Setting: Manga canon, Chapter 370
Characters: Hakudoushi
Rating: K+
Genre: Angst
Warnings: Character death.
Author's Note: This was inspired by a challenge prompt called "New" in the Inu Yasha Themes Livejournal community.
Summary: Hakudoushi had thought he had achieved mastery in the art of cunning. He was wrong.
Forever the Student
Realisation knifed through his brain with the strength of new steel, coating his throat with the after-taste of bile.
Strange, how his love of violence could vanish like so much smoke dispelled on the wind – an ephemeral whimsy of strength revealed for what it was. He had thought himself so clever, his plan so carefully crafted. So secret.
It had been so simple. Naraku had been so determined for that traitorous bitch to perform one last task before he ended her miserable existence. He had thought to surpass that master of cunning. He'd actually thought he had.
A desire for power crumpled around him like dying blossoms. One gust of wind – that's all it took to reduce his plans to dust, to grant the insight that came with his last breath, through the illusions that were shattering with the fragility of a barrier he had unshakeably, foolishly trusted.
To obtain the power he had craved, he had agreed to Naraku's plan without question. So intent upon watching her life fading away before his eyes, her freedom futilely ensnared amongst the unyielding strands of Naraku's cunning, he had utterly failed to see the reality. He had failed to see the spider's dance, the true pattern of the web being spun.
Call it arrogance, ignorance. Call it hope. It no longer mattered. He had believed Kagura's final duty for Naraku was to free Goryoumaru.
But as the power of Tessaiga smashed through his body, as the chains of this life broke away, freeing him from the burdens of this world and opening the kazaana's gateway to the trials of the next, he could see the truth in all its stark clarity.
He hadn't been the bait for trapping Kagura.
Kagura had been the bait for trapping him.
FIN.