I Was Invincible - Chapter 7
"...And when you're looking back to now
All the years gone by
Will there be something that you say
That you should have done right
In your life."
- Ten Years Time, Gabrielle
Tokyo, Present
As Mama Higurashi finally retired for the night, Kagome was downstairs finishing her dinner. It was cooled yakitori, not that she minded. After retrieving the remainder of the grilled chicken from the stove and reheating it in the microwave, it was edible enough. There wasn't much left, which her mother had profusely apologized for. She explained that although she herself did not have much of a serving, Souta was a growing boy and had to be admonished for taking a sizeable portion earlier. Now in high school, Kagome's brother was a popular player on the basketball team. He was more often out doing things with friends rather than at home, much to her mother's chagrin. In fact, he had dashed off just after supper to some unknown destination with his teammates with only an abrupt, "Later, mom!" for a farewell.
He reminded Kagome of herself at that age, only she was darting off down a magical cistern in the wellhouse to battle demons in a bygone era with a demon exterminator, fox kitsune, perverted monk, fire cat and one oft-grumpy hanyou.
Her throat tightened, and she cleared it. 'You think about it too much, still. He's gone.'
It had been eight years. Eight long, painful years. He disappeared one day, the day that Kaede's village burned to the ground due to the fire set by the army of Oda Nobunaga, a warlord. She had come late, upset with him earlier over trivial things.
It had cost her.
Shippo, Kiara, and Inuyasha had vanished. Miroku and Sango were at a loss to their location, and they were so swept up in relocating the survivors of Kaede's village that they hadn't much time at that point to search for their lost party. It was odd enough that the ones missing had youkai lineage in the first place, but the horror of that day was so fresh that the thought never really occurred to her until later on. Tremendous atrocities were committed that day, and she was too late to stop it.
'Be reasonable. You wouldn't have been able to stop it had you wanted to.'
Her shoulders slumped and she stared at the crumbs of cold chicken on her plate.
'I could have at least said goodbye...'
She would not cry, not again. She had cried every night the first month, and then intermittantly for the year following that. It had made her numb, and careless. Her ailing grades had slipped even more, and she nearly failed high school. College had been out of the question with her marks, so instead she opened a small antiques shop. After all, Naraku hadn't been defeated yet. She could still travel through the well, which she still did to collect items for her shop and to visit with Sango, Kohaku and Konda.
Konda. Kagome smiled slightly, almost wistfully. He was such a strong boy, and he took after his father in more than looks. His personality and the way he acted around the opposite sex was already manifesting itself to reflect Miroku.
Miroku had died of his curse less than a year ago. He had married Sango not long after the disappearance of Inuyasha, Kiara and Shippo. Something about the urgency of the wedding made Kagome see that the couple realized just how short their time together could be. When the surviving villagers had settled an area a few days west of their original settlement, they had the ceremony. It was meant to be joyous, but with all that was lost it was difficult to even keep a small smile. What was supposed to be a wedding was also a funeral, in a way. Konda came not soon after. Although he was a blessing to his parents, he carried the curse of the wind tunnel. It was small when he was a newborn, held in Sango's trembling arms the day he came into the world. A small dot on his right palm, no bigger than a speck of dust marked him as cursed. It widened every so slightly with every year he took on, and it halted the desire in both parents to have another child carry the same affliction.
Years down the road, Konda's father died horribly. In his final months, Sango would even refuse to allow Konda to see his father. Kagome had seen Miroku in his final hours, with Sango clutching his head to her chest while her body was wracked with sobs.
The void in his palm had eaten its way up his arm, and over his shoulder. They kept it bandaged, but Miroku was in pain every second of the last year of his life. He compared it once with being chewed slowly by a ravenous but patience wolf - a predator that knew it had all the time in the world to consume you. In truth, it appeared to be a more disgusting variant of leprosy. When his hand had disintegrated, his forearm was next. His elbow followed, then his bicep, and then his shoulder blade. It was nerve-wracking for both Kagome and his wife, unable to do anything. Soon the black hole ate its way down into his chest cavity and destroyed his heart.
Kagome still remembered it clearly. She had helped a distraught Sango stand up, even as Miroku's eyes fluttered shut and his intact hand slipped away from Sango's. His last breath was a rattle in his chest, more a wheeze, and then there was the distinct sound of air exiting from another area of his body. Kagome assumed that the void had punctured part of his right lung, and therefore air was escaping there too.
She led Sango outside. She would never forget when the grieving woman lost the glaze of shock that stained her face before dropping to her knees in the grass. Her hands fisted in her hair, knuckles bleeding away to nothing but white before she screamed.
The screaming didn't end until Sango was coughing and gagging to breathe, only to attempt to scream again. Kagome was weeping for the both of them, unable to comfort Sango when she herself could find none. The loss of Shippo, Kiara, and especially Inuyasha was already a blow she lived with day to day, but this was too much.
They had lost too much.
Thankfully, Kohaku had taken Konda out to hunt for supper that afternoon. Sango's brother had been a point of stability for her now that Naraku seemed oblivious of his existence. Well, oblivious wasn't quite the right word, but it had been a long time since Naraku had controlled Kohaku. Kagome and Sango even had the false hope that the abomination known as Naraku had forgotten about him. When one lost hope in some aspects of life, they attached them to others. Kohaku knew that he had to take Konda away that morning, or so Kagome quietly informed him. It distracted the boy and kept him from hearing his mother's cries. Kagome hadn't believed that Miroku had much longer - she had been right.
Kagome swallowed, and tapped her chopsticks against her mother's porcelin dinner plate. The sound was high-pitched and nearly sublime in the empty kitchen. Under the glare of the overhead lights, Kagome was haunted by one moment in particular when Sango stopped wailing.
Her head tipped back to the heavens, face streaming with tiny rivers of unstoppable tears, Sango shrieked.
"NARAKU!"
Kagome blinked, and shook her head to clear it. Standing, she went to the sink to clean her plate. As her hands worked mechanically to turn on the water valves, she dispassionately began applying dish detergent to the running water. Her body went through the motions, but her mind was not in the present.
Her grandfather had died of a heart attack two years ago, but somehow his death and the time the Higurashis had spent in the hospital paled in comparison to how Miroku had died and the wretchedness of it all.
She shut off the water, shook the plate and utensils, and set them on a rack to air dry. Her bloodshot pupils stared out the kitchen window at the inklike silhouette of the well house across the yard. Her thoughts drifted again, as they did so often those days.
'I should really pay Sango another visit. It's been almost a month and a half since last time.'
It wasn't that she didn't enjoy her visits with Sango, it was just that the Sengoku Jidai held too many reminders. Memories of Inuyasha, of happier times. Sometimes she couldn't believe that it had turned out this way. Stories were supposed to have happy endings, right? Then why, oh why, was the one person she had grown to love dead? They had never found a body, or any bodies for that matter, but eight years had gone by without a trace of anyone. Eventually, cold fact settled in and she had no choice but to move on. She had dated Hojo a few years after his disappearance, but that relationship had been doomed from the start. She could never see Hojo the way she had seen Inuyasha, and her heart belonged to none but him. She had come to the conclusion after her somber breakup with Hojo that she would always be alone, always wishing for him.
A short, bitter laugh escaped her lips. She was such a fool.
'Damn you, look at you... you've had your life destroyed. No, two lives. You lost the one you could have had with Inuyasha in the past when you lost him, and the one you have here has no future. You're empty, and used up.'
She wanted to laugh again, perhaps to signal to herself that this truth was in some way funny. In the end, she couldn't convince herself that it was. Any further crow of condemnation died in her throat. Pivoting on her foot, she turned to go upstairs.
'Hear that, Inuyasha? I'm the walking dead, and you really are dead.'
A pause.
'I think you got the better end of the deal.'
Sengoku Jidai
He was reaching for her, arms extended and claws glinting in the limbo-light of her.. where was she? Why was Sesshoumaru-sama reaching for her? She attempted to see his face, but she apparently had no corporeal form and neither did he. There were only those arms - wait, didn't he only have one? She could swear she remembered he only had...
Rin woke up.
Sitting up ramrod straight, her eyes protested the sudden wide-eyed stare she forced them into. The late-morning sun had nearly crested to a pinnacle to announce the arrival of noon, and she had slept like a log. Well, save for the dreams that is.
'No, nightmares. I miss you, Sesshoumaru-sama. Where are you?'
He had been there in her mind, swirling there the entire time she slept like an elusive phantasm. She couldn't reach him, no matter how hard she tried. If he reached, she found herself unable to go to him. If she reached, he fluttered silently beyond her grasp like a nervous hummingbird.
Which was even the more strange, since her guardian did not flutter.
As her eyes adjusted, she felt the familiar distress of yesterday setting in. Remembering her experience from yesterday, she practiced more caution in extracting herself from the mats. Standing slowly, she felt instant relief when all the blood in her body stayed down and didn't rush at once to her head. So far, so good.
Taking a timid step forward, she grimaced and listened for sound. Nothing. Her body hadn't completely lost the discomfort it had aquired from yesterday, but it wasn't unbearable.
Another step.
Now she heard them. Muffled though they were, she could hear them beyond the shoji screen. They were talking about her.
"Should I bring her some food?"
"It would be for the best. She is likely to be hungry." It was Sango, and the first baritone belonged to Kohaku. It seemed so long ago when she had first sighted him, but now she could grudgingly admit that he had become handsome. Not nearly as handsome as Sesshoumaru-sama was, but...
Wait.
Where did that thought come from? She did not.. she could not...
Rin made a face, disappointed with herself. She had no right to have these inappropriate thoughts about him. Sesshoumaru-sama was her guardian, her protecter! Or... was he? The events of yesterday had her second guessing herself, which she despised. The past few years had brought with it a change in the structure of her body and her mind. She thought differently now, even though she was still much the same girl inside. Still, the inner turmoil she felt now floundered about her and wracked her insides with indecision. She hated not knowing.
"Awake, I see. Feeling better?"
The shoji screen had slid aside while she was having her inner conflict with herself. She was almost nose-to-nose with Kohaku before she jerked back and drew herself up to her full height.
"Y-yes," she stammered, forcing down a blush at the instant proximity and the fact that she had been caught unaware.
Kohaku didn't seem to take notice, and if he did he made no point to comment on it. Stepping aside, he made a flourish with one hand and ushered her into the adjoining room. "Come in, then. My sister just made something."
"T-Thank you."
"No need to be nervous." He gave her a disarming smile meant to calm her nerves, but it only frazzled them further.
"I'm.. I'm not.. nervous."
He just continued smiling.
Rin fully flushed and breezed past him, where she saw Sango kneeling upon the floor next a plain kotatsu table that supported saucers and rice bowls. When Rin knelt beside her and gave her a troubled look, Sango merely offered her some rice and chopsticks. "Eat. You probably have not had anything in awhile."
Gratefully, Rin accepted the dish and barely remembered her manners as she devoured the contents. In the meantime, Kohaku had settled beside his sister. Through the screen that led outside, the sounds of a boy at play could be heard. Rin allowed herself to take in this room. It was larger than the one she had occupied, and was obviously the living and dining space. Shelves held assorted weapons on one wall, and the opposite was completely cluttered with bowls of various sizes and shapes. Some tatami mats were next to the shoji screen that led outside, and even more intricate ones ringed the kotatsu table beneath their knees. The ceiling was low, and the roofop could be seen through the rafters.
It was a modest dwelling for a commoner, nice even. It seemed more cozy to Rin than the shiro ever did, and therefore it had its charms.
Still, the unease in her soul would not allow her to enjoy her surroundings or her rice. She ate quickly, and finished with a hasty 'arigotou'.
As she stood, Sango took ahold of her tattered yukata while holding her rice bowl in her freehand. "Would you like to take a bath in the village onsen? I think I have some yukatas that would fit you as well."
Rin drifted into a kneeling crouch again. She realized that two pairs of worried eyes were now set upon her.
"I.. that would be nice. I just.. I need to find.."
"We know. We also need to speak to you about that, but now is not the time. Get cleaned up first, and then we shall talk." Sango suddenly stood, disappeared into the sleeping chamber that Rin had awoken in, and reappeared a minute or two later. Holding a neatly folded summer yukata in her upturned palms, she offered it to the teenager.
"Take this. I used to wear it when I was younger."
"Are.. are you sure?" Questioning brown eyes met the darker ones of Sango.
"I am."
"Thank you, again. You are very kind."
"You are welcome. Kohaku will show you the way to the hot springs."
"Arigotou."
That said, Rin turned just in time to see Kohaku offer his arm to her. She did not take it, and instead rubuked his offer with a slight shake of her head. Nodding with an understanding expression, he led her outside. Bathed in sunshine now, she blinked rapidly and glanced around.
'Sesshoumaru-sama, did you forget Rin?'
A/N: There's Chapter 9. Hope it clears up a few things. As always, R&R! How long will this story be? Looooong, so hold on. I'll reveal things chapter by chapter, and not before. If things in one chapter don't make sense, count on cluing in one or two chapters down the line. The big questions won't be answered until the end of the story, of course, so no help there!