Slipped Away
Ch1/one-shot
By Zeldagurl
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or any of the songs I may mention.
Authors note:
First, I'd like to dedicate this fiction to everyone who has lost a pet, no matter how small or how big they were. No matter the circumstances. The feelings remain the same. I thought I knew what death was, and now I stand in the wake of it, and I finally understand it like everyone else who has experienced it. Pets are a huge part of our lives, and we will never forget them.
And I also want to dedicate this fiction to my Katze (Caatza). You were the best friend I could ever have asked for, and now without you, I don't know where I am anywhere. I hope with all of my soul and all of myself, that you've gone someplace peaceful and happy. And that you can forgive me for what I let happen... You were everything to me, and I miss you.
This fiction is the story of me and my cat, told in the perspective of Kagome. All of these feelings have been felt, and all of these things have happened. It will still be Inuyasha and Kagome primed, but it's more centered on Buyo and Kagome.
This is not being written for reviews, and although I love reading your opinions; this is really to try and get out my feelings of losing my cat. I hope you'll still read and review like you've always done. Thank you
(Begin)
I remember my Buyo as clearly as I remember how much I loved him. It was a love that is more than I could ever explain. It wasn't consuming, it wasn't jealous, and it wasn't painful. It was indescribable and so simply basic that I can only explain by telling you what sort of relationship we had.
I'd lie in bed, trying to sleep for school the next day; and I'd feel his weight settle on the soft pillow that my head lay on. I'd hear him purr, and feel him try to get under my blanket because it was his favorite thing to do. He loved lying underneath the blanket with me, purring beneath my fingers, rolling around under there while I was trying to go back to sleep.
I'd always stay up an hour later because of him, but I really didn't mind...
I'd eventually have to kick him out when I really wanted to go sleep, and he'd sleep somewhere close, still purring. I'd smile as he would look at me before closing his eyes for the night. I loved him then.
Sometimes, I'd pick him up from where he'd been watching me, holding him close to me and burying my nose in his soft fur. He would let me cuddle him close before he had had enough, and would leap from my hold to eat or something.
But still, He looked me in the eyes like no other cat I've known. Like he knew my secrets, like he understood me more than I understood myself. It was only natural that I trusted him. I trusted him to be with me when I was in all sorts of moods, and I loved him for being there with me.
Whenever I would pet him, he always responded with his whole body. Rubbing his head against my hand as it passed his head, or raising his rump as I passed over that as well.
He'd come running as soon as I would reach out my hand... He and I had a rhythm that flowed between us, like an unspoken song. I'd pet him, scratch behind his ears, feel him purr. He would just always be there for me; loving me unconditionally even when Inuyasha would not.
He was such a wonderful cat. Such a beautiful little thing...
When I'd cry about Inuyasha, he would come to me and meow in my face, probably wondering why I was so upset. He lay in my lap until I stopped sobbing. He would sleep right next to me when I cried myself to sleep. So when I think back to those times, I guess I can never say that I was all alone, because in truth I wasn't...
Plus, it's not to be ignored that he put up with Inuyasha at the best of times. I shudder when I think back to the things Inuyasha did to him.
I placed the picture back on the dresser table among the crumpled tissues. I lay back in bed, pulling the covers up and wiping my tears away; hiding from the reminders around my room by facing the wall.
I sighed and let my mind drift away from me; and, of course, it goes to him. I close my eyes and see the vet's office.
I open them again before I can relive a nightmare that's been haunting me for days.
I didn't want to think about the emptiness I'm facing tomorrow, and the day after that. That emptiness hurt me more than any physical pain I've ever felt. I want to stop thinking about him and I want to stop crying. But it doesn't seem right to try and forget about him; I don't even know why it occurred to me to try. I didn't think I'd even ever be able to forget... I probably shouldn't have been too worried...
He was a cat, yes; he was an animal who was with me for a short time compared to the length of a human lifetime. That seemed to be the more factual, grey side of things that presented themselves in my mind. Things die all the time. It's not like he could have lived much longer after we put him down. In all fairness, it was more of a comfort that we put him down without pain.
But then, there was the part of everything that made me remember him being there, looking at me with those loving eyes and making me love him more than I thought possible. There was the part of me that missed him so completely; the part of me that couldn't breathe in this cloud of grief and pain that surrounded me.
Where was he? Where did pets go when they've died? Where did we send him that day? Was he still with me? Or is he so far away? Could he really have been gone so quickly, so completely?
Would he really not be there when I get up to go to the kitchen? Will he not be there waiting at my door? Will he really not be there?
These questions and more plagued me, and wouldn't let me rest my tired mind. And of course it wasn't just questions that blocked out any ray of light or hope in my heart.
One moment he had been alive in my arms, and the next, he was dead on the table. How I be expected to deal with a thought like that in my head? How can I justify letting that happen? How could I not blame myself? I could have stopped it... Some way... Somehow...
The thought that I've been thinking since he left pops into my mind, making me face harsh truth once again.
What have I done?
I snuggled deeper into my soft coverlet, staring at the brown writing desk sitting in front of me. Looking without comprehending; I couldn't take the pain. It was so hard to think about him, it was so hard to try and understand what happened.
But you can't choose your dreams, no matter how much they're going to hurt you or even help you.
And dream I do...
(flash)
She stood in the vet's office, hardly believing what she was there to do.
This wasn't really going to happen, was it? It all just seemed surreal and unnatural. It seemed a hallucination; it seemed that she would be able to wake herself up, out of this hellish idea.
The bright white walls mocked her, and the sterile unnatural tools and chemicals gleamed impersonally from the desk across from where she stood. Buyo sat in his cage, meowing and looking around, scratching to get out. Kagome looked down at him and felt her heart lurch as her eyes caught on his. He watched her for a few seconds, and then turned his attention to the door once again.
Why was she doing this?
Her mother sat calmly in the chair by the door, staring determinedly at the floor. She clutched her brown leather purse like it was her own beating heart, gripping it so as not to lose it.
Kagome knew that the people waiting in the vets office had stared at her had wondered why her eyes were red and why she occasionally sobbed. She hadn't really cared. She had wanted to distract herself from thinking about what she had to do.
She thought to treasure each second of life Buyo had left; to remember each look, each touch, everything about him for when she wouldn't have him. Her tears welled up in her eyes and she turned her head away to ward them off.
How could she be standing here, letting it happen? Life wasn't supposed to work this way. Kagome knew that beings have to die, she understood that. But she just didn't want to have to let go of anyone now. She didn't want to do it.
The door shut behind her and she looked back, seeing a nurse and a doctor moving slowly towards the table. Her heart quickened and her eyes widened. All of the sudden her mind began to spiral everywhere, moving at a pace that only let her watch and not react.
The doctor prepared a pinkish looking liquid and loaded it into an injector's chamber, looking at it to make sure he had the right dosage loaded. The nurse opened the cage, looking backwards at the doctor and then to my mother.
"Is this your first time with this procedure?" Her mother nodded, moving to stand closer to the cat and herself, biting her lip as hard as she could without breaking skin. Kagome stared numbly at Buyo, not believing, not understanding, and just seeing. She could do nothing else.
"Alright." The doctor said, finishing his check on the poison and motioning for the nurse to take Buyo out of the cage and position him on his side, with his back legs open.
"This is a large dosage of a narcotic drug; it should take five seconds for it to do its work."
Kagome repeated that number in her mind while looking at her cat desperately; Five seconds? So he would be dead in just five seconds? How could that be? Kagome thought that she would have time to at least say goodbye as Buyo was leaving! Why would it be over in five seconds; Kagome knew that she would need a lot more than that to say goodbye, for her own sanity's sake.
Before she knew it, the doctor had inserted the needle into her cats lower belly, and was about to inject. No! Why wasn't she stopping this?! It was wrong! Why did she have to say goodbye to him?! Why couldn't they just live they had? Why couldn't she have more time? Why?! She couldn't breathe.
Kagome sobbed.
Her mother breathed.
Buyo stared at Kagome.
The doctor pushed forward, and immediately, Buyo turned and lay his head down, closing his eyes slowly, yet almost immediately.
No!
The doctor and the nurse wouldn't move fast enough. She tried to move past them, she tried so hard to get to him.
'I want to say goodbye! Move!'
No matter how fast she moved, no matter how polite she was being, letting them move before as she was taught, he still...
Oh God...
He...
He wasn't... moving anymore. He wasn't breathing... He was gone. It had only been five seconds! Could something really die that quickly? How could he be gone, when she hadn't been touching him; she hadn't been holding him close to her heart.
She imagined things happening so differently before, but she could never have imagined this. His quick death, nor the enormous anchor of pain that dragged her down to the bottom of it all. The realization of what she'd let happen, and the hurt that pounded in her chest like a hammer.
"Buyo! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I love you!" She screamed through her tears, laying her hands on him and choking on her own sobs, her own pain. What had she done?! Why?! He was gone!! And she had let it happen!
Why?!
She hyperventilated, knowing only the site of her cat, lying on the table with no life in his body. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe!
"Buyo..! I'm so sorry!"
Her mom cried beside her, although not nearly loud enough. Even if she was wailing at the top of her lungs, Kagome wouldn't have thought she was sad enough.
Kagome wanted so badly for Buyo to look up and meow at her, to look at her with those eyes and to make her feel happy again. She wanted that so badly. She wanted to feel him purring in her arms again, she wanted to be with him again. She wanted to pet him, but she was so afraid; petting him and feeling him not respond would confirm the nightmare.
'Look up baby kitty! Look up at me please!' She thought, pleading with anything that would listen to restore her cat to her.
"I'm going to wait in the waiting room, okay?" Her mom said, clearing her face of any traces of crying and moving towards the door.
"Come when you're ready." She left as Kagome didn't even respond, still looking down at Buyo's body, lying on the table.
As soon as her mom had left, Kagome leaned back against the wall behind her, making her face level with Buyo's.
"Oh Buyo..." She whispered.
She couldn't breathe, and she couldn't stop crying. Her only attempt at composing any words only ended up narrating her thoughts.
"Buyo. I'm so sorry. I love you so much. I'm so sorry."
She petted him softly, just the way she used to when he would greet her from coming home from school. Rubbing behind his ears and beneath his jaw, just how he used to love it. He would purr, and move as she did it, always coming back after he had passed from her hand.
Kagome knew he was dead, and his lack of response only proved that the nightmare as she had thought it would; this terrible dream was really real...
He didn't move, and he didn't rub his little head against her hand. He lay quietly, still as death. With no expression and no personality; nothing but the stillness that life had left him with.
That was what Kagome couldn't bear.
She pet him one last time and stood by the door, not wanting to see him dead anymore. She looked back every other few seconds, wiping her tears away; but she always turned back to the hallway. Every time she laid eyes on him, a new batch of tears flooded her, made it so incredibly hard to breathe.
She couldn't breathe...
She didn't feel that she deserved to breathe, so it didn't matter.
But still, she couldn't breathe.
(Switch)
And with that, I left. I left him lying dead on a table, in a vet's office. Because of my own weakness, I ran away out of that place. I cried the whole way home.
It was so suffocating; I just couldn't breathe, even if I was far away from the place that he had died. My own memories turned on me and made me blame myself; so I couldn't sleep.
What hurt me the most after I had gotten past his death was that I just left him there. For the first time in my life, I didn't and still don't know where my kitty is. I didn't know if they buried him, or if they burned him into ashes. I didn't know if he was donated to science and dissected in some high school biology class.
I didn't want to think of him being burned to ashes, or cut wide open. I didn't want to think of him lying cold in the ground.
I just wished he was here...
"Kagome...?"
I heard him calling my name. But I didn't want to open my eyes. I didn't feel as though I had the strength to. Maybe if I kept them closed, I would die and forget the pain I felt clenching my heart at the moment. It felt like it would take the strength of the strongest man in the world to make me be able to open them. Because my lack of will to open them was gone, and the strength was replaced with blinding pain.
But then, I've always thought Inuyasha was amazingly strong...
For Inuyasha's sake, I opened my eyes slowly. He crouched in front of my bed with a stony look on his face. I knew though, that he was concerned, seeing as he was much closer to my bed then he usually might be.
Did he know? Or did he smell my tears with those amazing senses of his?
He moved a little closer and penetrated my eyes with his, resting a clawed hand on the bed.
I hated that he had to see me like this. So raw and unkempt; nothing like the Kagome he was used to dealing with every day. I got the feeling as I looked into his eyes that he was maybe just a little afraid of me; Or at least of what I might be feeling.
"Hi Inuyasha." I said softly, blinking and sniffling faintly. I pulled my blanket tighter around me, and swallowed. I was about to dismiss my tears and frazzled state in order to distract him from the truth because I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to see Buyo's little face in my head, and I didn't want to remember him just... Just laying there, dead. Not breathing, no longer with me.
I shook my head. No! I don't want to...
"What's wrong?"
"N-nothing."
I scrambled around in my mind, trying to think of the right words to say. What could I possibly say?
"Don't lie. I know something's wrong." He said bluntly, his eyes boring into mine as I searched for some
way to avoid the whole thing.
He was being stubborn as usual, so I kind of already knew that I couldn't get myself out of it. Once he knew that he didn't know something that I was keeping from him, he always demanded that I tell him. But I didn't want to tell him, that was the point.
I didn't want to cry in front him. Not about this...
"Inuyasha, I-I don't want to talk about it."
I sat up and leaned against the wall, keeping my eyes on anything but him. I could feel my shabbily assembled center crumbling beneath me. My tears filled my eyes; it became so hard to breathe.
I didn't want to cry in front of him. I didn't want to make him see me like this. I wanted to be alone, I wanted to curl up inside of myself, and never come back.
Oh Buyo... I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry
I loved you
Suddenly, I felt something surround me as I began to lose control of myself. I found my head tucked protectively underneath his and my body held within his strong grasp.
"You might as well talk, you know. I'm not going anywhere."
So he wanted to know? He truly would wait for me to be able to tell him everything? How could I push him away now? The truth was kind of obvious, even in my fragile state of mind, I couldn't. I had no choice but to tell him.
I guess sitting in my room alone wouldn't prove to get me out of my pain.
All of this 'trying not to cry' crap felt so frivolous and stupid. I felt so stupid for pushing everyone away. I felt so stupid for not wanting him near me for this, and for wanting to be alone.
"We put Buyo to sleep." I said softly in a broken voice.
"To sleep?" He replied, rubbing my back as I breathed loudly through a sob.
"We gave him a poison so that he would die without pain." It sounded so barbaric, looking at it through Inuyasha's eyes. Thinking of it that way just made it that much worse.
"I see." He pulled me closer and buried his nose in my hair. I knew that he wouldn't be able to understand completely. I couldn't possibly expect him to. But I was glad that he was making an effort. That he was there. I was just a mess of so much emotion...
"I miss him so much."
I hadn't realized how lonely I was without Buyo's familiar presence. I hadn't realized how much I needed him, and how much I would miss him before we put him down. I hadn't realized that he would leave so huge of a void in my life.
"It's hurts so much." I continued.
"I know."
He pulled away and looked down at me; his expression was one of concern.
"I'm sorry that I can't protect you from this kind of stuff. I'm sorry that you have to hurt like this." He said quietly, his eyes finding mine and holding them. He looked so sorry, as though it was his fault.
"I guess everyone has to hurt once in a while." I didn't want him to feel sad over me, he didn't have to be. I
didn't want him to be.
He was silent for a moment, watching me as I watched him. He opened his mouth after a short time and spoke in a strained voice.
"I know. I just... I can't stand knowing that you've been crying, that you're hurt. Because every time I see you like this... I hurt too." He looked away, staring angrily at the bed beneath us.
I smiled slightly at his admission. Even beneath my sorrow for my cat; it still made me feel just a little bit better.
It's so ironic that no one but him can make me feel better like this. I guess it's just one of those ways you know that you belong with someone. Even if fate has a way of distracting that certain someone...
I came back to rest in his embrace, closing my eyes and listening to his beating heart. It beat fast.
It was there with me, alive and strong. He was here with me, being here while my cat was now gone. I was so grateful. I was comforted that I could hear him, that I could feel him here; holding me. In that moment in time, I guess he was kind of like Buyo; comforting me because a part of my love had died and faded away.
"Thank you Inuyasha." I sniffled, and he wrapped his arms around me tightly.
(switch)
Buyo's death was one of the hardest things I've had to experience yet. I loved my cat so much. The little things and the small familiar comforts he used to provide me remind me of him as time passes. I still miss him, and I still cry because he's gone. I will never forget my little buyo.
Time has passed, and it gets easier to breathe, especially with Inuyasha's help. He holds me when I break down, and comforts me, understanding that even the smallest thing can still hurt me. I'm so thankful that he cares.
I'm not okay yet though, and it sometimes seems that I never will be. The empty places that buyo left have yet to be filled in my heart. The story isn't close to being over yet. I still have some road to cover before I'm able to move on.
But I'm getting there.
And for now, that's all I can hope for.
Authors note: It's been at least two weeks since I started this fiction. I think that it's been one of the hardest two weeks of my life. I might have lost some of the focus that fueled this fiction in the beginning, but I still feel that it served its purpose. I'm starting to feel better, and a little less lost.
But the truth is that my cat's death has given me a whole new perspective on life. It's kind of depressing, and I know it's changed me.
I guess the only part of this fiction that isn't true is that Inuyasha is there with Kagome. I unfortunately had to deal with it on my own, so that might be a little dramatic. I have had my friends, who've been understanding and kind. I'm so thankful for them.
And like I said before, this fiction is dedicated to everyone who has lost a pet, or has been forced to let go of one. I know how you feel, and I now can identify how a death really feels. I also dedicate it to my cat, who loved me no matter what I did wrong or right.
I will always love her, and I will always miss her...
p.s I'd also like to thank sleepwalking chicken and HAP for the fiction called Gone. It's a very realistic fiction that deals with the same subject as this one does. Check it out if you're interested. It helps to know that someone else has shared your pain, and has survived it.
Thank you
Song Lyric:
And I'm still waiting for the rain to fall
Pour real life down on me
Cause I can't hold onto to anything this good
Good enough
Am I good enough for you to love me too?
-Evanescence, Good Enough
(By the way, the new Cd is awesome. Just as good as the first and maybe even a little better! I totally suggest you guys check it out.)