Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, nor do I own any of the characters associated with Inuyasha.
Humanize me
A shooting star streaked across the clear night sky as a thin stream of light passed down from the new moon and cascaded hypnotically across the dark waves.
From above the rim of the beach a small fire fiercely burned as a group of travelers roasted fish over the open flames. Just outside the reach of the fire's light, the dark silhouette of a young man carelessly walked alongside the grassy cliff above the beach. With a slight groan he braced his foot against the shifting dirt of the bank and let his body slide downwards onto the coast, the heels of his feet making soft imprints in the sand as he walked towards the water.
As Inuyasha brushed his long black hair behind his ears and embraced the soothing sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, he took in a deep breath through his nose and reveled in the pleasing smell of sea salt. It's funny, he thought to himself. On any other night I could have picked up scents over and beyond the simple smell of salt, and yet, on any other night the simple smell of salt would somehow be far less soothing than it is tonight.
Inuyasha smirked. He knew why every sensation seemed as if he were sensing it for the first time. He was living life through a different person's eyes.
Every hanyou has a period of time when they revert to their human state; it was just that tonight was his night. Half-breeds seem to have this incredible gift, to be able to live as someone they're not. This is the fundamental difference between a hanyou and every other youkai, hanyou's know what it means to be human.
It's strange how I've lost so much strength, only to become so much more, Inuyasha thought as he rested his back against the incline of a rock that had been smoothly polished by the tides. When I'm myself I can't feel the way that I feel now, I can't experience the same range of emotions that course through me at this very moment. Sure I spare human life, and sure I experience friendship – and even love, but I'm only going through the stages, only pretending that I actually feel what I try and force myself to feel, but when I'm human I think differently about the world around me. It's as though this black hair that sprouts from my head contains more than just a darker shade, it's as though it contains within it the truth of what it really means to be alive. Isn't that why I agreed to use the jewel to become human?
Inuyasha closed his eyes as he thought about his past, about the life that Naraku had destroyed fifty years ago. He could still smell the fragrance of Kikyo's hair as he held her tightly in his arms, he could still feel the warmth of her skin as he softly ran his fingers up the length of her body, and he could still feel the way his heart frantically beat as she pressed her lips against his. He had loved her, or at least loved her as much as his demon blood could have allowed. She was the reason he had chosen to let go of everything he had strode so hard to maintain, and embrace everything that he had been tough to despise. He wanted to give Kikyo his entire heart, and every bit of love that he could find within himself.
Fifty years ago he had asked Kikyo to retrieve the sacred jewel so that he could live the rest of his shortened life with her by his side. That was when the newly born Naraku played his first evil trick, and caused him to be sealed to a tree by the vengeful eyes of the woman he had loved more than anything else in his young life.
Inuyasha ran his hand over his tired eyes. Daybreak was a long way away, and he did not have the courage to fall asleep as he was. If Kikyo were here, he thought; if Kikyo were here she would softly rest her head against my chest, and perhaps I would find the courage and the comfort to fall asleep without worrying about the enemies that surround me. I don't mean the Kikyo that exists now, not the shell of a woman that survives in this world on the souls of the dead, but the real Kikyo, my Kikyo.
Why am I always so willing to follow you to hell? He screamed into his own mind. I hope you know that I've been to hell and back because of the way you've been treating me. I'm stronger now, strong enough to live my life without you – if I have to. But when I'm in my normal form, I will still desire you, I will still forsake my own life for how alive you make me feel; if only I could hold onto the rationality that I have at this moment, if only I could force myself to miss you less.
In the distance Inuyasha could hear light footsteps walk across the soft grass above the beach and he slowly pitched his head in the direction of the sound, his flashing gray eyes peering into the darkness of the night. He could see the silhouette of a slender young female place her feet on the edge of the cliff and wrap her hand around a stray tree root that protruded from the ground. The girl's skirt vibrantly fluttered as she cautiously lowered herself down onto the beach.
Halfway between the coast and the peak of the cliff, the tree root that the girl clung to for safety snapped and sent her awkwardly tumbling towards the ground.
With a quick burst of instinct, Inuyasha swung his right leg underneath the weight of his body and lunged at the falling girl, her limbs twisting end over end as she crashed downwards along the sliding dirt of the bank. With a greater degree of speed than he himself had thought he could achieve in his human form, Inuyasha stood under the sliding girl.
Before her head struck the sporadically placed rocks of the beach, Kagome felt herself being gently caught in a powerful set of arms. With a soft smile she looked up into the gentle glares of her savior.
"I scraped my knee," she said in a tender, disconnected tone. She didn't care about the painful stinging of her cut skin, the only thing that mattered to her at that moment was the pair of concerned gray eyes that softly sparkled against the starry night.
With his right arm firmly placed underneath Kagome's body, Inuyasha used his left to softly brush the golden tinted dust off her legs before gently letting her stand back up on solid ground. Kagome's legs clumsily wobbled as she felt herself stand under her own power. From the outside anyone would have assumed that she had hurt her legs, but Kagome knew it was the way that Inuyasha looked at her at that moment, that made her knees go weak.
"Maybe you should go down to the beach and wash the dirt and blood off yourself," Inuyasha said as he uncomfortably pulled his eyes away from her penetrating gaze.
With a slight nod of acknowledgment, Kagome forced herself to turn her back to Inuyasha and slowly walk towards the coast. She had no idea what was racing through Inuyasha's mind at that moment, but something inside her screamed that if she wished it hard enough, he would wrap his fingers around her forearm and pull her close to himself, then passionately press his lips against hers.
Inuyasha stood rigid as he watched Kagome approach the water. Countless notions flashed through his mind but in the intensity of the moment, none of them formed complex thoughts. Should he say something romantic, should he say something casual and protect his emotions, should he embrace her – should he kiss her? He could feel his mind being overwhelmed with indecision, and in the end, he could make no decision. He just watched her as she dunked her cupped hands into the ocean and splashed her tired face with the cool water.
Kagome could feel Inuyasha's eyes on her, and for that precious moment, she wondered how something like this could happen to her; moments this amazing were never suppose to happen to her, at least not with Inuyasha.
Kagome gently smiled at him and Inuyasha was suddenly flooded with embarrassment. She knows I'm looking at her, he thought as he quickly turned his back to her and stared into the night. "The fire is starting to go out," Inuyasha tried to casually say as he looked over the cliff towards the point where they had set up camp earlier that evening.
"Ya," Kagome remarked as she rubbed a handful of seawater over her cut legs. "I sent Shippo to gather some more fire wood before I left to find you. He should be back soon."
"You left Miroku and Sango alone. That was a stupid…" Inuyasha's sentence was cut off as a high pitched scream echoed through the darkness before being shortly followed by the distinctive sound of Sango's open palm striking the side of Miroku's face.
Kagome gently laughed as she listened to the Houshi and the Taiji-ya. The sound of Kagome's laughter stuck inside of Inuyasha's ear and he couldn't help but quietly stare at her from across the darkness of the beach. Is this the same feeling that drives Miroku to do the things that he does, Inuyasha thought. How do people keep these feelings under control? Is this what I thought I would find in Kikyo if I used the sacred jewel to become human, or is this something entirely different; is this something more?
That last thought stung at Inuyasha's heart. He loved Kikyo didn't he? How could there still be room inside of himself for Kagome?
Love is supposed to be confined to one person. If I still have space for Kagome, then what does that say about how I feel for Kikyo. I hate being human, too many thoughts and feelings. Nothing seems to makes sense to me anymore, he thought as he pressed the tips of his fingers against the edges of this skull to help ease the tension and stress in his mind. I love you Kikyo! Inuyasha screamed into the recesses of his own consciousness.
Once the pain in her legs had subsided, and once she pulled herself together enough to look Inuyasha in the eyes without losing herself, Kagome walked through the knee high water towards the land. The water rippled off in reflective waves as the bare curves of her legs sliced through the silent darkness of the ocean.
While Kagome had been in the water, Inuyasha had once again rested his back against the smoothly polished rock that he had been leaning against before Kagome had fallen. With a sublime motion of his wrist, Inuyasha motioned for Kagome to lay down on the soft sand beside him. Gently, Kagome lowered her body onto the cold sand and pretended not to take notice to the proud demeanor that Inuyasha held himself in as he lay against the rock beside her. Even as a human he still has that same presence, that same aura of noble grace, she thought as she forced a goofy smile to materialize on the lines of her face in a desperate hope not to give away what she was thinking inside.
All the endless months that Inuyasha and Kagome had spent together seemed to climax on the corners of Kagome's smiling lips, and Inuyasha's eyes suspiciously circled the edges of her complexion in a frantic desire to find his way into her thoughts. He had known her long enough to know that her exaggerated grins always meant more than what they portray.
Failing on his goal to discover her emotions, Inuyasha returned an exaggerated smile before casually leaning his body back against the rock and meditatively breathed in the chilled night air. As if savoring some kind of precious moment, Inuyasha slowly closed his eyes to the darkness around him while the soothing beat of hundreds of individual crickets peacefully broke the dead silence of the night.
"Sometimes I find it hard to believe that each and every one of those stars is nothing more than a giant ball of burning gas millions of kilometers away," Kagome peacefully said as she stared up into the endlessness of the night sky. "It's funny how no matter how hard science tries, it can't take away the simple beauty of everything around us."
"I have no time for beauty," Inuyasha lied. "There is no place in this world for such soft hearted mentalities. There is nothing beautiful about a world where the only law that holds true is to kill or be killed."
"You can't believe that. Not after all that we've been through," Kagome said as calmly as she could, her desire to avoid confrontation greater than her desire to expose Inuyasha's softer side. "You've changed so much since I first met you, how can you deny the better man that you've become."
"Feh."
Inuyasha's submissive answer annoyed Kagome and she could feel the flood of emotional questions climb up the back of her throat and prepare to roll off the tip of her tongue before she quickly closed her mouth, thus avoiding her thoughts from reaching Inuyasha's ear. What do I care if Inuyasha tries to fool himself, she thought. He knows he isn't fooling me.
They lay in silence for seemingly endless moments, neither knowing what they could say to break the tension. Without any logical reason, Inuyasha raised his arm and let it drop around Kagome's shoulders. His action surprised even himself for he had thought that he would never find the courage, however he had felt that the moment called for it, that some how it was what he was suppose to do.
Kagome's shoulders grew warm as she felt his fingers transfer their heat into her body and she gently opened up to his touch. Almost as if her actions were beyond her own control, she slid her body closer to Inuyasha and subliminally motioned for him to wrap his arms tighter around her. The two lay on the soft sand of the beach, Kagome's slender form buried deeply inside of Inuyasha's embrace.
Even as they lay so close together as to breath the same air, not a word was spoken between them. Sometimes more is said that way.
From the shadows above the cliff's edge, two pairs of peering eyes enviously gazed onto the impassioned silhouettes of Inuyasha and Kagome. With their bodies pressed against the grass along side the rim of the bank, Miroku and Sango felt an ingrained tension fuse between them as they stared towards the two on the beach.
It wasn't that they didn't feel anything for each other, in fact, they probably desired each other more than either Inuyasha or Kagome wanted one another. It was just that unlike the barrier that stood between Inuyasha and Kagome, theirs didn't vanish with each successive new moon.
Their barrier was a combination of understandable aggression, and a mutual fear of having one another involved in their own wars against their respective pasts, and their approaching future. There was no certainty in their lives, and neither knew when their own personal curses would finally catch up to them. How could they hope to open up to each other, if they were both too afraid to face their own demons?
As Miroku stared at Sango's longing eyes, he tried not to notice the way that her body spread out before him across the dewy wet grass, her lean form elegantly rising and falling along the stretched out curves of her body. Miroku's hard learned sense of decency and respect fought against his growing desire to run his open palm alongside the contours of her flesh, unfortunately, he was never one to be know to keep his desires confined within his own mind.
A boyish smile spread across the corners of Miroku's face as he wrapped his fingers around Sango's calf muscles before quickly extending his grasp upwards along the back of her thigh. Sango had expected Miroku's touch – as she had learned to always expect it – and gave him until the deep indentation of her lower rump before she did as was expected of her, and swung her fist around to strike Miroku across the side of his head.
The delicate blood vessels underneath Miroku's skin painfully erupted under the pressure from Sango's punch, and a dark red imprint of Sango's fist rouse to the surface of Miroku's skin. With a bloody red blotch just above the rim of his smiling face, Miroku childishly rubbed his hand against the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Your such a lecher," Sango said as she turned her eyes away from Miroku to stare back at the two on the beach.
The passage of time is ignorant of the wishes of individuals. No heart filled words or passionate embraces can halter the flow of nature's most unyielding force. As Kagome saw the first few shimmering rays of light glimmer off the edge of where the ocean met the sky, her heart sank.
As if knowing the man he now was, would vanish away as quickly as a spark flickers into a flame, Inuyasha pulled Kagome deeper into himself, his fingers nervously twitching as they met each other around the diameter of her body.
"Once you decided to use the sacred jewel to become human and thus live a peaceful life with Kikyo," Kagome said with her eyes soft and her heart open. "Is it too much for me to hope that one day you will decide to make the same sacrifice for me?"
"Kagome…" Inuyasha tried to softly say as he felt the warm light of the rising sun change his physiology. "I…" was all he managed to get out before his hair slowly turned a radiant silver and his once soft brown eyes morphed into a colder shade of harsh yellow.
Kagome could feel her heart being quickly torn apart as Inuyasha's once inviting arms began to reject her very presence. Don't let every single stride we have made vanish with your softer side! Kagome screamed inside the corners of her mind. I don't think that I can survive if you don't feel the same way that I do. You may be able to lose your emotions inside of your demon blood, but I cannot!
Kagome used every bit of her strength to fight off the tears she felt collecting just behind the pores of her eyes, but the surge of heart wrenching pain was more than she had ever felt before in her life, and in the end, she failed.
Inuyasha couldn't bare to look upon Kagome's crying eyes, and his weakness caused him to pull his body even further away from her. With his back turned to her, and his ears shut to her muffled weeping, Inuyasha casually breathed in the chilled morning air.
It's good to be strong again, he thought as he flexed his powerful claws.