A/N: Warning - this is an alternative ending to a current story. It is recommend that Hooked (also found on my profile) be read first. Thank you! ...This is written because I didn't just want this (rather dark) plot-bunny to languish in my mind. I'm posting this now because: 1. It fits with the present context of the story. 2. To assure readers that this is how Hooked will NOT end. So you can feel less depressed when reading the story itself.
Catch and Release
Kichiruka swallowed his jumping pulse. He shouldn't have returned. But just once more to see Rin, he had thought. In that instant he was prepared to risk everything. Now he was in a colossal mess. The muddy grass of the brook's bank stained his pants' knees. Not that Kichiruka cared anymore. He knew what would come. Complete exile. His sole advocate had managed to negate death – a sentence Kichiruka would have preferred at this point.
"So, sorcerer," Sesshomaru addressed the second water-demon in his midst.
Tensai didn't care for the way the dog-demon eyed him. He glared back.
"You're skilled with memory. Make your student forget of this encounter."
Kichiruka inhaled sharply. "Master…"
"Don't!" Rin cried. Only Sesshomaru's arm barred her from running up to Tensai and begging him upfront.
The swordfish sighed and shook his head. "You're asking the impossible, Lord Sesshomaru. I cannot do that anyway."
A silver brow arched. "You are unwilling?"
"I am incapable." Tensai folded his arms. "Memory can be stored in different manifestations, but you can't destroy it. Only the source."
"So then it can't be helped." Sesshomaru raised his blade. Kichiruka squeezed his eyes shut.
"Wait!"
Sesshomaru paused. Bakusaiga tracing just along the nape of Kichiruka's neck, not yet biting.
"I'll…I'll try." Tensai brokenly stepped forward, yellow eyes adhered to the ground. He couldn't bear to look at Rin. No doubt she felt tenfold worse than he. Why did the kindest women have to carry the heaviest of sorrows?
"Master Tensai…please, no," Kichiruka pleaded, resisting the cool hand on his shoulder. "I'd…I'd rather die knowing I had met Rin than live without a trace of her in my mind."
Tensai knelt to his student's eye level. He wanted to say how sorry he was, but what good would that do? Sorry never brought anyone back from the dead. Blinking rapidly, Tensai cleared his vision before turning a sure, steady gaze to his student.
"Master, I don't…"
Tensai held only proceeded to hum the incantation. First, he granted one last token of mercy and put Kichiruka under. The process was much easier with the subject unconscious, taking some of the pain from at least one of the parties. At length, Tensai withdrew a fine sapphire shard from Kichiruka's ear. The light inside the shard glowed with an inner light that fluttered like a bird.
"His memory?"
"Only of the past year," the swordfish said. He smirked painfully. "We'd have to remove a small boulder to retrieve his memory entire." With one finger, Tensai delicately turned the shard over in his palm. It didn't hold simply Rin's time with him, but also everything Tensai had been convinced to share in the space since. Damn, he'll have to relearn everything, too.
A pulse of yoki pushed the water-demon to look up. Sesshomaru held out his hand. "I will destroy it."
Tensai nodded. "Of course."
"No! Master Tensai, please don't let him!"
"Forgive me, Miss Rin, but I cannot stop Lord Sesshomaru from destroying what he wishes…Once he finds it!" With all his strength, the swordfish flung the bright shard off into the distance.
Amber eyes widened as the shard left a glittering trail that glinted for a second in the sun and then vanished off beyond Inuyasha's Forest.
Tensai smiled. He hadn't done the right thing, but at least there was a chance that the right person might find it. There was a rationale to that. He sighed. And stark, physical pain suddenly knifed through his chest.
Sesshomaru recoiled his whip. "Such a sentimentalist."
oOo
I feel like I've lost something. Which is ridiculous because my personal possessions are all accounted for. I've turned this thought around a few times, when I don't have anything better to do, and wondered if I got it backwards. Like maybe I didn't lose something…maybe someone lost me.
And that makes even less sense. I know I don't belong to anyone. My folks lost me way back when I was small and no one's found me since. But that pain is centuries' old. So why does this feeling resurface now? To be suddenly unmanned by this whimsy, it's silly. And yet I find myself unable to laugh at it, too.
Who's missing me?
Not Tensai, that's for sure.
I don't know what brought it on, but the drinking I once suspected of him suddenly worsened, spiraling into blatant alcoholism. He used to always be snappish with me – then it deteriorated to him going back and forth between hating me and acting as guilty around me. I'm not sure what made him change his mind all of sudden. "It's easy to hate the ones you've injured," he once mumbled in between stupors. I'm still not sure if he was talking to me or something else his glassy eyes gaze off to. In any case, it was the last thing I heard him say.
I've kind of lost count how long it's been since I left Mikan. Twenty I guess. Give or take a year. I never thought wanderlust would find me again since I came to Mikan. But once it took hold, it rode me off and fast into the ocean. I felt only compelled to go. And maybe find who or whatever "lost" me. It's only recently that it occurred to me that maybe what I'm looking for can't be found at sea.
Yesterday, I took my first trip to the surface. For years, I've debated the temptation. It seemed so wrong somehow for a water-demon to abandon his mother element and yet…Well, it's not abandoning if you're only going to visit, right?
The sandy beaches were splendidly soft and curled between my toes, all the sun's warmth packed into every grain. But the dark forest beyond them tempted me farther away from the shore. The compulsion excited me and altogether creeped me out. Why on earth go inland? I took one look at the forbidding trees and a whiff of that exotic pine smell. Why not?
Today marks that I've wandered for about a day and half, and the fear of getting lost has completely evaporated. It's like being a little kid again. I couldn't get more lost than I already am so might as well make the most of it.
But now I'm thirsty. Not like, man, I need a drink, thirsty. More as in the sense that my whole body needs to be immersed in water again. And I'm far from the ocean. I was once told that water yokai have internal compasses that can guide them to water. I closed my eyes and just ran into a tree. On this second try I've gotten lucky and tripped up on a brook. It's a nice little refuge, but there's also a net here. Almost got stuck in it myself. Where there are nets there are humans. None of the stories I've heard offer a very flattering light. And yet I'm drawn with an insatiable curiosity. So after I soak up a bit, I hop out of the creek and forge on. I assume they live over the next hill.
Walking down the knoll, sure enough I find a village. I don't know how humans react to yokai, so I keep my distance. Well, that was the initial plan. I've walked but three paces closer to the perimeter when I pitch forward, a sharp crack still smarting on the back of my skull.
"Where the hell have you been?" a sliver-maned half-demon demands of me. He doesn't look much older than I am, or by however it is that halflings age, and a set of dog ears atop his head prick forward aggressively.
"Do I know you?"
He swears gustily before grabbing me by the collar and hauling me into the village. I guess I'm going to get my tour. Albeit, it's not very thorough. Even though I'm on my feet now, the hanyo is walking to briskly for me to take in no more than a few sights at a time. I try to focus on what's being said instead. I'll take a gander and guess that these people are used to their resident half-demon because although some mumble at my presence, no one rebukes me. They aren't all rushing for their torches and axes like most tales describe. A few even hollered hello like they recognized me. Impossible since I've never been here before.
"Um, I'm sorry, but what's your name?"
"Inuyasha," the half-demon barks. "Just remember that I'm the nice one."
Is that so? Maybe this village actually has better artillery than the standard farm equipment. Now I'm nervous.
Inuyasha stops before a matured gent in priestly robes. "Miroku, wouldja lookit this," my escort says by way of introduction and jerks a thumb at me.
"How do you do," I said, though it felt unbelievably awkward, even for someone trained in improv. "I'm—"
"Kichiruka," the human, Miroku, greets with a warm smile. Maybe it was a grand joke of some sort or another. They couldn't possibly know me. But they know my name. And it isn't exactly a common one either.
"How does everyone know me?"
"Your memory was wiped clean, dumbass," Inuyasha snaps.
"I don't remember that."
"No shit." When Inuyasha rolls his eyes, I notice that they're amber. I find the color a bit unsettling, but I'm not sure what they remind me of.
The monk nods. "Please follow. We'd be much obliged if you did."
Since it's a pretty harmless request, I do. For all I know they could be lying about this memory thing, but it's a good storyline. Until we arrive at this small house and, after few calls from Miroku, a woman steps out. Now, I'm not too good with calculating human ages – looked it up once because I was curious – but I guess she's about ten years younger than the monk, but appears about that many years more than the hanyo.
Then she embraced me. No one's ever greeted me like that. Ever. Tactile as I usually am, this was a total switch. And I've never felt more lost.
"Sorry, I gotta go," I apologized. I tried to be polite. Really.
The woman nodded. She wrung her hands and looked the other way. She looked like she wanted to cry. Damn, it just makes me sick to leave someone so unhappy. At the end of the day, I just want people to smile.
"Is there something I can do for you, ma'am?"
She looks down at me. Hesitates for a minute. Then reaches into her yukata to pull out this bright shard.
"Please." She offers me the shard.
Okay, so this whole village is dirt-poor and this woman has like some secret stash as if she can just freely give away a precious stone to the next yokai that passes through.
"I can't accept this."
"It is yours," she insists. I think I just made her go from sad to angry. Great.
"How do you know?" I ask, humoring her. That's what you're supposed to do with people off their rocker, right?
She takes my hand and presses the shard into it. There's a sharp pain in my palm, but for a second I can't even feel the shard anymore.
"Because," she explains, "I had a wish once."
And she smiles at me in that way Rin always does.
.
A/N: Thank you for reading. More unrelated Hooked stories will be sporadically added to this collection.