...

"Shinjitsu no Uta"

Nineteenth Summer

After She Left Him

...

Inuyasha could only remember a couple times when he thought he'd die because he was drowning. The first time was by far the more frightening of the two experiences.

He remembered it like it was yesterday, how the water filtered through his nose into his throat, the way his head fell suddenly heavy and the water's weight pressed against his eardrums. The frantic beating of his tiny heart in his chest - he'd only been a child that time - and the way his frantically clawing arms had slowed along with it. He'd been attacked that time, thrown against the ground by a giant river serpent before he'd even known what had hit him, then dragged into the water even while he struggled against the bonds of its massive tail. It had been smiling at him with that terrible serpentine grin, its cold black eyes fixed on his tiny writhing form, two long fangs curling hungrily over his body.

That time he might have been a tiny brat, only just beginning to understand what a terrible world he lived in. That time he'd been young and full of defiant life, and he refused to die even through he had never been so submerged in water. This time, though… This time he didn't have that defiance. This time it'd been his own ineptitude that had landed him in this position, staring into the flaming orange light of the sunset as it shattered against the rippled water above him, bubbles rising to meet it, tickling his fingers and feet as they passed.

There'd been a fight. An oni had attacked them suddenly, unexpectedly, totally out of the blue, taking them all off guard as it threw out its arm, catching Inuyasha in the chest and sending him careening off the side of the cliff they'd been traveling along into the lake below at speeds that would have broken every bone in a normal person's body. Fortunately it hadn't broken every bone in his body, it had just shattered his elbow and left his left leg snapped cleanly in half.

Lucky me, he thought dazedly, watching as another silvery, writhing pocket of air escaped his open lips and billowed up to the sunset surface. Of course, he could have swam back up to the surface if he really wanted to. He could have broken that thin line between the glorious cold air his lungs burned to breathe and the watery warm depths his body had decided to settled comfortably against if he'd really wanted to. But even as he watched a tiny curl of red blood stream from the cut on his lip, as it swirled in the wake of his sinking body and dissolved into the clear darkness, he really couldn't find it in himself to care.

It'd been five moon cycles, eight days, and seven nights since she'd left him and he'd lost half of who he was. He didn't know that he'd lost half of his soul - his hanyou soul, not his human heart or his demon blood - until very recently, but it'd been eating away at him ever since. He hadn't been fighting at full strength. He hadn't been breathing as deeply as he used to. He hadn't seen as far as he used to, he couldn't smell the clear forest like he used to, he hadn't slept as soundly as before, he couldn't hear the sounds of silence. There had been nothing that really made him want to do anything. He didn't want to eat, he didn't want to sleep, he didn't want to stay awake. The fact that Sango and Miroku had gotten him to stop wandering around the Well like a zombie was a miracle in the first place, and now here he was. Sinking into the comfortable warmth of some lake in the middle of nowhere and on the cusp of reality.

This is where the memories came. This is where they took over. This was where visions of his mother flashed before his eyes; she hadn't taught him how to swim. She'd died before she could. The thought probably hadn't even crossed his mind. He was vaguely glad that she had died while he was so young. He hadn't understood death at that age. He'd missed her, but he hadn't felt the ripping, tearing anguish of losing her like he would have now.

Another mass of rippling silver bubbles rose from his mouth.

Kikyo's death was painful. He could still remember the sensation of her crumbling to dust in his arms, the warmth of her rescued soul as it passed through him like a balm. But she was free. She had reached Nirvana, her salvation had come at last, and she'd left him. He'd come for her, and she had said that had been enough. But was it enough? He still wondered sometimes, before the absolute peace, the gentle warmth of her soul settled over him. It was enough. That was good.

A third breath left him, this one considerably smaller than the others, and trailing with a hundred smaller bubbles that flew to the surface of the lake. The light that was fractured across the thin window to reality flashed and twinkled like a thousand tiny gems, though darker than they had been before, like the little lights that had danced in her eyes. Before he could stop his darkened mind, he could see her, with her hair like midnight and her kind hands that could both comfort and kill, her soft eyes that glittered when she looked upon him.

Gods, how he missed her. His strength left him, along with his last dwindling breath. There had been two times he had been drowning. The first had been infinitely more terrifying than the last. Mostly because he'd had life yet to live then. He didn't want to give that up. But now, without her…

Why should he?

He closed his eyes. Let the comforting companionship of death and numbness wrap around him like a blanket. He'd see her again, in the afterlife that he'd never hoped to meet before. He wasn't afraid. He didn't care to live this half life he'd have without her.

He sank into the darkness and let the darkness take him. He let her hands touch his face, the memory of her voice wash over him and fill his empty lungs.

Then it wasn't her hands that were ghosting over his cheeks, but two pairs of strong, callused fingers and palms that grasped for his arms, his clothes, reaching, pulling, yanking him up into fiery eventide and dragging him onto the grassy bank. He coughed, water spilling from his lungs, past his lips, heaving and gagging at the unnatural taste as his head cleared.

"Inuyasha! Inuyasha are you okay!" Sango was crying. Inuyasha looked up at her out of bleary eyes. There was a splatter of blood across her cheek, and the Hiraikotsu slung across her back was stained red. Miroku's face appeared beside hers. There was something nasty across his face that Inuyasha didn't want to place.

"Inuyasha?" he asked. Inuyasha hacked again, his lungs burning with cold air. So, so cold, after the warmth of his watery grave. "Stay with us, Inuyasha.

"Stay with us."

Glossary:

Hiraikotsu - Sango's bone boomerang weapon; "flight bone"

A/N So where the fetch does "Shinjitsu no Uta" - which means "Song of Truth" come into play with all this, you might be wondering?

The fifth Inuyasha credits song is "Shinjitsu no Uta". The fifth Inuyasha credits video shows Inuyasha drowning. I do suggest you go listen to it and watch it, you'll see what I mean.

And really, he sort of did learn the truth in this made up circumstance. He really didn't care anymore, as sad as it was.

hHHHNNNNNGGGG suffer.

Currently listening to: Shinjitsu no Uta - Do As Infinity (I love them, holy crap)