InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Exploring the Sengoku Jidai ❯ Broken Heart - Ch 173 ( Chapter 4 )

Author's Note: Takes place immediately after InuYasha pledges to protect Kikyo, while Kagome watches behind a tree (manga chapter 173, anime episode 48). Written for IYfic_contest on LiveJournal.com, week 44 theme “Broken.” I don't own any of the characters - all belong to R. Takahashi, may she write forever!

 

Broken Heart

 

Her soul skimmers looped through the clearing, casting the eerie glow of former life on the dead and the living below. He held her. He professed to be her protector. But it was more than this ….

 

He hurt for her. His voice was clear and strained. His anguish was written on his face. His torment expressed in his arms as they encircled her. Her plight was more real to him than his own. Her pain more intense. Her life more precious. In the face of this devotion I suddenly saw no room left in his heart for … me. A small pain grew into the center of my chest, penetrating my heart like a tendril.

 

She left, but he called her back. Back into his arms once again. He couldn't bear the thought … Watching his face as she left once more, I saw the shadow of my own heartache, my own longing. Because I understood, because our pain was the same, I could not be angry, only sad. But this was not a sadness I had ever felt before, it was something more fundamental. More complete. More whole. No longer a tendril, it grew larger, deeper, pushing more fully into my heart.

 

A twig snapped under my foot, bringing us both into awareness of each other. His eyes. So real. So clear. So beautiful. So sad. There was no pretense, no excuse, no attempt to cover over the truth of it. He loved her still. He had given himself to her. I had watched him do so, but until I saw the truth in his eyes, some hope must still have lived in me. But not in those eyes. There was no hope for me there. The pain which had woven itself into my chest became a solid thing, forcing my once whole heart into pieces. Cutting it. Cleaving it. Killing it.

 

I turned to run. My feet moved. I heard breath in my lungs and blood in my ears. But I was dead. In my chest, where once my heart had been, lay only the broken pieces of love.