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Love is Blind	By : SplendentGoddess Category: InuYasha > General Views: 3003 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi or VIZ Productions, and I do not gain financially from my fanfic in any way.

Chapter List
- 7
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- 9
Chapter Eight

In too much shock to say anything, Kagome heard it as Yasha move swiftly across the room, opening and closing the door, and then the feel of him began to fade away as he exited the restaurant, until she was left with the undefined white noise of the emotions of the various diners in the other room, plus, presumably, Sango and Miroku. They were all just at the edge of her awareness, because her range wasn't very far, which was actually a blessing because otherwise it'd be more of a curse than a gift.

Still in shock after everything that'd just happened, she maneuvered herself around the chair she'd grabbed hold of in her brief moment of panic and flopped her butt down in the seat, still trying to process it all. Then, before she could become fully absorbed in her own thoughts, the office door opened and closed again, along with the sound and feel of someone now being in the room with her; she felt overwhelming worry and concern from that person, and knew it had to be either Sango or Miroku.

Turning to face the door, she sniffled, and was just about to say something when Sango beat her to it.

“Are you all right, Kagome?”

She lost it then.

“Oh Sango!” she cried, and instantly, the older woman's arms were around her.

The slayer-turned-chef had no idea what all had been said between Kagome and Inuyasha but it was obvious Inuyasha had been inconsolable when he'd suddenly stormed through the tiny restaurant and out the front door without so much as a glance in her and Miroku's direction. Just one look to her husband had had Miroku nodding in agreement; he could handle the front of the house by himself for a minute, she was needed elsewhere.

“Kagome, what happened?” Sango asked her quietly and tenderly.

Without answering her directly, Kagome in turn asked, “Sango is Yasha...Yahsa's a youkai, isn't he?”

Sango felt surprised but also nervous at the question, which was all the confirmation she needed, and laughing bitterly, Kagome continued.

“I regained my ability to sense a person's soul. I'm empathic again, and he loves me Sango, he loves me. So I asked him why, and he said it was better if I hated him than feared him. Oh Sango!” She threw her arms around the other woman. “I could never fear him! Why didn't I think to explain myself better?! This is all my fault!”

“I don't understand,” Sango said then.

“I don't fear humanoid youkai,” Kagome explained then. “I mean, why would I? I was attacked by an inugami! They're just brainless monsters!” Pausing to sniffle loudly, she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and added, “Yasha called himself a monster. And he growled at me. He growled! And I was afraid!” Completely losing it, she hugged Sango tightly and started balling against the other girl's shoulder. “It was just...it was just instinct, but I didn't mean it!” she mumbled into Sango's work shirt, and the former taijiya could think of nothing else to do but pat Kagome on the back as that part of her shirt got wet.

“His full given name is actually Inuyasha,” she told Kagome quietly after a moment, hesitating when she felt the younger girl stiffen in her embrace, but Kagome didn't say anything else so she continued. “He's actually a hanyou, an...an inu-hanyou, and his particular breed is most closely related to the Akita and...and he has white hair. He was going to tell you on your date, but when he found out how you'd been blinded, and that you were afraid of dogs as a result, he just...he just automatically assumed that there was no way you two could be together, and he'd decided he didn't want you to know what his was for fear of you becoming afraid of him. I told him that he should just tell you anyway, that even if you wouldn't be able to date him because your phobia wouldn't let you, you still deserved to know the truth as far as why he was breaking it off, but he was just so afraid of losing what you two already had, that friendship you'd gained over the last two years. He'd foolishly thought that if he just let things fizzle out between you two romantically that you'd at least still come into the shop on your lunch break and he could at least still see you as a friend, as opposed to you never coming here ever again if you were terrified of him. He'd figured you'd be mad at him for a while but would eventually let it go, so he'd thought it was the lesser of two evils.”

“It's all my fault,” Kagome murmured again at Sango's explanation. “When I told him I was afraid of dogs, and how that inugami attacked me, I should have gone out of my way to specify, it's only animals I have a problem with. Humanoid youkai aren't animals. Even if they have an animal form! They have human brains, so it doesn't count! It's the unpredictable, animalistic nature of the less intelligent beasts I fear. And I know it's irrational to fear all dogs because of my attack. Especially mortal dogs. Inugami are inherently very vicious, true, but normal house dogs aren't, unless they've been conditioned that way. Logically I know that, but I have PTSD, and I just...I just can't help it. His growl. It just...well it spooked me, and now he thinks I really do fear him, but I don't!”

She started crying more heavily again, but Sango pulled Kagome away, shaking her a little. It was time for tough love, because she did love the younger girl, as a best friend, as a sister even, and she loved Inuyasha too, as a friend, and wanted to see them have their happily ever after.

“Kagome, calm down, it's all going to be okay.”

The miko sniffled again.

“How...?”

“Well, because I know you, and I know you can be just as stubborn as Yasha, if not more so. When you put your mind to it at least.”

She'd overheard enough of her and Inuyasha's casual conversations over the last two years to know quite a good deal about the former miko's personality, and this blubbering girl sitting before her wasn't the Kagome she knew.

“He needs to calm down, but then he needs to be sat down and confronted. Let me ask you this, Kagome,” Sango said, her tone of voice deathly serious. “Are you okay with the fact that he's an inu-hanyou?”

“Of course!” Kagome blurted right away, but then pausing a moment, what Sango was saying finally fully sank in. It wasn't her dating a hanyou that Kagome focused in on, though.

“Oh kami...he's a hanyou...” Before Sango could misunderstand and misjudge, Kagome finished with, “...it all makes so much sense now.”

And it did.

His insecurities, him telling her that he'd never been on a date before and that nobody considered him a catch, his admitted hesitation before asking her out, him not being bothered by her blindness...

How could he turn around and judge her when the world judged him? And, she had to acknowledge, a part of him had probably liked having a companion who couldn't judge him right off based on his appearance. She couldn't really blame him for keeping that detail from her when they'd just been casual friends, and he'd probably had every intention of telling her once they became romantically involved, but then she'd gone and dropped the bombshell of all bombshells and shattered his world.

She was slightly confused about one thing, but thought she knew the answer, when she asked Sango, “Our first date, that Saturday night...he was human that night, wasn't he?”

He had to have been. There was no way he could have fooled her mother and brother even if he'd been wearing a black wig.

“Yes,” Sango confirmed. “That Saturday night had been his human night.” Perhaps it wasn't her place to reveal this next detail, but she didn't much care at the moment. “His youki is very strong, and he only turns human one night a month, on the new moon. The rest of the month he's his hanyou self, night and day.”

Even though she couldn't access her reiki at the moment, she still remembered her lessons from back when she'd received her miko training, and Kagome knew that for a hanyou to only turn human one night a month, he had to have been hella strong. Then she gasped, as the obvious stared her right in the face.

“Toga Taisho...his father is Toga Taisho.”

Sango actually felt surprised and confused.

“How'd you know that?”

“Because...” Kagome laughed bitterly. “Our reservations for dinner were under his name, Mr. Taisho, and he'd told me the whole story, how he was an illegitimate son, a bastard son from an affair. I hadn't cared. I'm not a stickler for family lineage and honor and all that like my grandfather is. He might not've approved of me dating an illegitimate son, but I wasn't going to tell Jii-chan that part. But that was when I thought he was one of the human Taisho. There's only one youkai Taisho, that I know of, who is indeed a silver inu. It was part of my social studies as a miko. We were required to learn about the youkai royals. Yasha...” Pausing, she corrected herself. “Inuyasha's not just rich, he's a prince.”

“In blood only,” Sango said. “He's got no birthright, no claim.”

Kagome nodded.

“He's not an heir. He told me that. But I don't care about that stuff, anyway. It's just kinda crazy to realize who he actually is. Nothing in my lesson book talked about Taisho-sama siring a hanyou, but that's not surprising.”

“Well and it wasn't that long ago,” Sango said then. “If it would've been centuries ago, I'm sure it would've made the history books by now, but while Inuyasha will probably age like a youkai and live for several centuries, he's only thirty-five. He's got a baby face though, looks closer to twenty.”

The reminder of Inuyasha's lifespan caused a slight pang of sadness in Kagome's heart, but not from the idea that he wouldn't grow old with her. She'd never be so selfish. Instead, she regretted her own lifespan, and that he'd be forced to watch her grow old and die while he stayed young, forcing him to be alone once again after she was gone. But of course, she knew she was getting way ahead of herself. She had to find him for another sit down conversation and get him to actual believe that she still wanted to be with him before she could rightfully start planning on spending the next few decades with him, and he'd just told her that he would make sure to never be there during her lunch breaks ever again, under the misguided assumption that she was now terrified of him. How was she supposed to tell him that wasn't true if she'd never see him again?

Of course, the obvious solution was to just tell Sango to tell him for her, since she and Miroku would obviously still be seeing Inuyasha on a near daily basis. They could tell him that she knew he was an inu-hanyou now, and that she was okay with it, didn't fear him, and still wanted to be in a relationship with him. Knowing that he really did love her, then surely he'd come around after hearing that, right? She was just about to discuss that plan of action with Sango, but then suddenly, she got an even better idea.

“Sango, do...do you think either you or Miorku-sama could give me a ride to Yasha's apartment tomorrow? He should be home, right? Since you guys are closed on Mondays?”

Kagome couldn't see Sango's mischievous smirk as it formed, but she could definitely sense the woman's amusement.

“Oh, he'll be home all right. Especially since, if I know him at all, and I do, he'll be sulking after what happened today.”

Asking Kagome to give her a moment, jokingly saying she'd better go check on her husband and make sure he hadn't set the kitchen on fire yet, which earned the desired laugh from Kagome, Sango excused herself and told Kagome she'd be back in just a minute. True to her word, Sango returned a short time later, and told Kagome that while she actually couldn't take her to Inuyasha's apartment because she'd promised her brother Kohaku she'd help him out on an extermination job he was nervous to do on his own, Miroku hadn't been planning on going along since a reiki user wasn't required and so he was definitely available, and willing, to take her.

“I really appreciate it.”

“So will Inuyasha, once you yank his head out of his ass,” Sango laughed. “But don't be surprised, or discouraged, if he's closed off at first.”

Nodding her understanding, Kagome and Sango worked out the details, and then Kagome left, heading down the street to the bus stop.

o o o

“I'm home,” Kagome called out as she made her way past the genkan after sliding off her shoes.

“Welcome home, dear,” Mrs. Higurashi greeted as she came out from the kitchen dressed in her miko garb, the elder Higurashi woman having decided to get a head start on dinner preparations while there were no guests at the shrine requiring her blessing. She'd just been chopping vegetables for later.

Unable to miss the new level of determination that seemed to be radiating from her daughter, Atsuko asked her, “Were you able to get everything sorted out?”

Surprisingly, Kagome deflated a little bit at the question.

“Oh Mama...” she said, and her mother recognized that tone of voice all too well.

Coming up to her daughter, then, Atsuko directed Kagome to have a seat with her in the living room. Kagome's brother and grandfather were both in the main shrine building and wouldn't come into the house unless it was to fetch Atsuko because a miko was required for something, but Mrs. Higurashi doubted they'd be interrupted.

“What about dinner?” Kagome asked her mother absentmindedly when the elder Higurashi woman had a seat beside her.

“Nothing's cooking yet and the meat is still in the fridge,” she said. “The chopped vegetables can sit on the counter all evening for all I care. My baby girl is more important.”

Kagome smiled a little at that, but it looked strained.

“So are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to guess?” her mother continued when the former miko continued to just sit there quietly.

“Oh Mama...” Kagome said again, interrupting herself with a shaky breath as she tried not to start crying again. She was afraid to tell her mother, afraid of what the older woman's reaction would be, which ironically had her sympathizing with Yasha's...Inuyasha's...situation even more. Still, she knew she couldn't...shouldn't keep something like this a secret.

Especially if there was the slightest possibility of her still having a relationship with him, if he'd have her.

“I found out why Yasha broke my heart,” she began then. Her mother didn't even know she'd regained her ability to sense other people's souls yet, but Kagome was extremely grateful she had, not just because it had been the catalyst for finding out this next part, but also because she'd really know how her mother felt about the whole thing. “It's because I already broke his,” she confessed, before lowering her head and wiping at her eyes from underneath the sunglasses she hadn't taken off yet.

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” Atsuko murmured quietly.

Turning her head to face her mother, then, Kagome closed her sightless eyes and opened her mind's eye to the emotions of the woman sitting next to her.

“I found out he's not fully human,” she began, registering the shock that initially washed through her mother. The why was understandable, considering she'd met the man on his human night and, as far as her reiki had been able to determine, he was indeed fully human. “He's actually a hanyou,” Kagome continued, letting her mother absorb that bit of information next. More shock, followed by understanding dawning, because while it wasn't common knowledge, those in the reiki community were indeed aware of the fact that hanyou have times of weakness where they lose their powers and seem completely human to all but the strongest of reiki users, who even then would have to go digging for that tiny speck of hibernating youki.

After the surprise wore off, Mrs. Higurashi's understanding, love and acceptance shown through, and Kagome unconsciously exhaled in relief.

“Kagome, dear, surely you know that we would not object to you-”

“It never even got that far,” Kagome interrupted. She just needed to explain the whole thing, especially now that she knew her mother wouldn't reject him. “He's an inu-hanyou, and a white Akita on top of that.”

Her mother was surprised again, and then she murmured a quiet, “Oh, I see...”

“Yeah, and before I knew that, I told him the whole story of what happened, on our date, and how I'm scared to death of dogs now, especially white Akita!” She collapsed into tears at that, Mrs. Higurashi automatically wrapping her arms around her daughter as Kagome cried against her shoulder. “He was so hurt... He thought I would be afraid of him...”

The way she phrased it implied, in her mother's mind, that she and Yasha had at least had an open conversation on the subject.

“I'm sure he forgives you,” Atsuko said, but Kagome shook her head.

“He left the room right after more or less revealing to me what he was, so we didn't get to talk about it.”

“More or less?”

“He growled at me, to make a point, I guess. And I was afraid, I mean, just at first! 'Cause it's like people who are afraid of thunder, even though you know the lightning can't hurt you, so long as you're not out in the storm at least. So yeah, I was startled by the growl, 'cause it was spooky sounding, and then that's when he left, so now he totally does think that I'm afraid of him, like...like I now understand what kind of a monster he really is, or something.”

Tenderly, cautiously, while gently rubbing her daughter's back as Kagome leaned against her side, Atsuko questioned, “So...you're not actually afraid of him, right? Even though he's half inu-youkai?”

Aghast, Kagome pulled out of her mother's embrace.

“Of course not! He's a person, not an animal.” To Kagome, that difference was obvious. “I mean, I was surprised, and I can't honestly say how I would've reacted if I'd still had some sight and seen him before getting to know him, but now that I do know him? And this might sound harsh, but since I can't see him, then I can put his appearance out of my mind. I mean the poor guy's been judged his whole life based on his appearance, and he probably gravitated towards me because I couldn't judge him based on his looks, so I'm certainly not going to start now just 'cause I happened to find out what he looks like.”

It's not like, if he ever woke her up from one of her many recurring nightmares, she'd see his white hair and shining fangs suspended above her, and still half asleep, she'd freak out and try to get away from him.

And why the hell did she just have a mental picture of them sleeping together in the same bed?! But...that was what she wanted. A relationship with him. She'd told Kikyou she wanted to get married and have a family, and here was a man who loved her. Who cared if he wasn't fully human? She sure as hell didn't. The only thought she had on the subject was her previous fleeting sympathy regarding the fact that she'd die so much sooner than him.

Oh gods...

Belatedly, it just occurred to Kagome that the youki signature Kikyou had felt following her the other day had to be Inuyasha. Well, it didn't have to be, but it made sense. He knew where she lived, and would therefore know which bus she took to work, and hadn't she even shared with him the fact that she'd nearly missed her bus once? Hadn't he immediately offered to walk her to the bus stop on her way home, that very same day?

Inu-youkai – benevolent ones, at least – were very protective of their humans. It was clear to her now that Inuyasha had been trying to protect her by not letting her know what he was, convinced it would have freaked her out, and his desire to protect her probably went much deeper than that. He was following her around, not in a creepy, stalkerish way, but more like a guard dog, to make sure she stayed safe. There was probably also a bit of lost puppy in there, too, because now that she fully grasped his 'undesirability' to the rest of the world, he probably felt like he'd had, and lost, his one and only chance at happiness with her. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate coincidence that was the circumstances surrounding her blindness, even if it had just been a completely different type of lower youkai that'd attacked her, then she was sure he would've braved telling her he was hanyou during their first date. It wasn't the hanyou part he was worried about her not accepting, it was the inu part. The very thought that she might be terrified of him had terrified him.

“I'm going to make this right,” she said then, before turning her focus back on her mother's soul again. “Mama, this is important,” she stressed. “I need to know how you'd feel about me being in a serious relationship with an inu-hanyou. I mean, we might even get married and have kids one day, and if his youki's strong enough to do the full-youkai transformation, which it probably is considering his father is a daiyoukai, then they'd be hanyou kids. Would you be okay with that?”

Even with her shades still on, Atsuko could make out Kagome's milky eyes through the tinted glass, and they seemed to pierce right through her very soul in that moment.

It took Mrs. Higurashi a few seconds to realize she recognized the sensation, but she had nothing to fear from her daughter probing her heart as she answered quite truthfully with, “All that matters to me is your happiness, and, from the sound of things, poor Yasha's happiness as well. He seems like such a nice young man, and if you two do find that you complete one another, that is the happily ever after I have always dreamed could one day be yours. And if you two give me grandchildren one day, I certainly won't mind if they're also puppies,” she added with a laugh. “That'll just make them all the easier to spoil rotten when I babysit!”

“Mama!”

Laughing, Kagome wiped a rogue tear from her face, and then told her mother about her plan to have Miroku drive her over to Inuyasha's apartment the following day.

“I don't know how long I'll be over there, and I have no idea where it is and wouldn't be able to find my way back, so if Yasha...” Shaking her head, she corrected herself again. “If Inuyasha is going to drive me home, I want to make sure Souta and Jii-chan don't get weird at the feel of his approaching youki.

“We'll tell them tonight at dinner, together.”

The fierce mama bear attitude Kagome was sensing in her mother told her that if the senior Higurashi had anything negative to say about his granddaughter dating an inu-hanyou, her mother would have her back.
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Love is Blind