InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Chained ❯ Completing Memories ( Chapter 19 )

A\N: *Phew* This chapter is looooooooooooooong. Well, at least compared to some of the other chapters. ^_^.

Update # 4 4 today! ^_^

DISCLAIMER - Oi, get it through your heads already will ya? I don’t own Inuyasha or the other characters from the anime and I make no money off of them. Amaya is mine. The story is mine. And that’s about bloody well all. If you don’t like the other characters then blame Rumiko Takahashi-- she’s the one who made them! ~*~   Completing Memories

He was lost.

Lost in a darkness in his mind, the occasional flashes of pictures-- of memory-- appearing and disappearing as suddenly as lightening, too quick to see.

He frowned, panic beginning to rise through him.

He could hear the sounds of people running, wooshing behind him, but when he turned there was no one there.

‘Inuyasha’

Voices whispered. Inuyasha, spun, his ears twitching, trying to find their owners, but never seeing anything more than the darkness.

‘Inuyasha’

‘Hello?’ He asked nervously, not liking this at all.

‘Do you hear them Inuyasha?’ The voice of that woman asked, and Inuyasha spun around again, though she wasn’t there.

‘Who are they?’ He asked nervously, not knowing if she could hear him or not, but hoping she could.

‘They are all your memories. All the people in your life--’

‘Inuyasha’ The whispering, echoing voices called, sounding slightly more desperate, demanding now.

‘They are calling for you, Inuyasha.’

‘Inuyasha!’

‘What do they want?’ He asked, his voice shaking, fear lacing each word as another... whatever it was, slipping past behind him.

‘They want you Inuyasha. They want to come to you. But they can’t. They are trapped by the barrier.’

‘Inuyahsa!’

‘You can help them. You can set them free, bring them to you.’

A flash behind him, momentarily blinding him. ‘How?’ He asked, feeling slightly desperate.

‘Inuyasha!’

‘Call them, Inuyasha. Call them to you, as they call to you. Let them come.’

‘But I don’t know who they are!’ He shouted, turning in a circle.

‘INUYASHA!’ The voices yelled, somehow still maintaining the hissing sound of a whisper.

The woman didn’t answer, and Inuyasha’s ears flattened, his eyes wide in panic. ‘Hello?’ He called. His only answer was the sound of the voices again, fainter than ever before. ‘Inuyasha...’

Inuyasha began to panic, because he had this feeling that once those voices disappeared, they wouldn’t come back again. So he called the only name he could remember, the only name he felt would help. ‘Kagome!’

A silence filled the area, and Inuyasha spun around in panic. For several minutes, or maybe years, Inuyasha couldn’t tell, he stood there in the darkness, nothing happening.

Then, soaring through the air with a similar sound to those of Kikyo’s demons, the small silver thread appeared through the darkness, glowing softly.

Inuyasha watched as it began to weave through the air around him, surrounding him in it.

He felt very claustrophobic like that and began to panic, looking for a place he could escape from it, but it was already to late. The thread had surrounded him and was slowly covering the gap above him, which would have been too high to jump from anyway.

He stood there for a moment, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the string began to morph into something else, colours and objects and... people.

Memories began to appear, sometimes completing themselves, sometimes fading away into darkness before they finished, leaving Inuyasha confused and desperate for more, his mind spinning, not entirely sure where or when these things happened.

People came that he began to slowly recognise.

A man, a monk judging by the way he was dressed, holding a staff with some bangles of some kind or another at the head, a string of blue prayer beads wrapped around his wrist, and Inuyasha knew before the image progressed what they were concealing.

A small kitsune youkai, who, even as Inuyasha heard his own yelling voice resounding around the space, he felt a strange fondness and protectiveness over.

A woman with an incredibly large weapon slung over her back, her eyes set and determined, even as she lifted the thing over her head and swung it at him, yet, though in the memory he could feel confusion and rage at her actions, he knew that, in the end, she was on his side.

And as each image ended, the names of whoever it was he had just seen came to his mind. Miroku, Shippo, Sango, and there was Kirara, the dark demon aura surrounding her as she helped him train, fire blazing from her feet as she was surrounded by a dark spiral of wind, his own red wind blazing around him even as he lifted his sword, searching for the wind scar.

And then there was Kikyo. Inuyasha was slightly confused at this, because he had been unsure if he had actually known the woman before now, but it seemed, judging by the way she looked up at him, with deep dark human eyes for once, after her foot caught on the edge of the dock, and Inuyasha was stormed with the strange emotions his memory-self experienced as he let the pole he held clatter to the ground and embraced the human.

Inuyasha watched in confusion as the memory seemed to melt, him and Kikyo shifting slightly, but never really changing their position, and then he was in that clearing again with Kikyo’s cold arms-- the ones he was familiar with-- wrapped possessively around him, his lips tingling from the traces of the kiss left behind and... hold on a sec... kiss? Inuyasha’s eyes widened as he realised that, yes, he had kissed her.

He was considering contemplating this more, when suddenly Kikyo spoke. ‘If I stopped time, would you agree to that?’ Her memory echoed, and Inuyasha felt like he should say no, but he really had no say in the matter because this wasn’t him... at least, not really, and his memory self, defying all the thoughts of confusion and warning currently rushing through the present Inuyasha’s mind, answered her with a single ‘yes.’

And then the dark took him. For a moment, Inuyasha thought the memory was changing, but no, he could still feel Kikyo’s arms around him, and he could hear wind rushing as light blazed before his eyelids, even as his body immobilized and all thought seemed to flee him.

For a second or an eternity his memory-self stayed like that not moving, even while Inuyasha felt panic rising in himself, conveniently forgetting that nothing too bad could have happened to him here, because he was still alive, and then a voice came, strangely familiar and very close, echoing in that way that all the dream voices seemed to. ‘INUYASHA!’ And there was panic and fear in that voice, desperation, and Inuyasha felt his memory-self answer with a sudden panic of his own, a rage at whatever had caused those emotions in that voice, and his eyes snapped open, searching through the wind flashing violently around them until landing on... her...

‘Kagome?’ Inuyasha muttered, his mind whirling in confusion, matching and surpassing that of his memory-self. What was she doing here? Was this some trick his mind was pulling on him? Was he, in fact, succumbing to the insanity the sorceress had spoken of?

He watched as his memory-self suddenly wrenched himself away from the arms of Kikyo, leaping toward Kagome, who was lying at the base of the tree Kikyo’s servants had encircled moments before.

Inuyasha wanted to see more, but suddenly the memory faded away and was replaced with a very familiar one, and any feelings of anger or desperation to keep the previous one until it finished vanished as he realised exactly which memory it was.

And that it was completing itself.

The girl-- Kagome, he knew now, clung to the edges of the well and stared up at... him. He was falling slowly to the ground, staring at her with the same sort of look she held in her own eyes, as well as a great deal of confusion-- what was she doing here?

His memory-self landed several feet away from her, and for a moment they stared at one another as she pulled herself out.

‘What are you doing here?’ His memory-self said suddenly, the words that he had heard so many times, but had been unable to recognise as belonging to anyone... let alone himself. ‘I told you never to return!’ He said, an anger he was far from feeling tinting his voice.

The emotion quickly changed to surprise and uncertainty as the girl ran toward him, arms outstretched, and flung herself against his chest, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso in an embrace that suggested she never wanted to let go. ‘Inuyasha!’ She said, clinging more tightly to him, and he stared down at her uncertainly.

The vision began to blur and fade and suddenly it disappeared completely and darkness surrounded him.

For a brief moment he was back in his room, sitting on the futon, the sorceress staring at him with eyes clouded over, concentrating and muttering under her breath, the string still weaving from her finger, but slowly loosing the faint glow that clung to it.

He opened his mouth, wanting to ask what happened, but pain shot through his head and darkness resubmerged him, cutting off all thought, and he collapsed on the futon, exhausted, and knew no more.

Amaya’s eyes slid back into focus as she felt the connection completely break at last, and she lowered her hand, staring down at the hanyou.

She should leave now, go back before Naraku missed her, but then the hanyou would be likely to wake up thinking it was all a dream, and unprepared to protect his mind from the clutches of the miko-- of his old love.

Amaya knew now, not just from what Kagome had said, because she had seen his memories as well.

That’s why this technique could be mortally dangerous, long after the spell was broken, for an enemy or friend turned against you could easily use those memories against you, to bring you down. She had no interest in that, however, and she stood slowly, wrapping her arms around the torso of the hanyou and pulling him up so his head rested on the headrest, pulling the silky blankets around his body, unconciously smiling at the picture he made, before sitting back to wait for the hanyou to wake up.

END