InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Rock, Paper, Scissors: Love Beats All ❯ For The One I Love ( Chapter 10 )

[ A - All Readers ]

By: RinLove

Chapter Ten:For The One I Love

Rin's Point-Of-View

Rin could hear Shippo-chan's pained, but muffled, yelps resounding throughout the strange, dark room. She turned slightly and began looking for the kitsune, eager to hold tight to someone she was familiar with in this lonely, frightening place. She didn't want to be all alone. Not ever again. She felt the floor of the little prison and found herself mildly confused. She vaguely remembered feeling this texture before. But what was it...? She ran her other hand over the unusual surface, absently feeling the hand she now braced herself with as she did so. She gasped in sudden realization and horror.

The floor was made of SKIN!

"Now I...I really am...a tough guy..." Shippo's voice echoed in a rubbery undertone. Rin turned around with a start and, for once, noticed that the room she was in was spherical. 'Shippo-chan's shielding me with his body!' Rin's vision blurred as she met Shippo's wincing, glimmering eyes. That was all she could see in here. Shippo's tortured, agonized eyes. Eyes that were usually a child's. Free of suffering, full of innocence.

"No, Shippo-chan! Stop! Let me out!" she demanded in a voice that trembled with fearful desperation. "Right now! Before you leave me here without...without anyone at all! Please! We can...we can run away! Sesshomaru-sama will--"

"ARGH!" Shippo wailed, panting breathlessly for a moment afterwards before speaking. One of his eyes was shut in pain, but the other was locked on Rin. Rin stared up at him anxiously, her hands squeezing tightly into fists as her lip quivered. A hot tear streaked her face, burning a trail of fire down her cheek that quickly turned to a road of ice as the air collided with it. "Sesshomaru left you with me, Rin. ME," a strong, brave voice told her. Rin just stared up into the kitsune's eyes, distraitly pondering how his voice had come to possess so much of Sesshomaru-sama's levelness. "He didn't tell you to stay with Miroku or Sango. But said for you to stay with ME. I won't let anyone hurt you. And I won't run. I'll never run when I have someone to protect!" Rin gazed up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"Shippo..." she began.

"UNH! Da...damn..." Rin gave out a little hiccup at Shippo's swearing that might have been a gasp if she hadn't choked on her tears at that exact moment. "And..." Rin immediately looked up at him as he spoke, wiping the tears from her face. "And I definitely won't run when I have someone as special as you to protect. Someone... Mmrhn! Someone who always smiles so big and wide that people can see it from the moon!" Rin felt more tears spill down her face.

"Shippo...please..." She gazed up at him helplessly, her voice a mere whisper in the nothingness. "I don't want anyone getting hurt because of me!" She pressed her palms flat on the "ground" and silently shook with barely suppressed tears. 'Please don't do this, Shippo. Please don't die.'

"I won't run! Agh!" His eyes snapped closed, then quickly reopened. 'Don't leave me all alone!' she cried. "I won't lose! Yaaa!" Rin grabbed her sides, hugging herself tightly, and quivered with mute sobs. 'Stay with me!' she begged. "AND I WON'T LET YOU GO!"

"PLEASE DON'T GO, SHIPPO-KUN!" Rin lifted her face to the sky and screamed to the darkness that held her and Shippo captive. Shippo's eyes were wide with pain, but no terror could be found there. "Shippo! No! SHIPPO!" Shippo's eyes looked down at her quaking form peacefully, his eyes seemingly smiling at her. Then, as the green orbs tiredly rolled back into his head, his eyelids grimly hiding them away for the last time, the darkness vanished with a loud "pop."

Demons zipped and slithered through the sky above. Kagome-chan and Sesshomaru-sama fought them off from the ground. And Shippo lay motionless next to Rin, neither of them conscious of the world around them.

"Shippo... He's dead," Rin murmured hollowly to herself. "I killed him. It's...it's all my fault." And then Rin laid her head on Shippo's chest, where no steady rise or fall marked his breathing, and cried without ever blinking.

Sesshomaru's Point-Of-View

"So I did." Sesshomaru slowly walked a few steps, distantly waiting for Kagome to catch up to him so that he could sweep her up onto his back and rush to the battlegrounds. However, before any such thing could take place, a dark cloud spread over the mighty youkai and the land before him, casting the forest into night. He snapped his head up to glower at the sky.

"Demons! Millions of them! They're headed for our friends!" Kagome shouted from behind him, causing him to turn around and look at her. He didn't say anything at all, withholding all emotion from seeping through his features. This is just what he expected to happen, now that he'd begun to associate himself with humans! Humans were imperfect and, being such, were only capable of throwing TRUE perfection into chaos. Lord Sesshomaru had been a prime example of how a taiyoukai should behave and rule their lands...and then humans had corrupted that image. "Sesshomaru...? What are you waiting for! Rin and Shippo are out there!" Kagome seemed to be growing more urgent and frightened as he hesitated to rush to her human "friends" rescue. He would not stand in the way of Naraku's demons if they were to carry out the work that Sesshomaru would eventually have to do himself. The humans were the cause...and they needed to be eliminated.

All the same, Sesshomaru's eyebrows furrowed a millimeter at Kagome's mentioning of Rin. His hands twitched as he held his inuyoukai rage back. He felt as though his innards were being ripped and torn apart by some invisible, inner monster. He had to control himself...or else he would become a mindless, bloodthirsty demon as his brother always had. He hunched over, his claws digging into his sides as his eyes grew wide. 'Rin is nothing but another human! A parasite! The girl has no place among demons!' His claws raked through his sides, spreading pain throughout his entire body. "Sesshomaru," Kagome's voice crooned in gentle weariness. His eyes darted to hers and held them fastly. He'd meant it as a warning, but she stepped forward regardless. She smiled soothingly at him, her eyes submitted, and spoke as though she might break something if she raised her voice any higher. She took another step towards him, her legs still shaky from her earlier wounds, and held her hand out towards him a little. She looked like she was edging towards a scared and dangerous animal. How could he, the mighty taiyoukai of the Western Lands, lose himself like this! 'It was the humans! The humans have weakened me beyond redemption!'

"Flee or face the consequences, wench..." he ground out gruffly. He bore into her chocolate hues from beneath his dark eyebrows, the bones of his face cracking and shifting as a snout emerged. He began to growl, containing a roar with maximum effort. "Filthy humans... You filthy humans have sapped me of my full-blood!" He flung himself upright and, jerking his claws free of his sides, slung streams of dark blood over the tree trunks and summer grass. He spread his arms wide, threw his chest out, and whipped his head back like a madman. And he was. He was a madman with no control over his actions. "I WILL NOT BE REDUCED TO THIS!" he commanded the gods.

Then, quite suddenly, he felt a pair of slender arms wrap around his body, resting caring hands on his shoulder blades.

He froze.

A moment later, he was scowling down at the top of a familiar dark head. Kagome pressed her face up against his bare chest, her expression determined and frightened.

"Humans aren't the problem. It's love. You love Rin." Sesshomaru started in surprise, taken aback, before glowering angrily and raising a taloned hand above him. "You're scared for her...and you hate yourself for it."

"This Lord Sesshomaru fears nothing!" He brought the taloned hand down and grazed the top of Kagome's head with his claws, tossing her aside. She slammed into a tree with many ominous cracks and thudded at its base in a mangled heap. She didn't move again. He felt the anger and disgust that had risen up inside of him like a tsunami begin to recede, carefully ebbing away from the destructive transformation it would have eventually brought about. At last, he had returned to his usual self. He fell to the ground on one knee, his silvery wisps veiling his face and right shoulder, exhausted with the energy he had taken to hold back the transformation. "I feel nothing for humans. Nor demons." He raised his head and looked at the tree where Kagome lay lifeless. He glowered irately. "Nothing at all..." His eyebrows knit themselves together and he felt something tug at where he supposed his heart would be. He clenched his fists with all his might. "NOTHING, I SAY!" he bellowed into the forest, his voice louder than his earlier roar could ever have been. No one was listening, he knew. No one at all. But that wouldn't matter to the taiyoukai. Because he spoke to convince himself, not others.
The wind toyed with his long, silvery strands as he stood, calmly watching as the wind attempted to rouse the young human woman. After several moments of being unsuccessful in its work, the wind finally retreated and settled itself.

"Rise, human. You are not injured," he spoke to her limp form, refusing to move towards her. She did nothing. He looked upon her skeptically, still yet believing his own words were true. He tended to think that way, being that every occasion he'd said such a thing, it was so. Which was why he was growing so impatient that she continued to feign unconsciousness. "Do not test me, human. Rise, lest I leave you for the demons to sort out." He paused, waiting in utter silence. There was nothing. No sound, no movement...no Kagome? The silence squealed in his ears. The dead silence. Suddenly anxious, he made his way to her in three strong strides and knelt down. It was as he had presumed.

She wasn't breathing.

"Human girl! Awake!" Immediately, he expected her to leap up at him, as she had in the castle, and scold him for not calling her by name. For waking her up when she was so blissfully resting. He scowled again, except this time his full fury was let out into his face. Why wouldn't she rise! She'd been dealt worse blows when his idiot brother had served as her protector! "Awake!" He reached down and clutched her shoulders in his tight grip. Something was yanking at his heart again...and something swelled up inside of him. Something dreadful. Where had he felt this treacherous feeling before? When was it...? So many years before, when he'd become stone. He should hold it back, he knew. He was shamed the last he'd allowed it free reign...and it had made him a fool. 'A fool...as InuTaisho once allowed himself to become.' But he knew, today, this moment...he had to risk himself. "Kagome," he said quietly, releasing his grip somewhat. "For you, I'll repeat my father's mistake." He brushed the back of his right hand over her left cheek, unable to escape the mocking laughter of his and Kagome's dried blood that clung to his talons, and felt his eyes began to burn for the second time in his life. It was like acid, searing his heart and face with every wave that came forth. And for a moment, he believed he welcomed this feeling. These tears he'd known as weakness so long ago.

A single teardrop, the last teardrop, welled up from beneath an eyelid and slipped over the rim. It fell...and it fell...like Sesshomaru in this endless world of nothing...and then it fell no more. It no longer fell only for the reason that Kagome's gentle face had caught it. It was saved from its long and perilous drop by her innocent face. Because she carried his tears for him, he had found himself again. He fell no more.

He stood up then, that expressionless Lord of the Western Lands, and he gazed upon the human girl he could not deny. Lord Sesshomaru, first-born son of InuTaisho, was helpless to every extent.

And he didn't mind at all.

Kikyo's Point-Of-View

"Kikyo! Kikyo, don't give up on me!" InuYasha's garbled voice echoed around her cottony head, fading like a dying dream as it ricocheted off the sides of her skull. Had she really heard him call out for her...? It had been such a faint murmur, that voice that had sounded so much like InuYasha's. She uttered not a single word, fearing she was mistaken, and refused to dignify her mind's cruel tricks on her by opening her eyes. She stayed that way for a little while before finally giving in to her hopes.

"InuYasha...?" Kikyo barely allowed herself to say that much. She couldn't humiliate herself, calling out for a man (even one she'd devoted her love to), when he might not even be near enough to hear her. It made her feel ridiculous. Looking at the possibility that InuYasha might not be there after all, she'd be screaming like a lunatic, crying out for an invisible savior to pull her free of danger. Yes. That would be truly mortifying. She'd be made a fool of...even if no one else were around to see her stupidity. She was a miko, no matter if she retained her soul or not, and she would not settle for herself acting any less than the role implied.

"Kikyo! You'd better start answering, woman! Iron Reaver Soul Stealer! You hear me! Wind Scar! ANSWER!" Her eyes slowly opened, feeling Naraku's tentacles crushing into her body as her nerves reanimated themselves. She looked down at her body, terrified, and caught her lower leg crumbling away in places. It was happening. She had known she wouldn't be able to sustain this makeshift body of hers forever...but why did it have to happen NOW, when things were just beginning to go right after half a century of misunderstanding and hate? The tentacles squeezed her again and the pain ruthlessly washed over her.

"InuYasha!" she shouted, fighting the urge to pass out. The unbearable pain...the unbearable, white pain. For one horrible moment that spanned an eternity, all she knew was that flash of darkness and flash of blinding white as the pain streaked through her clay limbs.
"KIKYO! I HEAR YOU! Yell again! Wind Scar! One more time! PLEASE!" InuYasha frantically pleaded, his voice surrounding her in the foul place. It somehow took some of the fear away. Magically, his genuine concern for her eased the hurt from her conscious mind, leaving only hope in its wake. She opened her mouth to cry out again, encouraged to leave her pride behind, but her voice wouldn't operate at her will anymore. She couldn't speak at all! The pain...the mind-numbing pain. She could hardly think straight! She knew only that she wanted the pain to stop. Her body hurt so much...she just wanted to be free of it again. Free of this suffering. This pain. Even if it meant leaving this body behind. "KIKYO! Don't give up on me! Please! I'm coming to save you! Iron Reaver Soul Stealer!" Her side began to disintegrate into dust, taking away the pain that had been there as it went. She sighed in relief. "Kikyo! Don't you DARE do this again, you stupid wench!" Kikyo smiled through the pain at the insult. Wasn't that what he'd always called her when they'd first met? The priestess began to laugh softly, coughing every now and again, before opening her mouth wide in an attempt to send her reply.

"Half-man!” she rasped, still laughing as she remembered their first days together. “I'm here, you stupid half-man!" she shouted, her voice regaining its strength as it finally broke through the crippling pain. She was sure that the teasing insult had reached InuYasha's sensitive puppy ears.

"Kikyo! Kikyo, keep talking! I'll follow your voice!" came InuYasha's confident reply. Kikyo felt a particularly painful stab of pain in her right shoulder, which soon launched a new wave of paralyzing ache that sprawled over the rest of her body. She cried out as she began quaking in agony.

"InuYasha!" The shoulder that had caused the tremor of torture to snake through her began falling away in places. She stared at it thankfully, watching herself disappear into oblivion as calmly as if she were stargazing. The pain was finally passing out of her...

...finally.

'I want to see him...one more time. Just once,' She smiled to herself, ignoring her inner priestess' lecture that she was acting ignorantly, and closed her eyes. The next moment, she had let out the shrillest, most blood-curdling scream she could muster. As soon as the first note was out, she could hear InuYasha cursing and struggling to reach her. She wasn't meaning to startle him. It had just occurred to her that if he didn't reach her soon, they'd never be able to say their farewells to one another. Her shout would give him something constant to follow her by. She let the cry go on until her lungs felt as though they'd burst from oxygen-deprivation. Cutting the shriek off cleanly and abruptly, she began taking in great gulps of air that only added to her suffering. When she was back to the steady shocks and darts of pain she'd come to consider natural, she consciously visited each part of her body and willed it to release the tension it held. Lying just where she'd always been, she became as calm and still as ever. It didn't hurt so much if she stayed relaxed. InuYasha would find her much easier now, having had something to follow for so long.

Kikyo was a miko at one time...but not today. She realized that now. She understood the truth. She was undead, returned from Hell to kill the one she now loves. Her purpose among the living had vanished in the instant she realized her rekindled love for InuYasha, and so nothing remained but her wishes. And her only wish was to see InuYasha. Why did it matter whether she upheld the manners and demeanors of a priestess or not? 'I left that life long ago. To see InuYasha one last time, I would renounce all that I once was.'

"KIKYO! KIKYO! Answer me! Iron Reaver Soul Stealer! Wind Scar! Are you hurt! Answer me!" She heard him clawing away at Naraku's tentacles nearby, but another wave of pain was coursing through her again as Naraku pinched her body between the ground and his masses of tentacle. Her jaw was so tightly clenched that she couldn't open it to form any words...so she just whimpered as loudly as she could. Though her eyes were squeezed tight in her misery and all she could feel of herself was the unbelievable pain, she knew that her body must have been bucking in agony. Her nerves were writhing with the incredible torture that was being inflicted upon them...and then, all of sudden, she felt the pain entirely subside from her back. That must mean that it too had been reduced to clay dust.

"InuYasha! You must hurry!" she managed to call out. She only wished to see him one last time before her final death. Hopefully, her final death. The pain...the pain...the horrible, skull-splitting pain...

"KIKYO! IRON REAVER SOUL STEALER!" She heard flesh rip near her right side and smiled slightly. He was here. Oh, thank god--the merciful, blessed god--InuYasha had made it! Had made it before...before... She gasped. How could she have forgotten InuYasha? He would be all alone without her by his side! For the first time since she realized it was her time, Kikyo became anxious about dying. 'Kagome...' she remembered, 'he'll have Kagome.' //I don't love her, Kikyo. I love you...and only you.// Kikyo winced. He'd been lying. She hoped that he'd been lying. But he wasn't, and she knew it very well. 'His friends...the demon slayer and the monk, then. He'll still have them.' She knew they weren't able to be with him as she could be, but at least he would still have SOMEONE after she deserted him in this world. "Iron Reaver Soul Stealer! Iron Reaver Soul--KIKYO!" His face appeared through a gouge in the wall of Naraku's flesh and he peered in at her, breathing hard and looking worried. But not nearly as worried as he'd become once he realized that her body was self-destructing. "Oh shit! Kikyo!" He tore away more of Naraku's skin and was soon at her side, trying not to touch her for fear of doing more damage. "Kikyo..." He gazed down at her with an expression like someone had just lopped his right arm off. Then he was suddenly angry...like he always was when he didn't know how to deal with something. "Damn it! Damn it all to Hell! I knew you'd... You just HAD to do this again, didn't you! I just knew it! I just knew that it wouldn't last long!" Kikyo offered him a small smile in gratitude of his anguish.

"There's nothing wrong with this, InuYasha…" He looked at her suddenly, his face full of incredulity.

"What the Hell! That's gotta be Naraku's miasma talking!” He looked down at her imperiously, but Kikyo spotted the fear. Kikyo tried to comfort him with another smile, but he looked away from her defiantly, crossing his arms. “Well, I think there's a whole Hell of a LOT wrong with this! Why should you have to die now that everything's back to normal again? After all the shit we've gone through, this is how it has to end! KEH!" InuYasha's face wore an intense glower that Kikyo judged as the worst she'd ever seen over his features. He was shaking all over…but Kikyo knew it wasn't rage that shook him so violently. He tried to keep it up for a little while longer, but in the end it was just too much. His closed eyes popped open, his eyebrows began twitching with the effort it was taking to hold his angry expression, and before long he'd roughly untangled his crossed arms and brought his claws to rip at his scalp. "NARAKU, YOU BASTARD!”

"It's unfair," Kikyo crooned, causing InuYasha to cease his assault on his scalp and look back at her again. "I know that. But it's okay with me, because I want this pain to stop. I…I need it to stop, InuYasha. So it's okay… I want to go back to the world of the dead, where I can find peace again--"

"Stupid bitch!" InuYasha suddenly roared, making Kikyo jump. He looked down at her with more fury than she'd seen him direct towards her for a while. "You can't just give up like that! What if I gave up? I could've, you know...!” He considered her for a moment, taking in her reaction. She carefully eased the shocked expression from her face and settled herself. He continued after another moment's silence. “I could've given up a long time ago. When I was just a kid. But then what? I'd never have met you...and then you'd never have left the quiet confines of your temple. Or do you regret that, too?" Kikyo said nothing. She knew what he meant. He was asking if she regretted meeting him all those years ago. Even though it brought about her early death, she'd never before wished she'd never met InuYasha. Even while she'd “hated” him, she'd always secretly looked back at the memories with a smile. She knew she didn't need to answer. InuYasha already knew he was spouting off nonsense. "If you give up now, Kikyo--if you allow yourself to end like this--then I'm coming with you." Kikyo felt something pierce her heart so intensely, it could have been a fisher's line. She looked up into InuYasha's eyes desperately. She wanted him to live, not die alongside her! "Then all this shit with Naraku and demons and fighting...it will all just stop. And we'll just be together forever without any more worries or pain." His eyes dreamily drifted away from hers as he spoke, sounding alarms for Kikyo. If she didn't do something soon, he would be too enamored with everlasting peace to be talked out of it.

"InuYasha, please," she began, not sure what she should say. "I CAN'T stay. My body isn't able to tether me to this world any longer. It's not my choice anymore! You must live...please, InuYasha! Please just live!" He looked down at her for a moment, and then smiled. A true smile. He brought his hand to her cheek and brushed it against her lightly, so very lightly.

"You're mine." He lowered himself to lie next to her in the tomb of tentacles, whispering to her softly of the other world. Kikyo only smiled sadly, unable to deny that she was pleased at his unending love and devotion to her. And disturbed that she had fulfilled her purpose for returning from Hell after all.