InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Aiji: A Blanket Fic ❯ Introduction ( Chapter 1 )

Aiji: A Blanket Fic

Part 1

Inuyasha leapt through the knee-deep snow drifts, his feet barely touching the ground before he sprang into the air again. His heart was racing and his lungs were burning, both from the freezing wind that assaulted his body and the frantic pace that he was keeping. Small, icy snowflakes stung his golden eyes, causing them to tear involuntarily and blur his vision. He blinked them away with a growl, and they slid down his cheeks, freezing before they reached his chin. His vision cleared, not that he could see anything. The blizzard made it impossible for anyone to see more than a few feet away from their face, even someone with keen, youkai eyes like his. Then there was the fact that there was nothing to see, had been nothing to see for miles, if in fact they had even traveled that far. He had no real way of knowing, with the sky as it was in it's present state, but he sensed that they had been traveling for several hours. Be that as it may, he had a nasty suspicion that they hadn't covered much distance in that time. Had he been traveling alone, he wouldn't be inching his way across this frozen wasteland. Had he been alone, he would never have found himself trapped out in the elements, even if a storm of this magnitude was unheard of in these parts and was probably the work of malicious oni. More importantly, it wouldn't have mattered if he had; sitting in a tree with his back to the wind would have been enough shelter for him. But Inuyasha was not alone. He had Kagome to look after.

From the start she had slowed him down. She hadn't been able to keep up with him, so he'd had to slow his pace to accommodate her. Once the snow had begun to pile up, she had slowed even more. After a few hours, she'd had to stop and rest every few minutes, until finally she could go no further and had collapsed in the snow. Now she laid on her back, across his, their elbows linking them together. Carrying her hadn't been so difficult, despite the awkward position they'd had to resort to to accommodate her body. At first he had even thought that he could make up for lost time. But then the pains had begun. He would feel her body tense, and then she would scream in pain and fear, screams that were barely audible over the howling of the wind, yet were no less terrifying to Inuyasha. Her grip on his shoulders would loosen, and he would feel her weight slip from his back as she toppled into the snow. This had happened more and more frequently as time wore on.

"Gods," he thought to himself, "what am I going to do?" As the thought flashed in his mind, Kagome began to moan again. He felt the all-to-familiar sensation of her muscles tightening and her arms loosening. This time he landed quickly and caught her before she fell. Shielding them both as best he could with the long sleeve of his coat, he looked down at the trembling girl in his arms. Her normally full, pink lips were blue and her blue-black hair glistened with chunks of ice. For the first time, he was glad that she no longer wore the skimpy little outfit she had always worn when they first met. The miko's robes she'd had to adopt to accommodate her changing figure may have been an uncomfortable reminder of Kikyo, but at least they offered more warmth. He hugged his precious cargo close to his body, as if attempting to absorb her pain and fear into him. At the very least, he hoped that his body warmed her a bit. Her screams were still strong, thankfully, for they proved that strength yet remained in her seemingly frail and fragile body. When her muscles finally relaxed again, he hefted her onto his back for what seemed like the hundredth time. Despite his demon strength he was beginning to tire; the stress of his enormous responsibility for her was thoroughly draining. He had to get Kagome to someplace warm and safe, and soon, or else she would die out here, and his child would die with her.