InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Without a Lullaby ❯ Empty ( Chapter 6 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter VI: Empty

 
Sesshomaru felt his eyes bleeding red, his fangs elongated, and heard himself snarling at the man in front of him. The man didn't even realize he was there, and before Sesshomaru knew it he had ripped the man's head off with his bare hands. Blood spurted from the open word like a gyser, spraying Sesshomaru and Kagome with the filth of the ningen that had dared touch her. The body twitched and pulsed once, twice, the fell to the side. He watched as Kagome stared in abject terror at the headless corpse above her, rushing to move away from it.

He could see the trauma written on her bloody face already.

Sesshomaru could honestly say he had not anticipated on such an issue coming to pass.

Infuriated, he crushed the man's head in his hands, the brains dripping down his finger tips and he precariously tossed the head to the side as if it were a broken object that had no worth.

He immediately berated himself mentally, though, for being so brash about his methods of stopping the attack upon Inuyasha's bitch the moment she had brought his focus back to her.

He watched her labored breathing, the way she stared blankly at the once- alive man, the uncontrollable shaking that had taken over her like an earthquake tremored inside her small body.

But he did not grasp the full actuality of that horror until she flung her head back and looked him straight in the eyes.

 He swore to himself he saw her soul at that moment, the bare essence of everything she was crumbling around her into decay, and him being powerless to stop it if he wanted to.

If he wanted to.

If he cared to.

Did he?

And the dread that lay there was beyond anything he could have comprehended, could relate to, something that he never had seen before.

Or cared to take notice of before, rather.

In fact, he absentmindedly recalled Rin looked less scared in death than the woman did right then, though she lived.

And to his shock, she shined a brilliant pink that flowed throughout the area the moment she slipped into unconsciousness, as if the need to purge herself of all those things had come to pass in a physical manifestation. He unconciously raised a hand to shield his sight from the brilliant like, something akin to a nova, wincing as he was overcome with it.

And in that timeless moment he felt everything she did. He knew the depths of her agony, her despair, her horror. He knew it. And because of it, he felt fear himself.

 He was afraid of the level of the emotions she produced. Of the power she had to make him feel it.

And on some level, it disgust him as if he had succumbed to some weakness.

The power it had to bring him to his knees, the feel of a burning emotion lodged in his throat and unmoving. His breath became ragged, his hair become a curtain to shut out the world from his shameful display. His claws dug into the earth as if seeking strength from her, trying to find purchase in the vortex the world had become.

He was overcome.

And it was the first time he had felt afraid in over three centuries.

Eventually, the disturbance subsided. But the upheaval it had cause in his very rigid brain was not something he could ignore.

Finally, he found the strength to stand, the soil staining the white hakama of his pants. His eyes were lowered to his hand, his face becoming schooled into a cool mask of indifference to hide the torment he felt inside.

Beneath his usually well maintained claws laid dirt.

Like within himself.

Like within the Miko.
Underneath the surface, there was so much dirt it seemed impossible in the moment to get it all clean.

He walked over to her, once his vision was no longer blinded. He drew the sight within himself, the pathetic sight something he felt would be burned in his memory forever. An memory as immortal as he himself was. The way her skin had paled, and become clammy. The small pool of blood that surrounded her like a dark aura. The way her skin was marred with lacerations and bruised, maimed and broken. Then it caught his attention.

Something about her stomach caught his eye, something about the meticulous arcs of the slices at her skin...

He read the kanji.

...And he felt revolted.

 The act itself was beyond disgusting, it was worthy of such an undesirable murder that he had at first regretted.

The small onna was barely breathing, and he found himself staring at her blankly. He wondered if it would be kinder to simply put her out of her misery, after all she had gone through. He was never one to think in terms of compassion, but after he had experienced what she was going through in a very literal sense...

How could he not.

 Sesshomaru knelt down and gently picked up Kagome, and began to fly home.

 Her body... was so abused... she was bleeding from every place on her body imaginable.

 It was very conceivable she might die before he got her back to his fortress.

That it would be on him if she did.

 And it angered Sesshomaru he had killed the ningen male so quickly... afterall.

 He should have tortured the male...

Made him suffer.

 The fool had desecrated his ward.

 He sneered, the rage taking over him. As if he deserved to call her that. Lot good he did protecting her. He wanted to kill to avenge the miko. To avenge his honor. He didn't even think about why he felt that way, he just did.

Though the more rational part of his brain pointed out she had left of her own accord. That it was her fault she had ended up in this mess.

But looking down upon her frail, half naked body that laid unconcious in his arms, he did not have it in him to lay all blame at her feet.

He knew very well it was his words that drove her to leave.

But 'has beens' didn't matter as much as what happened now.

He was beyond a comprehensible fury, and he wanted blood for it. A lot of blood.

And he was sure the bandit had comrades... those kind always traveled in packs like a blight.

Fucking filth.

 But for the moment, he would have to care for the girl himself for he knew that if he left her in Jaken's care, the bumbling fool of a retainer would not have a clue as to what to do. He could just imagine it- Jaken standing there with a foul look on his face, confused and unsure how to handle the ningen.

Sesshomaru could also picture him calling Rin in to help him. He only had to think for half a second to imagine the way the child would take one look at Kagome and then scream. And scream. And scream. And scream.

For Sesshomaru-sama to make it all better.

 And the mere thought of it made him bristle with irritation.

 The girl knew about as much as Jaken did when it came to injuries that were of this extent...

 That is, they both knew nothing.

 Added to the fact, he did not wish Rin to see such gore. Her young and fragile mind would be scarred by it, which in previous years was something Sesshomaru may have scoffed at as insignificant.

 But Rin's durability had astounded him. She had constantly proven him wrong about what he originally thought about ningens in general.

 He knew it was not his place to scoff at such a resilient creature.

 Kagome caught Sesshomaru's attention as she groaned out quietly, flailing a little bit.

 Sesshomaru held on to her as tightly as he dared to keep her from falling, and he heard her hiss through her broken lips and whimper as a reaction to the pain.

 Her heartbeat was fluttering, fading.

Like a butterfly.

 Her blood was pounding beneath her flush, struggling to heal her own flesh, a desperate attempt to keep her in the land of the living..

Like rain cleansing the land.

It soaked through his clothes, staining them, causing them to stick to his flesh in a morbid moistness.

 He was familiar with that feel.

 What disturbed him was it somehow was signifying to him that yet again he had failed his brother. It was something that suddenly consumed him, staring down at her battered face, the way her eyelids fluttered as she barely clung to the last remnants of life.

 That was the first thought that had come to mind.

 That somehow, his otouto had cared for the miko much better than he had.

 For it had been barely three or four weeks before something as catastrophic as this had occurred.

And in the three or four years his brother had cared for her, nothing of this nature had come to befall upon her.

If he didn't know better, he might say he was guilt ridden.

Didn't he already go through these thoughts, why think about them again?

She ran away.

But he still knew it was his job to protect her.

He had been the one to drive her away, and he knew that.

He somehow felt incompetent.

He was going in a cycle, a neverending one at that, one that hand led to the situation at hand.

If there was one thing he was unused to feeling, that was it.

 Sighing silently, he flew into his own bedroom through a window.

 He knew what he had to do.

 He laid Kagome down on the floor carefully, trying not to cause her more pain then necessary.

 And from there, he examined her for a moment... she wasn't exactly voluptuous, but she had a decently distinguished curve to her body. Her face was turned away from his, her hair pooling beneath her in waves that had matted together from grime and blood.

But she was still freshly bleeding from multiple cut and stab wounds on various placed on her body... even her stomach where the scum had marked her was still bleeding.

 Growling out loud in a rising fury, Sesshomaru unsheathed Tokijin and brought it down upon Kagome.

 He saw her body lift up, struggling for a breath, as she reached up to him. He saw her blinking out tears, and look into him, inside him, as if seeing him the way he had seen her... and it perturbed him that she may be able to see inside of him and find out how he worked.

But her sight was gone just as quickly as she saw him.

Her eyes glazed over and become empty, and dead.

Sheathing Tokijin, he unsheathed Tenseiga. With it, he saw the creatures of the netherworld. And he slew them all with a single stroke of arcing light, restoring life and health back into Kagome's lifeless body.

As breath reclaimed her like one might gasp after having nearly drowned, and her eyes fluttered open, she remained motionless besides the way she coughed and choked on the suddenness of being dragged back into the world of the living so quickly.

Sesshomaru stared at her, and he knew it was unmistakable she lived. He heard her heartbeat, strong and steady. Her breath was cool and deep once she calmed, and her blood flowed with distinguished purpose.

Yet, she didn't move. She just stared out at the wall, and for as long as she did, Sesshomaru stared at her.

But she didn't seem to care.

She didn't even acknowledge him.

That is, until she spoke.

And Sesshomaru wouldn't forget it, because it was like the first time he had really ever heard her.

Truly listened for her.

And her voice was soft, and youthful... it wasn't seductive and deep like most female youkai. It was a symbol of her age, though she was much older than the year most girls were wed, there was an innocence there someone might find in a child much younger.

But it was so wound with despair that he barely recognized her from the voice of that fiery nymph that had unleashed Tetsusaiga from its grave.

“Did I die?”

 Sesshomaru didn't speak, and she took that with full understanding. What it meant.

“Why didn't you let me stay that way?”

 Sesshomaru again didn't speak, but she knew. She had seen it in his eyes, his answers.

They didn't placate her.

But on the reverse, he also didn't expect them to.

She closed her eyes, and rolled over onto her side, speaking softly before she fell into a slumber:

“Only a life of shard hunting and mindless massacre. I guess that's the way it'll always be, huh? Because the world isn't how it used to be.”

No, it's excatly as it always was.

She slipped again into the world of unconsciousness without ceremony upon Sesshomaru's bedroom floor, and he was stunned at the words she spoke. The cynical uncaring so uncharacteristic of her.

 As he knelt down and picked her up, and placed her on his bed, he wondered if he would hear her speak again.

Did such a life really wear down a ningen like this? The way of life he had himself adopted? The only thing he truly knew about?

Maybe such a life isn't for all. Yet he was sure this was the only way of life he could live.

 
Sesshomaru stood there, watching the girl as she sleep nude, seeing a small mark upon her stomach. He had only caught it, with the faint iridescence it shimmered with because of his sharp senses.

The only thing that had not vanished...

He leaned down to inspect it closer, wondering why it had not gone... It was so pale, so hard to catch, he doubted she would notice.

But he still knew it existed.

 “Yokama raped the slut,” he murmured out quietly, as not to wake Kagome.

 He decidedly loathed that scar in that very moment.

 It would tell not only of her misfortune, but his failure to prevent it.

 He frowned, staring at the hands that still dripped in the insolent mortal's blood.

He swore he would claim the lives of those `Yokama' traveled with.

And he turned on his heel to seek revenge for the stain on his honor.

And hers.
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