Tainted Silver
-Chapter 16-
It had taken time, it had taken a great amount of courage and thought on his part, but she'd left. His hair floated savagely on the currents that flowed cynically across the wide space before him. Perhaps he was wrong for waiting for his attackers, but there was no way he would hide. His pride and heart would not let him turn and run like he'd told the others to do. No, he would stay and fight for his family.
He clenched his fists but his eyes remained fixated with the prominent horizon.
Sometimes it felt like his anger consumed him, all rational thoughts flew out the window. He didn't know how to control the energy and adrenaline that flowed through his veins, the need to protect his own. Yet, therein lay his problem. As capable as he was to kill and harm the bodies of those that were beneath him in strength, he found himself unable to. Perhaps it was the mentality he instilled in his young ward, the mentality he found in the woman that stepped into his life.
His eyes filled with desperation at finding no solution to a problem that was upon him.
Was it plausible that his hands were being forced to take lives, unwillingly creating a cold blooded murderer? Perhaps, he thought, once they were done with him they would completely forget about those he sought to keep alive.
/Kagome/
"That miko woman was a load of rubbish!" the old man exclaimed. "I heard her casting spells on the villagers, something about becoming the monster they harmed."
Kagome's wide eyes settled on him as he waved the subject away with his decrepit hand.
"Rubbish, rubbish."
/Sesshomaru/
He could feel the fertile ground trembling slightly, human feet pounding mercilessly at it from afar. To face him, one man... No, that was slightly wrong. He wasn't a man, not anymore. That miko woman had cast him from the society he'd been born into, her foolishness costing him his life. Now she led humans, such as he had been once, against him.
She just refused to die.
/Kagome/
"As soon as they-," she gasped, her mind unable to process the thought. "As soon as they-!"
She looked to the side and met Sango's sad eyes, Kohaku's teary expression, Shippou's huddled form in the corner of the old shed they'd been crammed into.
"I-I-."
"I wish I could help," Miroku said wearily, "but I don't think I could bring myself to open the air void and end human lives, no matter if one took ours."
"I can't let him die," she whispered harshly.
"What are you rambling about Kagome," her grandfather chastised, "let him give his life. He wants to."
She turned enraged eyes on her blood relative, "If you weren't my grandfather I-."
She closed her eyes, an attempt at composing herself.
"I'm going out there, I don't care if I die."
"Kagome!" he said in an incredulous tone.
"Take care of the old man, he can be a pain sometimes."
/Sesshomaru/
As he stood in his courtyard, because make no mistake it was his, he remembered how it had all started. Not how he'd gotten his curse, how they'd suffered. No, how he'd met her. Rin had gone out because the boys had said something about a vision of a "pretty lady". Rin had known their tale well, she'd liked it the most out of all their tales, her favorite. The "pretty lady" was just what he needed, in her eyes, to be freed.
He'd scared Kagome, he'd rejected her humanity above all else. How ironic that he should feel this way about her now, how ironic.
He could hear the screams of war floating in the air around him, a slight breeze picking and toying with his silver tresses.
Kagome had tried to run from them so many times, each one stabbing him emotionally. Yet, her smiling face was ever present in his memories. Hai, if he was to die this day then he'd die with a melancholy expression. Never truly experiencing her love, but knowing that his humanity existed in the deep pools of her eyes.
"Die!"
"Release her!"
"Begone, unnatural creature!"
"Back to the depths of hell with you!"
"Iie, shut up!"
His eyebrows shut up, now there was an unexpected battle cry. He turned to the side, his attention riveted on a girl.
"A girl in a battle?"
No, not a girl. Kagome. His Kagome.
"Bloody fool!" he screamed.
His scream was carried away by the calm wind that flowed through her midnight hair as she stepped in front of him and push him back. The slight push was unexpected and he stumbled back, arrows flying through the air. He gained footing and spun her around in time to catch her surprised glance. His eyes widened and he stopped breathing. Her shocked eyes peered up at him his arms holding her up.
"STOP! CEASE YOUR FIRE YOU BASTARDS!"
His knees weakened and he dropped the ground, grasping her to himself. He felt her nails dig into his arm in pain and the simple action caused him to slowly deteriorate. He shoved his face into her pale neck, he refused to remember her pale expression. Refused to lose what he was so adamant in protecting.
"Foolish, foolish girl. Why can't you stay where I tell you to stay!" he demanded.
"Gomen," she whispered slowly, speech taking a great amount of energy.
"Why didn't they stop you-."
"Unhand her you freak of nature."
She grew limp in his arms. Was she dead? Had she merely lost consciousness? He had lost her, hadn't he? He pulled the arrows from her back, the men having stopped when they'd struck the girl instead of the original target. He laid her down, smoothing her hair away.
"Are you deaf animal? Get away!"
His eyes levered up to the speaker and his eyes flashed with an ungodly fire.
"Midoriko."
The woman should've been afraid, her name upon his lips with such a deadly promise. She merely raised her chin in his presence. He was defeated, his only means of salvation lay dead.
"You bloody pathetic excuse for a human woman," he growled. "How dare you curse me and then take what is rightfully mine?"
"She was not yours to begin with!" a man spoke vehemently from behind.
"Silence yourself human," he said with fury. "She lived here, this was her home. I was her family where you turned against her."
"Have you nothing to say you scum?" Midoriko questioned loudly. "Something that should be taken into account before you are sentenced to death?"
"If I die Midoriko," he said with a hint of a sadistic smile, "mark my words you'll go first."
Midoriko's eyes widened. Had she truly been foolish enough to strut into his terrain, leave herself vulnerable to his attacks? Yes, she had. However, rest assured, the villagers would attack in her favor, die while she ran for her own.
"You and what army creature?" she demanded hotly, self-assured.
The villagers gasped as small children, albeit one of them had a tail, approached and pulled on the creature's leg.
"Sesshomaru-sama, Kagome won't wake up."
"Insolent brats!" she chastised them, "have you no respect for the dead?"
Young, innocent eyes turned to her with dawning comprehension.
"Dead?" spoke the youngest.
The villagers began to murmur at her back, she unconsciously retreated slowly. The young girl dropped to her knees.
"B-But-."
"Rin, honey," spoke a new woman, her form seemingly passing through the tendrils of grass at her feet. "Kagome's just sleeping honey."
"No she's not!" wailed the other children.
A hand roughly turned the miko woman to face her army, "You didn't say anything about children!"
"Does it matter?" she argued. "They're all creatures that seek to kill us."
"That's not true!" yipped the demon child. "We can't even leave this place because of you!"
"You lie!" she screamed.
"Children don't like miko," Kouga added, standing at InuYasha's side.
"He is a demon and he can deceive you, do not fall for his tricks!"
"But mommy didn't have sex with daddy yet!" the young girl screamed, tears falling freely from her eyes. "Mommy!"
A young man tried to distance herself from the immobile body of the woman they'd supposedly come to save.
"No!" she screamed. "No! Leave me with mommy!"
The screams of a child at loss of a mother was disheartening, but the fact that they'd known the girl that lay dead on the plain made it all the more painful. However, knowing that the arrows that had been lodged into her back moments before were theirs, that struck home. The knowledge that the liquid that tainted the creature's silver hair was a human's, one of their own, cut deep into them. His hair was tainted silver by their hands, will of another.
-Uh... Writer's block? School? Ehehehehe...-