin' with this sword in the middle of the market, so let me go. Or you could come with me, but don't you have your own work to do?"

So he had said to her, and he isn't wrong. She does, indeed, have work to do. Now that it's spring, the herbs need picking, and the normal coughs and colds are going around the village. She wants to remove some of the burden from her too-old younger sister. Wants to do what she's been trained to do, what she best knows how to do, and help people. Wants to wipe away the rumors with her own daily life.

But she doesn't think Inuyasha is right to isolate himself, doesn't think he's right to go alone into the forest. Now that she has her memory, her identity, her life back, even in pieces, she sees something about him, and herself, and his intentions… something about the sword, and how it bends itself to his will. When he wants to protect her, when he's true to his heart, the heart of the sword awakens for him. Even if there was no sword, she thinks, we should be together. Even at night.

But even at night, when he's done arguing with the blade, he sits in the branches of Goshinboku, and doesn't move for so long that it feels like he might as well have remained there always. I was asleep, his posture says. Maybe I should have stayed that way. She thinks something isn't right. He is not well, and whatever's wrong is more than can be explained by the trauma of his lost arm.

Since meeting Kagome, Kikyou finds things about her past have become clearer in her mind, even as her present thoughts occasionally grow murky under all that weight. At first, she had remembered only the red of his fire-rat robe and the feelings hinted at by his kiss. Now, she remembers all the things in between.

The danger and why it crept close to her; the burden that had broken her and the blood he had shed. The blood he would shed again, not because he couldn't live another kind of life, but because it was the life he already knew, and gloried in despite himself.

Do I mind it? She considers for a while, but she has to shake her head finally. No. The world is at war, and there's nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. But I want quiet spaces in between. Sometimes it feels like he doesn't understand the meaning of quiet spaces, but then, has he ever known one? Maybe not. Can he, or is that only a human kind of thing?

When he's a man, he is her man, but he can be a demon too. Is that demon my demon, Inuyasha? But she doesn't, can't ask him, when she thinks he doesn't know the answer any better than she does. These days, it's hard for her to remember what yōkai even means.

What she wants to remember is the way he says he loves her, but she remembers, too, the way he struggled to look away from Kagome - the way he had hurt the girl, half from jealousy and half from rage. The way his ears had turned in her direction, seeking the heartbeat that Kikyou doesn't possess. How long ago was that? Not so many months. Not so long that she can just put it aside and forget. Something there… something will have to be dug out and purified, before it can be reburied and put to rest. Or is that me?

It's not because she's jealous. At least, she doesn't think she is. It occurs to her that maybe she should be, but she can't find the heart for it. How could she, really? Kagome will never look twice at Inuyasha, and Inuyasha is only looking twice at her. It isn't Kagome's fault that Kikyou pales in comparison to her reflection. But it isn't my fault, either.

Is that what Inuyasha is thinking? Is that why he loves her, but he stays away? If he is, there's danger in every moment in which such thoughts linger in his head. The Wolf will not suffer another attack like the last one, certainly… but there is one thing worse that could rouse him. Any attempt to remove Kagome from his presence – or to remove him from her heart.

Sighing, Kikyou turns away from the Goshinboku and heads back indoors. The beads of subjugation are still around Inuyasha's throat, and he says nothing about them, and she has had no reason to use them. But the longer he broods in silence, the more she thinks that day will inevitably come.

Or maybe not.

Maybe… maybe she is overthinking. Maybe she is doing what she did her whole life, and should know better than to keep on doing now. Did pessimism ever gain her anything? Can she call it realism, when she was never right about anything, even once? Can't she be hopeful this time? Can't she be an optimist? Maybe he doesn't think about Kagome, or killing, or wanting anything but what they have. Maybe he thinks beautiful things he hasn't said yet; maybe he wants things she can't even think of. Maybe he won't only tell her he loves her in the face of death.

Behind her, in the trees, she sees a rush of blossoming crimson yōki, which becomes an amber column of light. It's blistering to her finer senses, a fusion of object-energy, Inuyasha's familiar yōki, and a Daiyōkai's power. It's the same as what she felt in the tomb of bones, but more contained, less wild, less… angry. It's a greeting, and a goodbye. Why does she suddenly feel like crying? The power surges outward, sweeping through the forest, impressing its dominance over every particle of trembling life. Only around her, it stops, warm and familiar, curling like an embrace. "So maybe I am overthinking, Inuyasha. But still. Come home soon. Come home to me."

The power follows her back into the village, swirls of ghostly cloud-light rippling around her hakama as if she's standing in water up to her knees. Gradually, it slides down her legs, until by the time she reaches the door of her sister's home – hers too, now – it's rippling only around her straw sandals.

Kikyou spares a last glance over her shoulder, watching the light fade, then ducks under the curtain and steps inside.

The ripples of yōki stay at the threshold and do not disperse. Slowly, through the hours of the moon rising, they condense, pooling together until the shapes of two bare feet print themselves in the dust outside Kaede's door. They walk around the house counterclockwise, falling with a summoning rhythm. Each step brings the sound of ritual bells at a distance, coming closer and closer. Eight times, they circle the house, and then stop once more at the threshold. There's a hint of rustling silk, the sense of someone tall bowing their head, asking to enter.

"Kaede-dono, Edo no Miko, the General has come."

The house basks in silence. Moonlight steams off the thatched roof, mingling with the mist-like curls of yōki. The bare feet are more real now, male and pale skinned, with clawed toes. His footsteps imprint themselves on the dirt with energy; his feet do not touch the ground. Golden suzu bells gleam at his ankles, below a hazy hint of black kimono. Again, eight times counterclockwise, he steps around the house. Again, he bows his head.

"Kaede-dono, Edo no miko; Kaede-dono, sister of Kikyou, the General has come."

No one answers. The kimono's embroidery solidifies before the fabric, a gilded river that flows upward from the hem. Green fireflies blink faintly above it in the darkness, illuminating a silver field of reeds. Only then does the black of the silk behind them manifest completely, so dark it cuts a hole in the night. He takes another step, and another. Eight times, he circles the house again. The shadow of a sword grows visible at his waist, and a long tail of bound hair coalesces out of smoke and bell-sound, gleaming faintly white. Still, as of yet he has no face.

"Kaede-dono, Edo no miko; Kaede-dono, sister of Kikyou. Your parents are long gone. You have no brother, no cousin, no clan and no family. Once you were a younger sister, but you are older now. Who else can speak on a woman's behalf when the time comes for her to be a wife? Will you make the decision, Kaede-dono? The General has come!"

The house burns with reflected starlight. Yōki wreathes it like smoke, thicker and thicker, until the timbers and straws and mud of its walls shimmer like it, too, is a ghost. Finally, the curtain at the door moves as if an invisible hand is holding it open in invitation.

The faint light from the fire inside shines on the face of Inu no Taisho, standing at the threshold, more than a spirit and less than a living yōkai. Then he steps in.

I must be dreaming.

Kikyou kneels at the edge of the hearth, her face turned away. She doesn't remember how she came to be here, or when their guest came in, or where the kimono she's wearing came from. It's very pretty, raw silk whiter than silk should be, iridescent like winter sky before a snowfall. The hem is embroidered with rising layers of green, green trees. The obi is deep purple, patterned with black bellflowers, the outlines of their petals picked out in gleaming gold.

But it's not mine. Is it?

It's the right thing to wear, regardless, meeting the father of her suitor. And this is the right place for her to be sitting, obedient to custom and her own sudden shyness, while the General and her sister discuss her future.

I have to be dreaming. Inuyasha's father died almost two hundred years ago. He can't be sitting here. He can't be talking to Kaede.

But Inu no Taisho defies her by existing, by sitting across from her sister, elbow on his knee and chin in his hand. "I have little time; I'll get to the point, Kaede-dono. My son wants to marry your sister, but I didn't get a chance to marry Izayoi. I don't know what your customs are. Edo no miko, I kept my woman's treasures for my son, but what is the bride price of your pretty sister? Is that still what humans do, these days?"

This is a dream, and he isn't sitting here, and he isn't saying that.

"By your son, I can only assume you mean Inuyasha. The other is not sane." Kaede's voice is placid. Too placid. If this was real, wouldn't she be too shocked to speak? "But how can I agree to this marriage, General? There may be feelings between them, but Inuyasha has no house for him to marry in my sister."

A piece of paper, very old, singed and smoke-stained, comes out of his black sleeve. He puts it down and slides it across to Kaede. "Inuyasha has the title to his mother's estates. The land has been protected. The house can be rebuilt."

Kaede picks up the document, peruses it, nods slowly. She counters with her gaze still on the paper. "If I stand in our parents' place, I must be sure to make a good match for her. He may build her a house, but how will he furnish it, how will he feed her? Inuyasha has no income with which to support my sister."

From the corner of her eye, Kikyou can see that the General gave his younger son his smile. "Inuyasha has the treasure of his mother's family, ten thousand ryō in the ringing of a single bell. It's already in his hands, but I'm not sure it matters. Don't these two prefer a simple life?"

Kaede's voice is suddenly cutting. "But there's a mismatch in status. Can the General's son lower himself to marry in a peasant miko? To take her as his one and only wife?"

Inu no Taisho frowns, and taps the floor impatiently with one finger. "Now you are making excuses, Kaede-dono. To treat me as if I am a fool is rude." Yōki swells in the air, and suddenly a vague drizzle that has been falling in the background intensifies to a tingling stream. "My son is wiser than his father. He wants only one woman, now and for all time."

Kikyou feels that energy on her skin, a real thing, not a dreamlike sensation. It prickles warningly against her miko senses. She sucks in a gasping breath, and snaps her head around to stare at her sister. At Inu no Taisho, sitting calmly by the fire after uttering such provocative words.

She sees suddenly the spectral nature of his presence, the way the room around him is enveloped in a current of yin. How her sister's little house has been cut out of time, and it and them boxed in with brilliant footsteps.

He turns his head a little bit, and smiles at her. "Yes, you are dreaming, Kikyou-dono. But are you awake now?"

"I'm – awake?" But it comes out like a question, and she flushes. "Yes. Yes, I'm awake."

The General turns his Inuyasha-smile back to Kaede. "Do you have other objections, Edo no miko? Or am I allowed to ask your sister myself?"

Kaede shakes her head slowly. "No. No objections."

He summons Kikyou from her corner. "Come here, shikon no miko."

Kikyou obeys, frowning. "I hope you know that is no longer my calling, General. I am no longer that one."

He tips his head at her, half of a nod. "Correct. You are one of two, you in the darkness while the other stands in the light." Kikyou finds she has nothing to say to that. He nods, as if pleased with her silence. "So. Yōkai miko, shikon no miko, what do you want? Will you marry my son? Will you be Yashamori no Kikyou, or not?"

Yōkai miko? As the term startled Inuyasha, it startles her. She thinks she likes it. It gives her a world to belong to; she knows very well she isn't human anymore. But marry Inuyasha? She closes her eyes. What do I want?

Her first thought is about Inuyasha, and his smile. His sweetness and his sorrow. His promises and desires, his I love you. Then she stops and takes a deeper breath. Not what he wants. What do I want? How long has it been since she dared ask herself that question? Since I gave up on the answer. Since I thought it would never be anything I could have.

She can see a house in her mind's eye – no, a home. A home, that she makes with Inuyasha. A marriage, because that is a promise, and a wedding to wrap her in white silk, and red silk, and change the meaning of the colors of her life. White as a blank slate, and then a red robe of good fortune for the future.

Later, there will be children, won't there? Three children, or six, or a dozen. Someday. She can wait. Inuyasha has never thought he'd have this life with her, she knows it as much as she knows she was the same. He won't have thought of children either; she smiles to herself, thinking of the expression he'll make. And if her body won't give them to her, if she's been remade too strangely, well, this world has orphans enough, and there are others who might need her to raise them.

But those things, they're all such big dreams, some of them a lifetime in the making.

Kikyou finds that she wants little things, too. To hold his hand, to sit beside him. To kiss him, and never again care who or if anyone sees. She wants breakfast in a room with an east-facing shoji, to let in the sunlight or the misty type of rain. She wants afternoons in a garden with one big tree, reading or playing or cooking or sewing, while Inuyasha trains with his sword. She wants a room full of scrolls, and incense that smells of cinnamon and jasmine. She wants to drink sake from tiny cups, leaning against his shoulder and watching the moon.

She wants to grow radishes and yamabuki flowers in a tangle, wants to choose a pine tree and give it over to wisteria vines. She wants to take walks under white plum blossoms and then later, ignore the showy sakura; wants peach flowers, and peaches, apricot flowers and soft apricots.

She wants to eat them down to the pit, stain her cheeks with summer juices, then plant their bitter seeds and watch them grow again into something sweet.

Kikyou wants silk in many colors, and to never again wear a miko's clothing; to paint her lips for Inuyasha and not a mirror reflecting lonely darkness; to decorate her hair for him, wear gauze and bare skin for him, and learn what other wonderful things he can say besides I love you. But if she wants any of those things, first she has to make a choice.

Doesn't that make it easy? Didn't he say it; didn't his heart touch her before she came to bed, all his terrible power gentled to an embrace? No overthinking, this time.

She looks at her sister; Kaede only smiles at her. She lifts her eyes to meet the General's gaze. "Yes. I will. Because… because I want to." She hears the unsteady, wondering lilt of her own voice, and firms it. "I want to marry Inuyasha."

"Good girl. Then we will write the contract, your sister and I, and you will go to my son and plan for your life together."

A/N: A long, long chapter, but it would not break up except annoyingly, and then I would have felt bad and WHAT would I have titled the part 2? So there you are, glorious beings! Tessaiga is in fact the general's fang, and as we have seen with Shippou's dad's pelt, that is… meaningful. Hehehe. This chapter's title, Pater Familias, means "father of the family" but also "master of the house". Also, just as a note, this chapter takes place at the same time as the previous chapter - the events are happening on the same night.

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