InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fate will find a way... ❯ Life goes on… ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: SplendentGoddess 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Angst / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.06.2006 | Updated On: 06.13.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 3.2K | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Angst / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.06.2006 | Updated On: 06.13.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 3.2K | Status: Completed
Blanket Disclaimer:
Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
========================
Chapter 3 – Life goes on…
Leaping back out of the well after his 300th failed attempt, give or take, he sluggishly made his way over to Goshinboku, and tried there, for the zillionth time, to reach Kagome through the powers of the tree of ages.
It had only been two days after the deed was done when he’d realized that he’d made a grave mistake. Sure he knew that Kagome loved him, and he her, but he also still loved Kikyo, and had thought that she still loved him in return. What a fool he’d been.
Looking back on it all now, nearly 4 months later, he couldn’t believe what an idiot he’d been.
~Flashback~
Kikyo stood in awe over her own flesh, breathing deeply just to feel the sensation of air in her lungs, and bending down, she touched the grass, just to feel it brush across her finger tips. Her skin still had a slight sheen to it, as when Inuyasha had made his wish, the jewel began to float in the air, and burst into a cloud of powder, which then lowered itself onto Kikyo, absorbing itself within her body. The jewel was no more.
“Kikyo…” He whispered finally, talking more to himself really, though she’d heard him.
She made no immediate response in his direction, as he gazed upon her as if she were an angel. Kikyo, his precious Kikyo, brought back to him. Now they could be happy, right?
“Kikyo…” He said again, at regular levels, which did cause her to raise her gaze to his direction.
She smiled at his approach, and when he reached her, and snaked his arms around her pulling her into a tight embrace, she embraced him back. Whether it was out of a moment of true compassion, or the simpler desire to experience the sensation, she, herself, was not certain.
She did not object when he delicately brushed his lips against hers, but she did object when he attempted to deepen the kiss, as he edged her lips with his tongue in an attempt to ease her mouth open.
The hurt in his eyes as her outstretched palm pushed itself against his chest, pushing him back away from her, would forever be engraved upon her heart. She relished the expression.
“Of course…” He started, when she hadn’t said a single word in over two minutes, “It’s too soon, everything’s got to be so new, and scary for you, I’m sorry.”
He was so sweet, so carrying, so naive. He would realize this the following morning.
~~~~~~~~~~
When he found Kikyo wandering around near Goshinboku, he went up to greet her, and ask her if she’d slept well, last night having been her first night of sleep with her new living body, after all.
“Fine, and you?” She asked rather stoicly.
“I….I was worried about you.” He confessed, “You should have stayed in the hut with us…” He addressed.
He’d woken up an hour before dawn to discover that she was missing, but was unable to track her, since her living scent is now so close to Kagome’s, he was having trouble distinguishing the two, as Kagome’s scent was still fairly fresh over the general area. It would fade in time, he realized, not quite sure if that realization brought him joy, or sorrow.
Finally he spoke again, asking “Where did you go?”
“What I do is my own business.” She stated again rather stoicly, appearing to be rather bored with their conversation.
Not seeing what was right in front of him, instead only seeing what he wanted to see, he approached the image of the Kikyo he’d once known, but as he was close to snaking his arms around her again, he was taken nearly off guard, by the fact that she again pulled out a knife, and aimed it for his throat.
It really looked like she was going to stab him with it this time, but he caught her hand, and held it there in a moment of shock, as he looked at her again, with hurt in his eyes. When he saw the twisted smile she was sporting, it was then that he felt it. Felt all of the words she’d ever uttered at him in hatred or disgust, all the words he’d shielded himself from, because he was convinced she was bewitched by the feelings of hatred only while within that clay body. But the sweet Kikyo he’d once known had not returned with the flesh, and he found himself truly, for the first time, second guessing his memories, trying to be certain, that Kikyo was ever as sweet as he seemed to remember her being. Looking back on it in that moment, he recalled that Kikyo had always been standoffish. They never touched, embraced, hugged, anything. The only physical contact they ever had back when she was alive, was when he’d caught her fall after she stumbled getting out of the boat. In that moment, the contact had become an embrace, as they hugged each other, but had he held her since? Then he remembered all too well, their discussion over how they could use the jewel to purify his youkai side, making him human. She’d said it with such caring, like she was saving his soul, that he’d bought it. The fact of the matter was, she was just too prejudice to allow herself to be seen with a hanyou, allow herself to be touched by a hanyou. Being pulled from his trip down memory lane, he suddenly got the sensation of déjà vu, as those were the words leaving Kikyo’s lips at that precise moment.
“Keep your filthy hanyou hands off of me…” She said in a low, calm voice. The way Sesshomaru talks down to his enemies, cool and collected.
~End Flashback~
He shook the thoughts from his mind rather violently, as he punched the side of Goshinboku for good measure. Kikyo’d wandered off since that day, never to return. He’d smelled her presence a few times, but she kept herself well hidden. He managed to pass the time slaying youkai with Sango and Miroku, as they took it upon themselves to be slayers for hire, just as Sango herself had been before the whole mess with Naraku had ever begun.
He liked killing things. It kept his mind busy, kept him grounded, kept him sane.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~
*Beep Beep Beep*
Unconsciously, Kagome reached over and pounded her fist against the top of that infernal contraption.
Ugh she thought… 6:30 already?
Not that she truly minded being pulled from her dreams at the moment, come to think of it, since they had consisted, yet again, of her days back in the feudal era, and a certain, perfect hanyou. Though they had nearly parted on bad terms, he had turned sweet in the last moments, telling her he’d miss her, making her promise to live on without him. The whole thing made her feel like Rose from Titanic, and she was quickly beginning to loath the song “My heart will go on.” But it was true nonetheless, as a small smile crept upon her face as she unconsciously twirled her fingers around the rosary she now wore around her neck.
After she had stopped crying her eyes out back in the past, he’d assisted her to her feet, and walked her over to the well. She told him she wanted to leave right away, having already said her goodbyes with the others for the last several days, and it was only the goodbye with him that she’d been putting off.
Placing the jewel in his hands and wrapping his fingers around it, she looked him in the eyes and said “I’ll never forget you.”
He had keh’d, but when she pulled the rosary from his head, and draped it around her own, he had to fight back a single tear. She’d never know that after she dropped down into the depths of the well, he had permitted the tear to fall.
Getting dressed she felt a new twinge of depression that today was her last day of school. She’d thrown herself into her work the rest of this last year, and managed to salvage her grades, and she was graduating with the rest of her class. Everyone was proud of her, and she had to admit, she was proud of herself too, but now the continual distraction that it had offered would be gone. What would she do with herself? Though her grades were good enough, she hadn’t qualified for, nor bothered to enroll in, college. She supposed she could get a job, but her mother insisted that she enjoy her last summer vacation with her friends first, since it would be her first summer vacation since she was 15, that wasn’t spent risking her life every day searching for jewel shards and fighting youkai.
Walking down the stairs, she still had a slight limp where she’d hurt her ankle last weekend, when she botched her landing while trying to go through the well, yet again. She’d have to take a fist full of aspirin to make sure she could walk up on stage to collect her diploma, without stumbling and embarrassing herself.
“Where has the time gone?” Mrs. Higurashi commented wistfully to herself more than anyone else, her little girl was now 18, and graduating high school.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kagome and her friends were all celebrating at WacDonald’s, and Eri had joked to the server that it would be the last time they saw them in their wearing those gawd awful uniforms, as she put it, and smiling went back to the table with the tray of their food.
They were eating in reasonable peace, Kagome thought, until Hojo decided to make his appearance.
At some point between dealing with her own love triangle, and trying to save her hide whenever something demonic tried to tear it off, she’d confessed to Hojo that she was not interested in, nor ever would be interested in, becoming his girlfriend. He’d taken the news better than she’d expected him too, but she understood why when he admitted that he had suspected that she had already had somebody else in her heart, and she was happy when he smiled, and said he’d stay her friend. But since that day, Hojo had since ended up hooking up with Yuka, and though Kagome was genuinely happy for her friends, she didn’t really feel like having their love flaunted in her face, at the moment. They all knew that Kagome had made the final break with her boyfriend. That he’d finally chosen his ex-girlfriend over her, and that, according to Kagome, the two would never see each other ever again, as he now lived very far away. So Hojo and Yuka were very polite in that they restrained themselves, acting almost exactly as they had back when they were only friends, even though truth be told, he’d proposed to her.
Yuka lowered her left hand to hide the ring under the table at the moment, while reaching across with her right to grab hold of Kagome’s own hand, asking...
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Once again, Kagome slapped on that trademark fake smile of hers, the ones that made her friends cringe in horror, because it was so obvious she was hurting, and refusing to express it, instead, keeping it all bottled in.
“Well…” Kagome said, standing up and bowing lightly to her friends. “I’d better get going, I wanted to get some practice in before dark…” she trailed off.
They all looked up in shock, but waved bye nonetheless, as she headed out the door.
Kagome had taken up archery. She didn’t know why, except that something in the back of her head felt more at ease keeping her skills sharp. Even though she hadn’t sensed a youkai disturbance in her time since that incident at school during the cultural festival, and that was over a year ago, and she’d accidentally brought the youkai back with her from the past.
Arrow after arrow, she hit the bull’s-eye dead on, earning the occasional ooo’s and aww’s from the other students. The instructor asked her after the first day, why she was there when it was obvious she didn’t need the lessons, and when she’d said she had nowhere else to practice and wanted to keep herself sharp, he respected her privacy, and let her operate her chute herself. She’d fire off her arrows, retrieve them, and then fire them off again, all the while the instructor would wander around between the other people there, offering the assistance he was there to offer, to those who needed it.
Initially, Kagome had turned him down when he’d offered her a position there, as a fellow instructor, but now she’d have to consider it. She had left the door open for herself, telling him no originally, under the pretence that she was still in school. He had told her then, that if she ever changed her mind, to let him know.
“I’ll do that.” She’d said.
Shaking the memory from her head, she realized she was momentarily alone, which has happened before, as he trusted her not to hurt herself, so he’d occasionally permit her to stay while he closed the front gate to keep others out, while he’d run for a quick bite to eat.
He’ll be back in like 5 minutes… She thought to herself. Better make the most of it.
As her arrow began to glow pink with her powers of purification, she let it fly. Her purifying arrows wouldn’t do any damage to the wooden targets, they’re not demonic after all, but she needed to keep her spiritual powers in tune as well as her archery skills. She only had the opportunity to do so with arrows, during these few rare times when she found herself alone at the range. Otherwise, she tried other exercises, such as stretching out her aura to sense any demonic presence, of which, she usually found none. The only youkai that she was aware of as a resident of her time, at least in the city, was one which she’d seen before, the soul piper. He was harmless, lulling the spirits of dead children to the other side. But whenever she sensed him, it did make her a little sad to know that a child had died. On a few rare occasions, she had sensed a very faint demonic aura emanating from a person, from time to time, indicating that they likely had a youkai great-great-great-grandparent, if that. It was so deluded that they appeared fully human, and likely weren’t aware they were descendent from creatures of mythology. But it made a smile rise to her lips, realizing that at some point in time, somebody had obviously settled down with a hanyou, and their quarter-youkai children had, in tern, found themselves love as well. She wondered in passing if any of these people were perhaps the decedents of Inuyasha and Kikyo. Their youki was far too weak to tell what type of youkai their ancestor was.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~
“You just let her leave?!” Koga shouted.
Inuyasha wasn’t really in the mood for this. Not six months after Kagome had disappeared from his life forever, and Kikyo had turned her back on their past, Miroku and Sango made their union quite known, by declaring they were expecting a child.
So now here he was, youkai slaying with Miroku, as he would no longer allow Sango to participate in the activity while she was still carrying, and they had responded to the rumors of some wolf youkai harassing a nearby village, just to discover that it was this wolf youkai.
“Koga, what the fuck are you doing?” He spat, while Miroku chased his wolves away, who were hunting down and slaughtering some of the villager’s sheep.
“My wolves need to eat!” Was his defense, and when he added “We haven’t hurt a single human!” Inuyasha only keh’d sarcastically and returned with “You don’t think this is hurting ‘em? They need those sheep! Not you!”
He then proceeded to draw Tetsusaiga, and smirk quite satisfactorily…
“For the first time, I’m glad Kagome’s not here, because now I can kill you!”
But when he was shot back with “What do you mean she’s not here?” it made him stop in mid-swing, and through the hurt in his eyes, he went on to explain what happened. For some reason, just needing to get it out of his system, as he never had allowed himself to open up to Miroku in all that time. Koga was, after all, becoming an ally after the whole Naraku thing, that is, until now….
Koga wasn’t too happy to learn what had happened, and when he spat with venom that crack about just letting her leave, it was the last straw.
“What was I supposed to do, huh?” He snapped back. “Keep her trapped in this time forever? She’d never have forgiven me for taking her family away from her.”
“You were her family you moron!” Koga shouted back, for once admitting that he’d known all along that he’d never truly stood a chance all those times that he’d proclaimed his love for her. “She loved you and you just threw her away! I would never have done that, you dogs and your hormones, we wolves mate for life!”
“What about Ayame?” He snapped back in retaliation.
That got Koga to shut up, and both youkai just stood and stared at each other for a moment, glaring looks of death back and forth, until Miroku intervened.
“Koga…” he said shortly “You must leave this village, or we will be forced to dispose of you.”
Koga snapped back into reality upon those words, and grudgingly called his wolves too him, as he took off. Somewhere in the back of his head, he couldn’t quite hate the mutt, actually feeling sorry for him a bit, understanding the turmoil he must be going through. He’d make sure he never raided a human village again, even for only the lower animals, as he never wanted to find himself fighting Inuyasha, not for real. (He knew he’d loose)
Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
========================
Chapter 3 – Life goes on…
Leaping back out of the well after his 300th failed attempt, give or take, he sluggishly made his way over to Goshinboku, and tried there, for the zillionth time, to reach Kagome through the powers of the tree of ages.
It had only been two days after the deed was done when he’d realized that he’d made a grave mistake. Sure he knew that Kagome loved him, and he her, but he also still loved Kikyo, and had thought that she still loved him in return. What a fool he’d been.
Looking back on it all now, nearly 4 months later, he couldn’t believe what an idiot he’d been.
~Flashback~
Kikyo stood in awe over her own flesh, breathing deeply just to feel the sensation of air in her lungs, and bending down, she touched the grass, just to feel it brush across her finger tips. Her skin still had a slight sheen to it, as when Inuyasha had made his wish, the jewel began to float in the air, and burst into a cloud of powder, which then lowered itself onto Kikyo, absorbing itself within her body. The jewel was no more.
“Kikyo…” He whispered finally, talking more to himself really, though she’d heard him.
She made no immediate response in his direction, as he gazed upon her as if she were an angel. Kikyo, his precious Kikyo, brought back to him. Now they could be happy, right?
“Kikyo…” He said again, at regular levels, which did cause her to raise her gaze to his direction.
She smiled at his approach, and when he reached her, and snaked his arms around her pulling her into a tight embrace, she embraced him back. Whether it was out of a moment of true compassion, or the simpler desire to experience the sensation, she, herself, was not certain.
She did not object when he delicately brushed his lips against hers, but she did object when he attempted to deepen the kiss, as he edged her lips with his tongue in an attempt to ease her mouth open.
The hurt in his eyes as her outstretched palm pushed itself against his chest, pushing him back away from her, would forever be engraved upon her heart. She relished the expression.
“Of course…” He started, when she hadn’t said a single word in over two minutes, “It’s too soon, everything’s got to be so new, and scary for you, I’m sorry.”
He was so sweet, so carrying, so naive. He would realize this the following morning.
~~~~~~~~~~
When he found Kikyo wandering around near Goshinboku, he went up to greet her, and ask her if she’d slept well, last night having been her first night of sleep with her new living body, after all.
“Fine, and you?” She asked rather stoicly.
“I….I was worried about you.” He confessed, “You should have stayed in the hut with us…” He addressed.
He’d woken up an hour before dawn to discover that she was missing, but was unable to track her, since her living scent is now so close to Kagome’s, he was having trouble distinguishing the two, as Kagome’s scent was still fairly fresh over the general area. It would fade in time, he realized, not quite sure if that realization brought him joy, or sorrow.
Finally he spoke again, asking “Where did you go?”
“What I do is my own business.” She stated again rather stoicly, appearing to be rather bored with their conversation.
Not seeing what was right in front of him, instead only seeing what he wanted to see, he approached the image of the Kikyo he’d once known, but as he was close to snaking his arms around her again, he was taken nearly off guard, by the fact that she again pulled out a knife, and aimed it for his throat.
It really looked like she was going to stab him with it this time, but he caught her hand, and held it there in a moment of shock, as he looked at her again, with hurt in his eyes. When he saw the twisted smile she was sporting, it was then that he felt it. Felt all of the words she’d ever uttered at him in hatred or disgust, all the words he’d shielded himself from, because he was convinced she was bewitched by the feelings of hatred only while within that clay body. But the sweet Kikyo he’d once known had not returned with the flesh, and he found himself truly, for the first time, second guessing his memories, trying to be certain, that Kikyo was ever as sweet as he seemed to remember her being. Looking back on it in that moment, he recalled that Kikyo had always been standoffish. They never touched, embraced, hugged, anything. The only physical contact they ever had back when she was alive, was when he’d caught her fall after she stumbled getting out of the boat. In that moment, the contact had become an embrace, as they hugged each other, but had he held her since? Then he remembered all too well, their discussion over how they could use the jewel to purify his youkai side, making him human. She’d said it with such caring, like she was saving his soul, that he’d bought it. The fact of the matter was, she was just too prejudice to allow herself to be seen with a hanyou, allow herself to be touched by a hanyou. Being pulled from his trip down memory lane, he suddenly got the sensation of déjà vu, as those were the words leaving Kikyo’s lips at that precise moment.
“Keep your filthy hanyou hands off of me…” She said in a low, calm voice. The way Sesshomaru talks down to his enemies, cool and collected.
~End Flashback~
He shook the thoughts from his mind rather violently, as he punched the side of Goshinboku for good measure. Kikyo’d wandered off since that day, never to return. He’d smelled her presence a few times, but she kept herself well hidden. He managed to pass the time slaying youkai with Sango and Miroku, as they took it upon themselves to be slayers for hire, just as Sango herself had been before the whole mess with Naraku had ever begun.
He liked killing things. It kept his mind busy, kept him grounded, kept him sane.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~
*Beep Beep Beep*
Unconsciously, Kagome reached over and pounded her fist against the top of that infernal contraption.
Ugh she thought… 6:30 already?
Not that she truly minded being pulled from her dreams at the moment, come to think of it, since they had consisted, yet again, of her days back in the feudal era, and a certain, perfect hanyou. Though they had nearly parted on bad terms, he had turned sweet in the last moments, telling her he’d miss her, making her promise to live on without him. The whole thing made her feel like Rose from Titanic, and she was quickly beginning to loath the song “My heart will go on.” But it was true nonetheless, as a small smile crept upon her face as she unconsciously twirled her fingers around the rosary she now wore around her neck.
After she had stopped crying her eyes out back in the past, he’d assisted her to her feet, and walked her over to the well. She told him she wanted to leave right away, having already said her goodbyes with the others for the last several days, and it was only the goodbye with him that she’d been putting off.
Placing the jewel in his hands and wrapping his fingers around it, she looked him in the eyes and said “I’ll never forget you.”
He had keh’d, but when she pulled the rosary from his head, and draped it around her own, he had to fight back a single tear. She’d never know that after she dropped down into the depths of the well, he had permitted the tear to fall.
Getting dressed she felt a new twinge of depression that today was her last day of school. She’d thrown herself into her work the rest of this last year, and managed to salvage her grades, and she was graduating with the rest of her class. Everyone was proud of her, and she had to admit, she was proud of herself too, but now the continual distraction that it had offered would be gone. What would she do with herself? Though her grades were good enough, she hadn’t qualified for, nor bothered to enroll in, college. She supposed she could get a job, but her mother insisted that she enjoy her last summer vacation with her friends first, since it would be her first summer vacation since she was 15, that wasn’t spent risking her life every day searching for jewel shards and fighting youkai.
Walking down the stairs, she still had a slight limp where she’d hurt her ankle last weekend, when she botched her landing while trying to go through the well, yet again. She’d have to take a fist full of aspirin to make sure she could walk up on stage to collect her diploma, without stumbling and embarrassing herself.
“Where has the time gone?” Mrs. Higurashi commented wistfully to herself more than anyone else, her little girl was now 18, and graduating high school.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kagome and her friends were all celebrating at WacDonald’s, and Eri had joked to the server that it would be the last time they saw them in their wearing those gawd awful uniforms, as she put it, and smiling went back to the table with the tray of their food.
They were eating in reasonable peace, Kagome thought, until Hojo decided to make his appearance.
At some point between dealing with her own love triangle, and trying to save her hide whenever something demonic tried to tear it off, she’d confessed to Hojo that she was not interested in, nor ever would be interested in, becoming his girlfriend. He’d taken the news better than she’d expected him too, but she understood why when he admitted that he had suspected that she had already had somebody else in her heart, and she was happy when he smiled, and said he’d stay her friend. But since that day, Hojo had since ended up hooking up with Yuka, and though Kagome was genuinely happy for her friends, she didn’t really feel like having their love flaunted in her face, at the moment. They all knew that Kagome had made the final break with her boyfriend. That he’d finally chosen his ex-girlfriend over her, and that, according to Kagome, the two would never see each other ever again, as he now lived very far away. So Hojo and Yuka were very polite in that they restrained themselves, acting almost exactly as they had back when they were only friends, even though truth be told, he’d proposed to her.
Yuka lowered her left hand to hide the ring under the table at the moment, while reaching across with her right to grab hold of Kagome’s own hand, asking...
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Once again, Kagome slapped on that trademark fake smile of hers, the ones that made her friends cringe in horror, because it was so obvious she was hurting, and refusing to express it, instead, keeping it all bottled in.
“Well…” Kagome said, standing up and bowing lightly to her friends. “I’d better get going, I wanted to get some practice in before dark…” she trailed off.
They all looked up in shock, but waved bye nonetheless, as she headed out the door.
Kagome had taken up archery. She didn’t know why, except that something in the back of her head felt more at ease keeping her skills sharp. Even though she hadn’t sensed a youkai disturbance in her time since that incident at school during the cultural festival, and that was over a year ago, and she’d accidentally brought the youkai back with her from the past.
Arrow after arrow, she hit the bull’s-eye dead on, earning the occasional ooo’s and aww’s from the other students. The instructor asked her after the first day, why she was there when it was obvious she didn’t need the lessons, and when she’d said she had nowhere else to practice and wanted to keep herself sharp, he respected her privacy, and let her operate her chute herself. She’d fire off her arrows, retrieve them, and then fire them off again, all the while the instructor would wander around between the other people there, offering the assistance he was there to offer, to those who needed it.
Initially, Kagome had turned him down when he’d offered her a position there, as a fellow instructor, but now she’d have to consider it. She had left the door open for herself, telling him no originally, under the pretence that she was still in school. He had told her then, that if she ever changed her mind, to let him know.
“I’ll do that.” She’d said.
Shaking the memory from her head, she realized she was momentarily alone, which has happened before, as he trusted her not to hurt herself, so he’d occasionally permit her to stay while he closed the front gate to keep others out, while he’d run for a quick bite to eat.
He’ll be back in like 5 minutes… She thought to herself. Better make the most of it.
As her arrow began to glow pink with her powers of purification, she let it fly. Her purifying arrows wouldn’t do any damage to the wooden targets, they’re not demonic after all, but she needed to keep her spiritual powers in tune as well as her archery skills. She only had the opportunity to do so with arrows, during these few rare times when she found herself alone at the range. Otherwise, she tried other exercises, such as stretching out her aura to sense any demonic presence, of which, she usually found none. The only youkai that she was aware of as a resident of her time, at least in the city, was one which she’d seen before, the soul piper. He was harmless, lulling the spirits of dead children to the other side. But whenever she sensed him, it did make her a little sad to know that a child had died. On a few rare occasions, she had sensed a very faint demonic aura emanating from a person, from time to time, indicating that they likely had a youkai great-great-great-grandparent, if that. It was so deluded that they appeared fully human, and likely weren’t aware they were descendent from creatures of mythology. But it made a smile rise to her lips, realizing that at some point in time, somebody had obviously settled down with a hanyou, and their quarter-youkai children had, in tern, found themselves love as well. She wondered in passing if any of these people were perhaps the decedents of Inuyasha and Kikyo. Their youki was far too weak to tell what type of youkai their ancestor was.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~
“You just let her leave?!” Koga shouted.
Inuyasha wasn’t really in the mood for this. Not six months after Kagome had disappeared from his life forever, and Kikyo had turned her back on their past, Miroku and Sango made their union quite known, by declaring they were expecting a child.
So now here he was, youkai slaying with Miroku, as he would no longer allow Sango to participate in the activity while she was still carrying, and they had responded to the rumors of some wolf youkai harassing a nearby village, just to discover that it was this wolf youkai.
“Koga, what the fuck are you doing?” He spat, while Miroku chased his wolves away, who were hunting down and slaughtering some of the villager’s sheep.
“My wolves need to eat!” Was his defense, and when he added “We haven’t hurt a single human!” Inuyasha only keh’d sarcastically and returned with “You don’t think this is hurting ‘em? They need those sheep! Not you!”
He then proceeded to draw Tetsusaiga, and smirk quite satisfactorily…
“For the first time, I’m glad Kagome’s not here, because now I can kill you!”
But when he was shot back with “What do you mean she’s not here?” it made him stop in mid-swing, and through the hurt in his eyes, he went on to explain what happened. For some reason, just needing to get it out of his system, as he never had allowed himself to open up to Miroku in all that time. Koga was, after all, becoming an ally after the whole Naraku thing, that is, until now….
Koga wasn’t too happy to learn what had happened, and when he spat with venom that crack about just letting her leave, it was the last straw.
“What was I supposed to do, huh?” He snapped back. “Keep her trapped in this time forever? She’d never have forgiven me for taking her family away from her.”
“You were her family you moron!” Koga shouted back, for once admitting that he’d known all along that he’d never truly stood a chance all those times that he’d proclaimed his love for her. “She loved you and you just threw her away! I would never have done that, you dogs and your hormones, we wolves mate for life!”
“What about Ayame?” He snapped back in retaliation.
That got Koga to shut up, and both youkai just stood and stared at each other for a moment, glaring looks of death back and forth, until Miroku intervened.
“Koga…” he said shortly “You must leave this village, or we will be forced to dispose of you.”
Koga snapped back into reality upon those words, and grudgingly called his wolves too him, as he took off. Somewhere in the back of his head, he couldn’t quite hate the mutt, actually feeling sorry for him a bit, understanding the turmoil he must be going through. He’d make sure he never raided a human village again, even for only the lower animals, as he never wanted to find himself fighting Inuyasha, not for real. (He knew he’d loose)