InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Forgotten ❯ Tetsusaiga: Father's Secret ( Chapter 30 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Sesshomaru, Inuyasha or anyone from the hit anime/manga series. Rumiko Takahashi does. I do own all OC's and plot in this story.

 

Part 2: Father's Secret

 

Current year…

 

Inuyasha sat beneath his favorite waterfall, letting the water stream over him, meditating. This time he was looking inside himself without leaving himself. His consciousness swam through his inner sanctum. Or at least he tried to. He found it to be extremely difficult to refrain from plunging too deep. It was mid-afternoon and he had been trying to find his inner sanctum since dawn.

 

He was knocked from his meditations when he felt something impact with his body. Blinking, he dragged his awareness back to reality. He glanced down and watched tree tops speed passed his dangling feet. He was soaring above the trees with Kirara holding his sash as she flew. Inuyasha looked back at the clearing and swallowed. It was swarming with soldiers like ants on a corpse.

 

“Thanks, Kirara,” he said staring. Kirara growled through her clenched teeth and kept going. If Inuyasha was going to keep insisting on continuing his meditations then they were going to be done at safest location the twin-tale could think of. They landed on the switchback leading to Sanshaku no Hinansho at midnight. She would have preferred to fly straight to the entrance but once within the aura of the mountain fortress any and all externalized energy would be absorbed and Kirara would fall from the sky.

 

Inuyasha huffed and said, “I know you want to bring me to a safe place but I'd be in just as much danger if I were found by my uncle's men as I would be if I were found by Kuromakaze's. The only difference would be my ability to fight back.” Though, not used as a sanctuary right now there would still be activity in the form of scholars and supply runners. Being spotted by any of them would be dangerous for the fugitive hanyou. Kirara yowled and Inuyasha sighed again in defeat. “Alright, we'll at least spend the night here. No sense wasting more time to look for a more suitable location.”

 

The pair climbed the rest of the way and entered the sanctuary. Inuyasha then led the way into the lower levels. If anyone came looking for supplies the ones available on the higher floors would be easier to reach. Once he dropped three levels, he walked down a stone corridor and settled into a sleeping alcove, which were cut into the walls like giant shelves. Not the most comfortable nor private living quarters but the fortress was built to protect lives not to be lived in regularly. Kirara shrank into her kitten form and curled up next to him. They were both asleep before they had even drawn their second breath.

 

Izayoi appeared dressed in the same pink robes she had been wearing the day she died. She walked over to her sleeping son and stroked his head. Inuyasha shifted then awoke and looked at her. “Mother?” he muttered. He knew he should have been startled or surprised or unsettled in some way but he regarded his mother in the same manner he would have if she had never been killed.

 

She opened her mouth but the words she spoke echoed as if spoken from a great distance. “Come with me, Inuyasha.” She turned away and Inuyasha, without the slightest hesitation got up and followed. She led him to the stairwell at the end of the corridor where they climbed downward all without him asking a single question or wondering what he was doing.

 

They continued to descend until they reached the final landing. There Izayoi turned and passed through the chamber's only door. Inuyasha followed and found himself in the Sanshaku no Hinansho's library. His mother continued to walk among the shelves loaded with scrolls, weaving between them until she came to the farthest corner of the room. Once there she touched two scrolls, one many times bigger than the other, that looked brighter than the ones they lay on. Though, time did not affect anything within the room, the material written on revealed the era it belonged to. These two scrolls belonged to a more recent era than those lying underneath.

 

Inuyasha walked up beside her then picked up the small scroll and opened it. The words were a jumbled mess that made no sense to him. He couldn't even recognize the symbols used. He wasn't even sure there were symbols, everything seemed to blur together. What? Inuyasha stared at the incomprehensible lines then glanced at his mother who gazed at him expectedly. This is a dream, he thought.

 

Inuyasha blinked. He was lying in the alcove where he had fallen asleep and Kirara remained curled next to him. He sat up slowly and put his hand to his head. A dream? He looked at his hand then thought, I need to read those scrolls. Picking up Kirara, who mewed in complaint, he followed the path his dream had revealed to him until he was standing in the exact same place in the farthest corner of the library.

 

There were the two scrolls just as they had been in his dream. Just as he had done in his dream, he reached for the smaller of the two. The seal that he hadn't noticed then was that of the Kanzaki family with his mother's name written beneath. He opened it and began to read. The room had light crystals that were just bright enough to read by but not overwhelmingly so.

 

Within two lines he realized it was letter written to his brother. He didn't know much about Sesshomaru other than he saved him from death at least once and possibly twice when he was little. Inuyasha, though, had never been formally introduced to him. The only contact he had with his brother was the day Kuromakaze had transformed himself into a hanyou. Inuyasha wasn't sure how he felt about his older demon brother. He was grateful to him for saving his life but he was grateful to Sage Katsuya and even Maou for the same reason. A brotherly feeling was hard to harbor when the person was never around.

 

The letter was explaining something important. Something his mother had made clear in the beginning she would have preferred to say to Sesshomaru in person. Inuyasha hesitated to continue reading it but thought, If mother didn't want me to read this she wouldn't have shown it to me. He started reading again but as he read his hands began to tremble with the effort to keep from hurling the thing away. When he reached the end, he dropped the scroll and fell to his knees.

 

“It can't be,” he whispered, Kirara rubbed herself against his cheek in an attempt to console him; though she didn't know what was upsetting him. Inuyasha felt tears fall from his eyes. In the letter his mother explained about the Inu no Taisho's failing health and why she had chosen to carry his child when he would not survive to see the child grow. For Inuyasha it was the shattering of everything he had believed and dreamed.

 

The hanyou had spent many hours as a child imagining what it would have been like if his father had lived. He believed he and his mother would have lived at Inuyokai no Shiro instead of Kyoto. That he would have had many children to play with and none would have called him half-breed like the human children did at the capital. After his mother died he had been too busy with training to think about it much but in sleep his dreams had always drifted toward that impossible past. He had hated fostered hatred for Takemaru and then Sagara once he learned how his father had died. Now he knew that even if those two hadn't existed he still wouldn't have had his father.

 

He only lived because his father had been dying. Because his father couldn't help Sesshomaru and needed someone who might be able to reach his frozen heart. Inuyasha existed to save Sesshomaru and the sad fact was his brother may already be dead as General Makoto had pointed out during the trial. Unlike Sesshomaru, he had been deliberately created for a specific purpose. It seemed so petty to be mourning something he never had but the tears still flowed. He wasn't a child born of love, he was born of necessity. Had his father even love him for him at all?

 

“Everyone is expecting great things from me. I'm supposed to save the country as Sage Katsuya predicted. I'm supposed to save my brother as my father desired. I'm supposed to save everyone, that's why I exist and continue to live. But look at me, I can't even save my own wife and child,” he whispered between sobs. Inuyasha didn't know how long he remained their crying but once the tears began to dry he spied a line that he had barely seen the first time and read:

 

He chose to leave the great demon sword, Tetsusaiga, with me and my child. He didn't believe you should have it or need it. The sword won't be in my possession. Your father has taken it with him to his grave pending your brother coming of age.

 

Inuyasha gazed at it again. “The Tetsusaiga was just a crutch for him; a cane that allowed him to hobble around in his old age. Now I'm supposed to inherit it. What a laugh,” he said with great bitterness while rolling up the scroll. Personal letter or not, it still contained a portion of Tenji's history. He was certain it was the only written record of what really happened between Izayoi and Kenhoshi. To someone raised to respect literature and history, destroying it was unthinkable even if it was painful. He returned it to its place and was about to turn away when the large scroll's seal caught his attention. It held the crude design of a winged dog, his father's mark. Compelled beyond reason, he grabbed the large scroll, sat down on the ground and opened it. The first section contained a summary of what lay within it like most historical scrolls.

 

Within this scroll contains the details of a horrific crime that I, Kenhoshi the Inu no Taisho, committed. I did not do this crime out of malice but out of necessity in order to prevent a greater horror from coming to pass. I truly wish there had been an alternative to my choice but I found none. If upon reading this you wish to call me out and judge me by the laws of Tenji then so be it. I will not fight and will accept my punishment. Know that no one else to be held accountable for this.

 

I ordered the execution of every man, woman and child of the Kurohane clan that had been part of my tribe. I did this because they had been seduced by the dark power of their celestial inheritance and conspired to control the whole country as singular rulers and thus resurrect the ancient order. I ended that terrible conflict before it could begin as well as all conflicts that would have followed if I had allowed any to survive. I write this for the sake of the innocent who would not have remained so if they were spared.

 

Inuyasha closed the scroll, refusing to read further. He was in no mood to learn of this hidden history. Maybe later, I'll be able to sit down and read it all the way through. He placed it with care back on the shelf and walked away. He was torn in two. The summary was well written. The key points of what his father did and why were there. Inuyasha couldn't help but think about it even if he hadn't read the whole thing.

 

His father had committed genocide, a terrible thing, but at the same time he had done it because the people had been threatening to use their great powers for selfish reason and possibly enslave all those within the territories they claimed. The bloodshed and deaths of innocent people would have followed such a rise to power. His father had made a decision to protect the world by shouldering such a terrible crime on his own shoulders. Then again, hadn't they praised him for doing such a thing in the past? Wasn't the Celestial War of old ended with the annihilation of the enzeru?

 

I shouldn't be thinking like this. I haven't read the entire history so I don't know all the details. I shouldn't judge him like this, he thought then another thought entered his mind as he walked out of the library. “If I find my father's grave I might be able to communicate with his spirit. I can ask him about that event in person and at the same time…” he said aloud then finished in his head, learn if he ever cared about me as a person at all. Kirara blinked at him and mewed.

 

“Sorry, Kirara,” he said and stroked her head. “We're going to take a little trip out of Tenji to visit my father's grave. I went there once with my master to pay my respects. I've long neglected a return visit.” Kirara mewed again. “Well I just learned there's something important there, something my father intended to give to me, that's why we're going.”

 

To be continued…

 

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I know very boring part. It is a transitory piece that sets up the next section. Which is why the rest of this chapter was posted all at once.