InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Overrated ❯ Overrated ( Chapter 1 )

“No, Kagome.”

 

“Inuyasha, please. He needs your help. He's your brother—you should want to help him,” Kagome continued to plead.

 

Inuyasha looked at her as if she had lost her mind. He couldn't believe that Kagome was in front of him, begging for him to help his bastard of a brother. Had she lost her mind? Clearly she had, if she thought for one minute that he was going to do anything to help that fucking asshole that he unfortunately had to call brother.

 

He thought back to all those times that he had run into Sesshomaru, and all the horrible things that his brother had done to him. Sesshomaru had never once accepted him as his sibling—whenever he said the word “brother,” it was always uttered as an insult (to Sesshomaru). Sesshomaru had tried to kill him numerous times; had left him to die in the wilds as a child; and had tried to steal the only thing that their father left Inuyasha, and now he had the audacity to send a missive asking for assistance? Fuck that.

 

“Inuyasha? Inuyasha, are you even listening to me? Stupid jerk!” Kagome complained. Inuyasha turned smoldering eyes on her. She had no right to call him that after asking him to help one of the two people he wished would drop dead.

 

“No.” he stated.

 

“He's family, Inuyasha. You can't turn your back on that,” Kagome told him. Wrong move.

 

Inuyasha was livid. How dare she tell him that he can't turn his back on his family? As far as he was concerned, he had no family. His only family had died two hundred years ago when irate villagers chased him and his mother out of town, killing Izayoi in the process. His family died the next night when he came upon Sesshomaru and the demon turned a young child away. For Kagome to say that about him…she really didn't understand, at least not the way she thought she did.

 

“Shut up, Kagome! You don't know what the hell you're talking about!” the hanyou raged. She'd unintentionally touched on a sore spot, and now she had to deal with the consequences.

 

“That bastard is not my family—” he started, only for Kagome to interrupt.

 

“He's your brother, so that makes him family,” she said.

 

“No, he's not. He's some bastard who has the same father as me. He doesn't deserve a damn thing from me and I'm not going to help him. What type of family leaves a little child to die in the frozen woods during the worst of winter? After that child just lost his mother?” Inuyasha questioned. Kagome's face paled and she had no response.

 

“What kind of brother tries to kill his younger brother when he's still considered a child, just to remove a supposed taint on the family bloodline? What kind of brother tries to murder his younger brother period? What kind of brother tries to take the only item their father left the younger brother because the taint shouldn't have it?” Inuyasha continued, too caught up in his rage to pay any attention to Kagome.

 

He paced the hut like a caged animal, slowly trying to work out his feelings on this subject. Kagome had brought up a lot of things concerning Sesshomaru that Inuyasha had buried, and he wasn't quite ready to deal with the onslaught of emotions that came with her words.

 

“I didn't ask to be born,” Inuyasha fumed. “I didn't ask to be a half-demon. He hates me for something that is not my fault. He's made me feel inferior for years, and now that he needs something from me, you expect me to go running like a servant as his beck and call?

 

“I almost starved that first winter on my own. I didn't know how to hunt, how to cook, how to find shelter. I was half-dead by the time spring rolled around, but spring was worse than winter. All the demons were out and about, and many of them either thought I'd make a tasty snack or hunted me for the hell of it. Sesshomaru could've prevented all of that, but he didn't. He left me to die!” Inuyasha ranted.

 

Kagome had no answer for him. She had known that his childhood was not the best, but actually hearing it made it real for her. She understood how Inuyasha felt about his brother, but it was still no excuse for him to ignore a request for help.

 

“Inuyasha, I understand,” she started, ignoring the glare he sent her way, “but you should still help him. He's asking for aid, and it's not for himself. Think of Rin—she needs Sesshomaru. What'll happen to her if he's no longer around?”

 

“The same damn thing that happened to me. She's lucky that he even bothered to save her, cause that's a hell of a lot more than he ever did for me. Besides, she's human, so someone will take her in,” Inuyasha stated, brows furrowed.

 

“Please, Inuyasha. If you don't do it for Sesshomaru, do it for yourself. Prove to yourself that you're better than him, that you have more honor than he does,” she asked, trying to get him to reconsider his decision.

 

Inuyasha stared at Kagome for a long minute. It was clear now, more than ever, that she couldn't even begin to understand the hardship that he had faced, and the hatred that was so ingrained in his being that he didn't think it would ever go away. At that moment, Inuyasha saw Kagome not as a friend, fighter, confidant, lover, or priestess—she was none of those things. In that instant, he saw her for what she really was: a fifteen-year-old child from the modern era who had little concept of the life in the real world. She would never comprehend the agony that his mixed heritage caused. She couldn't grasp what his life had been like, and to some extent still was.

 

The life of a half-demon was filled with many horrors—that's just the way the world worked. Kagome looked for the good inside of everyone, without realizing that even though there is goodness present, there is also darkness. She wanted him to help his brother based on the fact that Sesshomaru asked it of him. To her, his request meant that he had realized Inuyasha's worth on some level, or else he would not have asked for help. To Inuyasha, however, it was a way to use his skills so Sesshomaru didn't have to get his hands dirty. He wouldn't be used by anyone again. He'd learned his lesson long ago about blindly trusting someone because they showed you a measure of kindness. Look where it got him and Kikyo…No, he wasn't going to help him, and he didn't care if Kagome never forgave him for it.

 

“No, Kagome. I'm not going to do it. I don't need to do anything to prove that I have more honor than he does: I know I do. If you can't understand why I won't help him, then you don't know me as well as you thought you did,” he said, walking out of the hut.

 

Kagome walked after him, watching his retreating back. She wanted to argue with him, to help him see her point, but something stopped her. The sadness present in his voice when he uttered those last words stilled her. Kagome felt as if this whole debacle had been some sort of test that she had failed miserably.

 

As Inuyasha left, only one thought echoed in his head. `No, Kagome. You don't know me well at all. If you did, you'd know that sometimes being the better person is overrated.'