Inuyasha
He pulled himself upright and snarled with fury as Ryukotsusei jeered at him. Red eyes with sky-blue pupils narrowed over two jagged purple claw-like lines on his cheeks, and long fangs grinned with feral joy as he ran towards the giant snake a hundred times his size. He heard the girl scream his name – a name he no longer acknowledged, and did not pause, disregarding the rusty old sword lying point-down in the ground to his side. It pulsed and called, a cool voice of reason in the turmoil of his mind – but he was fury, he was savage thrill, he was bloodlust and frenzy, and he did not even glance at it as he attacked. The snake, unprepared for his ferocity, fell within minutes, torn to pieces under unnaturally long, sharp claws and ripping fangs. He stood atop the corpse of the snake and howled his triumph to the heavens.
Some part of him – golden eyes and gentle hands – called out to him, telling him that by succeeding, he had failed, and had he failed, he would have succeeded. Inuyasha, he snarled his name, silencing him momentarily. The fang still called out to him, but he could not hear. The demon – that was all he was, not Inuyasha, not that weakling half-breed who needed to hide behind a fang to send blood spraying and end life.
The girl screamed again, and the demon felt a brief irritation. Why did she keep calling that name?
Others joined in, calling, and the demon snarled in vicious frenzy as the chorus of that name he hated inuyashainuyashainuyasha filled his ears. He leaped into the air, and with a few quick strokes ensured silence. Seven dead, including that old fool and his transport. The last one, the girl. His claw lifted to end her life.
She stared at him, fear in her eyes, and betrayal, but also hope, and pity, and too much love. He hesitated, caught by that expression, and then he turned and ran from it, ran with a speed greater than he had used against the snake. Her final cry rang in his ears – his too-sharp ears – as he ran from the girl.
He ran for months, or maybe it was years. He kept no count, and saw no calendars. His primitive mind had no need for the first and no understanding of the second. Rain and snow and sun, he relished them and hated them and ignored them like any animal. He sought shelter on the ground, disdaining the trees his inner-self had preferred – because he had preferred them, and he had been weak. He took no mate, and tolerated no companions. He killed what he saw, and ate what he killed, and cared not what it had been before its death. There was Meat, and there was Prey, and there was Need and there was Bloodlust. One sufficed to end the other.
Or it should have. The hated presence within his mind – the Inuyasha-creature – diminished as time went by, but his aching need and grief left a scar within the demon's mind; on the rare occasions when he needed to sleep he was troubled by brief, fever-bright dreams of that girl he had spared. The only one he had ever spared. His other self was tormented by the things the demon did, and the demon took pleasure in doing them, if only to ensure that the pain continued.
Sometimes, he sensed a presence near him, most like him but not quite. Dog demon, hunting. He avoided that presence cleverly, using every trick he had to mask his scent and his energy. It was stronger than he, even in this form, and if they fought – and they would fight to the death – then he would die, and he was sure of it.
He also felt another presence, one that made his other self bare his fangs and made his hackles raise. It did not please the demon, because he felt the same urge when that wretched spider-scent washed over his sensitive nose, and he disliked feeling anything that his other self felt. He felt the spider watching him occasionally, pleased with itself and viciously contemptuous, and tried to fight it, but it left before he could track it down. It fought the dog a while after the demon had come alive, and died by his strikes, and the power of two mikos. The dog barely survived, and the demon felt pleased, because the dog no longer attempted to follow him.
In the beginning, he could reason, after a fashion, but as time went by that diminished, until he could no longer understand that the grunting of humans and demons was, in fact, decipherable to the ear. He became a true animal, a white-haired, red-clad beast, the stuff of old wives' tales. And as his reason deserted him, so, too, did the reason he avoided the dog. And so it was that three years after his birth, the demon faced the dog in a grassy clearing on a bright, sunny day like the first time he had seen him.
The dog looked like him, the demon noted. White hair, and something in the features, although he was more refined than the demon. He snarled mindlessly at it, and golden eyes narrowed under magenta eyelids and the dog spat out an icy reply. He did not understand, but he caught that hated name, and it drowned out that inner instinct that warned him that to attack the dog would be to court certain death.
He charged.
A/N: So, if you liked it, review, dammit. I've never written anything remotely tragic before this. Thanks to anon, who reviewed the first chapter.