Chapter 8: Hurt

"What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end"

-"Hurt"
By Nine Inch Nails

A/N: This chapter could trigger suicidal thoughts, and I would be remiss if I did not warn you here. Please proceed with caution and be aware of your limits.

For Inuyasha, the time leading up to that first phone call was much different than Kagome's, to the point where he was almost envious of the two months she'd told him of.

She'd been home, focusing on her mental and physical health, spending her days preparing for employment and taking care of herself. Kagome had implied that she'd been a little lonely at first, but Yash could tell she had adjusted well when she mentioned she'd had Maya over for dinner and a few drinks one night.

He hadn't truly been alone since he'd landed for a layover in Helsinki. His assistant, Johann, had flown there to discuss what had happened in his absence entirely.

In short, it was pure chaos.

Inuyasha hated Berlin. Not the city, but the branch of Takeshi Corporation based there. He hated it more than anything, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about burning down the branch at least 100 times since he had taken on the mantle of creating stability there.

So, his last two months had consisted of him working 12 and 13 hours a day at the office, just to turn around and have more work to do at home. Johann, to his relief, was unmarried, and had taken to staying over at Yash's apartment when they were really struggling with finding a solution to an issue, and when Johann wasn't there, he'd undoubtedly find Shippo popping over for a night or two on a layover to help Yash gain traction when he could.

The months of hard work paid off, because just a few days after Inuyasha had bravely called Kagome, he and Johann found themselves completely done with work at 4 pm for the first time in…forever.

Everything was stable, all the clients satisfied within reason, all the loose ends suddenly taken care of. It was…astonishing. But Inuyasha wasn't an idiot; he'd been through this so many times before. He knew in a day or two he could easily be back to working without pause, so he held his breath and waited to see if it would last. For the next five days, Johann was able to sleep in his own home, and when it carried over for a second week, Inuyasha finally felt that he could exhale.

It was a relief, like a long cool drink after a hard day of working in the heat. Yash was so damn happy that he'd unthinkingly called Kagome at midnight her time, her groggy voice asking worriedly if he was okay.

He should have felt bad, because as soon as he started apologizing he could hear the sounds of her turning on tricky lamp he'd bought for the master bedroom in Kyoto, the familiar 'click-clickclick-click' of the mechanism coming through clearly over the phone. But he didn't, because as soon as he'd given the short hand of why he'd called, Kagome had sweetly expressed how happy she was for him, and he couldn't help but keep talking when she gently prodded him for more.

A part of him wondered if his mattress would smell like her now, but he squashed that quickly, deciding it was neither here nor there because he was here and not there.

Talking to Kagome…it wasn't anything like he'd expected. It was on a whim that he'd called her the first time, suddenly aware that he had time to talk to her and owed it to himself to check in on her. They'd talked for his entire lunch hour, about everything and nothing and it was an unexpected mood booster that gave him the positivity he'd needed to get through the rest of his day.

But that second time, as she sleepily chatted with him when he was on his way home, he felt peaceful. He didn't know why he'd immediately thought to call her, to share the best news he'd had in months with a proverbial stranger, but he didn't care to dwell on it. Not when she insisted he express what he'd called to say, not when she did nothing but praise him and seemed to be genuinely relieved for him. Kagome even went on to press him about how much sleep he'd been getting, and if he'd been eating properly.

How long had it been since someone outside of his family had genuinely cared about his wellbeing? How many years had it been now?

150 years, give or take.

The number came easier than he'd expected, the punch of emotions in his stomach enough to get him to sheepishly hang up with Kagome and wish her a good night, a promise to call her during his lunch the next day forming easily.

Sophie.

Kagome's name had once ached on his heart like that, and not for the first time he tried to recall the pain exactly, comparing the two.

No, not like that, he amended. When he'd accepted the inevitability that he would die long before Kagome graced the earth with her presence, his soul was what ached. There was nothing like that pain, his demon howling in the back of his mind as he tried to piece together a life for himself in her wake.

But with Sophie, his soul just stood still. There was no howling, no loss of intelligible thought as he'd expected. Instead, there was part of him that whispered an 'I told you so' as his feeble human heart had broken that day, over a century and a half ago.

Inuyasha was home, in his apartment in Berlin, a glass of whiskey in his hand before he finally let himself sit down and think about what he was feeling.

The reintroduction of Kagome into his life was not what he had expected. A part of him, the part that had remained the most like the young half demon that Kagome had known, had been hopeful that things would instantly be…fixed. He wished it was like that, that he had walked up to Kagome that day of her graduation, kissed her senseless and then the two of them lived happily ever after, devoid of all darkness and pain that plagued them.

But this was real life, and real life was ugly.

There was no magic 'fix it' button, they were no longer to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together seamlessly. To be honest, they never really were. He had tried to kill her when he first met her all those years ago.

But…he had loved her. She had been the air in his lungs, the strength in his muscles, the reason his heart kept beating. Yash, in his 150s, couldn't imagine his life without that young girl's sweet smiles and painful 'sit boy' commands. It had scared him, endlessly, but she was the only thing that made sense.

Thinking back to the years immediately after Kagome had been ripped away from him, Yash immediately just remembered the throbbing mass of hurt his heart had been.

It was a burning ache like he had never felt, a part of himself missing that Inuyasha would never regain, had never even known he could lose. He had known loss, had known searing pain, but he felt empty in her wake, a shell of the half-demon he had grown to be. Inuyasha had been certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kagome was The One™.

He would have welcomed any subjugation despite the bruise to his all male, all dominant, all alpha ego if it meant he could just see her again. But his demon, the rebellious voice that always made his presence and opinion irrefutably understood, his demon was the worst.

It was plaguing him with constant, pervasive, perverted thoughts that would have made even the idiot monk blush, image after image of the younger girl appearing when he least needed them. They were fueled by his own memories, more innocent touches and interactions warped and recreated to leave him hiding in the trees until he regained control of his body. The not so subtle affections between Sango and Miroku didn't help, his sensitive ears and nose able to pick up activities that only served to further his demon's creativity. It was as if every time the two of them went at it, his mind used it as an excuse to remind him of what his body called for, of what he subconsciously desired most.

It wasn't just the glimpses he had caught of her while she bathed, though they certainly didn't help. It was the feel of her legs tightening against his sides when he carried her, the warmth of her smooth skin under his fingertips as he kept her close, as he kept her safe. They were destroyed, the otherwise pure moments, by his daydreams.

Her legs, instead, would curl around his sides and lock across his lower back, trapping him against her tightly. Inuyasha felt the softness if her skin brushing against his own, spreading little touches of warmth all over his body that sent his head spinning, urging and begging him to give her more. His mind took the sensation of her hair brushing across his face from the wind and morphed it to sway across his chest rhythmically, took the sound of her alarmed voice screaming his name for help and converted it to a wail of pleasure. Her scent, typically sweet and innocent, was laced with the intoxicating smell of desire and sex, heady and heavy.

Inuyasha was strong. He had fought his demon for years without the help of the tessaiga and had then remained in control completely with it. But that scent, the saccharine scent he loved so much laced with erotic musk scent his eyes red in a flash. Even if it was just a daydream, an unwanted pest to annoy him, it was enough to have him teetering on the edge of an abyss he had not yet visited.

Even now, as he sat on his couch in Berlin, remembering those thoughts had him shifting uncomfortably in his seat. They were powerful, and he'd be lying if some of them hadn't revisited with her reappearance in his life.

The first several decades were the hardest. Sango and Miroku were having enough children to necessitate even his full attention and participation most of the time. It wasn't that Inuyasha wasn't grateful for the role he played in their lives, in fact the large family grew to be his saving grace. But the constant reminder that what they had was what he wanted wore on him.

He remembered meeting Tensho for the first time, the little babe swaddled in the colors of his house, proudly placed in his arms by Rin, Sesshomaru standing protectively next to him.

Was that what their child would have looked like? It was hard, Inuyasha decided, to know for sure. He'd never seen a quarter demon at that time in his life, and that's what his children would have been with Kagome, unless his demon blood was in full control when they…it wasn't something he would have ever allowed, something he didn't want to dwell on.

It was harder to be the invincible half demon then, as his friends raised their children, his brother too, even if it was only to the face of his friends and their descendants. He was broken, completely devoid of all desire to live, suddenly aware that if Kagome's timeline ran parallel to his, she too was gone. She had probably married, by now, out of desire for children. She would have been an excellent mother, someone who deserved a doting husband and a brood of children to adore her.

But after Sango and Miroku passed, after he realized Kagome's own life must have reached its end, he was broken.

Yash still worked and protected the village, still participated to his fullest physical ability, but it wasn't living. He felt no joy, felt no love like he had for Kagome. His heart was incapable of anything but hurting, his body unable to do anything but protect the innocent. He wished he could be reborn into her lifetime, his soul becoming an imaginary human that she would have fallen in love with and bore children from.

He didn't want to live, not without her.

He decided on a regular day, the sun beating down his back, too tired of waiting. Inuyasha was resolute in his choice. He went to the well that night, trying one last time to cross the gap between himself and his soulmate. When the bridge between their times once again refused to open, he drew his sword and prepared himself for the flash of pain.

Except the tetsuaiga never transformed. He was left with the rusty imitation of a sword that usually rested at his hip but decided to say "fuck it" and go ahead anyway.

He placed the tip of the blade on his chest, the hilt of the sword in his left hand, his right hand steadying the blunted edge to the exact point where his pulse was the strongest.

Inuyasha paused.

This was it. This was forever. With one last thought of Kagome's face, of her smile, he pushed on.

There was resistance, the blunt tip struggling against the skin of his chest. He applied more pressure to the hilt if the sword, cautious at first and then without pause. The initial breaking of the skin brought on a burning pain that lingered, the give in the level of resistance once he broke through the layers of the subcutaneous tissue causing him to abruptly jerk the sword in further and ignite his flesh in an inferno of pain. The blade, though lacking the necessary sharpness to be swift in its movements, ripped through his pericardium and his heart as if it had found purchase there, continuing through his posterior chest wall to properly impale him.

With a quick twist, his blood spilled down his front, uncomfortably warm on his skin. It was a strange sensation, he realized, one he had never had the luxury to dwell on amidst battle. It was oddly sticky, coating his skin completely, leaving him in pulses timed with his heart beat. He choked, the sword having also pierced his left lung, and it caused him coughed up a bit of blood, a trail running from the corner of his mouth.

His heart beat slowed, the black dots swimming in his vision as his body struggled to survive without the oxygenated blood pumping effectively through his arteries and veins.

Kagome had loved him, he realized then, even when he left to be with Kikyou, even when he was an ass and possessive and probably not the charming man she dreamed of as a child. She loved him as a half demon, loved him even when he perceived himself to not be whole. Kagome had cried over much less fatal wounds before, always doting on him and trying her best to put him back together.

She would be devastated if she knew he had done this, and Inuyasha imagined her response as if she were sitting there with him already dead. He saw her cradle him to her chest, saw her cry out in anguish as he remained limp and pulseless, heard her wails echoing against the walls of the well.

If Kagome felt this pain, if Kagome had sat at the bottom of the well and tried to kill herself, what would he have said to her?

He would have said anything to keep her alive, wouldn't have cared if she was with another man, if she had this stranger's children, all that mattered was if she was happy and alive. He would have screamed at her that loving her didn't mean anything if she wasn't alive to love.

All it took was a fluid jerk, and he pulled the sword out, feeling his heart jolt and his demon pulse into control to work overtime to heal him before death. He didn't remember thinking to pull out his blade, but there it was, in his right hand, blade covered in his own blood.

Kagome loved him, and she would want him to live. She would want him to be happy and to have found joy in his life.

Inuyasha would live for Kagome, even if that meant living without her.

Recovery from his physical wound was easy when compared to his emotional ones. He moved in with Sesshomaru, Shippo joining him a few years later. Yash devoted himself to caring for his family, taking special time with his nephew to help him deal with being a half demon, becoming more involved with the inner workings of the house of the west.

Things had not been good. Many demons were uprising against the feudal system, trying to overthrow their lords. They were lucky, it turned out, that Sesshomaru had mated a human, and that Inuyasha was so loved by many for what he'd done to help destroy Naraku. They remained in power, the west still loyal to his family after all this time.

They still fought to protect their constituents from the others, something that at one point had dominated Inuyasha's life. He'd spend months at a time at their borders, only retreating when Sesshomaru himself was there to take his place. It wasn't that they were fighting change, they were only serving those who served them, keeping everyone in their domain safe. When the time came that the fighting stopped, when people were seeking out alliances and Tensho was already as old as Inuyasha had been when the fighting had started, he almost didn't recognize the world.

Glamours were made around that time, the demons that remained deciding it was best to fade into the past and allowing humans to believe them all dead from the wars. Humans had started developing more advanced and planned civilizations, and they played a small, yet vital, role in them. Demons, like them, had the most wealth and power, even when they were in hiding, and they used that to help create societies they thought were worthy.

Things in his life evolved. He and his brother started lending money and charging interest after those Italians had started doing the same successfully, something that lead to their continued wealth and business dealings to this day. He focused on that, on business, and his family. It was easier to ignore the emptiness when his life was so full of with his niece and his nephews that needed his guidance to accept themselves for what they were.

It was then that he began to seek the comfort of a woman's arms, even if it was just for the night. Which it usually was. He never wanted a wife, never wanted a mate, he just wanted a roll in the sheets to pacify his physical needs. Inuyasha, at age 300 and something, was certain he would not survive the next one hundred years, so he didn't bother pretending like he would. It was how he coped, how he pushed his demon to forget, just for a little while, and it worked.

There had been others, of course, that he held a soft spot for. One had been the head of an okiya, the first who took the time to show him how to make love to a woman, how to take the time to make a woman to feel wholly appreciated. Momiko, her name had been, he recalled. He always thought of her with a pang of sorrow.

She'd died of tuberculosis a year or two after Inuyasha had started learning from her.

The others…none of them gave them what he wanted, none of them accepted him for what he was. It was always the same. They welcomed him into their beds and homes, wanted him to give them what he was so good at, and then when he finally thought it was safe, finally felt like they might want him for the half demon, he was proved wrong.

They would all scream in horror, it turned out, when he took off his glamour.

For a brief second, he realized Kagome had wept out of joy. She was so damned special, and the thought caused his stomach to knot briefly from the sheer emotion.

But, she had loved Inuyasha the half demon. Not Yashiro the human lord or courtier or whatever he was that year. Of course, it made sense that she was happy to see him.

Sophie had been shocked, too. He'd expected that, was anticipating that she would have shoved him out of the door as so many others had. But instead, in 1875 in Dijon, France, that young blue-eyed girl had carefully run her hands over his ears, inspecting them closely.

It had taken her a few weeks, but she still wanted to be seen with him, still enjoyed courting him in public (with his glamour on, he didn't have a death wish) and in private, and when he decided that he might have found someone to spend his life with, she reciprocated.

They were married that winter, all his family surrounding him despite their trepidation.

The problem, the irrefutable problem, was the physicality of their relationship. It was no secret that demons had mates, and with his lineage, it would be impossible for your demon to not want to mark their mate. It was painless and didn't do any sort of magic that allowed them to communicate with their thoughts like people often thought, more or less just a very powerful love bite during the throes of passion. His lineage, in particular, was known to be very adamant about marking, the act more righteous than marriage in their eyes.

His never wanted to mark Sophie, his demon whispering a warning against what he was doing when he had tried to force himself to do it, but he proceeded on anyway. It was a half mark, something that he hadn't expected or thought existed, but he took it.

She was his.

When she barely started to age, Sophie had become overwhelmed with fear of him not wanting her anymore, begging him to explain how Rin was still alive and young if she was a human like herself.

It took very little convincing on her part for him to plan to go forward with the ceremony.

The process is potentially fatal, bonding a human to a demon's life. You need be dead sure that the person you are presenting to your demon is the mate for your soul, the one person you are designed to be with. And when your souls are bound, in a primal, passionate way, the weaker of the two will inevitably die if you're wrong.

It was a full moon, the time when his demon was the strongest, and he'd divulged himself of all his control mechanisms, allowing his demon to be in charge.

His demon had been outraged in the days prior, yelling obscenities in the back of his mind, but when it came time for the ceremony he was silent. Instead, Yash, with the red eyes and his father's markings on his face, gently kissed her and thanked her for loving him, told her he was so sorry for what was about to happen.

The original pair that had pulled the bonding off had done it on their own, discovered the occurrence by accident, and it was their children who lived on to teach others. Sesshomaru had explained the basics to him, and he had the proper priest there to help. It was similar to mating, the binding of one person to another, but it required someone with the ability to sense auras to meld them together during a very…physical interaction.

So, yes, he was supposed to have sex with Sophie on an alter while a priest melded their auras, something that required his demon to be in control and was notoriously rough and messy for all involved. Except his demon was kind and gentle and did nothing but show the woman love, even as she sobbed and weakly hit his chest when she realized why he was being so kind, even as she died in his arms.

His aura had rejected hers. Inuyasha, in his heart, had known that while he had loved Sophie wholly, and that she had loved him in return, she was not for him. Choosing to ignore that, despite the love they shared, had cost him her life.

Losing Sophie, the last person who had ever cared for him, the real him, had driven a nail into the coffin that contained his heart.

He would never lose someone he loved like that again.

It wasn't until he saw the first car traveling down a dirt road in London that he realized how much time had really escaped him. It was then that he was struck with the realization that he'd somehow survived centuries beyond what he'd imagined.

In that moment, Inuyasha realized Kagome was in incredible danger one day.

He'd spent so much of his life trying to live beyond her, to make her proud of his actions and happy that he'd found as much happiness as he could, given the circumstances, that he'd completely overlooked what awaited her when she was born.

After…everything, every last thing he'd encountered, he couldn't live with Kagome's blood on his hands.

It was with the demon council the headed Japan that he and Shippo found success in protecting Kagome. Many were old friends and had known Kagome personally and they worked to convince those who had not to realize the severity of what was to come. They wiped any record of her involvement from the world, Kouga having gone as far as to have several people mysteriously disappear on a hunting trip that posed a significant risk to her on his behalf, something Inuyasha was eternally grateful for. He didn't care to think of the logistics involved, only put aside his previous disdain for the wolf in favor or a unrivaled partnership.

This wasn't just for him, or just for Kagome, it was also for the countless innocents who would fall under the control of a few idiotic demons if they were to kill the girl when she was vulnerable and use the jewel to gain insurmountable power. It was a fear of every demon who knew the jewel's power, who wanted to continue to live as they did, and together they rallied to ensure no one would even know when the girl was born.

When Inuyasha had finally seen the infant Kagome, when he'd finally lived to meet her in the same time, he didn't feel the way he thought he would.

He didn't want to hold onto the babe forever, didn't want to steal her from her parents and raise her himself, which was something he feared. Instead, it was like looking at any other baby he'd ever seen. She was beautiful, honestly perfect as he'd told the girl's father, but she was still just a little child. He was only struck by the memories her scent brought him, remembering things he'd chosen to forget.

Leaving her in that nursery was only difficult because he feared for her safety. He was only able to breathe a sigh of relief on Daichi's 16th birthday, the reports of the vassals on the shrine that she had lived to celebrate her own, knowing she had disappeared down the well on her 15th birthday, and their travels, for her, were officially over. The jewel was gone.

Inuyasha spent years of his life waiting for this, waiting for her to be his Kagome again, but when she was, he suddenly felt a peace he hadn't known. He felt okay leaving the country, felt fine to take assignments far away from her because she was safe. There were still vassals to protect her, still sworn to secrecy, still reporting on her health and wellbeing each week.

So, she'd grown up without him, grown beyond her own hurt and pain over losing him just as he'd wanted. But now what?

What did he want from her? He didn't know the answer, different parts of himself telling him different things.

It was hard for Yash. He didn't want a physical relationship with anyone anymore, but Kagome was…something he could not have anticipated.

Inuyasha was a man, and despite his age his body still reacted to her like a young man's would. He wasn't a fool, he once read that men think of sex, on average, at least twice as often as women. It was easy to explain away a lot of his reaction to her, in person, to his suppressed sex drive. It'd been a very long time for him, and he had needs. And, to his detriment, Kagome was stunning, having blossomed into a formidable woman, someone that any man would pause to admire for at least a moment.

He knew she had been sexually intimate with others, her scent missing the little bit of purity he'd always associated with it, a spicy note that only further excited him replacing it. Daichi hinted that she'd been a little wild before she'd crossed his nephew's path, but Inuyasha couldn't smell anyone else on her when he'd last seen her. Instead, all he found was her own attraction to him, and then the familiar bite of her frustration. She had been fighting it, just as he had. His demon had reared his head and demanded he sweep her off into a room and not leave until both of them were fully sated from the moment he saw her, but he hadn't.

Inuyasha would rather die than even take Kagome to his bed, even as his demon was plaguing him with idea after idea of how to best please the girl.

He would not lose Kagome, because if losing Sophie…if losing her had been bad, what would he do when he lost Kagome in the same way?

Something within him had broken irreparably just from Kagome's absence, but if she died in his arms, her trust placed inexplicably in him, he would have to finally do what he'd started so many years ago at the bottom of that well.

Inuyasha could never be with Kagome, not like what his demon wanted. He could only offer her companionship, care, and comfort for the rest of her life.

A/N:

A couple of things I really want to share:

I am so appreciative of those of who you commented and were supportive of me taking a breather. I needed it desperately to help me remember why I decided to actually post this stuff to start with. This is my story, my daydream, my thoughts and feelings on things and it's huge to even put it to words.

My Inuyasha is something, isn't he? This big hearted but irreversibly hurt man that wants nothing to feel loved and appreciated. I hope you guys like him as much as I do, but then again, I know things about him that you don't yet, so maybe you'll get to fall in love with him over the rest of this story.

That being said, suicide is never the answer, never the cure to the pain. If you are hurting, please seek help. 1-800-273-8255 is the suicide prevention hotline, and I encourage all of you to share that and save that for your own use.