A/N: This is just a drabble that wouldn't leave me alone. I've left Hojo pretty open to interpretation. He might be someone special, but I prefer to think that he isn't. The world needs more ordinary human beings.
Ten Easy Steps
~~
One of these days Hojo was going to write a book. It would be called How to Raise a Hanyou Child in Ten Easy Steps, and it would be a bestseller. There had to be other parents out there who shared his particular problems.
Of course, first he had to figure out what those ten easy steps were. All he had down just then were the hundred-odd hard ones.
"I'm gonna be late, Dad! Amiko won't care what I look like! OWOWOW!" Kazuo squirmed in his grip, although not hard enough to do any permanent damage. He was ten years old and usually sported an untamable mess of black hair. At the moment it was the wrong color -- a situation that Hojo was patiently trying to rectify, with or without Kazuo's cooperation.
"This would go a lot faster if you held still," he pointed out patiently, manhandling the boy with one hand and brandishing a bottle of black hair dye with the other. After almost a decade of doing this, he had it down to a science.
Kazuo remained unconvinced. He was bad-tempered tonight, and so continued to mutter and squirm. Something that sounded like a growl worked its way out.
Hojo was used to that, too. He smiled and calmly reminded Kazuo about the household rules. These included such time-honored classics as no sweets before dinner, no video games unless both chores and homework were finished, and no attempting to maul people during full moons. That had to be one of the ten easy steps right there.
Usually threatening the video games was enough to make Kazuo settle down. Instead the boy squirmed around to face him, a scowl scrunching up his face. The kitchen was poorly lit, so his eyes glowed in the dim light. His ears were only slightly pointed and tufted with fur, but they were trying to flatten themselves against the sides of his head.
Hojo stopped and peered at him. Kazuo had a lot of Kagome's features, but the resemblance was particularly pronounced when he was worried. Right now he looked like her silver-haired mirror image. Something was upsetting him.
"What's wrong?" he asked, setting the bottle of dye on the side of the sink.
Kazuo squirmed. He was loathe to give up any information -- a trait Hojo rather uncharitably attributed to his mother. Kagome hadn't bothered to share a large chunk of her life with him until her access to that life had been suddenly cut off. Even then, when fantastic stories about youki and jewels had come fast and furious, she hadn't really gone into all that much detail about Kazuo's origins. Maybe if she had lived, she would have come to trust him enough to explain.
But that had never happened. Kagome's enemies were long-lived, and one had finally caught her unawares. Hojo still didn't know exactly what had happened, because no one would tell him. All he had been able to do was deal with things like the funeral and the will. And with Kazuo, of course. The boy had been two then, and Hojo was the only father he had ever known. Whoever his wife had really loved was long dead.
All of this meant that he knew Kazuo very well. He wasn't deterred by the boy's stubborn streak. Instead of being impatient with him, he just kept a grip on his arm and waited. If there was anything Hojo was good at, it was waiting. It took a lot of patience to raise a hanyou child.
Kazuo kept up the defiance for a minute. Then he sighed and sagged against the cabinets. "I felt somebody watching me today."
Hojo frowned. A little feeling appeared in the back of his head -- the one that had told him Kagome was dead before he had even gotten the phone call. "Watching you?" he echoed carefully. "Was it another student?"
Kazuo shook his head and pointed at the pendant Hojo always wore around his neck -- the one with a single shard-like gem strung on it, glittering like glass. She hadn't really explained that, either. All she had said was that it was something very important, and that she trusted him to protect it.
Funny how that was the only thing she had ever trusted him with in her life.
"They felt like that thing," Kazuo said, and set the pendant swinging like a pendulum with one quick prod.
Hojo caught the pendant and traced its sharp edges for a moment. He was a normal human being, a man whose sole purpose was to be other people's anchors to a world they had lost. But now his instincts were screaming that this was bad, that it meant something horrible. Clearly Kazuo thought so too, and he knew to trust the boy's instincts.
He tucked the pendant back under his shirt. "Is it safe to stay here, or should we go find your uncle Souta?"
"I think it's safe here. They went away after a while." Kazuo shrugged, unease apparently forgotten almost as soon as it had appeared. He began to squirm again. "Can I go get my contacts now? I'm gonna be late! Amiko's gonna kill me!"
"You're done." Hojo released his grip on the boy, who zoomed out of the kitchen with almost-superhuman speed. Nonetheless, Hojo yelled fatherly advice after him. "Don't stay out too late! Stay on the block! And wear a hat over those ears!"
The answer was a grumble and a slamming door. Now that he had shared his unsettling experience, the only thing Kazuo had to worry about was not breaking the door off its hinges. He could ignore other, more serious things.
Hojo didn't have that kind of luxury.
With a heavy heart, he walked down the hall to the linen closet and hauled the sword out from under its pile of threadbare towels. The Sword might have been more appropriate. Shippo and Souta had presented it to Kazuo with great ceremony a few years back, apparently after they had pried it away from some antiques dealer. There had been much disappointment when the boy had not only expressed no interest in it, but called it a smelly relic.
What else had they expected? Kazuo wasn't his father. He was his own person. Understanding that was another step right there, although it definitely wasn't easy. Maybe that meant it applied to all parents, not just ones who had to worry about a full moon.
He waved the Sword around cautiously, scabbard and all. He didn't know how to use it, but Kazuo did. Souta had seen to that. He had trained the boy every summer. So had Shippo. Hell, so had Kouga when the youki bothered to show his face. They were all preparing Kazuo for something, although they hadn't told Hojo exactly what. They needed him to be a fighter.
They needed him to be his father and his mother all at once, but Hojo needed him to be Kazuo. He needed him to be normal, just for a little while.
The Sword felt very heavy in his hands -- too heavy for a ten-year-old. He wondered what Kazuo's father had thought when he'd held it, and what he would have done in Hojo's place. Would he have married a woman who so obviously didn't love him, or raised a child who was his son in every way that really mattered?
Of course not, Hojo decided with a humorless smile. Kazuo's father would have done something decisive, not worried about hair dye and homework. But then again, he wasn't Kazuo's father. He was a very different person. He was normal.
There were dishes to be done and laundry that needed sorting. Normal things. Human things. He was only human, at the edges of Kagome's world, but never allowed inside. Maybe it was better that way. At least he could catch Kazuo if he fell.
He shoved the Sword back into the closet, hidden away under the towels, and walked to the kitchen without a backwards glance.