AN: Yet another side story for One Wish, this one concerning Inu-Yasha. I thought it made a good story, but the whole thing doesn't fit into what I'm doing with One Wish. So hopefully this clears up all the mystery surrounding why Inu-Yasha is four hundred years younger than he should be.
Disclaimer: I'd like to think of it as borrowing Inu-Yasha with no intention of returning him.
Goshinboku- Sengoku Jidai -
Shouting villagers ran after a figure dressed all in red, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.
"It's Inu-Yasha!"
"He's got the jewel!"
"Someone find the priestess!"
A young woman, dressed in traditional miko's garb walked slowly through the forest the figure in red raced towards. Her steps were carefully measured, and she clung to her bow as if it were the only thing keeping her alive. Blood dripped down the back of her gi, staining the ground she walked upon.
The figure in red leapt from the rooftop to a branch of a nearby tree and raced into the woods, silver hair flying in the wind. In one clawed hand, he held a beaded necklace with a large pink jewel attached to it.
The woman spotted the fleeing demon at the same time he saw her.
"Why did you betray me, Inu-Yasha?" She asked, raising her bow to take aim.
"Kikyo?" His look of surprise and confusion disappeared into a grimace of pain as a glowing pink arrow shot through his shoulder, pulling him back to the tree he had just leapt out of. He slumped unconscious against the tree, arrow pinning him to it. The necklace fell out of his limp hand to sparkle innocently at the base of the tree.
The woman fell to the ground, the pain from the fresh, jagged claw marks on her back too much for her. The villagers raced up, a small girl with a bandage covering one eye leading them.
"Oneesama!" She cried, kneeling beside the fallen priestess.
"Kaede-chan," the woman whispered painfully, reaching a hand up to touch the girl's tear-stained cheek. "Burn the jewel with my body. This must not happen again." Her eyes went blank and her hand fell to the forest floor.
"Oneesama!" The girl cried, shaking the woman. Strong hands pulled her away from the dead body. She wept in her captor's arms, wishing for her sister back.
A villager picked up the fallen necklace. "What do we do with the jewel?"
The girl eyed it, remembering how it was said to grant one wish. Surely it could bring her oneesama back.
But oneesama had died to keep others from using it. Wishing oneesama back with it was wrong. And she had said to burn it with her body. Decision made, she spoke.
"We will follow oneesama's last wish. Burn it with her body." And she fled back to the village, weeping.
A tall man dressed in white stood before the base of the ancient tree, looking up at the pinned boy.
"You always were a fool, little brother," he said, knowing the boy couldn't hear him.
- December 1887, Tokyo, Japan -
A man stood with his wife and three small children, looking at the steep hill with distaste. The children were two boys, looking to be ten and five, and the youngest was a cute girl of four.
"We will have to replace the steps. The wooden ones are all gone. Rocks will work better," he said to woman.
"Do we have to live here?" The older boy whined. "I want to go back to our old house. It didn't have all these stairs."
"This shrine belonged to your great-uncle, Akira-chan. When he died, he left it to us, and we shall do as your honored ancestor requested and live here. You will like it, you'll see."
The younger two children raced up the staircase, intent on seeing their new home. The eldest followed grudgingly behind his parents.
"Look touchan, sleepy man!" The younger boy called out.
"Yeah, sleepy man!" The girl repeated.
The adults walked over to where the two children stood, pointing up to a part of the large tree where a jagged yellow scar was.
"Haku-chan, Rei-chan, you have a vivid imagination," the woman said, seeing nothing there.
Akira thought he saw a flash of red as he stared at the scar, but it disappeared, leaving him thinking nothing had been there.
"He's really there, kaachan! He's got silver hair, and furry ears on the top of his head, and red clothes, and there's an arrow sticking out of him!" Haku argued, upset his mother didn't believe him.
"Sleepy man!" The girl said again.
"Stop lying to your mother," the man said. "We need to go look at the house and see what needs to be fixed up. You three find something to amuse yourself and stay out of kaasan's and mine way, okay?"
"Hai, tousan," the three said dully.
"Akira-chan, make sure your brother and sister don't hurt themselves."
"Hai, tousan."
Akira glanced around the yard, bored. The younger two ran to stand at the base of the ancient tree, pointing up to nothing he could see and daring the other to pet them.
He walked over to where the two stood and looked up. Again, that odd flash of red where the yellow scar was in the tree's trunk. It lasted longer this time, and there was silver as well.
"What are you talking about?" He asked.
Rei pointed up to the scar, her aim a bit off. She was pointing at where he had seen the silver. "Furry inu ears!"
"I want to pet them!" Haku added. "Can I climb up and pet them?"
"Me too! Me too!"
Akira sighed. "Keep them out of trouble, he says. As if it's even possible. They look for it," he muttered. "How would you get up the tree?"
Rei and Haku exchanged incomprehensible babble. Sometimes he wished he were young enough to remember their baby language, but not very often. Kaasan always patted them on the head and called them cute when they did that.
"You boost us!" Haku said excitedly. "You're a big kid, and we're little. Easy!"
"Boost, boost!" Rei said, clapping her hands.
At least some people thought he was a big kid. He looked over at the house their parents had disappeared into. He could hear his mother complaining about dust in rooms jiisan hadn't kept clean. Akira knew he wouldn't clean a room if nobody planned on living in it, so what was her problem? But his father seemed to be tied up in calming her, so they wouldn't be out to check on them any time soon.
"Sure, Haku-chan. Let me boost you first so you can help Rei-chan up."
After a few false starts, Akira managed to snag the lowest branch, and Haku climbed over him onto the branch. Akira refrained from yelling at him not to step on his head again. He shoved dark bangs out of his blue-gray eyes from where they had moved during Haku's scramble up into the tree.
"Your turn, Rei-chan," he said, still pulling the branch down. Rei looked fearfully up at the tall tree, then back at her brothers.
"Chicken!" Haku called down to her. "Rei's a chicken, can't climb a dumb old tree!"
Akira rolled his eyes as Rei's chocolate brown eyes flashed angrily and she quickly climbed up into the tree to bop Haku on the head.
"Not chicken! Not chicken! Just seeing how far it is to fall."
Akira nimbly climbed onto a higher branch than the one his younger siblings were currently quarreling on. He still couldn't see their so-called 'sleepy man.' But both had gone too far for this to be one of their usual stories.
"So where's this sleepy man?" He asked, getting their attention.
"Dog ears!" Rei said, quickly scampering further up into the tree, Haku not far behind her.
"Bakas." He had monkeys for siblings.
He climbed up to where they sat on a strange thick vine that twisted around much of the tree's trunk. The odd yellow scar was in front of them, and both children were daring each other to touch 'him' and see if 'he' was really asleep.
Akira stared at the scar, wondering what the little ones could see that he couldn't. The flash was clearer this time, red clothing. But it disappeared again.
Haku seemed to have won the argument with 'girls are such babies,' and Rei inched closer to the scar. Akira watched as her hand closed on something that was not there and tugged. Make-believe had never been so weird. She jerked her hand back.
Haku giggled. "Sleepy man didn't move! Maybe he's dead."
Akira climbed up to sit on another branch and reached his hand out to touch the scar.
Rei yelped.
"Niichan stuck his hand through sleepy man's chest!" Haku said. He traced his hand along Akira's arm, but stopped at something Akira hadn't around his elbow. Haku quickly pulled his hand away.
Akira pulled his hand away from the scar and practically fell out of the tree as a man appeared right where his hand had been, an arrow through his left shoulder. He wore a red haori and hakama. Akira understood those were the red flashes he had seen. The man had long silver hair and furry white dog ears. Those were obviously what the babies were fussing over.
"Wow," he said dumbly. "You two babies weren't lying. There really is someone here."
Haku stuck his tongue out at his brother. "We're not babies. We see sleepy man before you."
"If you two keep making so much noise, maybe you'll wake him up," Akira said. "He's got funny hair and ears. I think he's a demon."
"Demons die out long ago!" Haku argued.
"They could have been put on trees like him," Akira pointed to the still sleeping man. "I didn't see him until I touched the funny mark on the tree. And who would believe babies when they say there's a man sleeping in the tree?"
It might have made sense to an adult, but to six-year-old Haku, it was just grown-up babble. "Not demon! Demons all dead!"
"What if he wakes up and he is demon? Will he eat us?" Rei asked, brown eyes wide with fear.
"Iie, Rei-chan. He's stuck to the tree," Akira reassured her.
"Would the three of you just shut the hell up already?" The man suddenly yelled. All three children screamed, losing their balance and sliding to lower branches.
"And stop screaming! It hurts my ears. Fucking kids, can't even fucking- holy shit! Where's that damned priestess?"
"Is sleepy man babbling to himself?" Rei asked, still holding tightly onto the branch she had managed to grab before she fell to the ground. Akira reached over and helped her back up.
"He's got a dirty mouth. Kaasan won't like him," Akira said.
"Oi, kids, can one of you pull this arrow out? I promise to kill you quickly."
"Kaasan really won't like him."
"I don't want to die. Maybe let sleepy man stay there?" Haku said from the branch beside Rei.
The man growled. "Go get Kikyo, you stupid ningen pups."
"Who's Kik-o?" Haku asked bravely. "We not know her."
"Sleepy man maybe remember dead lady?" Rei offered.
"Quit fucking calling me sleepy man! My name's Inu-Yasha, you morons!" He yelled at them. "And do something helpful, like pull this arrow out. It fucking hurts like hell!"
"Inu. Yasha? Girl dog demon?" Haku said hesitantly.
"He no look like girl," Rei pointed out.
Akira thought it was pretty funny. "Maybe he looked like a girl when he was born and they didn't change the mistake."
The man was beyond pissed. "Get me the fuck down from here!"
"Down is good," Rei agreed. She climbed down the tree away from the angry dog demon.
Akira and Haku followed after her.
"Oi, don't leave me up here!" Inu-Yasha yelled. All three ran back to the house, away from the screaming demon. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"
Their parents still didn't hear him yelling. Rei said it was magic and, baby though Rei was, Akira was inclined to believe her. How else would the man still be alive with an arrow in him? He wasn't even bleeding. And he was a demon. If there were demons, why not magic?
It kept the kids up at night, the yelling for someone to let him down. But they all remembered the promise of being killed quickly if they did, so they kept well away from the tree.
Which was why all three were startled when another silver-haired man showed up while tousan was at work and kaasan was in the bath.
"Children," he said coolly as he looked down at the three muddy figures playing near the well. "I should have expected innocents to be the one to wake the baka. I could hear him yelling all the way back to my lands."
All three stared up at him, silent. He looked a lot like the man still yelling about stupid kids and fucking priestesses.
"This Sesshoumaru believes your parents cannot hear him," the man said to them.
All three nodded mutely. If their parents could hear the foul language the demon was using, they would have shut him up days ago.
"Interesting that you can. Perhaps because of the age," he mused. "Or else the blood is not so thin as I had first assumed."
"Are you here to take grumpy man away?" Rei asked quietly. All three had come to a silent understanding that the cool man looking down at them was much scarier than the angry man still stuck to their tree.
"Unfortunately, only someone with holy powers can remove the arrow keeping him there." The man didn't look too upset about that. Akira thought he didn't like the angry demon anymore than they did.
"How come tousan and kaasan can't see him?" Akira asked.
"A spell was placed on him to keep ningens from seeing him. The priestess did not want him to be rescued." The tall man didn't explain why the children could see him.
"Are you youkai too?"
"Hai. And Inu-Yasha is only half demon. Do not call him youkai."
"Sesshoumaru, you bastard, come out where I can see you! I know you're there, I can smell you!"
The three children watched as the tall man walked over to the Goshinboku to look up at the pinned hanyou.
"Four hundred and fifty-six years, little brother. That is how long you have slept on this tree."
"Quit fucking lying, Sesshoumaru."
"Look around you, little brother. Do you think ningens would advance so much in a single decade? You're more of a fool than I thought."
The children inched closer to the two. The tall man had called Inu-Yasha little brother. Maybe he could explain why there was a demon pinned to their tree?
Inu-Yasha started cursing. All three children covered their ears, not wanting to hear more. Sesshoumaru waited impassively for the string of curses to stop.
"The miko died minutes after binding you, little brother. I'm surprised you managed to land a hit."
"Ka?"
"The wounds on her back smelled of you. I thought you had picked up a weak emotional human attachment to the woman, but it seems this was not the case."
"I didn't touch her! She was wounded?" Inu-Yasha sounded puzzled.
Akira was beginning to understand what had happened. Inu-Yasha had attacked some priestess, and before she died, she shot him into a tree.
"Magic," he told Rei. "You were right. Demons and magic. What else is there?"
Sesshoumaru grew impatient with Inu-Yasha's mutterings about smells and blood. The children giggled as a well-placed rock knocked the hanyou unconscious. "Children." All three looked up at him. "How did he awaken?"
All three exchanged glances. Rei and Haku's eyes voted Akira to be their spokesperson. He shrugged. "Dunno. I couldn't see him at first, but the babies made me help them climb the tree. Rei pulled on nothing I could see," Akira paused and waited for Rei's usual comment.
"Koinu! Doggy ears! Kawaii!"
"And I touched the scar on the tree trunk." He was stopped this time by Sesshoumaru.
"What scar?"
"You can't see it now, but it's where the arrow is in the tree."
"Niichan put his hand through Inu-Yasha's chest!" Haku added helpfully.
"Like sleepy man was ghost! Or else Kira-niichan is ghost," Rei said, pinching Akira to make sure he was still corporeal.
"Itai!"
"And what happened then?"
"We argued over whether or not he was a demon. And then he yelled at us to shut up. And hasn't stopped yelling since."
"Dirty mouth," Rei said.
Sesshoumaru was silent.
"Maybe Kira-niichan has magic and woke up dog man like Sleeping Beauty?" Rei suggested.
"Ick, I don't want to kiss him!" Akira said, making a face.
"Boy," Sesshoumaru said. Akira and Haku looked up expectantly. "How did you come to see Inu-Yasha if you could not at first?"
Haku looked relieved he wasn't the one being questioned. "I saw him after I touched the scar on the tree."
Inu-Yasha finally woke up. "Who the fuck threw something at me?" He yelled.
The children giggled, while Sesshoumaru looked as impassive as always.
"Do you want down, little brother?"
"Fuck yes!"
"You realize you will owe a debt to the one who releases you," Sesshoumaru warned.
"Like hell I will. I'll just kill them and then there's no-"
"I'm not helping," Akira said. "He keeps talking about killing us. He's not nice, and he says bad things, and he deserves to stay up there forever!"
"Listen, you little fuck, I've spent the past two weeks stuck to this fucking tree awake, not even counting the supposed centuries I've fucking been here unconscious, and I'm not spending anymore time-"
"I suggest you listen to the boy, Inu-Yasha, unless you truly do not have any honor."
"Fuck honor, Sesshoumaru! I'm not about to owe my life to some stupid kids."
All three children ran away, not wanting to hear any more threats.
"Then you will be up there until you starve to death, little brother." Sesshoumaru left the shrine.
"Get back here you bastard!"
In the bathhouse, the children's mother could be heard scolding the three for getting so dirty.
Akira sat at the base of the tree, looking up at the silent hanyou. How long would they be stuck with him? It had been months since the older dog demon had come and told them that it was one of them who had to pull the arrow out to release the hanyou. Other demons had come by to laugh at the hanyou's expense, making it even more impossible to sleep. How many curses could one person know?
"What the hell do you want?"
"How long do you plan on threatening to kill us?"
"I'm not going to stop. Ningens are useless, and their runts even more so. Who's going to miss a couple?"
"You're part human too, you know. Sesshoumaru said so."
"Yeah, well, I was on the way to fixing that when I ended up here."
He wasn't as intimidating when he wasn't yelling, Akira noted.
"Why do you want to kill us after we release you?"
"I owe my life to no one. I refuse to have debts."
Akira thought for a while. It really wasn't fair to let the man stay up there forever, but he had to have some way to keep Rei and Haku safe.
Something hit him. "Hey, inu. How old is your brother if he was alive before you got sealed to the Goshinboku?"
"What kind of stupid question is that?"
"A good one!"
"Feh. He's six hundred or so. Youkai don't play close attention to time."
"So if he's a full demon and looks young at six centuries of life, how old would you be before you died?"
"It's not like hanyous are common, kid. None have ever died of old age."
Akira thought the trapped hanyou sounded sad. It made him seem more human to Akira.
"Well then why don't we make a deal? That way you won't have a debt, you'll have a promise to keep."
Promises were much better than debts, Akira thought.
"What's that?"
"You look out for my family either until the bloodline dies out or you die, and I'll release you from the tree."
"That could take centuries!"
"Would you rather wait until someone decides to cut the tree down? It's a holy tree on a Shinto shrine, that could take even longer."
"I'm not going to baby-sit a ningen family for a fucking millennium. I've got other things to do with my time."
"Not right now, you don't," Akira pointed out.
"Not forever," Inu-Yasha repeated.
Akira frowned. Maybe that was a bit long. "How long did your brother-"
"Half-brother," Inu-Yasha corrected.
"Half-brother say you had been bound to the Goshinboku?" Akira finished.
"Four hundred something years."
"Then why not watch over the family for that long?"
Inu-Yasha was silent for a while. Akira thought it was a good trade-off. Sleep four hundred years, repay the one who rescued you by watching his family for four hundred years, and then go on your own way.
"You don't have to tell me now," Akira said, getting up from where he had been sitting. "It's not like you're going anywhere." He grinned.
Inu-Yasha chuckled softly. "You know, kid, you're not too bad."
"You're not to bad yourself, Inu-Yasha." Once he stopped cussing and threatening to kill people, anyway.
"I'll think about it."
Perhaps his brother wasn't as stubborn as he had assumed him to be. It had only been six months, and already he had lost the hate that kept the ningen children from coming near him. The smaller two were still afraid of him, but the eldest seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.
Perhaps it was memories of Inu-Yasha when he was very young, but Sesshoumaru couldn't find it in himself to hate ningen spawn as much as he hated the adults of the species.
He watched from the roof of the house as the eldest ningen boy climbed up to where Inu-Yasha was. The hanyou nagged the small child for being so slow and clumsy, but the boy looked to be pretty good for a ningen.
The boy hesitantly placed his hand around the arrow and tugged. As Sesshoumaru had expected, blue light of ningen magic swirled around the two, and the arrow disappeared from the boy's hand and Inu-Yasha's shoulder. Both went falling to the ground. Inu-Yasha grabbed the boy and landed gracefully on his feet.
"Whoa," the boy said as Inu-Yasha set him down. "That's a really long way to fall."
"Feh, you were fine with me around."
"I kept my part of the bargain, Inu-Yasha, now you keep yours," the boy said in a warning tone.
"Sure, kid. Just don't plan on me moving in. I've got a whole new world to get used to."
Not to mention he still had something of their father's that Sesshoumaru would have to tell him about if he planned on taking his promise of protection seriously.
The boy watched as Inu-Yasha waved to the two small dark-haired children peeking over the well at them, bidding them farewell, and ran over to the shrine's steps down. He paused and turned around to look over at the boy.
"Hey, kid, I never did catch your name."
The boy grinned, his gray-blue eyes lighting up. "It's Akira. Meirin Akira."