InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Paper Cranes ❯ Paper Cranes ( Chapter 1 )

Paper Cranes

 

Written for Numisma

 

Byakuya is not really a killer; he is only an observer - a clear glass window through which his master sees.

 

He only looks, watches, and sometimes reports something if it is important enough. But mostly, he just looks. He's had plenty of time to observe.

 

Byakuya knows he is not human. In fact, he doesn't quite know what he is, other than he's watched enough of both human and youkai alike to realize to be strong - he'd rather be a youkai.

 

However, to be happy - to experience fulfilling emotions and love - he knows it is better to be human.

 

And he's observed enough humans to see grief, love, and emotions of the highest form. He knows that it is tempting to be human - to know what it feels like to have emotions and feel them at such depth.

 

~*~

 

Byakuya never forgot the human woman he observed in a village before Naraku had laid it to waste. She was sad, glowing, and hopeful for a lost love.

 

This woman intrigued him - mainly because she was like him in the way of working with origami. Yet, the only difference was that he used his origami to fight, and she used hers to love.

 

Every day the woman made a paper crane for each day her lover was away from her - taken away east for a human civil war. Every day a new paper crane would signify her hope, her devotion to her lover.

 

She tied the paper cranes loosely to the cherry tree outside her small house. Some would catch the wind and some would shrivel in the rain - but none of that stopped her from making them.

 

And then the day Naraku's demons came and demolished the woman's village, her screams rang the loudest, catching Byakuya's attention as he watched the demon's suck away her life and soul.

 

All he could do at that moment was watch. He knew, by not being human or even fully demon, that he had no free right to do anything about the woman's terrible demise.

 

He was only a window to his master's world after all - this was his only function.

 

When it was all over, Byakuya came down from his large paper crane and looked at the woman's lifeless body. Only hours ago she was full of life and hope.

 

He still envied her even though she was dead.

 

In his final goodbye - his final duty to observe the village - he left on an understanding wind that followed him in a side current, buffering his ascent into the sky. With one final look back to the burning village, his heart moved slightly, a choked passing that was too small to significantly last.

 

Then, unexpectedly, his eyes widened in surprise as the dead woman's cranes had all been grabbed up by a sympathetic breeze - set free into the welcoming sky.