Shippo-Inuyasha- Shard#28- Secrets.
Apr. 28th, 2005 08:56 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
http://users.livejournal.com/_midoriko_sama_/ posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
30shards1. Title: Bring him Up, Bring him Down.
2. Pairing: non-rom(antic) Inuyasha-Shippo
3. Rating: R
4. Squicks: Attempted non-con/minor.
5. Summary: Being picked up and brought up by a stranger who offers to love you and take care of you, Shippo discovers, is not always a good thing. Not everyone gets a lucky hand at the game of Karma.
At first, there had been nobody Shippo hated more than Inuyasha. The Hanyou. Yes, the big brute had saved him, avenged his parents. But he was just that; a brute. He was hateful, he was violent, he was undeserving, and he was a Hanyou. Shippo made sure to hide these feelings, because being left on the wayside of the dust path again was not an option he relished. He was young, and he had been cursed with a precautious mind trapped in a yet too tiny, weak body. Most especially, he made sure to hide these feelings from Kagome, because the kit knew that human girl would side against him, and with the Hanyou. Who she gave attention, caresses to that he didn't disserve and didn't return, and accepted only grudgingly. And for this, Shippo only hated the Hanyou more.
So Shippo, the little fox kit who the Hanyou had taken in, hated the Hanyou in silence, envied his strength and his tall legs. Envied the way he could carry both Shippo and Kagome on his back for miles and miles and never seem to tire. Envied the way Kagome would caress his face or take his hand, even if the stupid Hanyou would always scoff, shy away, turn his back on Kagome's eyes as they tried to speak with him. Envied ... envied the food Shippo himself ate; because he, the Hanyou could hunt, could find shelter, could provide.
On one such of these nights of travel, a few weeks after the incident of the new moon, the Hanyou, as he had done that night at the spiders' temple, growled and snarled at the idea of accepted the offer of shelter from an old woman who offered it.
It had been raining - coming down so thick that it obstructed vision - Kagome was wet and tired, and would have taken ill unless she were warmed. Still, with his hair sticking to his face and his clothes to his back, the disgusting Hanyou had had to be put in his place, like the animal he was, in the mud, by Kagome's command, before they had finally found a roof and a warm fire.
The old woman even gave them her room to sleep in. The single futon was warm and large enough for Kagome and the kit, and Shippo - stomach full, warm and safe - soon began to dose off, envy always abated in moments like these, whenever he saw the Hanyou covered in mud and sleeping against cold, hard wood.
Shippo lost the fragile hold on sleep, though, when a snarl from the Hanyou's throat began to shake the room. Shifting slightly on the futon to try not to attract attention to himself, the kitsune noticed that the woman who had given them lodging was at the door-way, her bent and old figure black against the dying fire's light in the next room. The moment she stepped into the room, the Hanyou flew to his feet, but seemed to freeze, unable to move his body anymore than that.
"Don't you dare come any closer," he hissed, so low, so growl-laden and angry that it was almost more of animal's burning rage than an intelligent being's warning.
"Is this the way you repay the women who took you from the forests, and fed you, and sheltered you?" Shippo felt the anger he always hid for the Hanyou redouble at the woman's words, and the kit watched her in the flickering, reflected, dying light as, old and hobbled, almost like Kaede, she made her way across the room, with her arm outstretched towards the stiff and ungrateful man that was still wet, savage and growling more like a cornered animal than Shippo had ever heard.
"You're as beautiful as I imagined you would be," she said tenderly, "You grew up to be a man every woman would want to be with."
A sickness settled in Shippo's stomach as he thought of Kagome, and how the sweet, kind human girl confirmed what the old woman was saying.
The old woman's gnarled hand finally connected to the Hanyou's chest, and the growling chocked to a stop. He stood stiff, as though he had been made of wood, and Shippo realised after a second that the older man wasn't even breathing. Horror suddenly bloomed on the kitsune as the woman's hands began roaming the hanyou's chest in slow circles, rubbing the withered palm to his red clothing. Shippo held his breath along with the Hanyou as he realised that something very wrong was happening ... even though he couldn't understand it. The chill that settled at the back of his neck and down, down across his spine, roaming like that old paper-skinned hand was enough. As the Hanyou stood stiff and still, fists leaking blood, unable to move, Shippo's mind realised that it was still as young as its body.
The kitsune was trembling as he suspected the Hanyou wanted to. He could almost feel the ghost of that hand, seeming to come straight from the grave, pass over his miniature chest, face, shoulders, back, ears, lips, neck, down the spine, as the Hanyou continued to hold his breath and wring his claws into his own palm, mouth closed in a line, fangs two humps at the side of his closed lips.
The hand was joined by a second, and they travelled under the sleeves, carrying blood from his fist up the Hanyou's stationary, pulsing muscles, that Shippo could almost see even through the clothing, contorted into tight knots, as the kitsune's own muscles were. The sleeves of the Hanyou's red clothing bunched up and rose along with the withered arms, following the hands in the their quest up. And then down again, smeared in the Hanyou's blood.
And down. And down. Shippo's chest screamed in pain as he held his breath more, cringing into the sleeping warmth of Kagome, and he opened him mouth to shriek, but no sound came out.
It was the Hanyou ... it was Inuyasha who let a growl suddenly rip out of him and finally broke into movement before those gnarled hands reached their destination. In one movement he plunged his hand onto the hilt of the Tetsusaiga and swung it out of its scabbard, transforming it, and aiming the swing at the bent woman.
With her bent back, her paper-thin skin, her protruding knuckle and finger bones, she leaped back gracefully, landing on the other side of the room.
"Witch," Shippo heard Inuyasha snarl as the terrified kitsune was unable to take his eyes away from the old woman who had leaped across the room like an adult fox. "I no longer am what I was when I left here. Leave the room, or die."
"You won't kill me Inuyasha," replied a voice that was totally different from the tender one that had made the kitsune feel sorry for her, and comfortable as she handed them food Inuyasha had refused to eat. "You'll never managed to kill the hands that healed your legs, and that fed you."
"Drop the disguise, witch," hissed Inuyasha again, his voice and growl going even lower as the light from Tetsusaiga began to glow brighter and brighter. Blocked in place as if ice had grown around him and was clinging shiveringly to his spine, Shippo kept staring at the old woman - who slowly straightened - whose skin whitened and toughened - whose bones no longer protruded - whose face was as young as that of Kagome. Kagome who hadn't even stirred, despite all the growling and hissing the room was statically filled with.
"Poor innocent child," laughed the now clear voice, sharply mocking as Shippo looked at the smooth features, "you're still a child now .. always so stiff under my fingers. You had thought I would take you in and expect nothing in return? Foolish innocent child."
The growl from Inuyasha went so low that Shippo's ear hummed in response to it. Yet Shippo could not take his eyes off that woman, and the hands that had touched the hanyou- that had touched Inuyasha in such a manner that had frightened him, terrified Shippo so badly for reasons he could not understand.
"Any woman would want you," the woman went on. The light from the fire had dimmed to a mere glow now, reflecting on her chin and making her face totally black. The shadows dancer around her as fire flickered and the sword pulsed. "I wonder; do you stiffen when she touches you? Do you flinch when her hands touch your skin?" She stepped forward, Tetsusaiga's light touching her moving mouth and flickering tongue behind it.
"What did you do to her?" Inuyasha roared, pointing his sword at the woman's throat and lighting all her face from underneath. Shippo felt himself begin to tremble, tremble for both him and Kagome when he felt her not move at all, with her slow breath and her heavy limbs burdening around him. "You've fed her what you used to give me, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, of course. Put she's a poor human. She is asleep. Your little companion, however ..." Shippo saw Inuyasha stiffen - and then realised again, in the play of light and shadows, that what was holding him so stiff, what was making the trembling almost painful and rattling, wasn't the fear and terror of what he was seeing, and what he was being forced to hear and understand. It was the food - which Inuyasha, the Hanyou, had refused to touch, and had warned them not to eat.
"It has the same effect on him as it had on you as a childling," the whispery voice continued, "I loved how your eyes would grow wide and your mouth would just open when I touched you." Shippo wanted to whimper and look away, but he couldn't even cry, let his eyes mist over so he wouldn't see Inuyasha's body, almost as rigid as the kitsune's own. "You would have loved it, had you stayed. I know you would have."
"Give me the herbs for her, woman, and leave us," hissed Inuyasha, his voice as wooden as the walls, and as hollow.
"You think you can just order me in my own home? If you want the herbs for your woman, you must give me the kitsune. He is just as young as you were ... you have escaped my grasp, but I will not die without progeny, and if it is not you, then it will be him."
The light around the sword began to glow so brightly that whole room began to pulse yellow in its rhythm. The young, decayed, malicious face came in full light as Inuyasha, the Hanyou, snarled and barred his teeth at her until his gums began to bleed.
Still stiff, still screaming in his head as his lungs could only do it for lack of air, still almost blinded by the blood rising in fear and Kagome's cool, rhythmic breathing and heart beat behind him, Shippo watched the sword go up. The light rose with it, shadows falling down like ghosts on the helpless pray, usurping the protection of the night.
It broke through the ceiling of the hut -- Shippo's ears were ringing. Inuyasha was screaming. His lungs were screaming. -- and brought down wood crashing and rain falling into the room, seeping into them all. Then, Tetsusaiga came down again.
She hadn't even moved in her confidence. For a single moment, the tip of Tetsusaiga was stationary just above her face, pointed at her nose. The light fully showed her calm smile, collected expression, benign lips and cultured eyebrows.
Then Inuyasha's scream strengthened as his own claws dug through the hilt. Shippo's mouth opened wide and the screams of the woman filled his ears as his eyes blurred with fear and tears.
Over the woman's ear-splitting screams -- over his lungs' screams, over Kagome's calm, steady breath -- and over his own silent ones, he heard one thing.
"Die, and take your hands with you."
-------------------------------------------------------
At first, there had been nobody Shippo hated more than Inuyasha the Hanyou. Yes, the big brute had saved him, avenged his parents.
Walked into the hut with them even though he knew what would happen.
Shippo clung to Inuyasha, the Hanyou, as he carried the kitsune and Kagome through the woods. He, the Hanyou, had rampaged through the mononoke's potions to find cures for both the kit and Kagome. He had let Shippo cry and scream and cling to the warm red fire-rat before giving Kagome the waking medicine, never saying a word. He'd silently let a kitsune who he knew hated him climb into the safety between the fire-rat and the kosode. Then, he had quietly given Kagome the cure.
"Don't tell her. Never tell her."
Shippo had nodded.
"It will never happen to you while I live."
Shippo clung to the shoulder of Inuyasha, the Hanyou. He was a brute, he was hateful, he was violent, he was undeserving, and he was a Hanyou. Shippo clung to him harder.
2. Pairing: non-rom(antic) Inuyasha-Shippo
3. Rating: R
4. Squicks: Attempted non-con/minor.
5. Summary: Being picked up and brought up by a stranger who offers to love you and take care of you, Shippo discovers, is not always a good thing. Not everyone gets a lucky hand at the game of Karma.
At first, there had been nobody Shippo hated more than Inuyasha. The Hanyou. Yes, the big brute had saved him, avenged his parents. But he was just that; a brute. He was hateful, he was violent, he was undeserving, and he was a Hanyou. Shippo made sure to hide these feelings, because being left on the wayside of the dust path again was not an option he relished. He was young, and he had been cursed with a precautious mind trapped in a yet too tiny, weak body. Most especially, he made sure to hide these feelings from Kagome, because the kit knew that human girl would side against him, and with the Hanyou. Who she gave attention, caresses to that he didn't disserve and didn't return, and accepted only grudgingly. And for this, Shippo only hated the Hanyou more.
So Shippo, the little fox kit who the Hanyou had taken in, hated the Hanyou in silence, envied his strength and his tall legs. Envied the way he could carry both Shippo and Kagome on his back for miles and miles and never seem to tire. Envied the way Kagome would caress his face or take his hand, even if the stupid Hanyou would always scoff, shy away, turn his back on Kagome's eyes as they tried to speak with him. Envied ... envied the food Shippo himself ate; because he, the Hanyou could hunt, could find shelter, could provide.
On one such of these nights of travel, a few weeks after the incident of the new moon, the Hanyou, as he had done that night at the spiders' temple, growled and snarled at the idea of accepted the offer of shelter from an old woman who offered it.
It had been raining - coming down so thick that it obstructed vision - Kagome was wet and tired, and would have taken ill unless she were warmed. Still, with his hair sticking to his face and his clothes to his back, the disgusting Hanyou had had to be put in his place, like the animal he was, in the mud, by Kagome's command, before they had finally found a roof and a warm fire.
The old woman even gave them her room to sleep in. The single futon was warm and large enough for Kagome and the kit, and Shippo - stomach full, warm and safe - soon began to dose off, envy always abated in moments like these, whenever he saw the Hanyou covered in mud and sleeping against cold, hard wood.
Shippo lost the fragile hold on sleep, though, when a snarl from the Hanyou's throat began to shake the room. Shifting slightly on the futon to try not to attract attention to himself, the kitsune noticed that the woman who had given them lodging was at the door-way, her bent and old figure black against the dying fire's light in the next room. The moment she stepped into the room, the Hanyou flew to his feet, but seemed to freeze, unable to move his body anymore than that.
"Don't you dare come any closer," he hissed, so low, so growl-laden and angry that it was almost more of animal's burning rage than an intelligent being's warning.
"Is this the way you repay the women who took you from the forests, and fed you, and sheltered you?" Shippo felt the anger he always hid for the Hanyou redouble at the woman's words, and the kit watched her in the flickering, reflected, dying light as, old and hobbled, almost like Kaede, she made her way across the room, with her arm outstretched towards the stiff and ungrateful man that was still wet, savage and growling more like a cornered animal than Shippo had ever heard.
"You're as beautiful as I imagined you would be," she said tenderly, "You grew up to be a man every woman would want to be with."
A sickness settled in Shippo's stomach as he thought of Kagome, and how the sweet, kind human girl confirmed what the old woman was saying.
The old woman's gnarled hand finally connected to the Hanyou's chest, and the growling chocked to a stop. He stood stiff, as though he had been made of wood, and Shippo realised after a second that the older man wasn't even breathing. Horror suddenly bloomed on the kitsune as the woman's hands began roaming the hanyou's chest in slow circles, rubbing the withered palm to his red clothing. Shippo held his breath along with the Hanyou as he realised that something very wrong was happening ... even though he couldn't understand it. The chill that settled at the back of his neck and down, down across his spine, roaming like that old paper-skinned hand was enough. As the Hanyou stood stiff and still, fists leaking blood, unable to move, Shippo's mind realised that it was still as young as its body.
The kitsune was trembling as he suspected the Hanyou wanted to. He could almost feel the ghost of that hand, seeming to come straight from the grave, pass over his miniature chest, face, shoulders, back, ears, lips, neck, down the spine, as the Hanyou continued to hold his breath and wring his claws into his own palm, mouth closed in a line, fangs two humps at the side of his closed lips.
The hand was joined by a second, and they travelled under the sleeves, carrying blood from his fist up the Hanyou's stationary, pulsing muscles, that Shippo could almost see even through the clothing, contorted into tight knots, as the kitsune's own muscles were. The sleeves of the Hanyou's red clothing bunched up and rose along with the withered arms, following the hands in the their quest up. And then down again, smeared in the Hanyou's blood.
And down. And down. Shippo's chest screamed in pain as he held his breath more, cringing into the sleeping warmth of Kagome, and he opened him mouth to shriek, but no sound came out.
It was the Hanyou ... it was Inuyasha who let a growl suddenly rip out of him and finally broke into movement before those gnarled hands reached their destination. In one movement he plunged his hand onto the hilt of the Tetsusaiga and swung it out of its scabbard, transforming it, and aiming the swing at the bent woman.
With her bent back, her paper-thin skin, her protruding knuckle and finger bones, she leaped back gracefully, landing on the other side of the room.
"Witch," Shippo heard Inuyasha snarl as the terrified kitsune was unable to take his eyes away from the old woman who had leaped across the room like an adult fox. "I no longer am what I was when I left here. Leave the room, or die."
"You won't kill me Inuyasha," replied a voice that was totally different from the tender one that had made the kitsune feel sorry for her, and comfortable as she handed them food Inuyasha had refused to eat. "You'll never managed to kill the hands that healed your legs, and that fed you."
"Drop the disguise, witch," hissed Inuyasha again, his voice and growl going even lower as the light from Tetsusaiga began to glow brighter and brighter. Blocked in place as if ice had grown around him and was clinging shiveringly to his spine, Shippo kept staring at the old woman - who slowly straightened - whose skin whitened and toughened - whose bones no longer protruded - whose face was as young as that of Kagome. Kagome who hadn't even stirred, despite all the growling and hissing the room was statically filled with.
"Poor innocent child," laughed the now clear voice, sharply mocking as Shippo looked at the smooth features, "you're still a child now .. always so stiff under my fingers. You had thought I would take you in and expect nothing in return? Foolish innocent child."
The growl from Inuyasha went so low that Shippo's ear hummed in response to it. Yet Shippo could not take his eyes off that woman, and the hands that had touched the hanyou- that had touched Inuyasha in such a manner that had frightened him, terrified Shippo so badly for reasons he could not understand.
"Any woman would want you," the woman went on. The light from the fire had dimmed to a mere glow now, reflecting on her chin and making her face totally black. The shadows dancer around her as fire flickered and the sword pulsed. "I wonder; do you stiffen when she touches you? Do you flinch when her hands touch your skin?" She stepped forward, Tetsusaiga's light touching her moving mouth and flickering tongue behind it.
"What did you do to her?" Inuyasha roared, pointing his sword at the woman's throat and lighting all her face from underneath. Shippo felt himself begin to tremble, tremble for both him and Kagome when he felt her not move at all, with her slow breath and her heavy limbs burdening around him. "You've fed her what you used to give me, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, of course. Put she's a poor human. She is asleep. Your little companion, however ..." Shippo saw Inuyasha stiffen - and then realised again, in the play of light and shadows, that what was holding him so stiff, what was making the trembling almost painful and rattling, wasn't the fear and terror of what he was seeing, and what he was being forced to hear and understand. It was the food - which Inuyasha, the Hanyou, had refused to touch, and had warned them not to eat.
"It has the same effect on him as it had on you as a childling," the whispery voice continued, "I loved how your eyes would grow wide and your mouth would just open when I touched you." Shippo wanted to whimper and look away, but he couldn't even cry, let his eyes mist over so he wouldn't see Inuyasha's body, almost as rigid as the kitsune's own. "You would have loved it, had you stayed. I know you would have."
"Give me the herbs for her, woman, and leave us," hissed Inuyasha, his voice as wooden as the walls, and as hollow.
"You think you can just order me in my own home? If you want the herbs for your woman, you must give me the kitsune. He is just as young as you were ... you have escaped my grasp, but I will not die without progeny, and if it is not you, then it will be him."
The light around the sword began to glow so brightly that whole room began to pulse yellow in its rhythm. The young, decayed, malicious face came in full light as Inuyasha, the Hanyou, snarled and barred his teeth at her until his gums began to bleed.
Still stiff, still screaming in his head as his lungs could only do it for lack of air, still almost blinded by the blood rising in fear and Kagome's cool, rhythmic breathing and heart beat behind him, Shippo watched the sword go up. The light rose with it, shadows falling down like ghosts on the helpless pray, usurping the protection of the night.
It broke through the ceiling of the hut -- Shippo's ears were ringing. Inuyasha was screaming. His lungs were screaming. -- and brought down wood crashing and rain falling into the room, seeping into them all. Then, Tetsusaiga came down again.
She hadn't even moved in her confidence. For a single moment, the tip of Tetsusaiga was stationary just above her face, pointed at her nose. The light fully showed her calm smile, collected expression, benign lips and cultured eyebrows.
Then Inuyasha's scream strengthened as his own claws dug through the hilt. Shippo's mouth opened wide and the screams of the woman filled his ears as his eyes blurred with fear and tears.
Over the woman's ear-splitting screams -- over his lungs' screams, over Kagome's calm, steady breath -- and over his own silent ones, he heard one thing.
"Die, and take your hands with you."
-------------------------------------------------------
At first, there had been nobody Shippo hated more than Inuyasha the Hanyou. Yes, the big brute had saved him, avenged his parents.
Walked into the hut with them even though he knew what would happen.
Shippo clung to Inuyasha, the Hanyou, as he carried the kitsune and Kagome through the woods. He, the Hanyou, had rampaged through the mononoke's potions to find cures for both the kit and Kagome. He had let Shippo cry and scream and cling to the warm red fire-rat before giving Kagome the waking medicine, never saying a word. He'd silently let a kitsune who he knew hated him climb into the safety between the fire-rat and the kosode. Then, he had quietly given Kagome the cure.
"Don't tell her. Never tell her."
Shippo had nodded.
"It will never happen to you while I live."
Shippo clung to the shoulder of Inuyasha, the Hanyou. He was a brute, he was hateful, he was violent, he was undeserving, and he was a Hanyou. Shippo clung to him harder.
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