InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Evil in Men's Hearts ❯ Evening Air ( Chapter 9 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Knittingknots 
InuYasha and Kagome get a moment's privacy. Sesshoumaru ends a problem. Teijo reveals something.
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action / Romance | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.10.2007 | Updated On: 04.11.2008 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 980 | Status: Work In Progress
InuYasha and Kagome get a moment's privacy. Sesshoumaru ends a problem. Teijo reveals something.
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action / Romance | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.10.2007 | Updated On: 04.11.2008 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 980 | Status: Work In Progress
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi.
The Evil in Men's Hearts
Chapter 9: Evening Air
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------
Who shall conquer this world
And the world of death with all its gods?
Who shall discover
The shining way of dharma?
Snap the flower arrows of desire
And then, unseen,
Escape the king of death.
--The Dhammapada
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------
He sat in his garden. It was early evening, and the jasmine was blooming, white star shapes cascading against the rocks and walls where it was planted, releasing its sweetness with the ending of the day.
A calming oasis was this enclosed garden within the castle grounds. There were various plantings, trees, shrubs, and a pool. Lotus floated and koi swam in its waters. Several interesting boulders had been placed where thy lead the eye up and towards the beyond. It was a place one might find quiet, or meditate, or otherwise renew oneself.
This evening, he would put it to a different use.
Anger burned inside of him. "They dared try to take what is MINE!" he whispered. Even through his well-schooled control, the anger he held in affected his youki. Those who could gave him a wide berth, not wishing to feel his aura contact theirs. He wanted to ease that anger. He wanted to see the eyes, the soul of a person who would attack, to taste their smell and feel their heartbeat as he dealt with them.
Only one of the two had made it through interrogation. They brought the surviving monk to him in the garden and removed his bonds. He had been beaten. He smelled of sweat and blood and pain, yet also of peaceful resignation. One eye was quite swollen. He held his left arm.
Yet he was a trained warrior, even if ningen, and the monk had withdrawn into some deep internal place, holding himself at the ready, waiting.
"Ningen," Sesshoumaru said, calm, controlled. "Why are you here?"
The man looked him squarely in the eyes, ignoring the pressure of his youki and the feral look in Sesshoumaru's eyes that promised darkness. The interrogators have extracted all of this information. Yet Sesshoumaru needed to see the man's reactions, to understand, perhaps, or witness what sort of truths the truths ningen held in his heart.
"I am the servant of Amida," the monk said, tiredly but patiently.
"No," Sesshoumaru said, very quietly. "Tell me WHY you are here in the Western lands. Why you came into my holdings without permission."
"To preach the Dharma. To liberate youkai."
"Who sent you into my lands?"
"My sensei Jomei."
Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow at the audacity of the answer . The serenity behind the man's responses when tasting the threat of death impressed the youkai. "And what were you doing when Teijo captured you?"
"We had found a girl who was talking with a youkai. We were going to free her from her youkai contamination." The monk looked defiantly at the Daiyoukai. "If we had known who she belonged to at that time, we might have acted swifter."
Red swirled in Sesshoumaru's eyes. Whatever curiosity he had about the ningen's motivations and training paled. THIS was the reason he was standing in the garden, looking at this creature. He stood, drew himself into his full height, allowed his youki to focus in on the monk. The man shuddered.
Sesshoumaru gave a feral grin, the type of grin a dog gives before the attack. "I give you a choice," he said thickly. " Stand here and enter the Pure Land now, or try to run. I would enjoy the chase. I have your scent. You will not be able to escape."
The monk closed his eyes and swallowed. "I will not run. Kwannon will walk with me, and my Lord Amida will be there to greet me. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu. I take refuge in Amida --" he said.
The youkai, his questions answered, his judgment rendered, tore out the monk's throat.
--------------------------------------------------
"We'll get there in the morning," InuYasha said. "You are too tired. Better not face my brother yawning in his face."
Kagome was surprised when they stopped. It was late afternoon. They had only traveled maybe three hours after parting ways with the Kitsune. But she didn't want to fight him on this one. She was tired.
InuYasha found a good campsite far enough away from the road for privacy and close enough to water, sheltered with trees.
"I think I've camped here before, " he said.
The fire ring was proof of it having been used from time to time, but from the look and smell of things, he knew no one had used it recently. InuYasha caught some fish in the stream nearby. Quietly, they set up camp, first gathering wood and making a fire, then preparing and eating dinner.
The afternoon gave way to evening, an evening that was calming, peaceful and starlit. Surrounded by this quiet moment, InuYasha let his thoughts wander to the next day, and what he would tell his brother, and wondered what his brother would want to do.
Sighing, he looked over at Kagome, at her eyes in the firelight, something he much preferred to think about. Her eyes seemed darker in the firelight than was normal, caught in the shadows and flickering light. He knew they were blue-gray, stormy colored, yet at the same time so often serene and kind. Tonight her eyes showed that she was tired, but still when her eyes touched his, it created an aching deep in his soul. How could anybody not see how she was good, pure, amazing just by glancing at her? How could anybody want her to do what those monks were planning on doing to her?
"What ya thinking?" she asked, as she put away the last of the dinner dishes. The fire touched her blue black hair with highlights, wrapped the lines of her face, her neck, her body in a dance of shadow and warm light.
"About you," he said, his voice soft and husky.
She looked up, met his amber eyes once again, smiled warmly. There were times like now, his white hair, touched with honey highlights from the firelight, his ears, his eyes, the way he carried himself, touched her heart in amazing ways. So otherworldly, so strong, so vulnerable, so beautiful. She had loved his beauty since the day she first saw him pinned to the Goshinboku. Moving next to him, Kagome rested her head against his shoulder. "And what were you thinking about me?" she asked.
"Oh, just how stubborn, beautiful, baka, and special you are," he said, wrapping an arm around her, resting his cheek against her head. "Putting up with me, with this life, giving up so much that you could have had."
A brief wistful look touched her eyes, as she thought of her loved ones five hundred years away, totally unreachable. But it only stayed there a moment. "I'll always be with you," she said, repeating a promise she made once in what seemed like a different life. So much had happened since, but the words felt just as true as when she first said them. "With you is where I want to be."
"So you put up with youkai, and bad monks, and greedy villagers who want to hurt you for being with me." He looked deeply into her eyes once again, ran a finger lightly across her lips, coming to rest his hand along her cheek. "I told you that you were a baka."
Something primal within him stirred as he held her and breathed in her warm scent.
"I love you. I can't be anywhere else," she replied.
He moved to where he was kneeling in front of her. He bent close and cupped her face in his hands. “Wife,” he said, brushed his lips lightly against hers. “Beloved,” he breathed into her ear, causing shivers down her spine. “Mine," he said, pulling her into a deep and hungry kiss.
"Yours, always," she breathed, returning his kiss gently, but following it with one of growing heat that did not end before she found herself being lowered to their bedroll.
He lay on top of her, his arms along side of her head bearing his weight, running his tongue down her neck, trailing kisses back up to her jaw. “I want you,” he breathed in her ear. He pressed his growing hardness into her thigh, trailed kisses down her throat to the V of her kosode’s neck opening. She arched up into the touch of his mouth, her breath quickening.
“Then take me,” she replied.
--------------------------------------------------------- -------
Matsuo sat under the stars next to a small fire, looking as if he were in deep meditation, although his youki was disturbed and restlessly swirled around him. If he were not shaven headed, his hair would have been swirling in its current.
Pine trees waved in the true wind, darker shadows in the night echoing his agitation. Intentionally, he breathed deep, letting the mindfulness he was searching for follow the path of each breath, pulling through his nose, into his lungs, out again. And yet his mind stayed a bee, unable to really settle. His awareness went out and could trace the eddies of power, jyaki and spiritual, human, youki and something he didn't recognize.
"Your ki is a stormy ocean tonight, Matsuo."
Matsuo opened his eyes and looked into the cool amber eyes of Teijo.
"There is a wind blowing on it that is not mine," he replied.
"This is true," Teijo replied. The Inu youkai reached into his outer kosode and pulled out a small bag. Unfastening it, he pulled out a small gem that glowed with an intense red.
He thought about it the first time he saw it.
"Behold Kukai's hand. In it rests the destiny of youkai," said the kami.
Teijo watched it, feeling the power contained in it as it rolled around in the center of his hand.
"That is what it is," said Benzaiten, Kami of good fortune, lover of Kitsunes and snakes, one face of Inari. She glowed with pale, otherworldly light, swirled with an aura neither human or youki. "This guards the heart and soul of what the youkai, in all their forms are."
"Why?" he asked.
"The time is coming when youkai survival will rest on the fate of this stone. It is a seal binding that which longs to destroy all that is youkai, to drag it down to the depths of Yomi, the darkest reaches of Hell.”
Benzaiten's eyes pierced him. He felt naked in her eyes.
"Why did you ask me, and not a Kitsune to guard it? Or even a snake?"
"I need Inu loyalty and honor. Can you do this? Will you do this? The price will be high. The need of the stone and all youkai must come before family, friend, heart."
He closed his eyes, felt his balance, sensed the winds of destiny swirling.
"I will do it."
Many things had happened since then. Always, he kept to the path, the road the stone prescribed. He had to turn his back on his brother's need and watch him die, unable to act. He had to reject his brother's woman's pleas for aid and let her son grow up a wild thing. Always, everything fell away from the need to protect the stone, to guard the way, to insure the future.
Matsuo looked at the gem in his hand.
"This,"said Teijo, "is my curse. And my duty. It is calling all the players together."
------------------------------------------------------- ------
"We must be getting near to your brother's castle," said Kagome. She signaled to InuYasha to let her down from his back.
"Thanks. My legs needed that, " she said stretching.
"It's not far, " InuYasha said. “Once we get around that next rise and past the bend in the road, you'll be able to see the castle."
"I can feel lots of youki," she said.
"Not surprising. Lots of high level youkai here. You know what my brother's youki feels like. He's probably the strongest, but he's not the only one around here with strong youki."
They followed the road as it climbed and circled round a dark outcropping of rock. Amid the weeds and grasses growing in its cracks, Kagome noticed ward signs. She could feel the power from them, something she suspected that was put there to chase away the unwary human.
"Look, Kagome. There is the keep of the Inu no Taisho, the Daiyoukai of the West."
The castle rose on a rise higher than the road they were on, like a small mountain. It had massive white walls and dark sloping roofs. Guard towers rose away from the main building, projecting the image of control, strength, power. Kagome was highly impressed.
"All that time we were looking for the shards," she said. "I had no idea that this was his base. He was traveling so often that I thought he was just a nomad."
"Don't know if he stayed here any more than we stayed at Kaede's, but this was his home. This place has bad memories for me. He can have it," said InuYasha.
They began to walk around the bend, when suddenly, InuYasha pulled Kagome behind him. A lone figure moved into the center of the road. White on white, silver hair and white garments. His amber eyes gave very little information out; his face marked with crescent moon and crest stripes was held passionless.
"Little Brother. Miko," he said with a slight nod of his head. "You will tell this Sesshoumaru everything you know about a ningen priest named Jomei."
The Evil in Men's Hearts
Chapter 9: Evening Air
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------
Who shall conquer this world
And the world of death with all its gods?
Who shall discover
The shining way of dharma?
Snap the flower arrows of desire
And then, unseen,
Escape the king of death.
--The Dhammapada
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------
He sat in his garden. It was early evening, and the jasmine was blooming, white star shapes cascading against the rocks and walls where it was planted, releasing its sweetness with the ending of the day.
A calming oasis was this enclosed garden within the castle grounds. There were various plantings, trees, shrubs, and a pool. Lotus floated and koi swam in its waters. Several interesting boulders had been placed where thy lead the eye up and towards the beyond. It was a place one might find quiet, or meditate, or otherwise renew oneself.
This evening, he would put it to a different use.
Anger burned inside of him. "They dared try to take what is MINE!" he whispered. Even through his well-schooled control, the anger he held in affected his youki. Those who could gave him a wide berth, not wishing to feel his aura contact theirs. He wanted to ease that anger. He wanted to see the eyes, the soul of a person who would attack, to taste their smell and feel their heartbeat as he dealt with them.
Only one of the two had made it through interrogation. They brought the surviving monk to him in the garden and removed his bonds. He had been beaten. He smelled of sweat and blood and pain, yet also of peaceful resignation. One eye was quite swollen. He held his left arm.
Yet he was a trained warrior, even if ningen, and the monk had withdrawn into some deep internal place, holding himself at the ready, waiting.
"Ningen," Sesshoumaru said, calm, controlled. "Why are you here?"
The man looked him squarely in the eyes, ignoring the pressure of his youki and the feral look in Sesshoumaru's eyes that promised darkness. The interrogators have extracted all of this information. Yet Sesshoumaru needed to see the man's reactions, to understand, perhaps, or witness what sort of truths the truths ningen held in his heart.
"I am the servant of Amida," the monk said, tiredly but patiently.
"No," Sesshoumaru said, very quietly. "Tell me WHY you are here in the Western lands. Why you came into my holdings without permission."
"To preach the Dharma. To liberate youkai."
"Who sent you into my lands?"
"My sensei Jomei."
Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow at the audacity of the answer . The serenity behind the man's responses when tasting the threat of death impressed the youkai. "And what were you doing when Teijo captured you?"
"We had found a girl who was talking with a youkai. We were going to free her from her youkai contamination." The monk looked defiantly at the Daiyoukai. "If we had known who she belonged to at that time, we might have acted swifter."
Red swirled in Sesshoumaru's eyes. Whatever curiosity he had about the ningen's motivations and training paled. THIS was the reason he was standing in the garden, looking at this creature. He stood, drew himself into his full height, allowed his youki to focus in on the monk. The man shuddered.
Sesshoumaru gave a feral grin, the type of grin a dog gives before the attack. "I give you a choice," he said thickly. " Stand here and enter the Pure Land now, or try to run. I would enjoy the chase. I have your scent. You will not be able to escape."
The monk closed his eyes and swallowed. "I will not run. Kwannon will walk with me, and my Lord Amida will be there to greet me. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu. I take refuge in Amida --" he said.
The youkai, his questions answered, his judgment rendered, tore out the monk's throat.
--------------------------------------------------
"We'll get there in the morning," InuYasha said. "You are too tired. Better not face my brother yawning in his face."
Kagome was surprised when they stopped. It was late afternoon. They had only traveled maybe three hours after parting ways with the Kitsune. But she didn't want to fight him on this one. She was tired.
InuYasha found a good campsite far enough away from the road for privacy and close enough to water, sheltered with trees.
"I think I've camped here before, " he said.
The fire ring was proof of it having been used from time to time, but from the look and smell of things, he knew no one had used it recently. InuYasha caught some fish in the stream nearby. Quietly, they set up camp, first gathering wood and making a fire, then preparing and eating dinner.
The afternoon gave way to evening, an evening that was calming, peaceful and starlit. Surrounded by this quiet moment, InuYasha let his thoughts wander to the next day, and what he would tell his brother, and wondered what his brother would want to do.
Sighing, he looked over at Kagome, at her eyes in the firelight, something he much preferred to think about. Her eyes seemed darker in the firelight than was normal, caught in the shadows and flickering light. He knew they were blue-gray, stormy colored, yet at the same time so often serene and kind. Tonight her eyes showed that she was tired, but still when her eyes touched his, it created an aching deep in his soul. How could anybody not see how she was good, pure, amazing just by glancing at her? How could anybody want her to do what those monks were planning on doing to her?
"What ya thinking?" she asked, as she put away the last of the dinner dishes. The fire touched her blue black hair with highlights, wrapped the lines of her face, her neck, her body in a dance of shadow and warm light.
"About you," he said, his voice soft and husky.
She looked up, met his amber eyes once again, smiled warmly. There were times like now, his white hair, touched with honey highlights from the firelight, his ears, his eyes, the way he carried himself, touched her heart in amazing ways. So otherworldly, so strong, so vulnerable, so beautiful. She had loved his beauty since the day she first saw him pinned to the Goshinboku. Moving next to him, Kagome rested her head against his shoulder. "And what were you thinking about me?" she asked.
"Oh, just how stubborn, beautiful, baka, and special you are," he said, wrapping an arm around her, resting his cheek against her head. "Putting up with me, with this life, giving up so much that you could have had."
A brief wistful look touched her eyes, as she thought of her loved ones five hundred years away, totally unreachable. But it only stayed there a moment. "I'll always be with you," she said, repeating a promise she made once in what seemed like a different life. So much had happened since, but the words felt just as true as when she first said them. "With you is where I want to be."
"So you put up with youkai, and bad monks, and greedy villagers who want to hurt you for being with me." He looked deeply into her eyes once again, ran a finger lightly across her lips, coming to rest his hand along her cheek. "I told you that you were a baka."
Something primal within him stirred as he held her and breathed in her warm scent.
"I love you. I can't be anywhere else," she replied.
He moved to where he was kneeling in front of her. He bent close and cupped her face in his hands. “Wife,” he said, brushed his lips lightly against hers. “Beloved,” he breathed into her ear, causing shivers down her spine. “Mine," he said, pulling her into a deep and hungry kiss.
"Yours, always," she breathed, returning his kiss gently, but following it with one of growing heat that did not end before she found herself being lowered to their bedroll.
He lay on top of her, his arms along side of her head bearing his weight, running his tongue down her neck, trailing kisses back up to her jaw. “I want you,” he breathed in her ear. He pressed his growing hardness into her thigh, trailed kisses down her throat to the V of her kosode’s neck opening. She arched up into the touch of his mouth, her breath quickening.
“Then take me,” she replied.
--------------------------------------------------------- -------
Matsuo sat under the stars next to a small fire, looking as if he were in deep meditation, although his youki was disturbed and restlessly swirled around him. If he were not shaven headed, his hair would have been swirling in its current.
Pine trees waved in the true wind, darker shadows in the night echoing his agitation. Intentionally, he breathed deep, letting the mindfulness he was searching for follow the path of each breath, pulling through his nose, into his lungs, out again. And yet his mind stayed a bee, unable to really settle. His awareness went out and could trace the eddies of power, jyaki and spiritual, human, youki and something he didn't recognize.
"Your ki is a stormy ocean tonight, Matsuo."
Matsuo opened his eyes and looked into the cool amber eyes of Teijo.
"There is a wind blowing on it that is not mine," he replied.
"This is true," Teijo replied. The Inu youkai reached into his outer kosode and pulled out a small bag. Unfastening it, he pulled out a small gem that glowed with an intense red.
He thought about it the first time he saw it.
"Behold Kukai's hand. In it rests the destiny of youkai," said the kami.
Teijo watched it, feeling the power contained in it as it rolled around in the center of his hand.
"That is what it is," said Benzaiten, Kami of good fortune, lover of Kitsunes and snakes, one face of Inari. She glowed with pale, otherworldly light, swirled with an aura neither human or youki. "This guards the heart and soul of what the youkai, in all their forms are."
"Why?" he asked.
"The time is coming when youkai survival will rest on the fate of this stone. It is a seal binding that which longs to destroy all that is youkai, to drag it down to the depths of Yomi, the darkest reaches of Hell.”
Benzaiten's eyes pierced him. He felt naked in her eyes.
"Why did you ask me, and not a Kitsune to guard it? Or even a snake?"
"I need Inu loyalty and honor. Can you do this? Will you do this? The price will be high. The need of the stone and all youkai must come before family, friend, heart."
He closed his eyes, felt his balance, sensed the winds of destiny swirling.
"I will do it."
Many things had happened since then. Always, he kept to the path, the road the stone prescribed. He had to turn his back on his brother's need and watch him die, unable to act. He had to reject his brother's woman's pleas for aid and let her son grow up a wild thing. Always, everything fell away from the need to protect the stone, to guard the way, to insure the future.
Matsuo looked at the gem in his hand.
"This,"said Teijo, "is my curse. And my duty. It is calling all the players together."
------------------------------------------------------- ------
"We must be getting near to your brother's castle," said Kagome. She signaled to InuYasha to let her down from his back.
"Thanks. My legs needed that, " she said stretching.
"It's not far, " InuYasha said. “Once we get around that next rise and past the bend in the road, you'll be able to see the castle."
"I can feel lots of youki," she said.
"Not surprising. Lots of high level youkai here. You know what my brother's youki feels like. He's probably the strongest, but he's not the only one around here with strong youki."
They followed the road as it climbed and circled round a dark outcropping of rock. Amid the weeds and grasses growing in its cracks, Kagome noticed ward signs. She could feel the power from them, something she suspected that was put there to chase away the unwary human.
"Look, Kagome. There is the keep of the Inu no Taisho, the Daiyoukai of the West."
The castle rose on a rise higher than the road they were on, like a small mountain. It had massive white walls and dark sloping roofs. Guard towers rose away from the main building, projecting the image of control, strength, power. Kagome was highly impressed.
"All that time we were looking for the shards," she said. "I had no idea that this was his base. He was traveling so often that I thought he was just a nomad."
"Don't know if he stayed here any more than we stayed at Kaede's, but this was his home. This place has bad memories for me. He can have it," said InuYasha.
They began to walk around the bend, when suddenly, InuYasha pulled Kagome behind him. A lone figure moved into the center of the road. White on white, silver hair and white garments. His amber eyes gave very little information out; his face marked with crescent moon and crest stripes was held passionless.
"Little Brother. Miko," he said with a slight nod of his head. "You will tell this Sesshoumaru everything you know about a ningen priest named Jomei."