InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Into the West ❯ Waking to the Moon ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

What can you seeOn the horizon?

Sesshoumaru watched as the miko cried for her friends and cried for her losses. It had been a devastating battle, one which Sesshoumaru had never in his long life seen a woman such as she survive almost unscathed. But maybe her mental wounds would cripple her just as the physical wounds had ended InuYasha’s life. As much as he hated to admit it to himself the battle had been a hard one for the group he had joined not only two weeks prior. It seemed as if it wasn’t so much that he needed their help in defeating Naraku, but that they needed his.
Scanning the horizon just as the sun peeked out from above the trees, Sesshoumaru found a landscape that would frighten most at its sight. A barren wasteland, desecrated with the bodies of the fallen and the blood of the innocent and wicked alike. Trees were scarred with the unnatural attacks of possessed youkai and the grass could already be seen wilting due to the blood that soaked the dirt. Bodies, corpses of comrade and foe staring lifelessly at the sky, forever reliving their final moments before the quiet of death claimed them.
The miko’s movement caught his eye as she struggled to stand under the weight of her grief. Instead of standing, she crawled towards his brother’s form as wept for him, for the loss of the life he held. He watched as she pushed aside his hair and wiped his face clean before checking over his wounds. Though she must’ve known she could aid him in his injuries no further. She had been his…savior in the few weeks he had seen the group function and she was its epicenter.

Why do the white gulls call?Across the sea

~Flashback~
“InuYasha…” Kagome warned the hanyou with stern voice as she held bandages and salve for his recent wounds gained from Naraku’s latest puppet. The doll had struck InuYasha’s torso head on and cut deep into his stomach. He wasn’t at all surprised the half-breed’s gut hadn’t fallen out as the battle wore on. But here he was, simply holding the wound closed as the wetness of his blood began to darken the red of his haroi. He focused back to the miko as she spoke once more, this time pleadingly.
“If you don’t get that closed you will bleed out and very slowly begin to die from the blood loss. Do you want that when we are so close to Naraku’s death that he feels so threatened that he has to send dolls after us? Do you want to die before…before you see Kikyo’s death avenged?” The tears that were brimming her eyes were now running down her face in streams. From what little he had seen of the group prior, he could tell that where the miko and the half-breed were concerned, Kikyo was a sore subject. He could only assume that the miko held some sort of affection to the half-breed and she saw Kikyo, even dead, as competition for the hanyou’s affections. Alive or dead mattered not because the memory of one you held feelings for could remain long after they leave the world.
But with a conceding sigh, InuYasha followed Kagome to the river to have his wound dressed. While there she discovered the poison slowly working through his system from the strike. Catching it early enough, she was able to kill the poison before it became fatal.
~Flash-forward~
But even though she had saved his life countless times before by just doing the littlest things for him as she did, becoming his energy source, she still couldn’t save him from his fate. She was his something to fight for, his reason to keep going and in the end it was she that had kept him going, not Kikyo’s memory. A memory can only carry you so far before it becomes stale and old. Kagome was alive and fresh and everything in her made InuYasha a fighter. Even in a fight that he was never meant to live through.

A pale moon risesThe ships have come to carry you home

She finally rose to her feet and called out to him. He watched her as she wobbled towards him on shaky legs, avoiding the dead at her feet. Her wounds were minor, outwardly. But just one look into her lifeless eyes and he could tell she had been wounded beyond the repair of a living hand. Her spirit was torn because of the destruction she had witnessed today. Bloodshed of any kind should never be witnessed by one as fragile as her, so pure of heart and soul. She was not meant for battle and yet here she was walking amongst the fallen with blood on her tattered clothes and a somber look in her eyes. The battle had taken its toll. She finally made it to him before collapsing against him. He caught her just before she began to sway and heard her whisper his name as one would when speaking of their guardian angel. He looked at her face with tears still streaming down her face even as she slept, reliving the deaths of each of her friends, one by one until she reached the one death that would forever haunt her dreams.
“InuYasha…don’t leave me…” Kagome uttered in her sleep. Images of InuYasha being torn apart repeatedly by Naraku as he laughed sadistically at her screaming face flashed before her eyes like a movie, so real in its intensity. The blood spraying from his flesh could be felt on her face, following her tears as the flowed like rivers down her cheeks until the fell to the earth.
Sesshoumaru touched her face as she grimaced, no doubt from her nightmares. Her features relaxed as she sighed before peaceful sleep finally claimed her.
Within her dreams she watched her tears of blood and water flow into the earth and a single rose grew from the ground, as red as the haroi on InuYasha’s bleeding body. Naraku disappeared into the darkness around her, leaving her and InuYasha alone. His crippled form lay on the ground at her feet and she kneeled to rest beside him. He reached out slowly and plucked the rose from the ground, presenting it to her with a tiny smile. Their fingers brushed as she took it from him and her hand nicked a thorn. She watched as the blood InuYasha had left on the rose and her blood mingled to run down the stem and fall to the ground. Once more a rose grew, but this time alongside the red, another twisted up its stem to blossom together, this one a pure, glowing white.
“I will never leave you, Kagome…not even in death.” He rasped out, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth.
“I know. I…I will miss you, InuYasha.” Kagome whispered, unable to do more as the tears came once more. He lifted a hand and caressed her face, a tender smile on his own.
“Live for me, be alive as I cannot be and find happiness. Do not let a memory blind you as it did me. You know…” he paused to caught up more of his own life, “I always loved you…” Kagome sobbed hard as she nodded before watching the hand fall away and his brilliant amber eyes close for the final time. His silver hair pooled around his head, spreading to overcome the darkness, leaving only silver light to surround her and their roses.

And all will turnTo silver glass

Kagome gasped as she shot to a sitting position, the sudden jar pulling at her wounds. She reached for her side and touched the wraps around torso with wonder. She looked beneath her to find her sleeping bag and her blanket tangled around her feet. ‘Sesshoumaru…’ she looked up and glanced around her to find her only companion. Odd that so soon after the battle she thought of him as such when not only days before she could barely call him friend. What was he now? A friend? Companion as she had just labeled him as? Or maybe he was her savior? All she knew was right now he was…absent. She carefully stood on wobbly legs and made her way toward the fire in the middle of the field she currently occupied. She sat before the leaping flame and watched as embers floated up toward the sky. She followed the embers before her eyes strayed toward the image of the full moon staring back at her. Tears stung her eyes as she though of her fallen friends.
“InuYasha…”
She blinked back her tears and looked around her to the quiet darkness. Before her eyes images of her friends sitting around her celebrating with her sprung to her. Miroku and Sango sitting closer than ever as the realized love had a chance to blossom and grow. InuYasha in his human form staring at the moon with a wistful look on his face. It all seemed too real to her…
“Kagome.” Her head snapped toward Sesshoumaru’s as the images faded into the darkness. He stood before her in only his hakamas and haroi, now clean of blood and grime. He gestured behind him and Kagome began crying anew as Shippo jumped off of Ah-Uh and ran to her. She sobbed as he clutched at her, guessing as to why she was alone, he could gather what happened.
Sesshoumaru had watched her from the darkness as she woke and stumbled to the heat of the fire. She still held the look of forlorn loss on her face, but there was hope now shining in those depths that hadn’t been there the day prior. After listening her speak the hanyou’s name in reference to the new moon he thought it better to come out, but just as he stepped into the light of the fire her eyes had glazed and the tears gathered in her eyes as she looked around her, even straight at him, without seeing anything.
He called her name to gain her attention, only to loose it once more when he let the kitsune return to her. The reunion was expected and though he didn’t tell the kit what had happened he knew upon seeing Kagome alone and had taken it upon himself to be the one Kagome cried on.
As they walked back toward the western palace to gather Rin and return Ah-Uh, Kagome walked along behind Sesshoumaru with a lighter step. Crying out her frustrations was just what she needed and seeing the sunlight shining down through the clouds made her just a bit happier, if only for the moment.
“Mama, why do you smile when you look at the sun coming through the clouds?” Shippo asked innocently from atop her shoulder. Sesshoumaru turned his attention to the miko for her answer, eyes straying to where she had been staring off to.
“Well, my mother used to tell me that on a cloudy day, if you see sun coming through the clouds, that’s Kami calling upon the souls of the dead to rest. I imagine he’s calling up our friends now.” Kagome replied with a glow to her eyes as all three of them watched the light shine down from the clouds.

A light on the waterAll Souls pass