Defective by Ikorose
Chapter 1
Defective
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of the characters. This is purely for the enjoyment of writing. This story is AU and I have taken creative license with the characters while trying to keep them OOC as little as possible.
When I look back I wander what the hell was I thinking? After all we were so vastly different there was no way that we would last. I was raised in a single parent household, just my mother to take care of me and my siblings. Although I was only the second oldest most of the stress in my home fell to me. Let me elaborate a bit on my family as it pertains to shaping me into the person I am today.
I love my mother dearly but she has issues of her own that made it hard to see her as a mother. She got pregnant in high school with my older brother; he was a year old when she graduated. Her parents stood by her side and helped to bear the brunt of the shame that was attached to being an unwed teen mother. My brother’s father stuck around for awhile but eventually he took off, whether because my mother wouldn’t marry him or because he felt the call of the road again, I have no idea. You see he was in a Motorcycle Club and had no desire to settle down. My mother met and married my father about a year later, and along came me. She stayed married to him for six years, six terrible terrifying years. He was an abusive bastard, addicted to coke and a whoring dick. Over the six years he kept an atmosphere of fear over us and although she didn’t love him anymore my mother had no choice but to play along, to afraid to leave. He had moved her and my brother thousands of miles away from her family so she had nowhere to turn. During that time my little brother and sister were born. Finally my mother had reached a breaking point and just happened to run into some old friends that rode with my brother’s father and after she begged then for help we were smuggled away one night hiding under the coats of very large and scary bikers. We made our way back to my mother’s childhood home and my grandparents took us in. We lived with them for five years before my mother took a job in another part of the country, but still close to them. Things were good, my mother was working at a job she loved, had met a man that was good to her and us, we had a nice apartment, but like all things in our lives, it seems, it didn’t last. My mother developed spinal arthritis and couldn’t hold a job, she cheated on the man that she had been with for a few years, and started seeing a man who did nothing but seem to drag her down.
My older brother, Naraku, was my hero, my savior, my everything when I was little. He is five years older than me and protected me from my father as much as he could. Unfortunately as we grew older we grew apart. The psychological damage done by the years of abuse had changed him, he became colder and prone to violence. By the time he hit high school he was an addict and I died a little each day as I watched him morph into the thing he had tried so hard to protect me from. I was fortunate enough to have blocked the first seven years from my mind, selective amnesia the doctors called it, but Naraku was not so lucky. He remembers everything and it destroyed him. He met his first wife, Kaugra, when he was eighteen and I thought that she was what he needed, she helped him to get clean and even get his GED. He had a love for cars and natural talent for working on them so she helped him get his certifications and get a good job. Everything seemed so perfect but I found out years later after my niece, Kana, was born that he was just like my father. He had abused his wife for most of their marriage and she was afraid to try to leave him. I did everything I could to help her but she was so afraid he’d come after her and their daughter. The day I went to their home and saw him raise his hand to her while she was holding their three month old I lost it. I myself had an anger management issue most of my life but I had the control to direct it away from others. I had channeled my aggression into boxing and tai chi Even though my brother was bigger than me I had to stop him, I acted without thinking and punched him as hard as I could knocking him away and to the ground. Kaugra took Kana and locked herself in the bedroom while my brother and I got into possibly the worst fight we had ever had. By the end the cops had been called by the neighbor after she saw my brother fall through the front bay window. Naraku was locked up for domestic violence but refused to press charges against me for protecting his wife and daughter. The cops agreed with him and I was free to go. I packed up Kaugra and Kana and drove them to her mother’s house that same day. I spent much of my teenage and early adult years doing everything I could to keep him alive and out of jail. I am sorry to say that he is my first and most painful failure.
My little sister, Kikyo, was born five years after me, almost to the day. She was a sickly child, born with a hole in her heart where the chambers met. As she grew the hole became smaller and she started to get better. She was only two when we left my father so she hadn’t had a chance to become damaged and jaded by him. While we lived with my grandparents though I had begun to notice that while my grandmother treated me and Naraku the same as the younger grandkids, my grandfather did not. I remember the year I turned nine and Kikyo turned four that I had asked for a bike, nothing else just a bike. My mother had explained to me that they could not afford one that year, two incomes to support seven people made money tight. While I was disappointed I understood, my early life had forced me to mature at an advanced rate. At nine I understood the value of money and what it took to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. We weren’t poor but we couldn’t afford luxuries very often. On the day of our birthday party, just a small family affair, I got received a Barbie that I wanted and some cloths from my mother and grandparents. Kikyo received a stuffed bear almost as big as she was from my mother and grandmother, and a brand new bike from my grandfather. Later that night while everyone thought I was asleep I overheard my mother and grandmother arguing with my grandfather. I remember the argument well.
“Why the hell did you do that?” my mother yelled.
“You know we don’t have the money for this, we talked about it when Kagome asked for a bike,” my grandmother said sounding exasperated.
“I wanted to get Kikyo something special so I sold some of coin collection,” my grandfather replied, “I don’t see what the problem is, I only want my grandchildren to be happy.”
“No Higurashi, you only seem to want Kikyo and Souta to be happy. What about Naraku and Kagome? They are your grandchildren as well!” yelled my grandmother. I knew she was pissed because she only called my grandfather by his last name like that when she was beyond mad.
“That’s not true; Kagome understands that we couldn’t get her a bike right now. Kikyo is too young to know these things. She started asking for a bike when she heard Kagome talking about one.”
“Then you should have sold more of your coins and gotten them both one. You need to stop treating Kikyo and Souta like they are the only grandkids you have.” My mother’s voice was soft, full of hurt and venom that didn’t normally exist.
“I will treat my grandkids how I see fit, Kikyo and Souta haven’t been corrupted by you and your bad choices in life yet, I plan on keeping it that way. Naraku and Kagome are already damaged, why should I waste my time on the defective?”
I didn’t hear the remainder of the conversation; I had buried my head under my pillow so no one could hear my sobs. I was defective, my grandfather had said so. Naraku and I were just a waste of space, doomed no matter what. I had truly thought that I had lived through enough pain and torture, but I was apparently wrong, I was going to live a life full of it. Kikyo was different though, she was still young enough to be saved. I decided that night that I would do everything in my power to protect my younger siblings, to keep them from the pain of being unwanted and discarded. The pain of being me.
Souta was born a few months after we left my father. He was less than two years younger than Kikyo and by far the favorite of my grandfather. He was spoiled beyond belief and was a brat because of it. He had a slight learning disability, it took him longer to develop speech and comprehension skills but he had a mind that could grasp and hold onto mathematics and mechanics. He was a friendly child but was picked on because of his speech, my sister and I got into many fights defending him. I got into many fights defending both of them. My mother signed me up for therapy when I was ten because of it. That is how I ended up taking boxing lessons and eventually tai-chi. I didn’t get along with Souta when he was younger, he always ordered me around and if I said no he cried to my grandfather and I got in trouble. Eventually I made friends when I was in middle school and spent most of my time away from the house. When we moved for my mother’s job things got better for awhile as I said, before they got worse.
When my mother’s live in boyfriend left her and she couldn’t work because of her back I had to be the responsible one. All through school I had maintained a solid 3.9 GPA, now entering into high school as a freshman in a new state things were looking bleak. With no steady income in our home I had to work as well as go to school, luckily our landlord needed someone to help out with maintaining the gardens in our complex and was willing to pay me under the table because I was too young to work legally. I worked every day after school for five hours weeding, planting, watering, and maintaining the many gardens. It wasn’t enough though; money was still too tight to survive on. My neighbor heard me and my mother arguing one day about her spending money we didn’t have and approached me a few days later, she worked nights as a stripper and her babysitter had quit unexpectedly and she needed someone to watch her two small children at night. I jumped at the opportunity. She dropped them off with me every evening and I took them home every morning she worked. Between the two jobs I managed to keep up with the bills and put a small amount away each week for emergencies. Kikyo and Souta were now in middle school and still believed themselves to above everything. They ignored the rules if they didn’t like them and expected to keep getting everything they wanted no matter what. My mother had stopped coming home for days at a time, the man she was seeing demanding all of her time. It got to the point that the schools, doctors, anything that had to do with my siblings, they all stopped calling her and started calling me. I was 15 and raising a family, working two jobs, and going to school full time. I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and no one to help me bear the burden. By my sophomore year I got to add dealing with the police to the list of burdens. Souta had become out of control, the police were at my door once a week about him and property damage, fights, or truancy. I was drowning; the only thing that kept me afloat was the few close friends I had made.
Sango, Miroku, and Koga were all a year ahead of me in school but I had classes with them as we all took AP courses. Yes, even with everything going on I still maintained my GPA and kept ahead of my school work. I met Koga about a month into my second year and fell in love with his wild and outrageous personality, no not romantic love. He on the other hand chased me like I was the last female on the planet and he had a permanent hard on. After a month or so he gave up and we settled into a great friendship. He had met my family and knew about everything and he stood by my side. It was through him that I met Sango and Miroku, the hard ass and the pervert. They were the perfect couple, she was a sadist and he was a masochist, and they had loved each other since seventh grade. The three of them helped me keep my head above water and helped me in any way they could. This often included showing up at 2am and kidnapping me to go eat. A strange habit of theirs that I grew to love. My junior year I took a job as a waitress in a small diner and loved it. It was a short way from I95 so it got a lot of traffic from truckers and bikers. My perpetually happy personality earned me great tips, enough that I was able to only work one job. I spent my new found free time with my friends and I’ll be the first to admit that I went a little wild. I had threatened my mother to have her charged with child neglect if she didn’t spend more time with Kikyo and Souta and start being a mother to them, so I spent many nights out with my friends. There were many morning that one parent or another would find the four of us all passed out in the same bed. They allowed this because we never did anything but sleep, we were a family. Sango and Miroku had their own sex life but kept it away from the group. I dreaded the end of the school year that year, my family was graduating and I still had another year to go. I spent time that year going over my options and deciding what I wanted to do with my life. That summer I went to spend time with my Uncle Jinenji. I loved my Uncle Jinenji dearly, but was never able to spend much time with him.
My uncle had just retired from the Army after twenty four years and settled down not far from where I lived. That summer I asked to come see him and my cousins, I needed to get away and do some soul searching and I know that he could help. Jinenji and his wife welcomed me into their home and spent many hours aver the two weeks I was there talking to me and helping me figure out what I wanted to do. Jinenji had always done his best to help me feel like a normal child when I was younger. When he heard about my grandfather treating me and Naraku like cast offs and spoiling Kikyo and Souta he had done his level best to keep things even between all of us kids. He would send my grandmother or mother money to get us things, never letting us know that it was him. He didn’t want to cause a greater rift between us siblings. I learned of this fact when I was sixteen and going through some old paperwork for my grandmother when she got sick. By time I left his house I had decided on what I was doing after I graduated school. I was going to enlist in the military.
Now you have my background let me give you his.
Inuyasha came from a single parent home as well, the difference being that his mother was a kept woman. Inuyasha’s father, Toga, was married with no plans on ever divorcing his wife or leaving his older son. Inuyasha had contact with his father when he would come to see them once a month for a few days, his wife believed him to be away on business. Inuyasha knew the reason he couldn’t see his father all the time and he used it to his advantage, threatening to show up at his home or work if he didn’t get everything her wanted. Toga always gave in because he didn’t want the world or his wife to know of his indiscretions. Inuyasha attended public school because his half-brother attended the private school in our area. Inuyasha was smart but lacked focus, he kept his grades up but only so he could wrestle. That is how I met him; I was a manager for the wrestling team. Sango had asked me to do it because her little brother had joined the team that year. Inuyasha had a large home with a staff that did everything for him, he indulged in getting high any chance he got, and was known to have a new girl almost every day. He lacked any sense of responsibility or decency.
I had met him my freshmen year and couldn’t stand him from the start, but we traveled in different circles so we barely crossed paths. Now however I was being forced to deal with him on steady basis. Thankfully I was friends with several of the wrestlers so avoiding having to have unnecessary conversation with him should have been easy. However like everything in my world, nothing ever goes as I planned. About a month into the wrestling season I walked into the gym for practice and saw Sango’s brother Kohaku being picked on by Inuyasha and one of his friends. Kohaku did his best to ignore the boys but I could tell it was getting to him. It just so happened that the friend he had with him was one of Koga’s little brothers and they should have known to fear Sango and her wrath. As I walked over Ginta looked up and paled, remembering who I was and who I knew. He tried to pull Inuyasha way but Inuyasha was having fun picking on the freshman.
And this is the beginning of the story.