• 1-The Coyote Child
• 2-Chapter Two
• 3-Chapter Three
• 4-Chapter Four
• 5-Chapter Five

The Coyote Child

By Terri Botta

Disclaimer: I don’t own
Inuyasha. Sole copyright belongs to Viz and Rumiko
Takashi. I’m poor so don’t sue.

Rating: R for later chapters.

Pairing: Inuyasha/Kagome

Summary: Inuyasha and Kagome
are asked to adopt a coyote-hanyou baby from Arizona.

Email feedback to:
tci100@psu.edu

Webpage:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/Botta

*******

Chapter Three

Yukio
stayed awake all night, staring out at the mountains and waiting for dawn to
come. He fed and changed the pup once more during the wee hours of the morning,
and was proud that he did it without waking his mother. Now that he beinbeing
properly fed, the pup was a very easy keeper and seemed to have a pleasant
disposition, but being that he was only eleven days old, it was hard to tell
what his temperament would really be like. Still, he didn’t seem to be the
cranky sort, and he was alert and responsive when he was awake. Some of his
siblings had driven his mother crazy when they were little pups. Hiro especially came to mind. The infant fire-hanyou had
been irritable and colicky for months, and he had cried for hours on end.
Nothing Kagome did seemed to help either and his poor
mother was often ragged from lack of sleep. He’d often wondered if Hiro’s difficult infancy was an eerie premonition of his
future fate.

Focusing
on the pup helped him get through the night without going into a complete
meltdown. He hadn’t felt the weight of Miakaspanspan> death
so heavily on his shoulders in almost thirty years, and it did not sit well
with him. He’d spent decades compartmentalizing the last forty years of his
marriage, trying to avoid the memories he had locked away.

Long ago
he had come to the realization that his marriage hadn’t been like the blissful
union his parents shared for quite some time. In fact, when he was brutally
honest with himself, he could admit that the ‘blissful union’ part had really
only lasted about thirty or forty years, and had really started to go downhill
once members of Miaka’s family had started to die
while she remained youthful because of the infusions of his blood. Rather than
turn to him in her grief as the one constant in her life, and leaning on their
love to sustain her, as his mother did when her friends died, Miaka had pulled
away from him. The steady distance between them grew until the final betrayal
in 1935 when he had dragged her out of Japan by force. She allowed him to give
her his blood only once more between 1935 and 1945 when the Bomb dropped on
Hiroshima. After that, she had refused every time he offered, and died
seventeen years later.

They’d
been married 234 years, but of those years, he could only call about half of
them happy. He’d been happy for nearly all of them, barring the last seventeen,
but Miaka… Miaka probably hadn’t been happy much since 1783 when her last
sister died. She’d tried, but he had felt her growing sadness. He’d tried to
give her everything she could ever want, but he couldn’t give her children or
bring back her loved ones from the dead or stop the world from changing while
they stayed the same. He had hoped that having Kagome to talk to would help
Miaka weather the decades, but mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had never been
very close. Miaka was almost afraid of Kagome in some ways. His mother had
risen to an almost mythological ideal in the eyes of the villagers, and some
people even believed her to be a tennyo and not a
normal human. His mother hated the awestruck reverence and did her best to
dispel the rumors, even going so far as to share in manual labor in the rice
fields and treat the Eta families living on the
outskirts of the village, but that had only served to make the villagers hold
her in even higher esteem.

Miaka had
often compared herself to Kagome and Yukio knew she felt that she would never
measure up. Kagome had tried to tell her that all she had to do to be worthy in
her mother-in-law’s eyes was love her son and do right by him, but Miaka always
seemed to feel that Kagome was criticizing her or judging her against a
standard no normal human could ever hope to aspire to. After the debacle of
1935 when he had forced her out of Japan on one of his family’s deep sea
fishing boats, the relationship between the two women had significantly soured.

‘I
should have known what would happen. I’d had enough warning. I just… kept
hoping that I’d be enough for her, that our love would be enough to sustain us
through the Hell of the War. But deep down inside I knew that it wouldn’t. I
guess… I guess I always knew. Miaka did love me. I know she did. She just… she
didn’t have what it took to live for centuries.’

He
watched dawn rise over the mountains and flood the Bow
Valley with sunlight. The endless forest of the mountains was a beautiful sight
to him and he loved his home with a fervent passion. Japan had cut down most of
its forests to make way for cities and housing for the burgeoning population,
but here in Canada the seas of green remained in all their glory.

‘I am
the Lorax and I speak for the trees,’ he mused,
remembering one of his favorite books by the famed author Dr. Seuss. ‘Someone
has to since humans have stopped listening to them.’

He knew,
of course, that trees talked if you knew how to listen. Goshinboku talked all
the time. Trees, like all living things, were sentient beings and they had
their opinions on things if anybody bothered to ask. They were surprisingly
self-sacrificing too. They didn’t really mind selective harvesting because it
made the forest stronger, but they especially didn’t like clear-cutting because
it destroyed the forest and made the soil blow away in the wind.

His
father was known for building houses out of standing deadfall. It was easy
enough to find it because so many road construction projects resulted in
drainage flooding that killed acres of trees alongside highways. It was
relatively simple to harvest these trees after they had cured for a couple of
years and recycle them into usable lumber. In doing so, they avoided killing
trees needlessly and preserved what little forest the planet had left.

To his
family, such a thing was common sense. Trees made oxygen and cleaned up carbon
dioxide. They provided food, shelter and protection for animals, plants and
soil. He also had a sneaking suspicion that trees made rain clouds but he
wisely kept that to himself in today’s ‘scientific age.’

‘Scientific?
If breaking everything down into tiny pieces so all you see is one thing
instead of the whole picture is being ‘scientific,’ I’ll keep on being a
backwater bumpkin thank you very much.’

He was
brought out of his thoughts by the sound of his father’s footsteps in the hall.
Looking at the clock in the room, he smiled. It was just past 8am.

‘10am
my ass. He dropped Ian off at school and rig right here.’

A passkey
being slipped into the lock told him that the front desk hadn’t given Inuyasha
any trouble about getting up to the room, and he stood, still holding the
sleeping pup, and went to meet his father at the bedroom door. Inuyasha frowned
immediately and it was obvious that his emotional turmoil was showing on his
face.

‘I
can’t tell him what’s happening to me. It’s not that he won’t understand, it’s that he will and he’ll know exactly how I’m
feeling. It’ll just bring back bad memories for him, and there’s really nothing
he can do about it so there’s no point in burdening him with it.’

“Oi. What’s going on?” his father
demanded, then switched to Japanese. “What happened here last night? How is
your mother? Is something wrong with the pup?”

He
dropped his eyes and wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Okaa-san is fine. The pup
is fine. Nothing happened last night.”

“Bullshit.
They might be fine, but you’re not. Are you going to tell me or do I have to drag
it out of you?”

“I…”

“Inuyasha,”
his mother’s voice interrupted and he cast a glance at the bed to see her
rising.

‘She
must have been just dozing and heard Otou-san come in.’

His
parents shared a meaningful look, then his father
gazed at him shrewdly as if weighing his options.

“Keh. You’ll tell me when you’re
ready.”

“It’s
nothing, Otou-san, I promise.” ‘Nothing you can fix anyway. You may be able
to do a lot of things Otou, but healing broken hearts isn’t one of them.’

His
father snorted but didn’t comment. Instead he looked at the pup.

“How was
he last night?”

“A little
colicky in the beginning, but he’s fine now. He’s very thin so Okaa-san upped
his feedings.”

Inuyasha
nodded then turned to Kagome. “Tetsu’s plane lands at
2. He’s going to pick Ian up from school and bring him home.”

“I’m
glad,” his mother answered, standing up. “I’m going to shower.”

“Okay.
When are the other two due back?”

“By
10am,” he replied.

“Okay. I
have the Jeep packed and ready to go.”

“The Jeep? Isn’t that a little small?” he questioned.

“I’ve got
the Grand Cherokee.”

“Ah,
okay.”

“Simon
and Frances are coming later today to pick up your bike and Kagome’s car.”

“Simon? I
brought the Ninja,” he answered. Simon was the gardener, and a small
earth-hanyou, too small to handle a racing bike.

“I know,” his father sighed irritably. “That’s
why Frances is going to drive the bike and Simon is going to drive the Saturn.”

He
sputtered. “Frances?! Frances is going to ride my
Ninja!?” he squeaked, on the verge of panic. Frances was one of the
housekeepers they employed to keep their home in working order. She was a great
organizer but she didn’t know the first thing about motorcycles.

“She’ll
do fine. She only has to drive it 25km.”

“But…
but…”

“She said
she’s been itching to try a bike. I think she’ll have fun.”

“But…
but…” ‘Not my Ninja!’

He was
still in a state of shohen hen his father cracked a wicked grin and he knew
he’d been had.

“Gotchya. Tetsu’s
picking up the bike after he gets in. I just told you Frances was going to do
it to irritate you.”

He
growled which only made Inuyasha grin wider. “You looked like you needed it.”

“Keh,” he snorted. ‘Truth is, I
did. Thanks Otou.’

“That’s
my line.”

“Mr.
Fushikenwa,” Emma’s voice interrupted, and his heart sank into his stomach.

‘There
she is. How am I going to handle this? My heart is telling me one thing but my
head is telling me another. I could give her the cold shoulder but it’s not her
fault. She didn’t mean to hurt me. It’s just my screwed-up head. I shouldn’t
punish her for something that’s my fault. I’m not like my father. I don’t lash
out at people just because I’m afraid they’ll hurt me. My parents made sure I
never had to use that tactic to protect myself.’

His
father noticed his discomfort because he gave him a questioning look before
turning to face the Cree woman.

“Yeah,”
Inuyashawerewered.

“Good
morning. Is it 10am already?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Yukio
noted that she looked tired.

“No, it’s
only 8. I’m early.”

“Oh. I’m
glad. I thought I had overslept.”

“Are the
others up?”

“I’m not
sure. The bedroom door is still closed.”

His
father nodded. “We’ll all go to breakfast once the other two get here, then
we’ll get on the road. I want to reach Helena by nightfall.”

“Helena?”
he repeated, looking at Inuyasha.

“It’s
about 7 hours away. I’ve made reservations at the Holiday Inn. Tomorrow we’ll
make Park City.”

He
nodded. It looked like his father wasn’t planning on drives longer than 9 hours
in a day which was fine by him. Long days cramped into a car were never
comfortable for any of them.

He saw
Inuyasha flick an ear towards the bathroom and turned his hearing in that
direction in time to hear the water turn off.

“Your
mother’s done in the shower.”

“I’ll
feed the pup then take one myself,” he said, indicating the now rousing bundle
in his arms. He knew he had about three minutes before the pup started bawling.

His
father grunted in assent. “I’ll bring you a bottle.”

It was a
clear directive for him to leave the bedroom, but he was reluctant. To do so
would mean being alone with Emma and the thought made butterflies flutter in
his stomach. Not obeying the silent command, however, would give credence to
his father’s earlier concerns that there was something wrong. Unhappily, he
stepped out of the bedroom while his father stepped in and closed the door
behind him.

He and
Emma stared at each other for long moments, then Emma
looked away.

“If
something I said last night hurt you, I’m truly sorry,” she whispered softly.

He
lowered his ears even though he knew she couldn’t see them and sighed. “It’s… it’s okay. I know that you didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“No, I
really didn’t.”

“It’s
just… I’m just… I’m still sensitive about it. It’s not your fault.” ‘And I ’t w’t want to hurt you either, but…’

“I’m
still sorry. I’ll try to be more careful in the future.”

Her hurt
expression called to him and he hurried to comfort her before he even had a
chance to think about it.

“It’s
okay. You don’t have to.”

She
looked up at him with hope in her eyes and his heart did a flip-flop in his
chest. “But I want to. I don’t want you to be hurt because of something I did.”

‘Yukio,
you are a pathetic sap and it’s going to bring you nothing but pain. It does me
no good to be too nice to her. I’ll give her the wrong impression. Still,
there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, is there?’ “I know. I don’t hold
anything against you. I promise.”

She
smiled. “I’m glad. When you left so abruptly, I was worried.”

He looked
down at the squirming pup. “Well, he was fussing and he needed care. I wanted
to get to him before he started crying.”

“I never
heard him make a souo I o I guess you got to him in time.”

“Yeah.”

The
bedroom door opened and Inuyasha shoved a bottle of han-i-lac
at him. “Here.”

He took
the bottle and his father shut the door again without another word. Emma looked
at the closed door with amusement.

“Is he
always like that?”

Yukio
shrugged and brought the nipple up to the pup’s mouth. “Pretty much,” he
answered as the pup started feeding.

His
father gave her a raised eyebrow, then looked at him
for a moment of silence.

“Keh! Whatever! Just
don’t do it again. Things are stressful enough without you haring off
with a female.”

“Me?! I was not haring off with a female! David and Michael
came too! Just ask them!”

“Right. Get in here and prove to your mother that you’re
still alive and unharmed.”

Behind
him, Emma snickered and he cast her a pleading glance.
David and Michael were watching with amusement as well.

“Good
night, Yukio. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good
night. Good night guys. Sleep well.”

“Night,”
Michael replied.

“We’re
leaving bright and early in the morning, and I don’t want to hear any of you
complain about how you’re too tired,” Inuyasha scolded.

“Don’t
worry, we’ll be up on time,” David assured him.

“Keh!”

Yukio
gave them a final wave as Inuyasha gave him a shove and slammed the door
closed.