InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ As I Am ❯ Numbing The Pain ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Rumiko Takahashi owns every right to Inuyasha©. I do not.

 

 

 

 

As I am

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

It was hard for Kagome to remember how many times she had felt out of touch with the world, lost and confused and feeling misplaced as she would stumble down the busy streets of Tokyo, unintentionally listening to the cries and demands of the people around her. She could hear them yelling and sobbing, laughing and scolding into their cell-phones and she could see the angered, weary and sad expressions pulling at the muscles beneath the skin covering their faces. They never seemed happy or optimistic, something Kagome just couldn't comprehend no matter how hard she tried.

 

Even now, her innocent mind half set on getting to school on time, she couldn't figure out why she was the only person smiling. Why was everyone unhappy? Why was she the only person happy? Was it something they ate?… Or was it something she ate?

 

Kagome could feel her smile slipping, a faint blush spreading from her cheeks to the tips of her ears, at the very thought of her being some what different than everybody else. She didn't like the thought of sticking out, an outcast among a tidal wave of identical people. She wanted to be as normal and as average as possible, just as her father had told her to be back when she was only a small child.

 

“Kagome! Wait up!”

 

A strong hand suddenly reached out from the gloomy sea of people and latched on to Kagome's school uniform, tugging her backwards a couple of steps and causing her to lose her balance. Kagome's long legs twisted into what seemed to be the shape of a pretzel and she was sent tumbling to the hard pavement, her textbooks falling down around her.

 

“God, I am so sorry, Kagome.” Sango Harada (a/n if I don't know someone's last name, I'm going to use the one's from Yukiru Sugisaki's DNAngel©) elbowed her way towards Kagome, her chestnut-colored eyes wide and full of concern. “Are you okay?”

 

“Well, I don't think I broke anything,” Kagome giggled, her grin returning. “That would mean I'm okay, right? It would, wouldn't it?”

 

Sango smiled down at her fallen friend and then offered her a hand, which Kagome gratefully took to pull herself back up. “Yeah. I'd have to say it is, with you being so clumsy and all.”

 

“But, Sango, you're the one who made me fall,” Kagome pointed out. She knelt down to gather her textbooks, only to discover that Sango had already stacked them into a neat, ordered pile.

 

“Yeah, but I still think it had more to do with you tripping over your own feet.”

 

 

Xxxx

 

 

Inuyasha Tiasho slammed the bathroom door shut behind him and limped over to the small medicine cabinet dangling above the sink. He opened it and took out a bottle of aspirin, popping open the lid, taking out four small white pills, and quickly swallowing them dry.

 

“It isn't working,” he growled. He threw the bottle across the room, his dog-ears twitching from the sound the aspirin made as it hit the ground.

 

It still hurts like hell…

 

Coming from outside the bathroom door, Inuyasha could hear his older half-brother starting up his car, the engine roaring and purring from the safety of its own personal garage. About a couple of seconds later, the sound began to soften and soften until it was gone completely.

 

That sick bastard… He doesn't even care…

 

The alarm clock directly infront of him read eight twenty-five.

 

Inuyasha had fallen unconscious at eight twenty-two.

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

Blood… Warm, sticky, horrible blood…

 

 

Inuyasha felt the nearly empty lunch pail slip from his fingers and bounce off of his foot, his bruised banana peel and juice box spilling out onto the new carpet.

 

 

Blood… Horrible, warm, sticky blood…

 

 

“Mommy?”

 

 

Blood... Sticky, horrible, warm blood…

 

 

Her beautiful dark eyes full of pain and despair, Izayoi forced herself up from the ground.

 

 

Blood…Blood…Blood…

 

 

“Inuyasha, baby, don't cry... Please don't cry. For mommy, please…”

 

 

 

Xxxx

 

 

 

“My dear Sango, if only you would run away with me...”

 

Kagome finished the remainder of her juice box and then stuffed it inside of her lunch box, right next to an apple core and her half-eaten sandwich. She still had a granola bar left, but she planned to leave it for the walk home just incase she got hungry.

 

“We would be as free as… as free as…”

 

“Antelope?” Kagome offered, a thoughtful expression adorning her delicate countenance.

 

Miroku Niwa's clear blue eyes went wide, his childish grin growing even larger. He threw his arms around Sango's waist and drew her in closer. “We would be as free as antelope!”

 

Sango snorted, half-heartedly punching his shoulder. “Do you honestly expect me to fall for that? I mean, come on, that is the lamest thing I have ever heard.”

 

“Or perhaps it is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard and you just don't know it yet,” the young Casanova replied. “True beauty is rarely, if ever, appreciated.”

 

Watching her two best friends, Kagome could not stop herself from smiling. It was almost as if they had been made for each other, the clashing of their opposite personalities bringing them together and meshing them as one wonderful whole. To Kagome, it was astounding.

 

Sango's going to look so pretty in her wedding dress, Kagome mused. I hope she will let me help her pick it out… Oh, and I hope she let's me do her hair, too…

 

“Kagome! Kagome!”

 

The previously daydreaming teenage girl stood up from the bench she was sitting on and turned to face the direction she thought her name was being called out from. There was a young boy running towards her, his dark chocolate eyes large and urgent.

 

“Sota!” Kagome gasped. “What are you doing here?”

 

Kagome's younger brother had to catch is breath first before replying, “A teenage boy. He was sent to the clinic about ten minutes ago. Mom needs help. She has too many patients to deal with right now.”

 

“Oh, okay. Just let me get my stuff.”

 

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

The lips that had once sung Inuyasha to sleep had been outlined in an even darker shade of red.

 

The beautiful dark eyes that had once sparkled with love and concern for him were closed.

 

The warm, comforting arms that had once held him tight as he cried had been forced to cross over her chest and the long tresses of luxurious hair that he had once buried his face in had been pulled back from her pale, slumbering countenance.

 

“--and may she rest in peace…”

 

Everything about her seemed wrong to Inuyasha. She wasn't supposed to look this way. It was too staged and fake to be the mother who had cared for him all of these years.

 

“She's not supposed to be dead,” Inuyasha whimpered, his voice barely above a whisper. “This wasn't supposed to happen.”

 

 

“Apparently it was,” Sesshomaru, his half-brother, replied impassively. “Or she would still be alive, would she not?”

 

Inuyasha turned to face his older brother, blinking away tears. “But--“

 

“There are not buts.”

 

Sesshomaru sighed and began to fix his neatly cropped silver hair, his long, deadly fingers glistening from the gel he had put in only hours before the funeral.

 

“Your mother is dead, little brother, and it is about time you accept it.”

 

The little boy didn't answer.

 

He knew Sesshomaru was right.

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

Inuyasha had never been hit before…

 

Not by his classmates...

 

Not by his teachers…

 

And definitely not by his mother…

 

“I told you to behave,” Sesshomaru hissed. “Can you not hear?”

 

Inuyasha touched his cheek. It stung more than anything he had ever felt, even more than when he had accidentally burnt his hands on the kitchen stove back in his mother's first apartment.

 

“I'm sorry,” the little boy answered softly. “I-I didn't mean to.”

 

A tightly wounded fist sunk into Inuyasha's face and forced him backwards into his brother's bookcase. He could hear his arm snap from behind him, but, as strange as it was, he couldn't actually feel his arm. It was almost as if it had never even been there in the first place.

 

“I'm sure you didn't.”

 

Sesshomaru began to massage his temple.

 

“Just don't do it again, you hear me, Inuyasha?”

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

“What happened to your arm?” Koga gasped, his light blue eyes large. “And your face?”

 

Inuyasha blushed, refusing to meet the wolf-demon's incredulous stare.

 

“I fell down the stairs,” he murmured. “It was an accident.”

 

The wolf-demon nodded ignorantly and then smirked. “I didn't know you were clumsy.”

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

Why does he look so sad? Why won't he smile?

 

Kagome couldn't stop herself from peering inside of the young boy's room and gawking at the anger and depression splashed across his handsome countenance. There was a part of her that wanted to run up to him, to hold him and to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be all right.

 

But, after witnessing his behavior towards the doctor--Kagome's mother--and the nurses, Kagome had enough sense to know that she should just leave him alone.

 

The boy was staring down at his lunch tray, picking at the canned vegetables and fruit with his spork. His long, dark hair had been pulled back from his face and woven into a tight braid, revealing the stitches he had had to receive to hold is head together. His lips were puffy and swollen.

 

Apparently the young boy had got into a fight with one of his classmates and had got the living tar beat out of him. The boy's maid, Ayame, had found him unconscious in the bathroom, blood gushing from his forehead, a bottle of aspirin sprinkled around him. She had immediately called the nearest clinic, before then driving him up there by herself.

 

The boy's guardian had yet to make an appearance, even after the maid had tried several times from the clinic phone to reach him.

 

“Are you just going to stand there all day like an idiot, or are you going to come in?”

 

Kagome had to blink twice, her cheeks burning, before realizing that the boy she had been staring at was now staring right back at her. His eyes were a beautiful shade of amber.

 

“Oh,” she murmured shyly. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, refusing to look up from the floor. “I-I was just…”

 

“Being stupid?” the boy concluded, his voice dripping with frustration and hostility.

 

“No,” Kagome replied. She finally found the courage to meet his gaze. “I was just wondering whether you were okay or not, Mr. Tiasho.”

 

The boy snorted. “My name is not Mr. Tiasho. It's Inuyasha… And, yes, I'm okay.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“What about you? What's your name?”

 

Kagome smiled. “Kagome Higurashi. My mom owns this clinic.”

 

Inuyasha nodded and then went back to picking at his uneaten food, leaving Kagome to sink into the waiting char beside her, an awkward silence filling the void between them.

 

“You should be able to go back home tonight or tomorrow morning,” Kagome interrupted. She wanted to say more about it, but she stopped when Inuyasha looked up at her with what seemed to be a look of fear flickering in his beautiful eyes. “Are-are you okay?”

 

He still didn't answer.

 

“If you start to feel sick or anything, my mom is in the room next door and all you would have to do was call out and I'm sure she'd come as soon as she hears you.”

 

He still didn't answer.

 

Kagome left the room.

 

Inuyasha pretended to go to sleep.

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

It's like she never even existed…

 

Inuyasha knelt down beside his mother's grave, his hands trembling as they caressed the sleek, marble stone that had marked the burial site of his mother's decomposing body for the past seven years. There were a few cracks disheveling her simple, rectangular shaped headstone, and the single red rose he had placed on top of it only a few weeks previous from the present had wilted, the petals plucked and yet no where to be seen. No other flowers or trinkets had been placed near Izayoi's grave.

 

His heart seemed to catch in his throat, and he withdrew his hand, a sense of shame and disgust contorting his features. It wasn't right of him to get so worked up, especially after all the years that had passed since his mother's brutal demise. He wasn't some sniveling child anymore, haunted by the memory of her last request, nor did he want to have to look in the mirror and see himself as he had looked seven years ago, a round, chubby face with wide eyes and pathetic tears streaming down from them.

 

It's different now… I don't need her to coddle me and protect me… I have myself and that's all I need and it's all I ever will need.

 

It had always been that way. For seven, painful years Inuyasha had had to learn how to depend on himself and how to survive in a world that didn't even care that he existed, a world where not even his own brother seemed to give a rat's ass about him or his well-being.

 

A world that Inuyasha had full-heartedly accepted, an outsider looking in and not caring for what he was seeing or for what was looking back at him.

 

Inuyasha knew his place, as difficult as it was for him to voice it aloud, and he wasn't ignorant anymore as to what he could or could not do. He knew his limitations and he accepted it. He knew that no one could love him as his mother had and he was just fine with the way things were starting to turn out.

 

As honestly as he could put it, he just didn't give a shit.

 

Roughly biting down on his bottom lip, tasting the bitter, crimson blood seep through his lips and into his mouth, Inuyasha rose to his feet. He couldn't stand it any longer, mourning over something that was never going to come back. It was about time he forgot about his long since dead mother and stopped thinking back to when everything just seemed so joyous and innocent…

 

Like that stupid girl… What was her name again? Kagura? No…

 

“Kagome?… Kagome…”

 

He laughed aloud, pulling a hand through his long, wavy hair and then hiding it in the back pocket of his tattern jeans. That girl was so strange, the way she had blushed the entire time she had come to see if he was okay and the way she had insisted on walking him home after he had been released from the hospital and left to himself, his brother being too tied up with his work to give him a ride.

 

She was sort of pretty… Those big, brown eyes and that long, thick ebony-black hair… And her smile, it was so friendly and welcoming…

 

Inuyasha suddenly snorted, his earlier disgust returning.

 

God, you are so pathetic…

 

 

 

Xx

 

 

 

Naraku licked his lips greedily, his crimson-red eyes brimming with excitement and impatience, and took one last look at the teenage boy lingering alone in the cemetery. The boy was staring down at his feet as he walked towards the iron-weaved entrance, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, strands of dark, inhumanely silk hair hanging across his face and cascading freely down his shoulders.

 

The boy had no clue that he was being watched, and Naraku smirked at the very thought. He could not prevent himself from thinking how effortless it would have been to sneak up behind him, inject him with a little bit of tranquilizer and then sneak off with the unconscious body limp in his arms.

 

“Poor little Inu-chan,” Naraku chuckled darkly. “It won't be much longer and I promise it will all go away. You just have to be patient…”

 

Naraku stayed where he was and observed the boy until he had dissapeared from sight.

 

“Oh, yes, you and I going to have so much fun…”