InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Darker Purpose ❯ Chapter One: Excessive Behavior ( Chapter 1 )

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

�Why did you even bother, again?� he asked her quietly, aware that she was standing at the end of her bed in the dark. �Why do you keep going there?�
�Because I know that�s where you�ll be.�
Miroku closed his eyes. �You can�t save me, Kagome. We�ve gone far past that.�
�Why do you keep doing this to yourself?�
He smiled. �It�s not as if I have anything better to do.� His answer was kind of a little joke between them � it was his answer for everything, these days.
Kagome wasn�t amused. �You�re going to end up killing yourself before Naraku ever does, you know.�
�Wouldn�t that be the greatest �fuck you� ever?� He gave a little laugh.

Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Romance / Hentai | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 02.23.2005 | Pages: 6 | Words: 6.0K | Visits: 537 | Status: Work In Progress

A Darker Purpose

I: Excessive Behavior

“Never mind, Kikyo. He's already…done. Yes. I'll take care of him. No, I don't want help. I don't need your kind of help, Kikyo! Just stay there with InuYasha - it's the one thing you're good at, isn't it? …Just forget it, I'm sorry. No. Hell, yes, I said! I'll take care of it, damn it! Don't I always?”

Sighing heavily, she closed the cell phone with a frustrated click.

She wondered sometimes how things could have gotten so bad. It seemed like things shouldn't even be this way, like they were all living a different life from what they were meant to, doing other things than what they were destined to…

Kagome had arrived at the rundown apartment complex too late to `save' the last of her best friends. Oh, he wasn't dead - yet - but when he woke up in the morning, he'd wish he was.

Shoving the cell phone into her pocket, Kagome pushed down the overwhelming sense of hopelessness and fear that welled up inside of her at the sight of obviously well-ravished and extremely over-inebriated friend. She walked across the street, barely acknowledging the three barely-dressed young women practically holding him up.

“Hi, Kagome,” the one on the far left said with a smug smirk as she openly caressed the lean, well-formed hand dangling around her white neck. The witch ran one finger over the three silver rings adorning two long fingers and his thumb.

Inwardly furious and disgusted, Kagome ignored her. She bit her lip as she dragged the staggering boy out of the girl's arms and hefted one of his arms over her shoulder. Two of the girl's were giggling as he grinned back at them, his white teeth flashing roguishly in the darkness. The third girl, Yuka, just looked at him with a weak, embarrassed wave.

Furious at him, at Kikyo and InuYasha, at Naraku, at the whole damn world, Kagome bit back a snarl and painstakingly turned away. The two giggling girls went slowly silent as they walked back inside the doors, the latches clicking behind them.

“Kagome!”

Kagome closed her eyes as Yuka called out to her.

Back in grade school, Yuka had been one of her closest friends - but that had been before Naraku, before InuYasha…before…everything. Now Yuka was a party girl, looking older than her eighteen years, living in near squalid conditions in a sad-looking flat with a half-dozen other girls who also made their livings on their back.

“I'm…sorry, Kagome. I swear, I called you guys as soon as he showed up. I tried to get him to leave, but then Eri just kinda' latched on to him, and you know how she is - “ the girl cut herself off with a small cough. When she spoke again it was in a thin, reedy voice. “I'm so sorry, Kagome. He's just so…charming to us, you know?”

Kagome gave a half-smile as she turned her head to look at the boy leaning heavily on her shoulder. His violet eyes were dazed just then. He was drunk off his ass - again - and had no clue what the hell was going on around him, but he still managed to recognize her.

He smiled at her, his head dropping against her temple as he sighed against her cheek.

“Hmmm..Kagome. Always smell…so sweet,” he murmured seductively against her skin.

Kagome turned her head away, trying to ignore the myriad of scents emanating from him and his clothes. Leather, liquor, and…something sweet and salty, and…just something else she'd long-since come to recognize but didn't want to think about.

“Yes, he's really charming…to anything with tits and a vagina,” she told the other girl in a cold voice.

Yuka gave a soft gasp, but Kagome's words were far past truly shocking her. She was probably more shocked by the fact that sweet, innocent Kagome had said them, than by anything else.

“Kagome, just remember…we're really clean here, okay? You don't hafta' worry about him…y'know. We just got our tests back, everyone is…healthy. Everyone is real careful, here, you know? You just…I just want you to know that.”

Feeling sick to her stomach, Kagome kept walking. She focused on keeping the boy next to her from tumbling over and crushing her on the dirty asphalt with his muscular, much taller frame.

“Yeah, Yuka. I'll…remember that.” That, and everything else, too, because she'd hafta' gouge her own eyeballs out to even try to forget all the things she'd seen the pervert get himself into over the last year…

“Thanks for calling us, Yuka.” Kagome tried to say in her friendliest voice, because it really wasn't Yuka's fault…for the sake of a long-lost friendship.

Good-hearted Yuka grabbed at the smidge of nicety like a lifeline. “No problem, Kagome! Take care!”

Kagome gave a tiny laugh as she reached her old car and leaned her friend up against the hood while she opened the passenger side door.

`Take care'. Yeah, right. Take care of `him', maybe. What else was she good for these days?

Miroku woke up in the blackest depths of Hell…or so he thought. It also could be - and most probably was - Kagome's bedroom, with the black drapes drawn over the windows, cutting out any light that might have the indecency to shine through and stab him in his aching, light sensitive eyeballs.

Groaning, he turned over, nuzzling his face into soft, clean pillows. He tried to move, to begin the torturous motions of waking up the arm and leg he'd slept on, but his sweaty bare skin was tangled in the sheets, damp from the humidity outside.

He was aware that he'd been violently ill, because his throat still burned with stomach acid, and the muscles of his abdomen were sore from heaving the better part of the night, no doubt…but he was also unsoiled. He didn't smell like anything besides his own clean sweat, and he knew who he had to thank for that…

“What the hell were you thinking?” he snapped out loud. “I told you not to go there anymore, didn't I? Tell me you didn't. Tell me InuYasha brought me back here.”

“Hey, baka. Good morning to you, too.”

Miroku winced and put one hand to his head at the sounds. He knew she was talking in her softest voice, but his hangover was wicked. Any sound at all felt agonizing to his ears.

“Kagome,” he groaned, burying his face into the pillows again. Guilt was eating him inside out these days, and it didn't help knowing he'd treated her to yet another sleepless night because of him and his revoltingly uncouth ways.

“InuYasha was busy with Kikyo last night - you knew that, though.” Her voice wasn't bitter though, not anymore.

Miroku rolled onto his back, gritting his teeth together until the room stopped moving around him. He opened his eyes and stared sightlessly into the darkness, clenching his gloved right hand hard as a searing pain swept through its center.

Well, he'd succeeded in what he'd set out to, last night, at least. He'd gotten so slammed he'd forgotten about the slow, deadly growth of his kazanna over the past few months. It was almost worth the hangover to have had a few hours release - miserable though they had been - from the knowledge that his destruction was imminent. Any week, now, no - any day - the black void in his hand could widen to its utmost and he would never be able to control it. The wind tunnel would open, suck him in, and leave nothing but an ugly crater in the earth to show that he'd ever even existed.

“Why did you even bother, again?” he asked her quietly, aware that she was standing at the end of her bed in the dark. “Why do you keep going there?”

“Because I know that's where you'll be.”

Miroku closed his eyes. “You can't save me, Kagome. We've gone far past that.”

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

He smiled. “It's not as if I have anything better to do.” His answer was kind of a little joke between them - it was his answer for everything, these days.

Kagome wasn't amused. “You're going to end up killing yourself before Naraku ever does, you know.”

“Wouldn't that be the greatest `fuck you' ever?” He gave a little laugh.

“I answered your question. Now you can answer mine. What were you doing there last night?”

“Kagome,” he groaned.

“Tell me.”

“You know what I was there for,” he said coolly, sitting up despite his discomfort. He'd had a hundred mornings like this - he'd live. “Have you ever thought that perhaps I was just created for a somewhat darker purpose than what we have all been given to assume?”

“Miroku - “

“Are my clothes ready yet?” he asked arrogantly, making her sound as if she were a servant.

It was like this at least three nights a week - Kagome would get a call from someone about where he was getting shit-faced once again, and she'd trek out into the dangerous, lonely night, usually alone, to pick his worthless ass up. She take him home - her home, because he didn't technically have one - clean him up, put him to bed - her bed - and take his clothes down to the cleaners a block away from the old shrine to be `fumigated'.

There was a faint rattling sound of plastic at the end of the bed. “You mean these?”

Miroku scrubbed a hand over his face. He should have known better than to treat her as if he took her for granted - she always had been able to see right past his shit. If she got mad at him, it was because he was hurting himself, not her.

“It's dangerous for you to be out, vulnerable like that,” she continued as if he hadn't interrupted. “He's got most of the shards, now.”

Miroku stood up, holding a sheet over his bare hips even though it was too dark for her to see anything. He kept his head down, his long, loose black hair covering his face as he silently held out a hand for his clothes.

Kagome sighed, and thrust the plastic covered hangers at him.

“You're stronger than this. What happened to you?”

Miroku slowly, methodically removed his clothes from their coverings and pulled them on without bothering to answer. She already knew. One by one they went on - threadbare, once-black jeans, his well-broken in black boots from beneath the edge of the bed, a faded dark purple t-shirt that fit comfortably snug against his flat stomach and hugged the lean muscles of his biceps. One thing was missing, though - and it was too important to leave without. And she knew it, damn her.

“Where's my coat?”

“You'll get it when you answer my question.”

Miroku clenched his jaw and tossed his head back, gathering up the shoulder-length fall of his hair and knotting it through itself into a neat tail at the base of his neck.

Kagome knew what he was doing. “Do you know how long it takes me to get the rats out of your hair when you just knot it all up like that? Why can't you just use elastic, or a leather thong like everyone else?”

“You know I always lose them,” he finally said, a hint of amusement in his smooth voice.

“Can I have my coat, now?”

“What were you doing there again, Miroku?”

He bit back his anger and reached out to the nightstand, snapping on the small lamp she had there. He had to blink away the spots that filled his vision, and lifted a hand to rub his temples as the small amount of light struck his eyes, but it was worth it. He could work his charm on her in the light; at least, make her believe that everything and everyone was going to be just fine - until the phone call, at least. In the dark things got way too honest between them for his comfort.

Miroku didn't look at her as he lifted his cursed hand and tightened the prayer beads wrapped around the specially-fashioned purple glove covering the void. It had grown overnight, again - just the slightest bit, but it was enough. He could almost hear the change in the air it was sucking in around the edges of the sacred seal.

“Miroku?”

He slid the silver ring the glove was attached to tighter against the base of his middle finger, trying to ignore her. He dropped his hand and fiddled with the heavy silver rings decorating his other hand. He had four silver rings, and three small silver hoop earrings - two in one ear, one in the other. Black and purple and silver - the mix of mysterious colors was a little conceit of his…plus, of course, the ladies loved it -

“Did your uncle throw you out again?'

Miroku finally looked at her from beneath his lashes as he tugged at the ring around his left thumb. She looked tired. Beautiful as ever, but still…tired. She had bruises under the big, heavily lashed brown eyes that held little of their former innocence; her long, full black hair was a little mussed from the sleepless night spent in the hard desk chair next to the bed as she watched over him.

“I haven't been at my uncle's in days,” he said, trying to sound light-hearted. It wasn't so easy for him to pretend anymore.

“Is that why you went there?”

“Kagome - I was just looking for a place to…to rest my head for a few hours.”

“I don't think you had any kind of `rest' in mind,” she snorted darkly.

He tried his most winning smile on her, knowing it would melt even her. “Now, Kagome. Would you begrudge me some harmless fun before I go to my grisly death?”

The smile didn't work this time, though. She exploded on him.

“It's not `harmless', Miroku! You're such an idiot! Why do you keep hurting yourself like this? You've got to stop punishing yourself!”

His façade of pleasantness disappeared. “I'm not trying to punish myself, Kagome! I'm trying to forget! But you won't let me!”

“Damn it, Miroku! Sango died because of Naraku! She - “

“I killed her! Fuck, why don't any of you get that? It happened right in front of you! InuYasha, Kikyou - you were all there! You saw her get sucked in to the kazanna - “

“Naraku threw her into the path of the wind tunnel, Miroku! It wasn't your fault!”

“It was my fault! I didn't seal it fast enough!” Miroku realized he was screaming, and took a huge breath. He calmed himself before he dared to look at her again.

“Just keep away from me from now on, Kagome. I never asked for your help, and I never expected it. I'm dangerous to be around now - there's nothing I can give you, not even friendship. I don't have anything to lose - but you do.”

Kagome shook her head. “What? My boyfriend? InuYasha already made that decision for me. My friends? Three of them are whores, one's dead, and another's doing his best to kill himself. My family - they were all taken by Naraku. Do you actually think he let them live? I have shit to lose, Miroku.”

Miroku took a long stride forward, and grabbed her shoulders. “Don't be foolish, Kagome.”

She shrugged away from him. “Don't you get it? We can't beat him split apart like this! This is what he wants, Miroku! He wants us all to be alone, and scared, and…a-and…”she trailed off, tears choking her throat.

He gentled his touch. “I'm not scared of Naraku, Kagome, but I am scared for you. I am scared of being alone, too. But with him having most of the shikon shards, now…I don't know what we can do to stop him. We're nothing but a couple of shabby freedom fighters to Naraku, Kagome. He doesn't think of us as a serious threat anymore; not since…not since last year.”

Last year, when Sango had died, and he had lost his faith…when Kikyou had finally succeeded in dragging a selfish InuYasha away from a heartbroken Kagome.

“Please don't go back there tonight,” Kagome asked him softly, breaking him free of the horrors of his memories.

Suddenly infuriated with her, he pushed away and strode towards the door, and the long black leather coat that he could now see hung from the hook on the back of it.

“Why not?” he practically snarled, jerking the coat from the hook and shoving his arms into the silky lining. “It's not like I have anything better to do!”

He held up his hand - inadvertently, the cursed one - as she approached. “Just stay out of it, Kagome! If I want to drink and fuck the rest of my lousy, worthless life away, then I will. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. Just stop trying to save me. My father proved he couldn't be changed, and so have I.”

“Living like this is only going to kill you faster!” she echoed her words from earlier.

Miroku smiled sadly. “Drinking isn't going to kill me, Kagome. After all, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right?”

Her voice stopped him just as he put his hand on the doorknob.

“If you're so scared of being alone, Miroku…why don't you just stay with me? Why can't you forget…with me?”

Miroku froze, his mind absorbing the meaning in her words. Slowly, he dropped his hand from the door, and turned back on her.

She was serious.

“Are you offering to help me forget, Kagome?” he asked silkily, lowering his voice several notches.

Kagome, his best, truest friend ever, actually looked at him with fear in her eyes. She tried to hide it well, but he could see it through the determination in her gaze.

That she would look at him as if she was scared of him, of what he could do to her, made him feel sick. But he could see here lay his escape - and hers, even if she didn't realize it now.

“Changed your mind?” he purred, stepping towards her as he tucked his hand inside his pockets. “You'd let me fuck you if I agreed not to go there again? You'd let me, knowing where I've been? What I've done?” His lips curved in a sensual, wicked smile. “Who I've done?” He lifted a hand from his pocket to touch her and she actually flinched.

Miroku pushed away the pain in his heart and laughed again, mockingly this time. “Why are you acting so afraid, Kagome? I know you aren't a virgin. InuYasha told me all about your nights together last year,” he lied, watching her eyes go wide. “He said you were very - “

“InuYasha never touched me like that,” Kagome whispered. “If he said that, he was lying. We never slept together.”

Miroku leaned back, stunned. Kagome and InuYasha had been inseparable for years. It wasn't true that InuYasha had told him about their nights, but Miroku had thought - it had seemed obvious that they had -

“You - y-you're a…virgin?”

Kagome looked indignant. “Of course I am! You think I'd have let InuYasha do that to me while I knew he wanted Kikyou, too? Give me a little credit, baka!”

It was a long moment before Miroku could speak again. The thought that she would…that…just to keep him home, to keep him safe…panic tore through him, because in that moment he realized he loved her.

And to love Kagome was to kill her….just as his father had killed his mother. Just as he had killed Sango.

Miroku bared his teeth at her even as his hand scrabbled for the doorknob behind him. “Just stay away from me, Kagome! Don't come looking for me, tonight - not if you don't want to get hurt! I might just be drunk enough to take what you're so foolishly offering!” He turned away from the wrenching hurt in her large, soft eyes and practically ran down the upstairs hall, vaulting the railing to land on the landing below in his haste to get as far away from her he could…because he was just weak enough now, selfish enough now, to want to forget everything with her…

Kagome stood motionless, stricken, in the doorway of her room. The silence in the empty house, in the whole shrine, was deafening. After a moment, she turned away from the door, and collapsed upon the bed, crying. She knew tears only made things worse, but she couldn't hold them back any longer.

He couldn't see that she was in love with him, and had been for over a year. He couldn't see that while he was off, trying to distance himself, trying not to hurt her…he'd already hurt her more than he could ever believe.

To be continued in Chapter II

Disclaimer: I do NOT own InuYasha, or any related characters.