Discl: No, nada, zilch nothing.
A/N: Okay, sorry for my prolonged absence but this is the week of my birthday and i had a choir concert yesterday to work out and stuff...(sighs) also I had to rewrite this chapter and delete a couple of the others. It didn't feel right...(sighs again) But you guys liked the last installment certainly! WOW! I want to update before midnight so I can officially say I updated on my birthday (YES! This IS my birthday, I turn NINETEEN today, I'm SO old it's starting to make me sick...older than all my peers by at least a year...anyway, yes, before midnight if I can, so it'll be March 18...so I have 8 minutes...) thus I apologize for mistakes ahead of time because I'm just going to post...the end...
Truth is in the River
"Dream away everyday
Try so hard to disregard
The rhythm of the rain that drops
And coincides with the beating of my heart…"
The river swept her, faster and faster, confused, frightened, Sakana tried to swim, but the frigid water robbed her of all coordination. Maybe this was a mistake…
She slipped under the water. Her hair flowed around her, tangled, confusing, like seaweed it choked her when she resurfaced, got caught in her mouth. She wanted to cry out for help but…that would bring Inuyasha…
A memory stirred within her then, a stranger memory than most of the others. There was a woman just like her somewhere…who looked just like her. She remembered kneeling before the tree where Inuyasha was pinned in her mind's eye. He called her by another name, saying she not only looked but she also smelled like this other girl he'd known…what had been her name? And why did she connect it with such pain?
Because Inuyasha loved her and not you.
That did it. Sakana gasped in the night air and sunk beneath the river's surface again. Her mind and memory reeled. Kikyo, that was her name…
I loved Inuyasha…I was Kagome…Before she could stop it the memory of waking up with his warm, moist lips pressed to hers resurfaced in her mind and she felt, somehow, through the cold of the river water all around her, a thrill of heat. Her heart beat frantically and she almost breathed the water as the memories began to surge through her, began to return with a force that she'd never seen or felt or even imagined could happen. Her head throbbed…
Through the blackness of the water Sakana—Kagome—saw a purple glow, eerie and beautiful at once. The Shards about her neck were floating; the glow was their doing. It had to be them! She reached to grab the Shards, but the current increased then and swept her around strangely, off balance. The glow disappeared to black…
Her mind swam, she was dizzy, and water snuck into her ears, there was pain there…pressure…
Her lungs felt as if they might explode!
She paddled frantically, seeking the surface, but she had no sense of direction in the blackness. Yet somehow she broke the surface. Her hair was everywhere again, a massive clog, a thing for her to choke on. She coughed and struggled to regain her breath as the water swept her along blindly…
A shadow loomed in the distance, massive, blacker than the black of the water. Fear opened up like a chasm inside her. She was heading right for it!
Sakana—Kagome?—braced herself, sinking below the surface, twisting about trying to avoid the thing…too late…
She struck a rock, her head slammed against it by the current. The air in her lungs escaped in a cloud of white bubbles. White against the black. Her world began to fade and wash away. Sense left her; thoughts vanished. She sensed that she was sinking deeper into the river, but at the same time she saw a strange light glowing through the black. If she was right, and she was sinking further down, why was there a strange light?
Was it a hallucination…?
…No, it wasn't.
She saw the streak of purple light, glowing brighter and brighter just as she opened her lips to take a breath, a huge lungful of cold water.
And a last thought skidded across her mind: I'm Kagome…not a fish…
Then there was nothing.
Koshi stood stiff as stone, watching Namaru and the other leading samurais carrying the pyres toward him and the gate. Outside the village's protective walls they'd light the pyres and burn the deceased men's remains to avoid spreading disease. It was all he could do to keep himself still physically while inside he felt as if he were dying, shriveling in agony on the inside, centimeters below the surface skin…
It was the day after Sakana had been taken by the Red Demon, and was long since, it was likely, dead and rotting. In the night after Koshi had learned of her disappearance he'd fought his emotions, his despair. In only the few days—just shy of week—he'd fallen in love with the mysterious beauty. And now she was dead, rotting somewhere in the damned demon's belly. His fists clenched at the thought.
Rumor had it that there'd been a monk and a demon slayer that'd come to the village when Sakana had been taken. They'd come to slay the beast…but none had seen them since they'd taken off for the hot springs the previous afternoon. Koshi prayed that they were still alive—when the demon slayer returned he planned to beg her to take him on as an apprentice. He would learn how to kill demons. It would be a better and swifter life than living as a slave to the samurais, a stable boy. As a demon slayer he would be able to do what he felt was right—for he'd come to bitterly hate the Red Demon and all of its wild, lawless, uncaring kind—and earn a very decent wage doing it.
There were not enough demon slayers in the world as far as he'd seen.
The boy stiffened his body again as the pyres passed him. He bowed his head slightly as they glided by. I'm sorry Hekamino… the old samurai warrior who'd always been somewhat of a father to him had died early that morning, just before dawn. The infections from his slashing wounds had spread through his blood and to his heart, killing him. With the terrible fever wearing down his body's energy, Hekamino had never truly regained consciousness after they'd arrived in the village. Koshi had never had a chance to say goodbye to the old man…now he'd never get one.
The tears prickled in his eyes suddenly and Koshi bit his lip, forcing them back. The lump of emotional pain in his throat refused to leave no matter how hard he swallowed it. First Sakana yesterday, now Hekamino. He wasn't sure how much more he could take.
The demon had to die…
The procession passed Koshi by, shamefully, the youth closed his eyes to hide the tears. Samurais don't cry. Men don't cry. Koshi was 16—a man by Feudal Japan's standards. But even so the emotions were there. I thought being a man meant you didn't feel anything like this. Life was supposed to be a good thing…but the idle thoughts he'd had as a boy were far from true. They hadn't been true then and they weren't true now when he was a man…
Some of the villagers followed the pyres outside the village's gates and watched as the fires were lit. Koshi snuck around these crowds and avoided the light of the fire, averting his eyes. He just didn't want to remember Hekamino's body burning there for all to see. It was supposed to be honorable, but Koshi didn't see it that way. He wanted to remember the man the way he had been alive—full of warmth, laughs, jokes, and stern lessons on life. Most of the samurais had deeply loved him simply for his sense of humor. He was kind—an unusual thing for a samurai. It made him endearing to most samurais—they liked him even when they didn't want to.
That was what he wanted to remember, that and all the lessons Hekamino had to teach him.
The fire blazed high into the sky without Koshi's eyes to watch it. The young man crept away from the pyres and columns of smoke; instead he walked through the rice fields, which were mostly empty, and towards the river.
The silence and utter indifference of nature was, oddly, comforting. Koshi threaded in and out of the brush, sometimes right on the path that the people of the village would've used and at other times he only skirted it, letting the weeds and grasses tickle his calf-muscles. His senses seemed to vanish and turn inward as he walked. Hours might've passed, or mere seconds, Koshi would never know. But whether he walked senselessly for years or only a few seconds ceased to matter at all when his eyes landed on a very dark blotch of green at the river's shallow edge on the opposite bank.
It was an off-shade of green, so dark that it was unnatural, thus catching the youth's eye. At first sight the thing appeared to be a slime-colored rock, but the slime was so dark that it couldn't be real. And it was oddly shaped, and didn't appear solid enough to actually be a rock. He stared at it without thought, empty of all feeling inside, almost unable to analyze it, or even to comprehend why it so attracted him…and then consciousness snuck back into his mind, drip by painful drip.
It was the color of Sakana's kimono…Without another thought Koshi raced into the river's tough current, arms flailing and eyes wide with some terrible emotion that was caught between horrified and frantic. Midway across the racing water Koshi was overwhelmed and he slipped under the ridge of the waves, into the black chilled depths. Despite the way his body shivered and convulsed at the sudden abuse, the youth's determination, and desperation at the sight of the strange "thing," on the other bank forced him up again. He rose from the water, splashing and sputtering, but his eyes refused to leave the bloated green form that lied, ominously still, on the other side of the river.
Stumbling into the shallower edges of the river, Koshi collapsed to his knees in the water, which was just shy of a foot deep and just outside of the rough current's reach. Shaking, he hesitated, looking over the green thing, suddenly terrified at the realization that this thing really was a body…
And it wasn't just anyone's body…
A strangled, choking sound wrenched its way out of his throat, the first outward sign of what was ripping him apart inside.
Sakana!He reached forward then, his hands still trembling from far, far more than just the cold of the river. He took hold of the cold, flaccid, and completely shapeless thing and lifted it, hauling it toward the bank. The simple kimono was soaked and waterlogged. As it came free of the river's concealing blackness, Koshi felt as if he would be sick. A mesh of tangled black hair rose up with the thing, and flesh appeared, as white as the moon at night.
The first jolt of horror and grief at seeing that it was real almost made Koshi drop her body back into the water. But, although his hand shook unceasingly, and his breathing was becoming absolutely erratic, Koshi persevered.
In a moment the young man found himself with Sakana's limp, pallid form lying on her back on the sandy riverbank. He didn't know how many minutes passed during which he simply stared at her, empty and bitter and mourning. The tears fell silently at first and without any motion from the youth. He might've tried to hold her still, lifeless form close to him—but in a way he was still too stunned from having found her body to be able to react to it. Everything seemed to be moving in a haze to him…seconds passed in the real world while to Koshi entire lifetimes seemed to go by, tortuous and filled with unsatisfied longing and bitterness at all that had been lost.
His eyes fell to her lips. They stuck out so vividly against the rest of her body because they were blue with the cold against the pale whiteness of the rest…Koshi closed his eyes, trying to force away the reality that lied before him—only to be swamped by his memories of the girl while she had been living. He saw her bright white, pretty smile, the sparkling in her eyes, and the vivaciousness of her laugh…
Without even realizing that he was doing it, Koshi reached out one hand to touch her…and his fingertips met up with heat.
Startled, he opened his eyes and looked down at her again. His fingers hadn't landed on her face, instead they rested on one shoulder—well, actually on a hard lump on the shoulder, beneath the soaked kimono. Perplexed, the youth felt it a little more and noticed that the structure moved…and on Sakana's neck a golden chain inched as well, mimicking the small, warm lump's movements.
Something suddenly stirred inside Koshi, and without understanding why he did it, or even thinking about the action, he leaned down close to her still, lifeless, frozen form, parted her bluish lips with his thumb, and blew air into her mouth and throat. He did this motion a second and third time without thought until, on the fourth try, he felt Sakana's cold lips suddenly move and shift underneath his own.
Koshi pulled back from her, stunned. He watched with wide, disbelieving eyes as Sakana came back from the dead amazingly.
Her lips moved, her mouth opened wide, and she gasped, choking. Koshi rolled her mechanically onto her side and watched over her as the pale, barely alive girl coughed and sputtered, frantically trying to expel the liquid water she'd swallowed and breathed inadvertently from the river the night before. Then she shivering began, intense, convulsive shivering that left the girl looking miserable and exhausted…but she was alive!
Koshi pulled her still half-coughing, heavily shivering, freezing body close to him, crying all over again. "Sakana! Sakana!" he murmured against her waterlogged mess of hair, "Thank the gods that you're alive! I thought for certain that you were dead and gone! The Red Demon hasn't gotten you yet!"
But the girl in his arms was too weak and cold to answer, in fact she was barely conscious. Koshi wasted no time in trying to get her to safety. Gently he wrapped his outer kimono over the girl, then he held her tightly to his chest as he rushed downstream toward the villager's crossing place.
Jostled roughly in his arms, Kagome weakly gasped at the air and shivered in the cold. Yet even so early in her rescue the color in her cheeks was beginning to return, the blue from lack of oxygen and the cold on her lips steadily diminishing, and the girl even managed to open her eyes and cling to Koshi with her weakened, frozen fingers. At her throat the shards of the Shikon Jewel glowed, although their shine was hidden thoroughly below her soaked kimono. They warmed and revived the girl, filling her with strength at a time when she should've died or at the very least be unconscious.
In her first plunge and soaking journey through the river's blackness, those same shards were the only things that kept Kagome alive. The magic within them might have spelled out continuous danger for the priestess guarding them from the ever-present threat of power hungry demons, but it also offered her semi-demon like powers. She was quicker on her feet, harder to kill, and a faster healer than normal mortals.
The shards had saved her before, and they had saved her now, but unlike the incident before, the shards had remained with her through the entire mishap…things would be different now, though no one knew it just yet…
Kagome coughed weakly against the warm arms and the rough fabric of her rescuer's kimono. Blindly her fingers searched for, and found, the shards that were burning, seemingly, into her skin, and grasped them, hard. And in her foggy, still half-unconscious mind the first clear thought formed and raced through her being, I'm Kagome…
Kagome.
"Would you like to eat some of this fish too, Inuyasha?" Miroku asked pleasantly, gesturing toward the skewered fish that were roasting over the smoldering fire. His manner and tone were much like a father's when addressing a spoiled, pouting child. And indeed, that was very much the disposition that the hanyou had adopted.
Across the meadow, his back to Miroku and the fire, Inuyasha sat in his typical cross-legged Indian style form, hands covered by his red sleeves, nose upturned haughtily. His amber eyes, however, were filled with frustration and clear unhappiness—and they were clearly trained on the river. His ears were turned toward it and unmoving. He was determined to hear anything that might signal Sango, Shippo, and Kilala's return…and with them Kagome…
Yet already he was beginning to sense that it was too late for things to end so uncomplicatedly. If it'd been that easy he was sure that Kilala would've returned with Shippo, Sango, and Kagome on her back the night before, but of course the night had passed—sleeplessly for both the hanyou and the monk—without such luck. Not long after the sun had risen Inuyasha had noted that Miroku had drifted off to sleep, and he'd contemplated running off…but instead he chose to catch fish from the river further upstream. Unlike before—when he'd meticulously made sure to avoid getting himself wet—Inuyasha hunted the fish as he would've done as a pup, diving and clawing at the slippery, scaly things until they tired and he could grasp them with his talons.
He'd returned with five large fish for Miroku, who'd still been deeply asleep, snoring lightly and even starting to drool. Since waking the demented but very fatigued and ravenous monk, Inuyasha hadn't spoken a word, hadn't even looked at his companion. He'd been able to smell and hear the progress of the monk's breakfast from behind him easily enough, and he didn't care to talk—not while he could be pouting, contemplating the continual lack of an appearance by Kagome.
Miroku's attempt to get him to eat now that the fire was dying and the fish were cooked, were the first words to really be exchanged at all that day. Already this new and very frustrating, generally useless day was aging quickly. Inuyasha glanced toward the sun through the trees out of the corner of his eye—making sure not to turn his head to do it so that Miroku wouldn't notice any movement—and guessed that it was probably nearly noon already…
I hate sitting on my ass while Kagome's out there alone…damn that monk! If he weren't here I could slaughter the whole bloody village and just take her by force!
Certainly that would be so much faster, so much easier…
Miroku's voice came again after the gentle, patient sound of the monk clearing his throat, "Inuyasha? Should I take that as a no?"
"Feh." Inuyasha huffed, grunting, shifting only briefly, acknowledging that he had, in fact, heard the other man's words. He restrained the full snort that he wanted to let loose with at Miroku's naivety. He assumed—incorrectly—that Inuyasha needed to eat cooked fish. In truth the hanyou had eaten three other fish straight out of the river, cold and still wriggling in his claws.
He wasn't the least hungry now!
"Okay, but I'm not going to try and save your share from Kilala, Shippo, Sango and…well…" his voice faltered and Inuyasha cursed himself inwardly when his ears fell backward along his skull, silently indicating that he was listening and hating what he was hearing. "When the others get back I'm not going to save you any fish…" he finally finished, forcing himself to sound confident, but of course the fear that was imbedded in his voice had already been clearly detected by the hanyou and once exposed there was no way to cover it again.
I'm tired of this bloody waiting!Inuyasha growled abruptly and rose to his feet. He sensed the sudden stiffness of the monk behind him, preparing to stop him, but he wouldn't let him get that far…the hanyou turned to face the monk, his face a stolid mask of unhappiness.
"I'm not going to sit around here on my ass anymore Miroku," he hissed, his fists clenching up at his sides unconsciously, "It's obvious that Sango and Shippo can't find her…"
"I see no reason to jump to such a conclusion…" Miroku began, setting aside his steaming slab of fish meat and rising to his sandaled feet, using the jangling staff as a crutch as he did so.
Inuyasha growled, louder, more menacingly than before, and took a step forward threateningly. "Look monk—if you don't see a reason than I think you must have choked on your drool when you fell asleep because your brain isn't working worth—"
"Inuyasha," Miroku began, once more taking the depreciating tone of a father, "You can't go to the village to look for her, that's where I suspect she is, anyway, although I know how much you want to, how much you worry about her—"
"Worry? About her!" Inuyasha stepped backward, suddenly changing his tune. Miroku could hardly contain the smirk he felt tugging at the corners of his lips. "You've got it all wrong monk!" he insisted, scowling.
Miroku didn't bother fighting with him about it, he merely rolled his violet eyes skyward once in annoyance and continued with his speech, "But because of what you did to those samurais you can't go in there…what would happen to Kagome if they realized that she is traveling with you, hmm?" he took swift note of Inuyasha's expression, which was suddenly twisted into a deep frown of realization, "I don't think I need to say anything more, do I?" he finished, one dark eyebrow arched.
"This is stupid!" Inuyasha raged, snarling to himself. Immediately the pacing began again—earlier, throughout most of the night in fact—the hanyou had been tromping down the grasses on one side of the meadow, creating a path of frustration that lead nowhere and accomplished nothing. It didn't even help to rid the hanyou of his pent up emotions.
But although Miroku found that the pacing made him uncomfortable, at least it was a sure sign that Inuyasha had seen reason. He sighed regretfully and sat heavily back down by the dying fire, reaching for his fish again…and a moment later regretted the assumption that the hanyou was under control. Indeed, Inuyasha was like a tamed wolf or big cat, one could never trust the animal, for on occasion it was likely to revert back to its wild, untrustworthy and unpredictable state.
He heard a grunt from Inuyasha just as he lifted the warm meat—his fish breakfast—to his lips, and a moment later when he looked up at a flurry of startling movement, his heart jumped like a frightened mouse. The violet eyes grew big and wide.
The meadow was empty.
Miroku leaped to his feet, forgetting his staff completely, and dashed to where the hanyou's crumpled trail of frustration had been smashed into the grass, and searched the trees. Although he could hear the birds screeching in fear, and see them taking flight from their roosts further into the forest, his eyes saw no sign of the wild Inuyasha. No flash of silver hair, no flicker of his red clothing…
So much for listening to reason!
What was he supposed to do now? Miroku looked toward the river's steady current, his face tense with concentration. Could he wait for Sango and Shippo and Kilala to return now? Or should he try to pursue the hanyou? And what about the village…?
Miroku sighed, angrily and turned back to where his staff was lying in the cool grasses, beside the fish that he'd dropped in his sudden shock. So much for my breakfast!
Grumbling with frustration, the monk picked up his golden staff and began to walk toward the river. He immediately took up on the small, obscure path that ran along its banks, straight toward the village…
Endnote: I shall endeavor to update quickly for you...next chapter I plan on having Kagome wake up and start to recover, Sango, Kilala and Shippo get to have a word in, as well as Miroku, and we see what Inuyasha has decided to do now that he's run off...ACK! less than five minutes left! From my email, I remember only one question and here's the answer: Yes, this really IS Kagome...Sakana is kindaa second personality, but she IS Kagome...I'm not playing any cruel tricks here guys...uh oh! Four minutes... THANK YOU TO ALL WHO REVIEWED! 140 Reviews the last I checked! this one really took off! YAYS! See ya next time...AHH! three minutes...pray for me...