InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Double Vision ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 1 )

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

Kagome leaned against Sango. They swayed together, close to the great, orange fire. Sparks cracked and shot up into the night sky. Their bellies were full of boar meat, and the fire of the sake they had consumed rushed through their veins. Neither one was happy.

Their men wanted them to stay in the village, safe from the danger and privation they had suffered during their travels. So Kagome worked on improving her miko powers, and learned healing and plant lore from Kaede, whom she regarded as a grandmother. Sango devoted her time to raising her children to be demon slayers, while honing her own abilities as best she could, given her almost constant state of pregnancy. Though Sango took pride in her heritage, and her own personal skills, it hurt her to train her babies as she herself had been in the ancient demon slayer’s village. She had seen what it did to her little brother, Kohaku. Even before she knew of the existence of Naraku, she had felt that the life of a demon slayer would somehow harm her sweet and sensitive younger sibling. She had been proven right, to an obscene degree. Sango, even as a very young girl, had been acknowledged as the greatest slayer in their village. Kohaku was now a warrior, and had surpassed even her own skill. But he had been killed, resurrected, and made Narauku’s minion and whipping boy. He had been used by Kagura and Hakudoshi in ways his sister did not want to contemplate. While Miroku and Inuyasha were a team, often joined by Rin, Kohaku hunted demons alone, and returned silent to the village with his pay. This was not the fate Sango wanted for her children.

Kagome had problems of her own. All she had ever wanted was for Inuyasha to love her as she had loved him, from the moment she laid eyes upon him, shot through the heart by Kikyo’s arrow, hanging from the god tree. Now she knew why she had loved him so suddenly and so surely. As the reincarnation of Kikyo, was it not a given that she also would love the same being? She knew Inuyasha had trouble distinguishing her from Kikyo. She had schooled herself to consider that he was not a man. He was very much like a wild dog. Their love had taken the form of him vowing to protect her, and she joyously embracing his protection. It was a kind of love Inuyasha could understand, and strangely, it was the kind of love she had demanded from him from the beginning, but sometimes she felt like it was not enough. Kikyo was gone. Inuyasha had never really chosen her, Kagome. Kagome had won by default, by her rival’s final descent into hell. And while Inuyasha continued to protect and provide for Kagome, he had not lain with her since the month they were married.

Drunken Inuyasha was dancing, in the western manner taught to him by Kagome, with the equally intoxicated Rin. Rin was straddling Inuyasha’s knee, and his large hands cradled her ass. Rin had grown to look much like the young Kagome when she had first come through the well, but was dressed in one of the rich silk kimonos provided by her lord, Inuyasha’s demon half-brother. Kagome had grown to look almost exactly like Kikyo, who had ceased to age upon her death at about the age of twenty. Kagome had an elegant, shapely body, long, smooth legs, and even, perfect teeth, thanks to her twentieth-century origins. Rin’s teeth were gapped, her legs were not as long, but her face and her scent were almost identical to Kikyo and Kagome’s. Shippou, a full demon with a sensitive nose, had told Kagome how much little Rin’s scent resembled her own when the group first encountered Rin as a child. Now it was Rin who Inuyasha carried on his back when they traveled to distant villages to perform slayings and exorcisms, her stocky legs wrapped around the half-breed’s hips.

When Kagome stumbled, and almost fell forward into the fire, it was Kohaku who wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back. Kohaku drew Kagome into the trees at the edge of the clearing. It was fall and the air was crisp away from the bonfire. He held her against his side, for her sense of balance was lacking at the best of times.

“Kagome, listen. You will accompany this Kohaku when he leaves the village in the morning.”

Kagome actually managed to summon a giggle. Kohaku spent a lot of time with Sesshomaru. They were similarly stoic, and Kohaku had absorbed his lord’s manner of speech and aristocratic gravity. It was amazing to Kagome that Kohaku was pursuing the subject, and not for the first time. Kohaku was quietly outraged by Miroku’s repeated betrayals of Sango, but kept silent about it, allowing his sister to live in a state of denial. He was not so tolerant of Inuyasha’s poor treatment of Kagome, and his disgust with Rin was made abundantly clear. The whole village had assumed Rin to be Kohaku’s intended wife. Aside from his attempts to reason with Kagome, Kohaku tried to remove himself from the emotional chaos engulfing Edo as much as possible, returning only periodically with offerings of coin, spices, and cloth.

“They’re just drunk, Kohaku. By morning Inuyasha will be a half-demon again, everyone will sober up, and life will go on like always.”

Kagome had borne Inuyasha’s betrayal over and over. She had had it pounded into her for years that there was something lacking in her, that she was not as good as Kikyo, that she was never meant to have all of Inuyasha’s heart. For years, the part of her soul that would have allowed her to hate had been missing. It had been part of the resurrected Kikyo. Now it seemed only natural to accommodate this latest insult. She had stayed when Inuyasha went to Kikyo, and she intended to do the same now that Inuyasha went to Rin.