InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Dark Side of the Sun ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: Characters within belong to Rumiko Takahashi, unless they are my OCs in which they belong to me…

I intend for this fic to be mostly young adult with sexual scenes at some point. I hope you enjoy.

 

Chapter one

 

I was dying.

 

It seems fitting that the last thing I see is his face. The last thing I feel, his long silver hair brushing gently across my cheeks. My tongue tasted the rich metallic tang of my blood, my lungs didn’t seem to want to work right, every breath was its own battle. I didn’t realize death would be so cold.

 

But his eyes were warm and so were his hands where he gripped my fingers, rubbing my hands to try to bring warmth where there was none. Seeing his desperation to warm me, his attention riveted on my face tears welling in eyes that were normally so hard and unshakable, I decided to revise my thoughts on my impending doom. I guess death wasn’t so bad if in the end even for just this moment, he was mine. The man I loved was at my side, my arch nemesis was at last dead, my friends were battered but alive, and the jewel of four souls was complete. Lying here, cold and dying, on the remnants of a battlefield, my life’s blood soaking into the soil, I was happy, content, because he was here with me and not with her.

 

“Inuyasha?” Her voice was like a perfect blade, sharp and beautiful, slicing into my happiness like a hot blade through butter. Her slender fingers curled around his shoulder, her body slid into view as she gracefully kneeled next to him causing his eyes to turn away from me. I gasped at the sudden pain, like a knife between the ribs, it pierced my heart. Another hand squeezed mine, and I watched Sango lean her body across mine and glare at Kikio. It relieved me to see someone else protesting her presence, as far as I was concerned the undead man snatcher was unwelcome at my deathbed.

“How is she?” Kikio’s voice was subdued, guilty. My mouth twisted into a pained smirk. After all that she had done to me, all the times she had tried to kill me, to break me, and now, now, she was guilty. A hysterical giggle escaped me but it turned into a strangled gurgling cough as blood flooded up my throat and dribbled down my chin. Everyone held their collective breaths, tension filling the air, the hands gripping mine clamped down with desperate force as they watched me struggle to breathe, unable to save me. After what seemed like hours the agonizing paroxysms faded and my wheezing gasps filled the silence.

Inuyasha’s voice split the silence, “I don’t think-“

“She’s going to be fine!” Sango snapped, glaring at Inuyasha. She snatched some more cloth from the pile next to him and turned to me, her eyes softening, and her face breaking into a gentle smile. She wiped the cloth across my chin, reaching up to tuck loose strands of hair behind my ear. “You’re going to be fine.” Her voice cracked, her hands trembled, and her careful expression of love and calm began to slide. Tears welled in her eyes and blurred her vision, spilling down her cheeks, “You’re going to be fine...please, please, be fine.”

“Sango…” Miroku shifted forward, reaching forward to grasp Sango’s shoulder. His face was drawn and pale, pain etched into every crease. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and the hand that grasped her shoulder shook with small tremors. The remnant of his other arm was bandaged tightly, crimson staining the white cloth and dribbling down in a steady drip out of the bottom. His hand and most of his forearm were missing the stump shattered and irreparable; he would probably need the broken edge to be amputated up to the elbow, but he would live, and that was all that mattered.

It had been a stroke of pure genius to use Miroku’s wind tunnel as our trump card in the battle, something Naraku would never see coming. Naraku, whom had been sure that the deadly tunnel was neutralized by his highly toxic hell wasps, had taken a decisive blow by underestimating the seemingly unthreatening human monk. During our war councils in the days before the final battle, the generals, including our little band, Koga’s tribe, the mighty Lord Sesshomaru, and other important powers, had continued to circle back to the massive power of the wind tunnel as a weapon, but no matter how many suggestions people came up with, no one could get past the hell wasps. We despaired of ever using it at all. Then it hit me, and I’d felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. I would use two things Naraku could never see coming; Miroku’s wind tunnel and my modern technology. And all I needed was an antidote. We managed to catch and milk venom from several hell wasps and contain it in a ceramic jar which I used to carry the substance through the well to my time. It was surprisingly easy to get an antidote, venom researchers in my world jumped at the chance to analize an unknown toxin. The first had refused my offer, but the second agreed to sign an NDA* to keep my name and face away from the media. In exchange for him having the samples of venom and taking credit for the discoveries, he gave me the antivenins, no questions. Wasps nullified. The look on Naraku’s face when Miroku took no visible effect from the wasps had, truly, been priceless. Even now, lying on the ground, dying, I can’t help but smile at the memory.

Sango shifted, pressing a thick cloth to the gaping wound in my abdomen, and I contorted, moaning in agony. Dying hurt. I hadn’t realized it would hurt this bad. I mean, I’d known that death would hurt, but until you experience this kind of pain, pain that puts a one to ten scale to shame, pain that makes you wish you had a knife in your hands so you could just end it, there is no preparing for it. Agony ripped through every fiber of my existence, sawing me to pieces, my chest heaved desperate to draw in oxygen, my heart stuttered, and my mind was consumed by a never-ending tidal wave of agony. I forgot everything and everyone around me. I forgot Sango, pale and frightened, Miroku, drawn and fighting his own hellish agony, Kikio, aloof and beautiful, and him, Inuyasha, even he ceased to exist in the face of the white hot pain. Seconds stretched into hours, hours into days, days into months, but, eventually, the pain receded as my body began to shut down. My limbs grew heavy and cold, breathing became an act of will instead an act of unconscious thought, I had to fight to bring the faces around me into focus. And suddenly, as if the sun had risen, there he was again, handsome and strong…and…holding tightly to Kikio’s hand. The physical pain I had just barely managed to live through paled in comparison to my heart being eviscerated.

It was time. It was now or never. Time to come to terms with the truth; there had never been a chance for me to be with him. He was, and had always been, hers. My breath hitched, tears burning fiery tracks down the sides of my cheeks, but that was all I could allow, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me weep. My fist clenched spasmodically, and I felt a hard warm roundness in my palm. The Shikon Jewel. One wish, that’s all it would take to make him mine forever. Could I do that? I looked at her, pale skin, long glossy obsidian hair that shined like fresh ink on paper, ruby red lips, a grace that was as natural to her as breathing; she was the embodiment of beauty. And damn it she’d had her chance, hadn’t she? My eyes moved to his face again, and found his eyes. He was looking at me bleakly, as if accepting that I was done and waiting for me to be gone, the panic he’d been in before was replaced with a calm acceptance of my inevitable death, and it stemmed from the hand behind him holding onto Kikio. He was drawing comfort from her, strength, when I died he would be ok. He would recover. He would be able to live on without me, but not her. No; if she died he would go with her, give up a part of himself to be with her. And in that moment I realized that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t force him to love me and take away what he had for her. I couldn’t do it because I loved him to much to take away his shot at happiness. I didn’t want to settle for second place, it was all or nothing.

The act of lifting my arm was pitifully difficult. You don’t realize the natural strength your body has until it’s taken away from you. The simple act of lifting my arm, fist gripping the round smoothness of the jewel, up towards my face was massively draining. I began to gasp for breath, sweat misting my skin, and my arm shook violently, barely able to perform the command it was given. At last my weak limb completed its journey, resting my fist against my lips, and my fingers uncurled around the jewel until I held it between my thumb and forefinger against my lips. I heard Sango gasp, “of course!” She breathed her eyes shimmering with a sudden and profound hope. “The jewel can save her! Hurry Kagome, use it!”

I smiled softly to her, and then turned my head to meet his eyes; I wanted to look at him one more time. The last time before he became someone else’s; but then again, who was I kidding, he’d never been mine in the first place. I was just righting the universe.  I closed my eyes unable to watch as I crushed my best friend’s hope, and also unable to watch as I ended any chance I had to be with my first love. I made my wish to the jewel. “Please give back the time that was taken from Kikio, so that she and Inuyasha can, at last, be happy together.”

Inuyasha’s clawed hand shot out gripping my wrist so hard the bones groaned, even through my numbed haze I was sure it should be hurting, a clear sign I was at death’s door. His super hearing must have caught my barely audible wish, “Kagome…no!” he gasped. His eyes were wide and wild, full of hope and longing, despair and regret. Sango’s eyes snapped towards Inuyasha’s horrified look, and then towards mine; realization dawning on her face, “Kagome,” she asked, her voice strangled with terror, “what did you wish for?”

I smiled at her, closing my eyes against the glowing light spilling from between my fingers. Inuyasha’s grip tightened against my wrist, a desperate gesture, “Kagome, please…” he whispered softly, torn between begging me to stop and wanting me not to, but the deed was done. My arm settled onto my chest unable to support its own weight any longer, my numbed fingers still grasping the jewel even as the light intensified to a blinding white brilliance. The sudden darkness as the light suddenly died left us all blinded and holding our breaths waiting for something to happen. Into the silence of our baited breaths I whispered my final wish, the barely audible words startlingly loud in the tense silence, “Inuyasha, be happy, okay?” Accompanied by sharp crackling noises the jewel crumbled to dust, sifting from between my fingers, and Kikio cried out as a white hot fire tinged with an amethyst glow enveloped her body. She screamed twisting in agony as the flames charred her skin and burned away her hair the heat so intense even Inuyasha’s desperate attempts to smother the flames with his fireproof haori failed. I closed my eyes content and maybe even getting a little smug satisfaction at her painful rebirth soon it would be over for me as well as her. One of the deciding factors of me making the wish I made was the fact that she would need the other half of her soul, my half, and for me that was fine. It would be a quick and painless death. And I wouldn’t have to watch them be reunited and together at last.

The radiating heat dimmed and the flames choked out leaving behind a crisped black shape of a female figure lying on her side. Inuyasha kneeled next to the burnt form afraid to touch it, making noises of distress. Everyone leaned forwards toward the figure sure she had died, although I knew better, then the figure shifted drawing a shriek from Sango, and Kikio sat up a thick layer of burned grave dirt falling from her pink, living, flesh. Her shaking hands reached up to touch her face, sliding over her cheeks and leaving muddy tracks through the thick wash of tears pouring from her eyes; eyes, that for the first time since she was resurrected didn’t reflect the constant burning hatred that fueled her unholy life in this world. Her hands slid down her neck and shoulders brushing more dirt from her body and revealing that she was naked the fire having consumed even her clothing. Inuyasha rushed to cover her nakedness with his scorched haori touching her with a tenderness that made me ache to my bones. She brushed the side of his cheek thanking him silently and turned to me her voice unsure, childlike, “why?” she asked. I opened my mouth to answer her but froze, watching as Inuyasha, again with that agonizing tenderness, gently brushed more dirt from her hair his gruff exterior portraying a softness I had never before seen. My heart broke again and again, an endless cycle of regression and breakage, all it took was picturing that look on his face and I would shatter again and again. I was supposed to have died when she was reborn, but I guess this would do the trick as well, my failing body couldn’t handle the strain. The emotional turmoil sped my heart up, the throbbing muscle straining to pump blood that just wasn’t there anymore, my breath burst from my lungs quicker and quicker my body starving for oxygen but unable to get it because my blood supply was almost out. Internally I was calm. I understood that now as my organs shut down, and my vision blurred, it was truly time. The cold set in, chilling me, numbing all the pain away. Dimly I was aware of Sango crying my name, her tears dribbling onto my face.

“Step aside woman.” I couldn’t see the person who spoke, but I knew his voice. Smooth, cold, regal, his voice caressed the ear like silk being drawn against naked skin

“What the hell do you want, you bastard?!” As silky smooth as his brother’s voice was, Inuyasha’s voice was rough and gritty. Sesshomaru murmured something else but I was fading away my mind drifting into darkness. The sound of Sesshomaru’s voice sent my mind drifting towards memories; memories of him, of the moment he went from being my enemy to being my ally.

 

 

*Non disclosure agreement

 

To be continued?

So I hoped that everyone liked the first chapter. Depending on how the likes and comments go will let me know if I should continue. So please comment and let me know how you liked it.

 

Thanks; Meganechama