InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Gone ❯ Chapter 2: Devastation ( Chapter 2 )

Gone
Chapter 2: Devastation

By Selenity Jade

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. I never will own Inuyasha. I only dream of owning him so I could run my hands through his hair... (drool) I'll settle for Sesshoumaru's hair though... (sigh) The older brother's hair is probably softer anyway.

 

Notes: Yes, I know I've been gone awhile; yes, I'm coming back slowly before I go insane... (sigh). So those of you still following me, just email or review me and let me know which fic you'd like me to update. This includes all my DBZ, SM, IY, and Trigun stuff. This fic was requested so if it's requested again, it goes to the bottom of the 'requested' list. That list is on my Fanfiction . net profile as that site is the easiest one to update the dang profile on. When I update at MMorg I'll probably also use that profile to keep an updated list as well... I hope. So remember, email is fine, or review, which update you are craving most.

 

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Last Chapter: Kaede learns that Kagome is gone.

 

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"Maybe we should watch Inuyasha?" Sango suggested quietly.

 

The lecherous monk glanced over his shoulder at her, saddened to see the lingering guilt and pain in her eyes. She looked haunted; a bit like she did when they ran into Kohaku. She and Kagome had been close, and Miroku suspected that Sango trusted Kagome above everyone else. Their group had become almost like family to her now that she had lost everyone to Naraku's plots. And even he found himself thinking of them in a familial way. It tore them all up to lose the most important one in their little family, the one that had held them all together.

 

He shook his head, and turned back to the door of the hut. "He would rather be alone."

 

"Yes, but that isn't good for him," the demon slayer stated softly in worry.

 

"That is true, but right now, I think it would be best to leave him be. He loved her more than any of us did."

 

"No, he didn't!" the kitsune suddenly cried out, hopping to his feet angrily. "He hated her! He was always so mean to her, ran around with that dead girl all the time, and made Kagome cry! She had nightmares about him, and she cried more. You don't hurt people you love! Mama and Papa loved me and they didn't hurt me! I didn't hurt Kagome 'cause I loved her more than he did!"

 

Miroku patted the little child on his reddish hair and smiled sadly. "We know you loved her, Shippou."

 

"Then why say he loves her more! He doesn't! He didn't deserve her! He didn't protect her like he said he was going to! I hate him! I hate him! He let her die!"

 

"Shippou!" Sango snapped, standing up. "Don't you ever say that!" She stayed there on her feet, shaking with emotion and Miroku was afraid she'd start crying. She really did need to grieve and he knew she hadn't let herself yet, as if she kept hoping Kagome-sama would come back.

 

"But it's true!"

 

"No!" Sango cried, her hand reaching automatically for her weapon. "Inuyasha is beating himself up over it as it is! He doesn't need our accusations too! He loved her, Shippou. Just one look at him now and you'd see it. She was the only one he talked to. She was the only one who listened to him. The only one who accepted him from the beginning when even we didn't! She was his friend, his best friend, and she stuck by him, no matter what. He hasn't eaten, or slept, or-"

 

"Sango, please," Miroku cut in, standing up gracefully. "Let me." He knelt down to the sniffling kitsune. "Shippou, Inuyasha doesn't show he cares about people, remember? He got jealous over Kouga a lot, don't you remember? And every time Kagome-sama got hurt, he was always the most distraught. Don't think on him with hatred because she is gone, Shippou. He already hates himself for that. What he needs now is our understanding and patience. Pay attention to how he acts, not what he says. He's hurting just like you are."

 

"But... I want her back," the child stated finally as he hung his head.

 

The monk sighed, and scooped the child up. "I know. We do too."

 

The tiny fox-child gripped the monk's robes and buried his face into them, releasing heart-stopping sobs of grief as the demon slayer watched with tears in her eyes.

 

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Kaede glanced up as she felt a familiar youki approach, and she smiled kindly - if a bit sadly - at the hanyou who was approaching. He looked worse than she'd ever seen him. His fire-rat outfit was torn in so many places it looked irreparable, luckily, that never seemed to be a problem for Inuyasha most of the time. He looked haunted, hallow, and weak. He looked utterly defeated, and his eyes held darkness she hadn't seen him exhibit before, not even when he came to destroy the village after he thought her sister had betrayed him.

 

It made her shiver, and she wondered again if that madness she saw before wasn't in fact a hallucination, but truth.

 

"Inuyasha?"

 

"I'm gonna go tell her mom." His voice was so bland and blunt; Kaede would have winced if she hadn't had fifty years of practice in schooling her thoughts and emotions.

 

"That would be wise. The family deserves to know," the old miko said softly, watching the half-demon carefully. She wished that one of the others could make the journey through the well to spare Inuyasha the task, but since it was impossible and someone needed to do it, she wasn't going to reason with him.

 

Inuyasha had started to grow on her and she cared about the boy. The changes Kagome had wrought in the scarred and damaged half-demon were nothing short of miraculous, and the hanyou even brought himself to voice concern for her now and again. She never had children, so had never had grandchildren, but with Kagome, Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, and Shippou around, that lack had never been so diminished. Now, Kagome - her sister's incarnation who showed more warmth and happiness than Kikyou had ever shown - was gone.

 

Inuyasha nodded curtly and turned around to walk back the way he had come - the direction of the bone-eater's well.

 

She stood there leaning on her cane as she watched him walk away. Her sister had once come to ask about Naraku, and voiced the observation that Inuyasha had changed, grown softer. She had said that if she had lived, it would have been her that changed him. Kaede loved her sister, even though she knew the husk walking around wasn't truly Kikyou, and hadn't had the heart to tell her that she didn't believe Kikyou would have opened the hanyou up like Kagome had.

 

Their father had told Kaede that Kikyou had been taken away from their family at an early age - at five-years-old, Kaede believed - the first time the priestess of their village had tested all the young girls of the village. Kikyou's extremely unusually strong powers had attracted the old woman's attention and she had been snatched up immediately. Having gone so long without an apprentice, the old priestess was in a rush to teach her sister everything she could before she passed on. Kikyou had learned from then on all about herbs, her powers, and how to set bones and sew wounds. But most of all, she learned how to school her emotions to command respect from her patients and the villagers she protected. She was distant, even to her own little sister who was born after the old miko had died and passed the village into Kikyou's care. She may not have wanted to be that way, but it was hard to take away years of training, especially when one knew that distance was necessary.

 

Kikyou had always been an excellent priestess, loving one half-demon hadn't been enough to change it, and it never would have. Her powers were weakened for loving the hanyou, but she would have never given it up for him until the Shikon no Tama had been purified out of existence and her love had turned human.

 

Kaede knew of a hundred ways one could use the Shikon no Tama selflessly, and the only reason turning Inuyasha human would be purifying the jewel would be if the jewel disappeared because it had purified Inuyasha. That wish would have not been a selfless one. In fact, to Kaede's mind, it was the exact opposite. Inuyasha would have wished for that to be with Kikyou, while sacrificing his demonic powers was selfless, his motivations were for himself. He had wanted Kikyou, and Kaede thought that Kikyou had been blind to think that the jewel wouldn't notice that. The jewel had a nasty habit of turning one's wishes against them if the wish wasn't completely pure. The only ones Kaede felt were safe holding or even using the jewel would have been Kikyou - before she died - and then Kagome. Maybe someone else with as pure a heart as her sister and Kagome could use it, but that was so rare.

 

Kikyou had loved Inuyasha, but she had never accepted him as he was. She had wanted him to be acceptable to her, meaning human. Kagome, however, loved the half-demon unconditionally, staying by his side even when he ran off to Kikyou, when he yelled at her, and when he turned destructive with his youkai blood. She loved him, so she stayed. She had accepted him as he was, and he had known that, even if he might not have realized it completely. That was what changed him. The girl was special that way, and no one else would ever replace her in Inuyasha's heart, of that Kaede was sure.

 

That boy had had a very hard life, enduring prejudice, the death of his father, his mother, the hatred of his own brother, taunts of humans and youkai alike, betrayal, and the love of a woman who wanted him to be human for her. He was barely a man now, only seventeen years old, and he'd endured so much more pain than she could imagine. How he had stayed sane before was a mystery, and now, when he had finally found someone he trusted - the first person he had ever trusted completely - he had lost her. For the first time, he had opened his heart so completely to someone who was completely incapable of betraying him, and she was torn from him.

 

If he made it beyond the grief of her death, he'd never allow himself to care for anyone again. That was an absolute certainty that she could see in his eyes. He had already distanced himself from the rest of the group, and her. Kagome had changed him for the better, and had made him happy for that brief while.

 

If somehow Kagome just woke up now and went to him, Kaede was willing to bet her life that Inuyasha still wouldn't be the same hanyou Kagome had come to care for. That part of him - the part that was happy with her, trusted her, and loved her - was dead. Even if Kagome someone was revived by the jewel, that one part of himself that she had healed, nurtured, and made whole was shattered irreparably. Inuyasha's heart died the same day Kagome's stopped.

 

And Kaede was afraid.

 

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He paused a moment before he exited the well house and walked slowly to Kagome's home. It was dark and the lights were on in a few of the rooms, so he wasn't going to have to wake anyone up.

 

He knew he was going to hurt them, bringing them this news. He fisted his hands into his shirt, growling softly as he stopped before the door. He couldn't even bring himself to care that it would hurt them; the pain in his own chest was too much to worry about her family. They hadn't been there to see her die. They hadn't been there to watch the light fade from her eyes. They hadn't seen the blood staining her. They hadn't failed her.

 

He had never bothered to knock before, and he didn't now, as he walked into the house. His sensitive hearing picked up the voices of Kagome's mother and her little brother in the direction of the area Kagome called a kitchen. He headed towards the sounds unerringly, not even dreading sharing this devastating news. After all, what more could be done to him? He already wished he had died instead; nothing they could do would make it worse. It couldn't be worse.

 

He paused in the doorway, spying the mother scolding her young son almost lovingly. Would his mother have done the same thing? Had his mother scolding him with such obvious adoration?

 

It didn't matter. His mother was dead, and had been dead since he was five. His father had died shortly before that. And Kikyou had died, too. Three people he had cared about, dead.

 

However, none had hurt as much as this one.

 

He watched as Kagome's mother looked up, perhaps sensing him watching her, and she glanced over at him. He watched as her eyes widened in shock and horror at the state of his clothes. She gasped softly as she looked up into his eyes, and Inuyasha hoped she saw nothing but blankness. He would never want this woman to see how much he was affected. The little boy stared at him with his mouth open, and neither spoke as they tried to understand what he was doing there like that.

 

"She's dead," he stated dully.

 

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Next Chapter: Someone comes visiting, and yes, that was supposed to be this chapter, but well, that was a good ending.

 

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AN: By popular request, and yes, it's short, but this fit enough for this chapter, while more would have been best in another chapter. And I just realized that that made no sense.

 

Lovies!