InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Heartless ❯ Anchor in the Storm ( Chapter 16 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or the other characters from the anime/manga. They belong to Rumiko Takahashi. Since the characters are borrowed and this story can be read free of charge, I obviously do not make any monetary gains by writing it.


Author’s note: If I say the next chapter is finished and coming up in two weeks, would it be good enough of an apology for my tardiness? I sincerely hope so.

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Important Note:
The last review I received for this story reminded me that some readers find the first chapter rather long and boring. I, however, refuse to make anymore changes on my previous chapters. But, I can’t blame those readers. Thankfully, something Ai Kisugi said gave me an idea, and I decided a PROLOGUE for Heartless is in order. I believe it will not only make the beginning of this story more interesting for new readers, but also provide my current readers a teaser of things to come in the next few chapters. If you’re interested, the prologue is in the beginning of the first chapter. Thanks to Kaelle for the stimulating review!
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Special thanks to my lovely betas Ai Kisugi and Hedanicree.
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‘Thinking’
“Talking”
Dream or memories


Chapter 16: Anchor in the Storm


The dark walls of the abandoned structure swathed them in silence the moment the trio stepped in. It was a far cry from the warm, lively home Kagome remembered. The air was damp and cold, reeking of humidity and of neglect and loneliness and resentment, and it was so very silent.

Like a grave.

The flames Kirara let loose on her tails illuminated their surroundings, and the miko could see that everything was just as she had left it – apart from the ten years’ worth of dust covering the surfaces. Piles of wood, shelves of pottery, jars, buckets, a now rotten collection of herbs… Everything stayed untouched. Even her old red hakama was unmoved – the one she had been stitching when she had last seen Inuyasha in that room with their children. The garment still lay where she had let it fall before going after her mate to spy on him that final day in the feudal era. It was as if not even rogues had dared to enter the house, this tomb of her happiest days. It was as if everything had turned to stone to preserve what had been…

It stood as a monument to what she had destroyed so carelessly.

Tinkling laughter of children echoed in her mind – the faint song of ghosts one could not let go. But like memories tended to do, they faded into nothingness under the overwhelming reality of the present, leaving in their wake the sting of tears in her eyes and the never-ceasing fire of loss that burned her from the inside out.

Taking in a deep breath, she urged the cat demon to the back of the house. As they slowly approached their destination, her eyes flickered between the painful expression on her unconscious mate’s face and the blood that tainted the neko’s fur under the hanyou’s stomach.

Upon entering the bedroom, her gaze fell on the futon that lay open against the back wall, close to the hearth. The day she had followed Inuyasha, she had been too agitated to deal with her daily tasks, and the futon was left as it had been, unfolded with the blanket sprawled haphazardly after another restless night. Just like everything else within those walls, it haunted her, reminded her of the day she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

The pang of guilt in her chest was followed by deep sorrow that threatened to overcome her adrenalin-inflicted determination. Clenching her teeth and blinking furiously against the onslaught of tears that blurred her vision, she led Kirara further into the room. The neko crouched next to the futon, and grunting in exertion, Kagome carefully eased the hanyou-turned-human down onto the layers of sheet and blanket.

As she gently laid his head on the pillow, Inuyasha whimpered in pain. Hovering over him for a few more seconds, she swept his dark locks off of his forehead and smoothed his brows lovingly. She hissed when her fingertips connected with his skin. He was burning with fever.

The miko scurried to her feet and hurried out of the room with the cat demon in tow. With the help of Kirara’s light, she located a few logs dry from years of wait in the main room. She gathered the wood in her arms and shuffled back to Inuyasha’s side. Kindling a thin piece of log on the neko’s tail, she set it among the pile of wood in the hearth to let the flames spread.

She glanced at the hanyou. His skin glistened with sweat in the growing light. His handsome face – marred with cuts and blood – was contorted with a scoff, and she wondered what nightmares his subconscious was forcing upon him. Occasional tremors ran down his body, and his fingers twitched where they lay over the covers. She ached to go to him, to take his pain away with her touch like she used to, but it wasn’t that simple this time.

Nothing was simple now.

Her guilt, his pain, their love… Everything was tainted with the loss.

The loss that felt like a hole in her chest – her very own kazaana that threatened to suck what was left of her into nothingness. This curse, however, she had bestowed upon herself.

Fisting her hands in frustration, she ran back to the main room. It didn’t take her long to locate the old buckets beneath the dusty pots sitting on the corner shelf. “Kirara,” she called, but the feline was already behind her when she turned around. Releasing an encouraging purr, the neko opened her mouth in offering, much to Kagome’s relief.

“Thank you, my friend,” she whispered as she hung one of the bucket’s handle on the cat demon’s awaiting jaw. With a soft snort, Kirara walked out of the door before taking to the air.

Forcing her trembling limbs to act to her will, Kagome grabbed one of the larger pots. She slid open the door to the bathroom to find the small pool the hanyou had tactfully built for her convenience when he had built the house. The pool was connected to the hot springslocated nearby, and she let out a small sigh of relief seeing that it was still filled with warm water. She plunged the pot in, filling it to the lid, and scurried off back to the bedroom, back to Inuyasha’s side.

She carefully placed the pot over the fire and turned to check on her patient. He lay silent, shivering in his dampened clothes. It wouldn’t be long before the fire chased away the humidity in the air. ‘Clothes. I need clothes.’ With that thought, she was back into action as her eyes searched the room for something to clean him up with. She spotted the medium-sized chest, where she had kept their clothing, in the corner opposite from where the futon lay.

She sat down on her bent legs in front of the chest and opened it to find her red hakama and white shirt resting on top of a pile of kimonos and white yukata. Without thinking, she plunged her hand into the chest and started ripping the first piece of cloth that she grasped into several pieces: some small enough for cleaning and others long enough for bandaging.

Tears blurred her vision once again, but from the whiteness and size of it, she could tell she was butchering a relatively unused yukata. Her knuckles turned white as she tugged on the fabric with more force than necessary. The small battle against the cloth was nowhere near relieving, but she still took some comfort in the sound as the fabric cried out each time she ripped another piece off of it. The garment slowly died in her hands, but she felt no better in the end. She was still in her personal hell, where she would likely stay for the remaining of her days. Could it get any worse than this?

A soft grunt saved her from her depressing revelations and brought her attention back to the man lying a few feet away from where she sat. Inuyasha’s lips moved as soundless words left his lips. He was delirious – again. “No,” he muttered, his scratchy voice barely audible to her human ears. “Kag’me.”

She couldn’t keep in the sob that tore from her chest. The cruel reality she had found herself in was without a doubt no better than hell, but still, it could have been worse.

She could have lost him.

“Don’t… don’t leave,” he whispered. His voice was small, a soft caress on her weak ears. But, its tug at her soul was infinitely stronger, and she was drawn to his side. He was reliving his worst memories – one in which she had left him. She wondered which one it was: The last time she had run away with his rosary, leaving him in the Western Castle; when she had left through the well for almost ten years; or even before that, when the well had closed after the jewel was destroyed, separating them for three years. A new crack formed in her heart with each remembrance, and guilt and shame flooded through the gaps. ‘How will I ever deserve his forgiveness? How will I forgive myself?’

Valiantly trying to be strong for the both of them, she shushed him as she stroked his cheeks and forehead. “It’s okay, Inuyasha,” she cooed. “I’m here now. Everything’s going to be okay.” She winced as the lies crossed her lips with remarkable ease. Nothing was going to be all right again, for a big part of their lives was missing, lost forever. The loss was going to be there until the end of time no matter how many lies she told him or herself.

Stealing her nerves, she deliberately pushed that knowledge away and ignored the large hole in her heart that was silently bleeding the tears she refused to shed for the time being. Her hands shook as she loosened the ties to his hakama. Pulling the garment open, she gently eased it off of his arms. His shirt was already shredded in several places, and the front of it was drenched in blood. The miko had no qualms tearing the offending cloth off of him.

She was gathering the bloody remains of his shirt when Kirara arrived with the bucket full of water dangling in her jaw. The miko set the fresh water aside and proceeded to clean the hanyou’s wounds with the uneven remnants of her yukata and the hot water on the fire.

The cat demon watched her struggles with somber eyes from where she lay across the fire. Kagome was lost in her own world as she dabbed at his fractured skin tenderly, murmuring words of love and reassurance to his ears even though he couldn’t possibly hear her. It was when the neko let out a frightened whimper that the woman stopped talking. As if coming out of a trance, she noticed what had been missing for the last several minutes.

She noticed, and she froze.

No sound came out of Inuyasha’s mouth except for the faint puff of his labored breathing – his labored breathing that was fading by the second.

The bloodied washcloth fell from her slackened grip, gliding down the front of her battered yukata like the last crimson leaf of fall. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no. You can’t give up.”

He had to survive. He was her anchor, and without him, she’d be lost forever.

“Look at me, Inuyasha,” she demanded desperately, shaking his half-dead form with determination even as she felt him slipping away. “I didn’t give up…,” she whispered before she had to swallow against the panic swelling in her chest and she choked out, “…for you.” Hot tears she could no longer keep fell on his ashen face. She cupped his cheeks, wiping the tangible proof of her sorrow over his cooling skin and inadvertently mixing it with his blood. “I still live for you. You have to survive. You will survive. You will live, Inuyasha. I will do everything in my power to make you smile again. But please, love… you have to survive first.”

She received no response, not even the faintest move of an eye behind closed eyelids. Her lips hardened into a thin line and her hands fisted at his sides, holding her up as she closed her eyes in silent acceptance. Her voice was hard with determination when she tried one last time, “If you go, I swear I’ll follow you. You hear me?!”

No matter how much she tried, though, her pleas and her desperate threats fell on deaf ears as his color continued to fade.

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When he had been alive, Inuyasha hadn’t thought about the afterlife often and he sure as hell hadn’t given a damn about where he would end up once everything was said and done. But in the few instances that he had considered his death, he had had no doubt that he would be burning in hell once some lucky bastard managed to bring his stubborn ass down for good.

He had been right; he was burning. He was a piece of smoldering coal, slowly deteriorating inch by agonizing inch. There was fire somewhere inside of him; that much he knew. Was it his whole body? Or was it only his heart? He couldn’t tell. Where there was fire, there was supposed to be light. But apparently in hell, even as strong an inferno as he had found himself in had no power to shed light over the consuming darkness.

He didn’t like darkness.

Darkness was abandonment.

Darkness was loneliness.

Darkness was the void that came with loss.

Darkness was where he had spent his solitary days.

He wanted out.

An eternity had passed in excoriating pain before numbness took over. He was floating in nothingness, scattered in the emptiness like a leaf in the storm. All feeling receded, and he could tell he was slipping away with no power to stop the current, with nothing to hold onto. The lack of pain was a relief at first, and he would have welcomed the peace if it wasn’t for the nagging feeling that he was forgetting something.

Something that had been left behind.

Something he had held onto until his last breath.

Something he was supposed to fight for.

Something worth living for.

Something… or, someone.

Panic gripped his unbeating heart, and he reached for something – anything – to hold onto in the darkness with nonexistent limbs. He cried out in desperation, but the sound was drowned in the silence, or perhaps, his ears were deaf to his own voice. Then, there was warmth and wetness on his face. Did he cry? With the warmth came the light – small but powerful. “Love,” it whispered, and he felt it fill the silence of his heart. “I’ll follow you,” it declared, and he knew it would. He wanted to laugh at its stupidity because he wasn’t going anywhere. As if he could ever leave the light behind…

Light was warmth.

Light was love.

Light was life.

Light was salvation.

It was his anchor in the storm, and he clung to it with all his being.

The sliver of light widened as his eyes cracked open to the blurry image of his savior. The first rays of a new day washed over her hair and sparkled on her teary face as if she was the source of light.

To him, she was the light and she was beautiful.

She was the warmth of silent tears on his skin.

She was love.

She was life.

She was his salvation.

His only anchor to everything that was worth fighting for.

A beatific smile blossomed on her angelic face, and more tears dropped on his cheeks like tiny pieces of diamonds born from brilliant sapphire, cleansing his soul with the warmth of love.

In all the years he had lived, Inuyasha had never thought he would go to heaven.

~*~

Fire.

It was everywhere.

Behind the flames, the smooth metal of swords and arrows directed at him glowed with the reddish light of hell.

He was surrounded.

He tightened his grip on the sword, but the small amount of comfort the deadly weapon in his hands provided him did nothing to alleviate his longing for the familiar weight of his staff.

He was going to die for sure, but strangely, Miroku didn’t mind.

He had done what he could to right his wrongs, and somehow, he knew that everything would be all right. His family was out of reach and protected, and his beloved was away from this circle of hell and strong enough to fight and survive for their family. Everything would be all right even if he was gone.

He took a deep breath and raised his sword, ready to go down fighting.

Instead of the first attack he’d been expecting, though, an enraged war cry erupted from behind the circle and a misleadingly delicate figure burst through the flames like an angry tornado. The warmth of his wife’s body both comforted and infuriated the monk as the couple stood back-to-back and faced their enemies.

“Sango,” he hissed, eyeing the circle as it narrowed down slowly. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not going to let you die alone, Miroku.” Her voice was hard with her unwavering determination. “I don’t care who I need to slay; I’m not going to let you die period.”

The monk growled in annoyance – an impressive sound even in comparison to the ones he used to hear from his half-demon friend. “Look around you!” he exclaimed as he shook his head in disapproval. “There is no escape from here, my love.”

“Then, we’ll die together,” announced the slayer with conviction. “Don’t you know yet, husband?” she asked in a soft whisper as her free hand came around to clasp his reassuringly. “I won’t live a day without you.”

And then, there was the cry of soldiers as they came at the couple from everywhere. Swords flashed, and arrows whizzed by his ears incessantly. He felt Sango tense behind him before he heard the clank of metal against metal as she received the first of their attackers. “No,” he mumbled in terror. She was, once again, willing to die with him, and once again, he could do nothing to stop her.

“No, Sango. No…”

The sound of his voice awoke the monk to the dim light of the dungeon cell. He raised his head to see his beloved lying on the stone floor by the opposite wall, helplessly attached to the wall with long chains secured on her wrists and ankles. At least, she wasn’t denied the comfort of sleeping on the ground, and he was glad for that unexpected show of mercy in the face of their treason. He yanked at his chains, causing the clasps to dig into his skin even more. He hissed in pain and felt warm blood glide down his wrists to his forearms.

After he had left Inuyasha in Kagome’s care last night, he had sneaked into the shrine and had successfully taken down the barrier, blowing half the shrine away in the process. Thanks to his less than subtle ways, he had been surrounded by the soldiers before he could sneak away. He had been ready to go down fighting, but Sango had appeared out of nowhere, refusing to leave his side. They had deflected the attacks and fought as long as they could before they were held down, luckily without serious injuries. The next thing Miroku knew, they had been carried to the dungeons, and he was now in the same position they had found Inuyasha not more than a few hours ago.

He sighed in relief, remembering that he had sent Myoga to warn his friends and his children. Miroku hadn’t planned on getting captured, but seeing how they ended up, he couldn’t argue that they had a sound plan after all. He had prayed for luck, but luck had abandoned them at one point. Still, he was grateful that Myoga had surprisingly stuck with him instead of choosing the safer route and running off with Sango when she had left to retrieve Kirara. The flea demon had made his presence known once it had been certain that the monk was not leaving the castle unnoticed, giving Miroku the chance to send Myoga off to the village to relay his messages.

He knew he wasn’t going to leave this place alive. In the eyes of the humans, he and his wife were traitors, and the penalty for treason was death. He was not worried for his children; Kohaku would keep them safe. He was, however, distraught by the fact that he wasn’t going to die alone.

Sometimes, he really wished Sango didn’t love him so much.

~*~

Smoke rose from the shallow hole in the small garden as Kagome stirred the fire with a stick, letting the flames engulf the remains of her bloody yukata. She breathed deeply as the breeze picked up, sending wet strands of her hair flying around her head. She felt much better now that she had freshened up. The familiar, tough fabric of her red hakama was comforting on her legs, and the clean white shirt she now wore was a welcome change from the ruined yukata she had worn for days.

Now that she had a moment to breathe, she was finally feeling the effects of the whirlwind of activity she had been through. The warm rays of the afternoon sun relaxed her aching muscles, tempting her to close her eyes and to give in to exhaustion. It had been too long since she had slept, but the miko still had work to do before she could succumb to sleep.

She sighed tiredly as she stood up and returned to the bedroom to find her mate asleep. He would have been up and about by now, regardless of his injuries, if it wasn’t for the sleeping draught she had concocted and had actually managed to make him drink. She even made him drink some of the broth she had cooked with the rabbit Kirara had brought earlier. Thanks to Kaede’s medicinal teachings, Inuyasha had slept through the changing of his dressings, sparing Kagome the guilt of causing him pain even if it was for his well-being.

Retrieving the bowl she had left by the fire, the young woman flopped down to her knees. She set to crushing the herbs she had gathered earlier in the forest, occasionally adding small amounts of water to turn the mixture into paste. As her hands continued the monotonous work, her eyes were drawn to the hanyou. She gazed at his beautiful face – peaceful in slumber – with no small amount of relief. The cuts on his cheeks were mostly healed, leaving only thin, red lines in their wake that would completely disappear in a matter of hours.

A lot of things could change in a matter of hours.

Before dawn, she had thought that she was going to lose him forever. Had it been her broken pleas, or had it merely been the return of his demonic aura with the first rays of sun? She didn’t know how, and it didn’t matter in the end.

He was alive.

However, in the few moments that she had almost lost him, there had been no doubt in her mind that she would follow him without hesitation. He was the only thread that tied her to this world now and knowing that helped her realize something else.

He would feel the same.

Everything she had lost, he had lost as well, if not more. While she had never known what she had destroyed, he hadn’t been blessed with the luxury of not knowing and had to live with the pain of his loss for almost ten years. She still had no idea if he was aware of what had happened to their children. But in any case, the poor guy had to endure so much, and all that time, the miko had been blissfully ignorant in another world. After everything she had caused, Kagome owed it to Inuyasha to be strong. She didn’t have the right to give up because if she did, he would give up, too. Something, or someone, had to keep him standing and give him strength.

That would be her.

She had always wanted him to live, to laugh a lot. He, at least, deserved to be able to smile again. He deserved to live, and Kagome was going to make sure that he did. That was, of course, if he let her near him again once he regained consciousness and found out how much her mistakes had cost him.

She scoffed at the all-too-familiar self-doubt that tried to invade her thoughts once more. She wasn’t going to succumb to her greatest weakness again. Ever. She was going to fight for the one she loved even if he wanted nothing more to do with her. She was not going to let the father of her children down – not anymore. If she ever saw her babies again in this world or the other, she needed to know that she had done something right by them – for them and for him.

The paste was ready by the time Kagome managed to severe her gaze from the hanyou. Crawling to his side, she eased the make-shift bandages off of his abdomen and applied the balm to his fast-healing wound with care before re-wrapping it with clean cloths.

After wiping her hands off, the miko lay down next to her mate and finally relaxed in what felt like an eternity. She let her head rest on his chest, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart. Inuyasha sniffed once, and then his arm wrapped around her shoulders and his hand fisted in her hair. He pressed her head firmly to his chest as she felt him bury his nose into her hair. She wondered if he was awake, but she couldn’t look up at him due to his unyielding grip on her. Before long, a soft snore answered her unasked question. She chuckled silently, knowing that he would be okay in the end.

It was true that too many things were eating at her soul. There were many obstacles waiting to be overcome and an abundance of hurt to be dealt with. Still, in this restless sea of broken emotions, she had her anchor in her arms, and she clung to him with all that she had left.

As long as they had each other, they had hope.


End of Chapter 16