InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Ames Qui Dorment ❯ Chapter Two - Dans l'Endroit Bizarre ( Chapter 2 )

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

Authors Notes: Okay, so I guess anyone who’s going to know knows. Âmes Qui Dorment has turned into an Inuyasha/Weiss Kruz crossover. Just a small one though!! Aya is the only character I’m actually going to bring into the story!! And since we don’t get to see much of her in WK, then I can do what I want with her personality! It’s fanfiction! Whoo hoo!! Ain’t fanfiction great?

Thankies: Fuuzaki-chan, for making me start this chapter. Who knows, I may have actually written more on Mended Wing otherwise. Tensei-chan, for being a strong woman. Pleiades-sama, for giving HP info and for being the awesomest beta reader EVER! Hey, is awesomest a word? Trenchcoat Man, for making ME a strong woman. Even if you had to be the world’s biggest asshole to do it. My mom, for trying to protect me from life’s lessons even though she knows sometimes we have to learn the hard way.

Disclaimers: Aw hell. Inuyasha, in all of his hanyou glory, and all related characters belong to Takahashi Rumiko-sama. I don’t know who Weiss Kruz belongs to, but it’s not me. Damn it all. But Inuken . . . now HE belongs to me!

Oh yeah, and I have a job now, so weekdays are sucky as far as writing goes now. I’m usually too tired after getting home to write. But I’ll write and update when I can.

  Âmes Qui Dorment Chapter Two - Dans l'Endroit Bizarre    

Inuken awoke before dawn. In the three days since the journey through the well, he’d gone to bed late and risen early. This routine was through no choice of his own; his senses burned with a fire he couldn’t explain except to say that it came with the place. His ears heard more sounds than he’d ever heard in his life. His eyes saw more movement and his nose smelled more smells. All were familiar, reaching into the deep well of his memory and touching some part of him yet hidden. From that hidden part rose a single feeling that could be described in one word.

Home.

Inuken no longer doubted his grandmother’s stories. It would be stupid to doubt after having taken such a trip. Now that he accepted the thought, he accepted that his instincts were right. This place with its myriad new sounds and sights and smells was his true home, a place he wanted to explore.

But he couldn’t leave Aya. He glanced to where the girl still slumbered. He wanted to protect her yet leave her. He wanted to guide her yet strand her. This place held no more interest for him after three days.

They’d come up from the well into the place Inuken knew was called the Inuyasha Forest, after his father. Aya had been frightened for all of the curiosity she had shown on the other side of the well. Inuken realized that she had not expected anything to happen, while some part of himself had known it would. Once he lifted her from the dark circle of stone, he’d hunted out the path leading away that was the most worn. That way, he’d decided, must be the way to the village where his mother and father lived. So they’d gone that way.

Only to find the village deserted. Not a single soul haunted the old houses left to rot and fall. Some abandoned homes showed signs of pillage and others of some worse sort of invasion. Most, however, were simply empty. Inuken had agreed with Aya to stay a few days to see if anyone would return on the off chance that someone regularly checked the village for life. No one came, and Inuken wanted to be off. He wanted to find his parents.

"Inuken-san?"

He turned to see Aya sitting up, her hand placed over her mouth to stifle a yawn. Her mussed hair made a cloud of fire around her head that shone in the pale light shining through the windows. The sun just barely peeked over the horizon.

"Inuken-san, you’re not getting enough sleep."

Amazing. Five-hundred years in the past and the girl still managed to be a mother hen. Inuken sighed and shifted to face her.

"I want to leave. No one’s coming here. This place is a ghost town, face it. We can’t stay here."

"We can find the village stores. There might be some food preserved well enough to still be good." Aya pulled her knees to her chest. "Even if we can’t, the village is a good place for foraging and hunting. And it’s close to the well. We’ll get lost if we go any further than here." She pleaded with him with her eyes. The only reason they were still here and not back through the well was because Inuken refused to go back.

"Aya-san, I want . . . no, I need to find my parents. I need to know why they left me in the future." He turned to gaze out the door. The light still remained faint, but his eyes picked up things he now knew Aya’s could not. He saw the emptiness of the forest around them. There were no birds or rabbits or any other sort of animal that should be in the forest. No owls flew home after a good night’s hunting. Nothing lived here, and Inuken knew he couldn’t find his parents in a dead village surrounded by dead forest.

"We can’t stay here forever, Inuken-san. We have to go home. Your obaa-san will be worried about you, and I know my onii-san is searching for me already."

"If you want to go back, you can. The well is still there, and there’s nothing stopping you." Inuken stood and moved into the steadily growing sunlight. "I’m staying here until I find my parents and ask them why the abandoned me."

He left her there. Anger swelled through his vision. Why couldn’t she understand? Her parents were dead, but his were alive and hiding somewhere in this new- or perhaps old- and exciting world. He needed to find them, needed to see if the stories about his father were true, and needed to know. He needed to know if they were heartless people, or if there had been some deeper reason for his mother’s relinquishment of her son to the harsher world of the future.

Well, he didn’t need Aya to understand. If she couldn’t then she could just go back. As he’d said, the well was there and waiting for her and there was nothing keeping her from returning to her world.

The forest, so dense, so dark, called to him from the edge of the old village. Inuken felt a tug in his bones, in the very central part of himself, that pulled him to the trees. He ignored it. He couldn’t go there and lose himself, not until Aya was gone. As long as she stayed, he had to protect her.

His ears picked up the sound of footsteps approaching from behind. He turned slowly to see Aya, red hair tamed somewhat, violet eyes begging for forgiveness.

"Gomen nasai, Inuken-san. I didn’t think about your parents. I should have realized-"

"No, it’s okay. If you want to go back now, I’ll walk with you to the well."

She paused and looked over her shoulder in the direction of the well. He saw her bottom lip curve into her teeth as she attempted to make her decision. Then she sighed and turned to him.

"I’ll stay here with you. I can’t leave you alone here. You may have come from this time, but you still don’t know anything about it or know anyone." She smiled. "You also need a woman to keep you from doing anything stupid."

Inuken rolled his eyes.

"Feh."

"Such as running off into the forest with no supplies whatsoever."

"Erm . . . I wasn’t going to do that."

Aya smiled and shook her head. She led him back to the house where they’d been staying. Inuken found two old packs, one that looked strangely modern, if a little out of date. Together they packed up some basic cooking utensils, some strips of cloth that could be used to bandage injuries as Aya was certain one or both of them would be hurt in the course of their travels, and in a search of the village found some dried meat somehow untouched by the weather or scavengers. Aya also insisted that they roll up the blankets they’d been sleeping in and attach them to their backs with a length of rope cut in half. Once all was said and done, Inuken had to admit, even if only to himself, that Aya had thought ahead better than he and this would probably save their lives in the forest.

Finally the girl told him they were ready and they set out for the forest. The trees surrounded the village on three sides and Inuken and Aya headed out on the side opposite the well’s location. Inuken wanted to make certain they would not go back through until he had found his parents.

The complete silence of the place unnerved him even more the deeper they traveled. Inuken watched Aya to see if she sensed it, but her eyes remained wide with simple wonder at the vast number of trees in one spot. A true child of the future, Aya could only see the beauty of a forest larger than any she had ever seen or probably dreamed existed. A true human, she couldn’t know that the silence she heard was so thick as to extend to his own senses. The further away from the village they walked, the more Inuken felt like growling at the scenery around him. He could understand there being no forest creatures around the village if it had been attacked. The animals would sense the violence that had occurred and not venture close. But why did there remain no signs of life this deep into the woods?

After a while, even Aya began to notice. She began walking closer to Inuken and glancing around with wary eyes.

"Inuken-san, I haven’t heard a bird since we left."

He grunted to show he heard her.

"In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard a single animal at all since we got to this time."

Again Inuken grunted. This time he saw the shift through the corner of his eye as she turned her face upward to look at him.

"You don’t sound very surprised."

"I heard the silence before we left. There aren’t any animals in this forest, or if there are they’re very good at hiding themselves." He walked forward, letting her keep as close as she wanted and as silent. He preferred the quiet to speech, because their voices echoed through the emptiness and carved out a hollow place in his stomach.

"What do you think it is?" Aya apparently didn’t agree.

"I don’t know. At first I thought it was the village. But we’ve been walking for," he shaded his eyes and lifted them to the sky, "half the day already and there still isn’t anything. I thought we’d see or hear something once we got out of the area of the village."

"But we haven’t." Aya pressed on, seemingly determined to fill the emptiness with her voice. Inuken groaned in his mind, but humored her because he knew she must be scared out of her head.

"No, we haven’t."

They spent the rest of the day in idle chitchat that remained peppered with the uneasiness lent by the empty forest. The echo of their words grated at Inuken’s nerves but he kept it down for Aya’s sake. The further they went without any sounds other than their own voices the more talkative Aya became until finally, as the sun sank below the line of the horizon, she stopped talking. Inuken settled his pack down and untied the bedroll from her back, then allowed her to do the same for him. As they set up camp for the night, Inuken watched Aya but listened to the forest. The disappearing sun had left a shadow in his heart, a thick coat of warning that made him pay close attention to the world around himself and his companion. So far he heard only more of the same nothing.

"Aya-san," he finally said, shifting to his worry for her, "are you all right? You haven’t said anything in a while."

"I’m scared."

"I know. So am I—"

"Don’t lie!" Aya whirled on him, her eyes wavering with her fear as well as angry tears. "You’re NOT scared. You’re enjoying this, you’re LOVING it!"

Inuken stepped away from her. Aya glared at him, her accusation burning as surely in her eyes as it did in his ears. He stuttered, trying to force out a denial he knew she did not deserve.

"T-That’s n-n-not true . . ."

"Yes it is and you know it is! You’ve been itching to get out on your own ever since we got here!" Her tears flowed freely over her cheeks, broken from their home by her anger towards him. "I saw you every time you thought I wasn’t looking as you stared out at this forest. I saw how badly you wanted to ditch me and explore by yourself. You’re so excited to be here you can hardly breathe!"

A twig broke in the shadows.

"Why didn’t I just-"

Aya had to quiet when Inuken lunged forward and knocked her down, hand over her mouth. He held her against his chest tightly, other arm wrapped around her arms and one leg draped over her legs so she couldn’t kick. He felt her shaking, afraid, but kept still, listening for another sound in the otherwise silent forest. He heard something scraping against wood, low hissing, and the slightest pattering of what sounded like hundreds of feet on the forest floor. When he was sure of the distance between whatever lurked out there and their camp, Inuken whispered in Aya’s ear.

"There’s something there. Whatever they are, they’ve surrounded us. They don’t sound friendly."

Aya froze, then began shaking more than before. Inuken realized that at first she was afraid of him and his actions, but had at least known him and known how to deal with him had he been planning something insidious. The lurkers were not visible; she knew nothing about them or how to stop them.

"We have to get out of here." He kept his voice to the lowest whisper possible. "We can’t stop to pack our stuff. We’ll have to head back towards the village. We won’t make it there, but it’s the only place we know. It could be the closest place for hundreds of miles." Inuken paused to listen. Underneath the shallow breaths of his companion, the hissing and scraping drew closer. "I’m going to move away from you slowly. When I signal, we run together, okay?" Aya nodded frantically.

Slowly, so as to not draw more attention than they needed, Inuken lived up to his word and disengaged from Aya, leaving her alone save for his hand on hers. That he kept and squeezed to reassure her. He listened and watched. Every moment the sunlight faded the sounds grew, indicating a large group of the unknown lurkers gathering in the shadow of secrecy. Inuken growled low in his throat without warning, choking the sound off when he realized what he was doing. He glanced quickly at Aya and was relieved to find that she didn’t seem to have heard him.

A scuttle sounded from above, and a small shower of leaves came down. Inuken squeezed Aya’s hand.

"Move! Now!"

He shot upwards and forwards, dragging the girl behind him as her thinner, less muscular legs struggled to keep up with his trained pace. For the first time in his life Inuken thanked his coach for the endless hours of running laps, if only in his mind. Though Aya kept him from running at his full speed, he knew he still could run faster than most people.

But he wasn’t running from people.

Something fell from a tree in front of him. Inuken jolted to a stop, automatically dropping to a crouch at the sight of an enemy. Though the danger radiated from every corner of the darkness, Inuken had to admit that Aya had been right; he loved the danger and craved confrontation with this strange foe. Another growl rose from the same place as before, the fourth of his heritage he’d never believed in until three days ago.

Then Aya yelped as she ran into him and tripped over his form. She sprawled before him unceremoniously, her skirt flying up and revealing the hearts on her white underwear. Inuken blinked, his animal instincts dulled by the unexpected sight. He felt a blush spread over his cheeks as Aya sat up and pulled her skirt down, face as red as her hair.

Something skittered towards her.

"Aya-san, look out!" The danger-lover in him flared again and he jumped forward, pushing the girl to the side and out of the way of the thing. With her out of his way and the creature closer, Inuken recognized a beast like the one he’d destroyed outside the well house. It must have come through . . . but the well was sealed!

Inuken heard more skittering and hissing from the surrounding veil of darkness. If there were more of these things, especially as many as his ears told him there were, he couldn’t fight them all even if he had a weapon, which he didn’t. He would be swamped in moments, and Aya faster than that. Inuken didn’t fight to hold back the next growl that escaped his throat. They may not last long, but there was nothing else to do but fight and better to be killed fighting than go quietly.

The nearest creature, the only visible one, hissed at him in what Inuken imagined must be glee at finding such easy and idiotic prey. Echoing hisses oozed from the trees around him.

"Alright," he murmured to himself, "if this is what you were born to do, to die now, then so be it." He felt the inkling of a grin tug at his mouth. The next words he shouted for the world to hear. "BUT I’M NOT PLANNING TO DIE TONIGHT!"

The first went down easily, as had the one outside the well. At the touch of Inuken’s fist it exploded into purple light and white sparkles. A chorus of angry hissing resounded and more creatures came out from hiding. More went down in flashes of purple and white, but the more that came at him the fewer Inuken was able to kill. Though small and ugly, the things were smart enough to know that if they kept coming in a wave their sheer numbers would eventually overwhelm their attacker. Inuken felt the sharp jab and scrape of claws against his flesh and only growled in return. I’m not planning to die tonight. I’m not planning to die tonight. I’m not planning to die tonight . . .

Then another shadow emerged from the blackness. This was taller, not a creature but a man. He moved swiftly and in the flurry of battle Inuken couldn’t make out his features. The part-youkai did, however, see that the stranger carried a staff, which he used as a weapon. The creatures vanished when touched by the staff, though not in the flashy manner they did when touched by Inuken.

Relieved to have even this unknown ally, Inuken resumed his fighting and listened for Aya. She was crying. He couldn’t turn around to see her, but at least she was alive. As she cried she made frightened grunting sounds, as though swinging something. Hopefully a weapon of some sort.

The stranger cut a path through the things towards Inuken, though not without damage to himself. Inuken saw a rip in the man’s robes at the right shoulder, though he moved as though he didn’t feel it.

"Keep behind me," the man said as he approached Inuken, lifting one hand. Inuken saw that it was wrapped in dark violet material and a string of beads. As he turned away from Inuken the stranger unwound the beads. "Air Rip!"

Shrieks, a thousands times more frightening than their threatening hisses, tore from the creatures as they began to scuttle away. Most, however, didn’t make it. As Inuken watched he saw a score of creatures lifted from the ground in some sort of whirlwind and dragged through the air towards the stranger’s outstretched hand. But he didn’t grab them. They simply disappeared.

The battle ended abruptly. One moment there were creatures crawling over every inch of the forest, the next they were gone, either sucked into the ‘Air Rip’ or fled. Inuken found himself staring up at the face of the stranger in awe.

A Buddhist monk stared back at him, handsome but aged, with streaks of white hair dignifying the black. Dark eyes gazed at Inuken soberly, and he felt as though his entire life could be read in seconds by those eyes. The monk held out a hand to help Inuken stand, and he noticed the beads were back in place over the wrapping. Inuken took the monk’s hand and stood.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Miroku. Welcome home, Inuken."

 

End Chapter Two.