InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Themes in Passing ❯ The Truth ( Chapter 4 )

Week 45 in iyfic_contest. Theme was Missed Opportunities. Inuyasha reflects on the past...

Title: The Truth

Rating: PG-13 (A few curse words, some implied violence)

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 606

Betas: silverontherose and docbevculver

Inuyasha sat up high in Goshinboku and thought about the past. He brought up, mulled over and examined every point in his life where, if he had just told her the Truth, things could have turned out differently.

He should have told her the Truth the first time she caught him with Kikyou. But he was young and foolish and had convinced himself that Kagome knew the Truth, when it was more than obvious that she thought he still loved Kikyou. Pride and stubbornness both got in the way then and all he could do was watch her as she ran off. If he had just stopped her; if he had just told her the Truth then…

It was his fault anyway. Everything was always his fault. Kikyou was dead; his fault. Kikyou was brought back; his fault. Kagome was back in her time in tears; also his fault. He could deal with it on his own, but how could he have explained it to Kagome. It wasn’t because he was in love with the shell that was now Kikyou, but because he loved the Kikyou that once was that he had to do whatever it took to see her rest peacefully again. Even if it meant he had to go with her. He wanted to stay with Kagome and that was the Truth. But he had to see his old love back to where she belonged. If that meant that he had to leave behind his new love, then Kagome was better off not knowing he loved her at all.

When Naraku killed Kikyou again was also a good time to tell Kagome the Truth. This time it was fear that kept his counsel. Fear that Kikyou wasn’t really gone, just broken, and still unable to move on into the afterlife. Fear that letting his true feelings for Kagome show would only make her even more of a target than she already was. He was also afraid that Kagome would reject him, because who wants a filthy half-breed as a mate?

Flashes of a broken and bloody Kohaku and an amputated Kouga burned in his mind’s eye. The truth back then wasn’t of his love for Kagome, but that that he was a monster who didn’t deserve a hole to shit in. A fit of rage due to Naraku and a temporary loss of sanity, humanity, and Tessiaga had driven Inuyasha to removing the three final shards from their owners in the most violent way. Self-loathing kept him from telling Kagome the Truth for good.

But the best time ever to tell Kagome the Truth was right before the jewel was completed, after they had finally defeated Naraku. Kagome had resumed her looks of hero worship and no longer had faint horror in her gaze when she came to him. But he had still been afraid and he let her complete and purify the jewel without telling her. She vanished before he could grab her and beg her to stay with him, not that it would have mattered.

500 years later, he sat in Goshinboku looking down on her. He watched silently as she screamed out her inner pain and tried the well over and over. He kept to himself when her family came out to console her. 500 years and 4 wives later the Truth wasn’t exactly true anymore. He had moved on. He had loved again. Older and wiser now, he knew that she’d never move on if he made himself known to her. It was his decision to allow her time to grow up that kept him in Goshinboku unmoving and unnoticed.