By Midoriko-sama
Saturday August 23 03
"INUYASHA!!"
Kagome watched as the man she loved, half youkai, human, received a cut all along his abdomen, down, down to his lower belly, and then a shower of deadly miasma he disappeared under.
"No!!" she screamed as she turned unto the other hanyou, who they had been seeking and ravaging after for the past four years of her life. Four years that had made her life, for now all that came before and all that was in the other world was irrelevant and futile.
It attacked her, he who they had come to call Naruku, and she would not have dodged the long tree roots issuing from his body, she would have shot him to death and they would have impaled her, but she would have been content. But Hiriakotsu came in their way and her arrow missed aim.
Again she leathered an arrow, again her vision flicked to the unmoving two on the ground, Miroku and Inuyasha, again her eyes blistered and swelled with tears, again the tentacles came, and again she let go.
Kikyou had given her these arrows. It was like her revenge too. Naraku had shed Onigumo like cloak of flesh, and was now half youkai no more. Kikyou had died again on his hands, and the pain she had seen on her beloved's face as he did it in front of him had killed her with him.
Now all she had left to do is take his life and die. She indeed felt like Kikyou now. The arrow was let fly, and it flew true. Another arrow, and another. Her vision blared by tears and a scream issuing through her mouth that was stronger than the scream coming from the creature before him as arrow by arrow he found himself helpless and inexorably defeated before her.
Her powers had at last come forth, through her grief. It was to be the destiny of a miko. Kikyou had grieved her humanity, and so been powerful in her prime as a miko. Now Kagome was grieving all. Her heart was dying away, and all around her was black. She was grieving Miroku, she was grieving Kohaku, she was grieving Kikyou, she was grieving Kouga. She was grieving Rin.
And she was grieving a part of her own soul. She was Grieving Inuyasha.
Arrow after arrow, pieces of Naraku came away, and he began screaming mercy instead of blasphemy, he began pleading instead of insulting and demoneering. But it was too late, Kagome was now grieving her humanity also. Colder blood than that of Naraku himself ran in her grief.
The last arrow she issued she aimed at his heart. Kikyou had been forced to aim the arrow to the heart of he who she loved, and even then, she had not found it within her to kill him, but only to seal him. Kikyou had confessed that she had hoped to return in another body and release him again to a life together. Kikyou who's body had been crumpling to the dust she was as she talked had given her the arrows and said that she, Kagome, was Kikyou's destiny. Then she had gone, asking her to love Inuyasha. There was no need of that request.
They the lay both dead, and now the arrow pierced the heart of the true demon. But she had no love for him, she had no compassion for him, she had nothing for him- or for anybody else anymore. There was no hope in this arrow, there was no love in this arrow, there was no pain or tears or regrets in this arrow. There wasn't even anger. There was just her power destroying him completely.
She watched him annihilate with cold wonder. She watched him go, and then let all fall from her hand to run to him, to Him.
He was still alive, but she couldn't move him. His body was nearly cleaved in two, and where the claw hadn't damaged the miasma was eating away, like seeing a corps in fast decay. He was conscious but he wasn't coherent. He didn't know she was there even though she was painfully aware that he was. She wished he were unconscious; it was not fair for him to have lived a life in pain and atrosciuos torture, because of a pure heart, and to die like this. It wasn't fair, he wasn't to die, he had lived the good life, he had been wronged, and yet he was dying the worst of deaths, in pain greater than she could imagine.
She had never even kissed him. She had never even held him to her like a lover. No, it wasn't fair, now she had Kikyou's blessing to be with him, and he was taken away. He couldn't even be with Kikyou anymore, she had returned to Kagome. No, it wasn't to end like this! It wasn't. .
She turned around to a scream. Sango and gathered Kohaku to her, but now the boy seemed to come to life once again, and had once again slashed at his sister. One of her arms held a deep bleeding gash.
Kagome couldn't bring herself to leave Sango, but mortal fear gripped her that Inuyasha would slip away in her absence, that she would miss his last moments that where the only ones she would ever be entitled to have with him. She hoped he would come to and talk to her, and tell her but once that he loved her.
She rose, but as she did so, so did another she had thought dead.
Miroku moved before Sango even as the voice of Naraku issued forth from Kohaku's mouth. Sango screamed as that alone rant her soul. Her brother's body had before been manipulated, but now his soul had been taken by Naraku's. He would never find peace- Sango was not even granted that thought. Kohaku's soul had not even been granted eternal peace.
Miroku cried to the world, asked his forgiveness of Sango, and then opened his Kazaana. No use now were the Seimayushu. Miroku took them all. And no use now where the screams and the change to Kohaku's voice, Sango was sobbing too loudly and painfully to hear.
Miroku screamed to the world once again as the creator of his affliction was taken into the affliction itself. He fell to his knees, too weak with all the poison he had taken in, but not only that. The black hole in his hand did not retreat and disappear with Naraku inside it. It widened and widened, took first his hand, and then his arm.
And then he turned to Sango and smiled, and told her to live, and to run, and to take care of his son.
Then he was gone
Kagome pressed Inuyasha to her as she ripped her eyes away savagely from Sango. Inuyasha's eyes were open and looking. He had seen the end of Naraku too. Maybe he resented not being the one to have taken him? It would be like her hanyou. She called to him and pressed him to her breast, and his eyes moved up to her. They were vibrant and amber, as she remembered the first time looking into them this close, when he had tried to explain Kikyou to her. But now they were vibrant in pain and affliction.
He opened his mouth and Kagome waited, looking at it. But nothing came. She looked back up at his eyes and found them dull. No, no, it wasn't fair, he wasn't to go. She had her blessing, they had her blessing and it was not to end like this, it wasn't fair, he was a good man, he wasn't to die in atrocious pain, she wanted to hear him say it at least once, at least once.
Sango walked up to her and sat beside her. She had had her last words of her lover, but she didn't even have his body to hold. Kagome had his body, but had never had a night as his lover, had never heard him say the words to her. Never would.
Sango hugged her. Kagome was sobbing too. Shippo came from his hiding place and wailed on his second lost father. They grieved. And wept and cried. It wasn't fair, Shippo kept saying, it wasn't fair. He had loved him like a father and he had died like his first father. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.
Kagome and Sango would not allow the villagers to bury the bodies. Kouga was taken by his pack. Kikyou's dust was taken by her sister. But the bodies of Inuyasha and Kirara, both the girls took with them. With them through the well.
Kagome's grandfather performed the burying prayers while his body was still in Kagome's arms. She would not, could not let him go.
She dug his grave with her hands, cleaned his body of the miasma. She couldn't purify it. She couldn't have without purifying him too. Sorry Inuyasha, forgive me, forgive me.
She placed him herself, in his grave below the Goshiboku. And there she sat with him in his grave, as he lay clean, as the rain came down, as Kikyou wept with her from the sky, as though Kagome too wanted to be buried with him.
She lay down on him, closed her eyes, like a lover ready for sleep after a night of love making. But there was no hum of heart beat, no murmur of breath.
Sango watched, and then descended next to her, took her up in her own arms like the sister she had become. Took her out of the grave. Kagome disentangled herself from her sister, and went back down into the hole. She took his collar, and she took his haori he had so often covered her with. She wore them both. Then both she and Sango covered the grave. She would never see him again. She would never see him again.
As the earth covered the last of his face, she knew she would never see him again.
Her mother's sobs came from behind her as she and her family held Shippo from digging at his father's grave and kept at a distance to respect their grief. Sango didn't even have a grave to weep over, for neither her brother nor her lover.
Hiriakotsu still sling on Sango's shoulder. The Shikon-no-tama still hung at Kagome's throat, now joined by Inuyasha's necklace. Their duty was not yet done.
Sango also had to give birth to Miroku's child. In due time.
************
"Shippo! It's time to go to school~!" Kagome called from the foot of the stairs. With a little spell or two, her son now looked like a charming tail-less, fox-footless six year old. He had gone to school for the past two years and mingled well.
Kagome herself had stopped going. Sango had been taken into the house. Miroku now was four years old. It was his first day of school too.
"We're coming sis!" said Souta running down the stairs. He was in secondary school now. His black high necked uniform suited him well. It was his first year in secondary school.
Kagome's mother hummed from the kitchen as she tended to the breakfast Kagome had made. She no longer went to school. She and Sango now tended the shrine and lived on its income. They would live like that, simply, and together. No other man would ever enter their lives, and they knew it. Their hearts wouldn't allow. So they would live like sisters.
Sometimes old friends of hers had come to visit, from school. She had presented Shippo to all as her son, shamelessly. They had explain his father's absence with a robbery. Kagome's mother had explained to any who visited that both the weddings of her daughters had been quiet, and that both men had been killed by a criminal in a robbery, while they had been in the country. None dared think it was a lie to cover. Sango's grief as she hugged her bulging tummy or her new born child every time someone asked of the father was enough to tell. Kagome's eyes told all for her, there was no need for tears.
Now all three women watched their children go to school. Mrs Higurashi watched Souta take Miroku's hand, the child Sango had her eyes on, while Kagome watched as her Shippo took his other hand. Then, going down the shrine steps, they began counting them.
Kagome smiled. She and Souta had always done that in their childhood.
She went to his grave, as every morning.
"Our son is coming well, and he lives in a world at peace, as you always wanted" said Kagome softly. Sango came up behind her.
"Inuyasha, tell my husband that his son has his name. Tell him that he is healthy, that he is whole, that his sacrifice was not in vain. Tell him that his son is happy"
"We miss you" said Kagome "We miss you both"
"We love you both" said Sango
"Until we meet again" they both murmured together. Sango held the prayer beads that once had been on her husband's glove and that he had given her some of their wedding night. Kagome gripped his beads aren't her neck, that had drank his sweat and blood. Then both women turned from the grave, as they did every single morning, and went to continue their life for the sons of the ones they loved.
Until, someday, they would meet again.
End
Oh dear, I'm really crying. Dear me, I'm not this emotional usually. Oh well, this is sooo sad. And I'm not crying only because it's sad! Inuyasha is REALLY finishing!! Soon! Noooo!! Not fair!!!! WAAAAAAA! *fountain tears effect*
*sniffles*
Midoriko-sama