Turn On Me
By Notes-and-Photographs
Prologue
Family. Since birth, it had been instilled in my being that it was the only thing that mattered. Without family, you were nothing. You must always forgive, must always obey, and always, always respect your elders. Friends, boyfriends, lovers, neighbors, and random people on the street: all these were ephemeral. Your family was not. It was something you could never be rid of and something you should never want to be rid of. At the end of the day, family was the people you could always go back to. Admittedly, this was a good philosophy to live by. It inculcated a sense of morality and values into the young that was rarely seen these days. When used properly, it allowed a family unit to be closer than ever.
It was primarily my father that impressed these virtues upon me. And until I was twenty, I never dreamed that I would be forced to choose between my beliefs and not only my happiness, but the happiness of another. It was unfortunate that, at that time, I had not been freed from the grips of these ridiculously drastic familial rules. When my father had been alive, they had made sense. They weren't vicious and cruel. They never would have deprived me of what mattered to me more than anything else in the world: love. But after his death, the dynastic values that had been propagandized in him from his youth from his father, and his father before that, fell to pieces. They turned into instruments of control, when considered at all. My father was the glue that held us together. I can clearly remember when I enjoyed spending time with my family and I can safely say that it was at least ten years ago. Now, I didn't even recognize my mother, my elder sister, my aunt. The death of my father had changed them permanently, had changed the way they treated me forever.
It is even more unfortunate that, while I had not been freed from the grips of these twisted rules, at the time that they affected me most, I had no desire to be free. In my mind, I would do anything, anything, to make things go back to the way they used to be. But you can't change the past; I know that now. You can only learn from it, and hope that you don't make the same mistake twice. And I assure you, I haven't.
Inuyasha Azuma. Or, as he is referred to by my family, "the mistake"; an aberration, if you will. Let me tell you, it didn't start that way. The first day I met Inuyasha, I thought him a crass, brash, hooligan unworthy of my attention. He thought me a stuck up, snobby, goody two-shoes. These, and other similar descriptions, were passed back and forth between us. Stick us in a room together and one of us would end up dead. It remained this way for three out of our four years at S— University. And even though we disliked each other, we couldn't stay away. I was an English major and he was a music major. You would think that our paths would cross rarely, if at all, but he was everywhere I went, no matter how hard I tried to avoid him, and I'm sure it wasn't purposeful. At least, in the beginning.
In our senior year, everything changed. I don't quite know what it was that changed; was it me, was it him, was it just the way things were meant to be? But they did change. The sight of him no longer made me want to scream. I suppose that, perhaps, after three years, we were just tired of arguing, of giving our friends headaches, of ruining fun evenings. We just didn't talk to each other. And then, in October, he asked me out. I was intrigued and I said yes. From then on, everything seemed to click. We were only together eight months, but I felt more in those eight months than I would ever feel again. Our romance may not have been long, but it was true. I loved Inuyasha Azuma then and I still love him now. Nothing will ever change that fact.
A week before graduation, in the interim between when classes end and graduation, he asked me to marry him. I said yes. A week later, at graduation, I said no. My family would never hear of it. Inuyasha was a brilliant musician, but he had no direction, no career, and, most importantly, no money. My aunt, my father's sister and my trusted confidant, forbade me from marrying the boy. I obeyed, reluctantly, and walked away. Overnight, I became a different person. I never considered myself to be very pretty, but when I was dating Inuyasha, I felt radiant all the time. Now that he was gone, I felt washed out and solemn. My aunt, once my closest friend, became a distant relative. Deep down, I could never forgive her.
But family was all that mattered. And without them, I was nothing. But, as I've come to realize four years later, without Inuyasha, without love, I'm less than nothing.
A/N: I know what you're thinking: Why in the world is this chick starting yet another story when she hasn't finished TCW yet?! I've asked myself the same thing. And the only answer I have for you is that I'm tired of TCW and have no motivation for it. So rather than just slap something together, I'm gonna wait it out and then come back and finish it the right way.
So anyways, new story. An Inuyasha Persuasion, if you haven't already picked that up. I finished the book a couple weeks ago and the plot bunnies have been driving me mad since then. And I finally gave in. It's short, but it's a prologue. Chapters will get longer. How fast I update will depend on the response. I have no set schedule for it, as of yet.
Lemme know what you think! Hit the review button!
Emily
NaP