Chapter 45
It loomed black and ominous, a stark contrast against the cloudless sky that day. A dark, billowing cloud rose, the rolling motion of the plumes originated on the ground—right where the village would be. There was too much of it to attribute to an innocent cause.
Fuck!
His body was already in motion, his legs pumping at an inhuman speed, launching him off bough after bough with precision.
Inuyasha only vaguely noted the deer carcass slip off his shoulder as he jerked his body forward, carelessly smearing still lukewarm blood on the side of his face and neck. The sound of it tumbling through the leaves trailed behind as he bolted ahead, skimming the tree crowns at breakneck speed.
He'd spent the bulk of the day hugging the ground, stalking through the underbrush for the targeted prey. And when he finally burst through the canopy again, this was what awaited him?!
Inuyasha didn't know how long it'd been... he could be too late.
No.
Snarling, he shook himself violently, refusing to be distracted from his current task. Which was getting his ass as fast as possible back to the village.
It could be nothing. It could have been a scheduled burn that Kagome forgot to tell him about. A disembodied rational voice in his brain was already refuting this idea, citing that the Kagome he was well acquainted with by now would not fail to look out for his sensitive nose.
This is what he gets for trying to be all considerate. It made sense at the time for him to travel outside the radius of the hunting grounds of the village men and head to where game they couldn't reach could be found. Group effort was directed to stocking up for the coming winter. And he wanted to bring extra game to the girls—only because Kagome promised to preserve his share too of course.
He should've known not to stray so far.
His eyes were starting to tear with the way he'd fixed them unblinkingly at the smoke still far in the distance. But as luck would have it, the wind blew in the opposite direction and he was still out of hearing range, which meant he was sorely lacking in sensory information to even anticipate what was happening.
His heartbeat thudded loudly in his ears accompanied by the harsh sound of his breath sawing in and out. It was like he was running in a narrow tunnel, the sides a blurred green of the vegetation he sped past and at the end was that grey column of smoke.
Watching the rolling motion of the plume made his stomach drop. Momentarily impaired, his foot pushed off a branch the wrong way and he tumbled down. The splintered wood tore through skin and Inuyasha barely salvaged the fall to only getting smeared with dirt rather than smashing his face into the ground.
With not a second to lose, he cursed loudly and shot back into the air again.
It was too similar, this paralyzing dreadthat swept through his body, making him clumsy and disjointed. Waves of biles rose up his throat as he struggled against the crushing sense of déjà vu threatening to overwhelm him.
This had happened before. This blind, gripping panic as if he'd somehow just remembered that he'd dismembered his heart, and it existed somewhere separate from his body where his enemies could easily trample on.
Last time he was lucky—she escaped mostly unscathed. This time…
He spat to the side and continued to sprint.
Somehow, sprinting in a trance while distracted with the task of tamping down his instincts from going haywire, he arrived.
When Inuyasha finally looked up and his senses snapped into proper focus again, it hit him like an avalanche.
A good portion of the village must be burning. The air was turbid, the smoke refusing to clear even as he waved his limbs frantically through it. The soot drifted in the air, scorching his throat.
It smelled like blood.
Sure, mostly livestock but definitely some human mixed in there.
He couldn't breathe for an entirely different reason. His stomach lurched, and the nausea hit him tenfold. On one hand he wanted to know, had to know if her blood was in the mix, but on the other hand he just wanted to stay in denial longer.
Was there a youkai stench in the mix? He thought so, but he couldn't muster up half a fuck to parse it out. Did it really even matter at this point who or what was responsible for the destruction?
How was he supposed to find her in this mess?
Inuyasha staggered. Uncharacteristically at a lost, he stood there, stupidly looking this way and that. People were screaming, the desperate cries rising above the sound of groaning wood that was about to lose the battle of the flames.
Where should he even begin to look? The shrine?
From somewhere behind him, he heard the faint trill through the air a second too slow.
Something heavy impacted the side of his head and he stumbled forward. He'd failed to dodge in time, dissociated as he was. Amidst the ringing in his right ear, he could feel a hot trickle of blood run down the side of his face, a jagged edge having ripped through his scalp.
He turned around clumsily and made contact with the blazing eyes of one of the village women.
"You bastard! We trusted you! How could you do this to us?" She screamed at him, clutching another piece of debris, likely similar to what was thrown at him
She was an honest, pragmatic woman—strong and protective of her three young brats. Actually, he'd helped her draw two extra pails of water from the well just this morning.
Inuyasha felt his jaw open and close uselessly, but no sound, no words come forth.
She turned angrily and hollered behind her.
"Everyone come here! He's right here!"
Vaguely, Inuyasha realized that there were a lot of villagers amongst the ruined buildings, likely trying to control the fires from spreading too far. At the women's instigation, humans started coming out of the woodwork, advancing into a loose crowd around him.
"You ungrateful half-breed!" A man stomped forward, gripping a hoe at his side.
The same man who'd been inviting him on maintenance projects since the very first time he'd contributed. Inuyasha thought they'd formed some sort of kinship fixing roofs in each other's quiet company.
"W-what is go—" He croaked out, his voice gravelly and unfamiliar.
"Don't you dare pretend! You just tore through here moments ago, we saw—"
"What did we do to you?!"
"After everything we did includ—"
"Should've known you can't change hanyou, you can't reform something born deformed!"
The cacophony of shouts overlapped each other, the angry voices blurring such that he could no longer decipher the actual words. Only that it was all hostile
This too had happened before. Not here. Not that he'd thought this village would turn against him like this. Not after the last couple of seasons interacting together. He'd thought he'd been able to prove himself…
"Our priestesses vouched for you! How could—"
That snapped his overwhelmed brain back into focus. Priestesses... Kagome.
He raised both his hands up in what he thought would be a non-threatening, placating manner.
"I didn't—I just came back from hunting." He uttered pathetically.
"Like hell! You sure look like you've been ransacking the village!"
Shaking his head desperately, Inuyasha attempted to deny their claims when any time in his past, he wouldn't have even bothered. Maybe... just maybe. He needed them to listen to him, answer his question.
He still had no idea what happened. But that wasn't what mattered most. Frantic golden eyes scanned the crowd, both hoping and despairing to see a glimpse of the dainty face he so wanted to locate.
"W-where is Kago—"
The end of his query was drowned in the clamor. The insults picked up again, the faces he could no longer recognize blurred into a pulsing blob closing in on him. Someone chucked a piece of broken crockery he managed to sidestep.
He could feel his pupils dilate, the instincts of a cornered animal rising regardless of how much he wanted to keep control of it. Youki surged in his veins and with it the ends of his hair floated unnaturally up on either side of him.
The humans stopped talking abruptly, and collectively they edged away.
There was some air to breathe again. This was good. It was okay, he's okay.
Inuyasha backed up slowly, sensing an opening where the crowd dispersed behind him to keep their distance. His skin tore as he curled his claws into his palm, but he barely resisted it.
He couldn't hurt them. But he didn't have time for this. He needed them to answer him.
"Where's Kagome?"
Nothing. Just the noise of the buildings settling after the destruction.
He kept his arms tucked to the side to prevent himself from lashing out and doing something he couldn't undo.
Then the sound of shuffling feet in response to some commotion at the far side of the half-circle. The humans looked back, expressions ranging from irritation to discomfort rippled like a wave through the crowd.
A petite figure thrusted out forcefully away from the tight throng of bodies. She stumbled forward with unused momentum but only just managed to recover her balance in a few wobbly steps.
Her hair was wild and mussed, her robes completely ruined by dark swatches of soot. But her grey eyes were wide and clear when she finally raised her face to look him straight on.
The breath stalled in his chest.
"Inuyasha?"
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A/N: Annnnd we are taking a bit of a break from the happy feel-good fic that is IWFA thus far. I apologize. This was how the plot wanted to go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If anyone's upset about it, it'd still like to know xD
Special thanks to lavendertwilight89 and superpixie42 for their efforts on QA for this and subsequent couple of chapters 3
I'll see you next week Thurs/Fri!
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha. However, this plot, the exact sequence of words and any original characters described therein, I reserve all rights to.