Slowly, Inuyasha's vision was starting to fade to black. He could feel the tears welling up behind his eyes, like they dared to do from time to time, planning their escape. He almost felt like watching them pass by this time. The girl he just wanted to hold close, whisper a thousand things into her listening ears, was destined to kill him. He knew it now. All those dreams, those little pricking words in the back of his mind all told the truth. This was his fate.
"Please...Kagome...Please don't do this." He pleaded, falling back against his elbows, letting the blood flow freely as he bore his unseeing eyes into her red ones. Was his voice even reaching her ears? Did she had any control at all anymore? He recognized that blank look. This was all another's work.
"Kagome, no!" The slayer's voice rang out to them, Miroku's pained groan following soon after as he clenched his dark veined wrist. The words were just mumbles to the other two, eyes locked in a deadly staring battle.
"Hm. How will you handle your fate, hanyou, when this wench is the cause of it?" A deep, heavy, voice broke through the heavy sobs that had begun to peel from Sango's throat. His silent feet carried him back until the darkness completely devoured him, leaving them in a heavy silence, just as before.
His life was thinning, but his legs shifted to pull him up to stand on wavering legs. He blinked, clearing a bit of vision back into his eyes, but clouded by a deathly black that he knew wouldn't fade until the end. He summed it up, gathering the last slip of his strength that hadn't already been drained with the blood that drenched the grass like bloodshed of a freshly abandoned battlefield.
"Damn you, Sanraku!" He cursed the demon, shouting with no aim from the creature's location. His sense of smell was drifting away, his body beginning to numb to the point he couldn't tell if he was walking anymore or not.
No. Not walking. Running. Running away, leaving the screaming slayer and poisoned monk behind. Without even a clue of his surroundings, the fading hanyou raced through the only forest he knew. The one he had dwelled in for fifty years in a peaceful sleep. Now he blood was splattering over trees and fresh grass and leaves as he passed, running frantically from the only girl he just wanted to hold right now.
He could hear her feet padding close behind him. Deadly close. Close enough to kill. She was gaining on him faster than the boy could breathe. Faster than he could blink or slip another word past his pale lips that longed for her kiss just once more before he let her take him down.
"Kagome!" He shouted, his feet skidding over the blood slick grass. He whirled around, eyes narrowed at her. If something could bring her back into his arms, anything at all, he would give it up just to pull her back from the biggest mistake of her life. She couldn't do this to him. Something inside of her would surely snap her back, bring her to the surface once more so she could actually think.
He eyed her, watching tears slip over the rims of her dimmed eyes as she straightened an arrow onto her bow, aiming directly for him. Inuyasha froze, his heart seeming to stop at the streams of liquid that trickled down her cheeks. So she had already snapped back. She was always there, always herself inside. She could see every move she made as forced hands pulled the string and arrow back to shoot a fatal blow.
'Stop her. Do something, you idiot!' Inuyasha ordered himself, a hand crawling across his abdomin to hold across his bleeding wound. What was the one way the miko had brought him back from a state like this? How could he pull the chocolate brown he loved so much, back into her eyes, the sweet taste to her lips, the color to her cheeks?
The hanyou pounced forward pushing down the bow and arrow that she held in a death grip to take her by the shoulders. He pushed against her, forcing his skin against hers, his lips to hers, making her feel what he must really want deep down inside. He kissed her, lips caressing hers in a last attempt to save them both from complete misery.
It lasted, his lips to hers though the sweet candy had melted from her lips, the warmth drained from her kiss. She didn't kiss back. He knew she wouldn't. This was his gift to her, his last gift that he could push to her with a weak and wavering nudge before another groan ripped through his throat and another flake of his life crashed to the ground with another sheet of his crimson blood.
His nearly blind eyes cast downward, a hand limply grasping the arrow that had lodged itself in his leg. The blood was already starting to stain down the length of his hakama leg. It hadn't worked. Not even the passion of his kiss and love could rip her from the state she had been thrust into. He couldn't touch her. Not now, not ever again. He knew for sure, this was the end.
"Kagome...I..." He tried to speak, but the blood was already to work it's way up his throat, coating his insides as he backed away slowly, his eyes trailing back up to hers. He coughed fiercely, tiny drops of blood spitting out that he quickly wiped away. Only moments before the thick, red, liquid invaded his mouth.
His stumbled back, his sight tilting but the miko never fading from his vision. His back slammed against the smoothed bark of a tree, sending prickles up his spine. His tree. The tree he was destined to live the rest of his life on, but torn from that fate by a certain young girl. The girl who stood before him now, another arrow raised to threaten his life.
This was it, his back was pressed tightly to the tree, his arm clinging against his bloodsoaked yukata. This wasn't what she wanted at all, was it? So why couldn't she stop herself before the last grain of sand drifted from the hanyou's hourglass of life. He only had a few moments, and anything could loosen that frail finger from the string and send him hurtling to his death.
"Fool. I...kn-know you're...stronger...than this." He stammered, his head falling back, his silvery bangs bobbing with the motion. His whole body ached with a pain so white hot that he could barely think anymore. It was almost enough to buckle him over, right then and there, but his legs only quivered.
"I know...this...isn't what...you want." He whispered, hoping with the last that he had that she would hear him somehow. Somehow, his voice would reach her through the thick barrier of hate that shielded her lips, her ears, her eyes, any sense that could bring her back to him and lower that arrow from his chest.
It was useless. All was useless as the miko pulled back even harder. She strained her fingers against the string until it sliced her alabaster skin, a drop of crimson blood slipping over the thin thread, trailing down in a reddish glow. She refused to hear, the poison pumping through her veins stronger than ever, only on the edge of drained out with the tears that shed from her narrowed eyes.
The hanyou didn't try to speak anymore, simply let his head loll back in wait for her decision. He didn't seem to be afraid of the blood that had flooded the caverns of his mouth. He didn't seen to be frightened of the quivering of his body, the numbness of his touch, the fading of life itself. He wasn't afraid as Kagome's fingers slipped back from the string, sending the pointed arrow hurtling towards him in a final hit to blow away his life.
It struck him, harder than anything ever before. It ripped through his clothing, plunging through his spiking ribs to pierce his scarcely beating heart. The death blow. As if he had been saving it up, a long, agonizing moan stole from his throat to echo through the dimensions of the dark forest, even thought the pain didn't sting him. His fingers traced along the growing circle of blood that surrounded itself around the arrow that protruded from his chest, pinning him to the tree behind him.
Kagome stared, wide eyed, emotionlessly horrified as a stream of blood flowing, carefully, from the side of Inuyasha's mouth. The corners gently curved into a small and eerie smile. His knees would have buckled if the arrow didn't pin him up. But he was slowly falling limp under the arrow's hold, his shoulders slumping in defeat as his bangs drooped low over his cracked eyes. His hands fell to his sides, blood trailing off his chin to trickle down his neck.
He blinked once, twice, and then a few more times, but it never was enough. A single, salty tear slipped down from the hidden shelter of his blood streaked bangs, dancing down his lifelessly pale cheek in the realization of his miserable ending.
Once upon a time, he was here before, forced to rush out last words to the woman he loved before it was too late. Now, he struggled to stretch on his final moments, using each breath conservately though is chest ached with each attempt that failed or succeeded. Now, he knew better, and just what to say.
He chose his last words carefully, picking the best ones from the mountain high pile, uttering them weakly.
"I love you...Kagome."
His vision finally faded, his smile slipping into a pained cringe as the last grain of sand fell from his hourglass. Slowly, teary pools of amber closed to never open again.
..:---.--..--.-------:..
Did I mention how much I love you guys?...Heh..Heh...not working, it is?
I realize this may cost me some reviewers...and many chunks of my life...
Yeah...I'm not being convincing, am I?
But who knows what will happen next! Don't you wanna know?
Well, reviews, reviews, please. Tell me how much you hate me for it and if you actually cried while reading this.