InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Forgiven's Not Forgotten ❯ Never Left Behind ( Chapter 4 )

Forgiven's Not Forgotten-Never Left Behind

I must have blinked. One moment, the youkai zombie was there, about to rip out my throat, to take away my pain, now suddenly he's gone. I slump forward slightly, my backbone turning into rubber. Trembling arms are all that hold me away from the cool rock of the courtyard. The cool, bloodied stone.

Even they give out on me, and I fall toward the unforgiving ground. I can't hear anything above the rapid beating of my own heart, can't feel anything besides the pain within it. Tears find an outlet, leaking out the corners of my eyes to rest in puddles, mingling with my own blood. Maybe I'm already dead.

An odd, though not entirely unwelcome, thought.

My eyes, blurred as they are, can see. A question, unexpected. If this is death, then why do I see my killer fighting still?

Fighting who? The darkness holds the youkai's aggressor, leaving me unable to tell whom it is. Does it even matter?

Not if I am already dead, it doesn't.

My eyes drift closed, but in the moment before they are shut completely, I see the last person I expect at this time. Inuyasha? Is he dead, too? The tears fall harder from my eyes. I have never thought that the dead could cry. He didn't deserve death.

Yet why were the two fighting? We are all dead anyway, fighting's pointless.

A stangled hiss, a piercing cry parts the veils of my conciousness. Something has given, and from what I am hearing the murdering youkai is the most likely candidate. Has there been a death-after death?

I feel something approaching, and I am surprised that the dead can even feel. Aren't I supposed to be floating, or something? Everything else had, when faced with death. Why am I special?

"KAGOME?"

I am happy to know that Inuyasha hasn't lost his voice in death.

Hands push me on my side, and I curl into a fetal position.

Apparently, he hasn't lost the ability to touch, either.

"We're all dead, aren't we." I open my eyes again, to meet his own confused amber pools.

"What the hell are you talking about, bitch?" He pulls me off the ground, lifting me to my feet. My spine hasn't solidified, and my head slumps to my chest without the support.

Why doesn't he understand? "He killed us, didn't he? My family, myself, though. . . " I lift my head to peer into Inuyasha's eyes, "I am perplexed as to how you died."

His eyes still look confused, but his voice is anything other than confused. "Kagome, listen to me. We are not dead."

I am shaking my head negatively, unable to believe. "No, that can't be. Why would you be here if you were alive? Now that I think about it, where's Kikyou?" I glance around, confused by her absence. "Shouldn't she be here?"

Inuyasha's eyes flare with what I believe to be pain before he pulls me forward into his crushing embrace. "Kagome, you're in shock. We aren't dead. Do I feel dead to you?"

Actually, he feels rather warm. And he stinks. Like sweat and blood and something dead. "But," I allow my head to slump forward once more, arms stuck at my sides, "You even smell of decay."

Surprise alights briefly in his eyes, though I do not see this, before he replys. "Kagome, that was the youkai." He glances around, smelling the stink of blood everywhere most likely. "Tell me what happened." His voice brooked no argument.

I shrug my shoulders. Relating the events leading up to my own death shouldn't be that hard. After all, I'll be seeing my family again soon. "Well, I knew something was wrong when I came out of the well. There was blood everywhere, leading to my house." I pull away from Inuyasha, to look at the house behind me.

"There was so much blood, so much blood wherever I looked. In the rooms, all over everything. But that wasn't all." I fall silent.

"And?" Inuyasha's rough voice urges me on.

"The bathroom. My name was on the mirror, written in blood. Blood, Inuyasha." My voice is haunted, as I continue to recount what has happened. "Then I knew that they'd be in my room. Everyone would be there. And they were. They were there, Inuyasha. Dead, but there." My eyes light up once more, and I start toward the house. "They're probably waiting for me, you know."

I feel his clawed hand pull me back, his arms wrapping around me. Inuyasha's too tall for his own good, in my opinion. Yet what are opinions to the dead? "Kagome. . . "

I am slightly annoyed. "Inuyasha, my family's waiting for me. Let go."

He doesn't listen to me, however. In fact, he's walking right on back to the well, with me in his arms.

"Let go of me!" I begin to struggle, but he ignores my efforts. "Chikuso! I want to see my family, Inuyasha!"

His voice is rough as he speaks. "They're dead, Kagome."

I snort. "I know. Now let me-"

"You're still alive Kagome. They're gone! You can't bring them back!"

I start to speak loudly, in a futile effort to stop his voice. "I'm not alive! I can't be! I have to see them, Inuyasha, I can't let them leave without me!" My struggling increases, but his arms tighten around me.

"I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Kagome." I must be imagining the pain in his voice. After all, this was just some sort of cruel joke, right?

Still, I am stunned. The deeper dark of the wellhouse surrounds us, and the hanyou leaps down the stairs to arrive on the well's lip. "Inuyasha," I am asking, incredulous, "How in hell can I kill myself when I'm already dead?" His answer is to jump into the well. "INUYASHA!"

I am feeling quite pissed off. In reality, I don't know how any ghost can have the array of emotions I do, but apparently this is possible. Inuyasha still has me quite firmly in his arms as he leaps back up the well, landing in the early morning hours amid the dewy grasses and glistening trees. My anger is reaching a pinnacle, and I decide to test a theory I've been rolling around in my head ever since he'd stopped me from entering the house.

"Inuyasha?" My voice is perfectly calm, perfectly controlled.

"Hn?"

"Osuwari."

Well, needless to say, the nenju necklace still works. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten that Inuyasha falls forward. Since I am in his arms, this is quite an awkward thing to have happen. His eyes meet mine, annoyed yet questioning.

See? They said, staring into my own. Can't you see you're alive? I'm alive? Can't you accept what happened and move on?

My eyes shoot an accusing message right back at him. This means nothing, except that the binding effects of the nenju necklace extends to the soul. This is supposed to convince me?

I feel his chest rumbling, knowing that he is growling at me. I can care less. What's he going to do? Kill me? I feel a perverse urge to laugh at this thought.

I can sense his body regain movement, feeling his muscles bunch as he prepares to stand once more. Oddly enough, my shoulder has begun to hurt again. Aren't the dead beyond pain? If this is true, then why have I so clearly felt the ground as I subdued Inuyasha?

I am interrupted from these thoughts as Inuyasha stands. Curiousity stirs in my breast. Dead I might well be, but curious I still am. "Where are we going?"

No answer. Fine. Be that way. I feel my eyelids droop, and know that I am exhausted. How? The dead can. . . Tire?

No matter. Inuyasha's self-created wind stirs my hair, and I now surrender to the tide that wishes to engulf me.

"Kagome?"

Time must have passed. "Leavemealone." Sleep is looking so inviting, though I still haven't left its embrace.

"We're almost there."

There? Where's there? I manage to open one eye, and look down in shock. A bit in the distance, Sango sits on a grassy knoll, Miroku close to her side. If I know anything about either of them, then she most likely is fending off his rather. . . Perverted attempts.

Yet this isn't what is sending me into shock. They can't be dead-They actually had something to live for. Which means that I. . . I am not dead either. Yet nothing that has happened recently has been in my imagination, so. . .

My entire family is dead. And I am alive.

In the most realistic sense, I am now all alone in the world.

Inuyasha must have felt me tense up a little, for he now is gazing down on my face. His eyes hold understanding, but not for long. Am I going to make it my remaining life's mission to cause this man pain?

"Osuwari." A look of pure shock alights in his twin amber pools, shortly being followed by anger. We are at least a hundred feet in the air-If I don't move from where he holds me I most likely won't survive. I can see in his eyes that he knows this.

Yet still I am not ready for the action he takes because of me. The support of his arms suddenly disappears; in my shock I forget my unconscious mission as I cling to Inuyasha's neck. Am I truly that afraid? I now let go, to prove to myself I am not as I always have been. I am not afraid anymore.

Unfortunately, Inuyasha doesn't just let me fall. How I wish I could, forever hanging in space awaiting a demise that will reunite me with the part of the future I have lost. My hanyou seems to believe differently, as he swings me onto his back. I must admit, he is rather agile when he needs to be.

One hand, the hand that has so many times pushed me away with such vehmnence, now clutches to my own, unwilling to let go. He would pin me here on his back, while the ground is rushing up to meet him in a none to tender embrace. Guilt briefly assages my senses, before all feeling is lost.

Touchdown.

Inuyasha doesn't make a sound, though I know that this has hurt him. My own breath is leaving my lungs in a violent torrent, causing me to gasp as a fish out of his watery home. As oxygen returns to my lungs, I register a small but important fact; Inuyasha has let go.

I figure I now have a grand total of thirty seconds to evade the hanyou, to escape into the lightening forest. Birds that have been interrupted by Inuyasha's race to the ground are beginning to sing once more as I push myself away from my hanyou's back. His eyes glare accusingly at me as I rise, somehow all seeing though he is communing now with the dirt.

The coward for a moment I had left behind returns to me now. I break eye contact, turning around and running for all my worth. Actually, I'm not that bad of a runner. That is, when there are no roots or rocks lying in wait to trip up my feet.

This miserable day seems to lack any of these, though I heisitate to call this a blessing.

I sense Inuyasha arise in fury from his nature meeting, almost able to hear his footsteps as he races after me. I cannot outrun him, curse the facts of reality, but I might be able to delay. I don't want reality right now. It has ceased to exist for me. Right now I need the fantasy, the single hope that if I run hard and fast enough I will be able to escape, I will be able to return to the well and I will find my family unharmed on the other side.

How quickly I have gone from one extreme of denial to the other.

More importantly, where will I be when my feet stop?

That answer is easy-I will be falling. Why? Because now I am falling, for the second time in the last two minutes.

Too much has happened in the past hour for me to comprehend. Perhaps this is why I feel myself falling not only in reality, but also into the depths of my own mind. I welcome this blank façade that engulfs me. For now I cannot feel.

For now there is no pain.

Ah, but reality is a bitch, no? I really shouldn't even think like this, but while I'm finding my way back through the haze in my mind I believe that this is more than valid. I still can't see much, though I think this is because it is now night. The sun has set.

Will it ever rise?