Title: The Wheel Ever Turns
Characters: Inuyasha, and that would be telling
Rating: PG-13
Notes: This was written spur of the moment. A Muse had me by the proverbial balls. And it was meant to be sorta angsty, but I don't know how I did, cause that's not my specialty. Tell me what you think?
"Inuyasha?" Her soft voice rang through the cool night air, and Inuyasha looked down from the tree. She stood at the base, moonlight bleaching her skin and hair and face. She looked breathtaking, as she did much of the time.
He tried to ignore her, but he could feel fate blowing in the wind, could feel that i something /i was happening tonight, and he could not stop it.
"Inuyasha. Please come down. I...I want to talk." Something in her tone was funny, but he forgot it quickly when he saw her upturned face filled with hope. So much hope, his heart felt like bursting. In the thirty odd years he'd experienced life, hope had become obsolete, something that led you on when you were finished, got you killed. But he could not resist the blatant expression on her small, heart-shaped face.
He jumped down, landed right in front of her, and she jerked in surprise. Another twinge in his stomach and head, but he ignored it. That, at least, he could ignore.
"What?" he asked gruffly, determined to get over with this irrevocable moment.
Kagome blinked. "I just...I just wanted to talk. We're so close, you know, to finishing the jewel. I don't know what will happen when we do. I need...I need to know."
"Know what?" He folded his arms against the chill that crept up his back.
She hesitated, eyes glancing down, face turning away, and a heartstring rattled. He never liked it when she looked away. "Kagome, what?" His voice was tinged with urgency, an urgency he had not known he felt.
Her voice was small. "How...how you do...feel...about me?"
Inuyasha blinked. That was it? But no, he knew it wasn't. He decided to tell the truth, let go of the strong walls he'd been keeping up for years now. It seemed he could never be truly surprised anymore, and that all his emotions were governed carefully.
"Can't you tell?" he asked, voice raw and low and intense. "Can't you tell? I can't hide it, it's buried inside me and snarls at me every goddamned second of every goddamned minute I'm alive, just like my demon blood always courses through my veins, tempting me, waiting for me to break. How can you not know? You've studied me, I know it, the way I've studied you, and I know you feel it and I know you avoid it, and now you ask, as if you don't know?" She took a step back, and something clattered in his mind, something set up a flag, but he was far from paying attention. "I spend every day with you, and you tell me you can't tell? I may not be good with words, Kagome, " she winced, and he winced because she did, "but I can't hide everything, not from you. Never from you. Never in life." He was breathing hard, now, and staring at her. She looked trapped, and angry, and sad, and he knew it was wrong, realized what had happened just as his next words spilled from his mouth, too late to stop them. He didn't know if he could've anyway. They had lain so long in his heart that freedom was essential. "I love you."
And there they were, out on the soft grass beneath the Goshinboku, sprinkled over her dark hair, floating in the moonlight. And though he knew what his brain had been trying to tell him, trying to stop him, he felt a sense of relief, having said the words after so long.
"But you're not Kagome." I was not a question, rather a statement, irrefutable, full of truth. There was no doubt in his voice. He knew.
The glamour fell away and he was faced with KIikyou, Kikyou in her robes and her hair falling so far down, longer than even his own, and he'd been growing it since birth, because his mother liked it and because his brother's hair was long, and no matter what he'd always idolized his older brother. Kikyou, with her hardened clay face that felt so much like flesh, but far too stiff and far too cold.
"Why?" His voice cracked, and it held so much emotion in it that even Kikyou looked ashamed and lost. Inuyasha's knees weakened, but he would not let himself fall, not in front of her, not after he had uttered such strengthening and debilitating words.
She didn't speak, didn't say anything, but raised a hand to his face. He didn't flinch, didn't pull back, but he was as stiff as she would always be.
The she was gone, and he felt the winds blow again, strong and full of voices, and he fell to his knees, and it was there he wept.
