InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Whispers At Dawn ❯ Beginning Again ( Chapter 1 )

 

 

Disclaimer: Youkai and hanyous were never once my idea to begin with, and unfortunately, neither are any of the Inu-Yasha characters. Simply put, this story is my creation, of sorts. And no, this idea wouldn't leave me alone.

 

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Whispers atDawn

-Jasmine Fields-

 

 

The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.

-Edgar Allan Poe-

 

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Chapter 1—Beginning Again

 

Darkness and miasma whipped and whirled wrapping its violent fury long, wide and deep - slashing, slugging, propelling its wicked unrepentant senile stealth...slithering, seething, sliding across the battlefield displaying deathly ghouls and gollems of creatures unearthly and unnatural of existence. Filling the sky morbid, beyond the blackest of night's black, the moon and stars shrieked while canvassed behind thousands upon thousands of armoured assailants tearing in treacherous roves from the heavens. No, the reality was hell disguised as a heaving regurgitating revile of filth and foulness flaunted over the land.

 

Space collided with space - and time collapsed against itself. Universes wailed and mourned as the fates still hoped and cleaved for the dreams and desires of mankind to pass. They were trembling like earthquakes scourging the entirety of earth praying to any awesome deity - any terrible god, even - that had the will to overcome the nightmare goading on the pain and misery of an already half starved, barely surviving nation. Desperately destinies cried to each other for an intervention upon humanity - an act of entirely undeserved mercy - of goodwill - as scales and walls of steely claws and teeth, though green and yellow-stained, indulged hungrily gnawing and gnashing on the organs and flesh of the weak.

 

Evil plastered the air thick carrying on its winds the howls and blood-curdling screams of innocents despairing and lingering in the confines of damp prisons made from crushed graves. Fire and brimstone - even in their tortured deaths - trapped them, barring them from ascending to the afterlife - with some magic potion, of sorts, sealing them to suffer. The Angel of Death - not even he boasted and bragged of the bribe baiting the strongest of humans from their safety...a ploy to lure them into Naraku's greedy grasping hands only to swiftly steal their life force. Not even the Angel itself would smirk upon such mortal desecration.

 

The victory was near - though for evil or good - it was a mystery at that time. The hearts of the humans were beating, fluttering, and battling for breath as the ranks of the youkai thundered upon them continuously - uncompassionate scorching the lands for their evil purpose and will to fight and overpower their hated enemy until their was neither strength or breath to escape anymore.

 

Fear for his friends - and their lives - had not yet become an issue when the half-youkai known as Inuyasha death gripped the hilt of his Tesseiga raising it and crashing it down to earth as a flash of lightning and roar of detonation pealed overhead. Naraku had completed the Jewel of Four Souls - then sneered as the strange woman known only as Kagome, rising against him after a near-fatal fall, fired an explosive arrow as she released a fervent steadfast wave of holy power that never existed prior to, during, or since the warring times that feudal inventions were introduced to Japan.

 

Kagome had run limp-legged, injury and all with full intent on reclaiming the jewel, toward the prince of evil in this age. Inuyasha, having been witness to the entire blast of priestess energy had leapt from his prostate crouch to rescue the woman he swore to protect. Rushing, panting, tripping toward their goal, just as Naraku pinned Inuyasha with a death glare, Kagome just barely reached out to touch object of pursuit as Inuyasha grasped her hand clinging protectively to move her from its malignant flare of influence.

 

In the end, nobody - especially the evil that haunted the wake of the dead - expected events to happen as they did...Naraku had shouted his spiteful wish in the same instance that the sweet lady holy priestess Kagome and the wild incorrigible hanyou Inuyasha silently thought their own tears pricking their own eyes when both hands enveloped the jewel simultaneously.

 

"Suffer Inuyasha!"

 

"Half-youkai or not, I will protect and love you forever."

 

"Happy --- I want Inuyasha happy."

 

The Jewel of Four Souls had granted all their wishes. Midoriko won a century or so-long battle and was greeted into realms where she could dream only of pleasant wonders. While the world was not set free from total tyranny and bloodlust, it drifted into unsettled strained understood peace that came from the knowledge of ages of dark warlords terrorizing the people and land - but not before Naraku had been struck dead, incapable of resurrection by the hand of the taiyoukai known as Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha's older half-brother, or before Kikyo bid Inuyasha her farewells falling to dust in the priestess robes she wore, and certainly not before Kagome danced like a breeze out of Inuyasha's iron grip only to fade away...

 

 

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"How long has it been?"

 

The day was chilled with the first frost - promising a mild winter, as it was still early in the season - while the long-suffered lingering of memory faded. Not so easily forgotten, the brutal sting of coldness prickled and steeped through flesh, then muscle, then bones and marrow dragging the darkness of his days through the entire passage of time that would never have an opportunity to heal the unmentioned unspecified incompleteness that engulfed his condemned being.

 

"I don't know - 8 years and then some since she disappeared?"

 

"You still think about her."

 

He took his time - choosing to answer cautiously, without being untruthful. The wind swept over him, his eyes fluttered and he spared a gulp conscious of the fever igniting his loins with the mere implication of her name - the subject of affection he so frequently attempted to elusively dodge.

 

"Yes."

 

"The well?"

 

The 500-year crater of separation chasmed and pitted itself against his bedeviled soul. He spurned his existence.

 

"Sealed forever."

 

"How long have we - ?"

 

"One year, two months."

 

"That's all?"

 

Quirking an eye upward, Inuyasha sighed, sparing room for the wretched cursed place hidden in the recesses of his heart for an unmentioned, unspoken other. Looking over, he concentrated his attention to drape an arm around her shoulders silently trying to reassure her while she leaned against his frame.

 

“You won't say… but you're still in love -- ”

 

“…With you.” He interrupted, with half a mind to run off the nervous energy building between his thighs. It was a lie, he knew. But he had faced harshness and uncouthly spat words demeaning and dishonoring his heritage… and couldn't bring him self to be so cruel as to destroy her hope so early in her youth. He was positive that she never wandered from her naïve dreams… more so than even the one he protected.

 

“With her.” She corrected, lowering her eyes and turning her face away; she was well aware of her naivety with matters of the heart - though he almost always distanced himself at the mention of her when brought up... no matter how subtle. Funny, she didn't remember him being so quiet in his younger years, she reasoned. She was certain he would never broach the subject on his own ever again.

 

Of course, he would never tell her the entire truth; they both were quite aware as they made peace with this unvoiced acknowledgement.

 

And he, Inuyasha - would never have his words completely understood the way they were intended when he wanted to say something close to his heart. His true confession would be unbearable to mention. After all, he lost his entire half dog demon god damned forsaken fucking identity and life those ancient eternal years ago.

 

"I'm surprised that bastard brother of mine hasn't said anything."

 

"He won't."

 

With near positive certainty, he knew that Rin was probably right, when she clasped her hand around clawed fingers.

 

 

 

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A/N: I have an idea for this, but I was hoping that someone could tag-team effort with me on this one....I don't know if I can multi-task to the degree some author's do...so, anyone up for the challenge of an Inu/Rin ficlet (maybe 4 or 5 chapters max)? If so, I would like a sample of your writing emailed to me with any idea that you might want included (not sent as a review, please) and then we'll work up some game plan to give life to this one. Admittedly, it'll be Drama/Romance with some angst...and for now, the rating is PG-13 (but who knows...that could change). I really don't know what my obsession with angst is all about, but generally makes for a better story line, right? -Jazz-